Board of Aldermen 05-25-2021 Page 48
we could rescind that ordinance. But if we rescind this ordinance, | don’t think that’s what we want to do. |
suppose we could rescind part of the ordinance, but it’s just more confusing. | am on the fence with this as well.
President Wilshire
Alderman Cleaver.
Alderman Cleaver
| believe the Mayor should have input on anything that is going to affect City Hall or rules that he is going to
adopt or not adopt. | think a separate ordinance would be fine and more appropriate. | don’t think in the first
place we should put this burden on the Mayor. | think it’s too complicated. The ordinance as is, stands for itself.
So | don’t think we should include anything associated with City Buildings.
President Wilshire
Are you all set Alderman Cleaver? Alderman Jette?
Alderman Jette
Yeah thank you Madam Chairman. | think it was pointed out to us that if we rescind the mask ordinance which |
detect that there’s a desire to do that as quickly as possible, it has been pointed out to us that the Mayor or the
City Government, the City Administration would not have the ability to restrict access to City Hall, require
masking, or require distancing or making any of the rules, which by the way, we have adopted the
recommendation of the Board of Health which says that business owners should be allowed to make rules as
they deem appropriate and that we should encourage them to do that and we should support them in doing
that. We are left with not being able to do that ourselves. So you are exposing our employees throughout the
City to the public choosing either to follow the recommendations or not follow the recommendations and | don’t
think there’s any doubt that there are people out there — you’ve gotten the same emails that | have who are
encouraging us to remove this mask ordinance, not because the Board of Health is recommending it but
because they don’t think that we should have adopted it in the first place. It’s not constitutional in their opinion, it
is not effective in their opinion.
The so-called science that they point to says that masking has no effect whatsoever, but our Board of Health
says that masking has helped and they are encouraging not to go through their recommendations but they are
encouraging us to follow the recommendations that they’ve outlined which include the recommendations of the
CDC and the State Epidemiologist, Dr. Chan. So there are certain people who should remain masked and we
have employees who are vulnerable and without carving out the opportunity for the Mayor, the City
Administration to adopt rules that our businesses can adopt to protect their employees and protect their
customers, without carving this exception for City Hall and City Buildings, we are leaving us without those same
protections to adopt the recommendations that the Board of Health has made to us and that we’ve adopted in
the amendment to this ordinance. So my motion, my amendment all that my amendment does is it gives the
Mayor, the Administration, the ability to follow the recommendations provided by the Board of Health to protect
our employees and to protect the public that visit our City Buildings. So | ask that you please adopt it.
President Wilshire
Alderman Clemons?
Alderman Clemons
Thank you. | just want to be clear and Attorney Bolton can correct me if | am wrong but whether we adopt
giving the Mayor the authority to do this, the only thing that it gives him the authority to do is to tell employees or
to tell those in the public that they have to wear a mask in a certain City Building or at a certain time in the City
Building. It doesn’t restrict him from setting up policies that give a separate appointment time to certain people
