Board of Aldermen 05-25-2021 Page 47
President Wilshire
OK. Alderman Clemons?
Alderman Clemons
Thank you, would the maker of the motion also well | guess this is what | am going to say here on this. |
understand the desire to do it, but there’s a lot of like Alderman Tencza just stated with the schools, there’s also
the Police, the Fire Department, the Public Works. In addition to that there are spaces that are private spaces
that the City rents out to people such as Liquid Therapy, some of the places in the Hunt Building. | don’t mind
having the Mayor have the authority but it is going to be, it has to be, he has to use that authority well and not to
say that he wouldn’t. The other thing is, | Know for a fact, I’ve talked to several employees of the City and they
are ready to be maskless. | know it is something that they desire because they have reached out to me to tell
me this. | understand the need to protect the public and | would support, of course, having limited hours,
restrictive hours in the morning and | think that the way that we are doing things with the appointments and
everything and the million dollars that we spent to upgrade City Hall to make things more spaced out and things
like that. | think we have done a really good job using the COVID time to really update some of these spaces to
make them more friendly for people. | think with the appointment schedules, | think people have a lot of
opportunities to be socially distanced and | am hoping that the appointment schedule is something that can
continue not for the general public because believe me, | had to wait my turn to go into the DMV to get my car
registered and that just delayed things even more for me so | understand people’s frustration. But maybe to
make an appointment for those who are immune compromised, they can make an appointment and have a
separate space in the building and things like that would be a good option. So! guess | am on the fence with
this. | don’t mind like | said | don’t mind giving the authority but | don’t know that it would be used and to what
degree and certainly there are spaces that | think it would be inappropriate to be used such as the private, the
people that are renting out private spaces that are in the public. So! guess |’m on the fence on this one.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
Well | recognize Alderman Clemons’ intent, personally | feel like we should probably refrain from over regulating
the Mayor and what he is going to do, because he does still have the right to either veto it or not do anything for
a week and then veto it like right in the last day. So | think there’s a point where we have to say OK as
Legislators we’ve written the law and when it comes to City Buildings and City Staff, that’s within his
responsibility. And if he does something that we as Aldermen collectively feel is inappropriate, we should
address that. But! don’t think there’s a reason to second guess him in this particular case. And | feel like we
shouldn’t set that dynamic up. Because the intent is to clearly communicate a citywide response to the mask
mandate and in my opinion, that communication should be done per the Public Health Department guidelines,
though | would let the Mayor run City Hall and the City Buildings and let him lead by example with regards to
how businesses can make those decisions independently as well.
President Wilshire
Alderman Dowd.
Alderman Dowd
You have 4 options on this, you could wait and do a separate ordinance that more clearly defines the powers of
the Mayor relative to the buildings. In other words you can have legal think about it. You could limit it to only
City Hall or you could put a time limit on it. Or if we didn’t think that the guidelines were being followed correctly
