Board of Aldermen 05-25-2021 Page 36
Alderman Jette
Thank you Madam Chairman. | want to say that | thank our Board of Health and our Department of Health for
all that they have done during this pandemic. | am sure that the Members of the Board of Health, who are
volunteers, you know, they are medical professionals who volunteer their time to serve in this role to help
protect the public health, | am sure when they agreed to do this they had no idea that we would be facing a
pandemic and they would be dealing with what they had to deal with and suffer the criticisms that people that
have aimed at them for trying to what they think is best to protect the public health. From the time that this
pandemic started, people forget that this is brand new thing, this had never happened before. There was a lot
of confusion, a lot of missteps as they were learning how to deal with the disease, there was a lot of trial and
error. There were things that were tried that didn’t work; there were other things that were put into place.
Slowly, “they” the medical experts learned how to deal with this and they are still learning. They are still
discovering new things about this thing.
So from the beginning and this has been very confusing to the public. There’s been so many conflicting
viewpoints expressed by experts and by non-experts. And the public has been subjected to all of this and it
has led to a lot of confusion and |, from the time that the Board of Health recommended that we institute this
mask ordinance, | told people that the information is very conflicting, it is changing every day and our Board of
Health is made up of medical professionals that include a pulmonologist, a pediatrician. The Department of
Public Health, the Medical Director is an Infectious Disease Specialist, they have an Epidemiologist on staff.
And the Director of Public Health is a Doctor of Public Health. So these people are much more qualified than |
am certainly to judge all of this information and to make recommendations. So |’ve been supporting them
when they recommended that we institute this mask ordinance | supported them and | voted for it then. And the
amendment that they recommended, | voted for that. Frankly | was surprised as | watched the meeting, |
heard at least two members of Board of Health and the Infectious Disease Specialist kind of suggest that, hey
this thing is still a big problem. This thing is still killing people and it may be too early to make these changes.
But in the end, they voted to lift the mask ordinance. | was surprised but | trust them, if they think this is the
right thing to do, then | support the lifting of the mask ordinance.
What | have trouble with is the amendment to adopt the recommendations. The recommendations that the
Board of Health is making is trying to tell people that even if the mask ordinance is lifted, there are still good
reasons to be careful. And there are instances where you should continue to wear a mask. There are certain
people who should continue to maintain distances from each other, continue to wash their hands. There are
recommendations that should still be followed. And the Board of Health has the authority, | believe, to make
whatever recommendations it feels are appropriate to protect our public health and to educate the public as to
what they should be doing while this pandemic is still a threat. However, we, as a Board of Aldermen, we
enact ordinances. Ordinances are laws, you know, ordinances say that you can’t do something and if you do
it, it is punishable by fines or even jail time. Our Ordinances are not designed to make recommendations so |
support the Board of Health and | encourage, in my opinion, | encourage them to make their recommendations
and to publicize that and make the public aware of their recommendations. But | am uncomfortable as an
Alderman, as the Board of Aldermen adopting an ordinance which makes recommendations. It has not effect.
If you don’t obey these recommendations, nothing happens. So! am uncomfortable with that and | don’t — so
for that reason | support the Board of Health but | don’t support adding these recommendations in the form of
an ordinance.
And | also have a question about the date, the timing. Somebody came up with June 8" and | don’t know if
Attorney Bolton can speak to that or someone from the Board of Health is on could speak to it or Director
Bagley. But why did they pick June 8 and do they have any problem with our making it tonight instead of June
8.
Attorney Bolton
| can respond.
