Board of Aldermen 02-22-2022 Page 18
dying.
The other thing, too, that really upset me last night is, you know, people that show up at these meetings and they don't
want masks, they can't be respectful to the people that are talking. We saw it tonight. Ms. Sage was talking - a high
school student. There was laughter in the chamber - laughter. It’s a kid! These people come up here whether it's here or
last night and they say, well we care about the kids. We want them not to be masked because we care about the kids.
But when a kid that doesn't agree with them talks, they laugh.
Last night, two high school students spoke one on the Board of Ed. who was a student representative and one in the
crowd. Both spoke eloquently, probably way better than | can speak, and they were for masks - high school students for
masks. Okay. There was snickers in the crowd. Okay. You know when one spoke, he spoke for about 10 minutes,
somebody yelled out. You spoke too long. You spoke for 10 minutes. He's on the Board. He can speak as long as he
wants. He has no time limit and both kids afterwards were not happy. They should have the respect to speak. So when |
see these people do this, it doesn't give me a whole lot of respect for them and | don't take their opinion when they come
up here and they pretend that they know the facts better than the doctors that | should believe what they're saying.
To wait one more week, six days, you know, | honestly | didn't think it was a big deal. And I've been thinking about this all
day. | thought about it a lot last night after the Board of Ed. meeting because it was a real important topic last night.
People made great points on both sides but at the end of the day, six days, and I'm going to go with | think you know - let
me do this. So anecdotally, right, you can put up all the facts you want. People can come up here and say | read this
journal and | read this journal. Both sides can come up with facts. So it's hard for me to go by that. But if 1 go
anecdotally, since I've been wearing a mask for two years since COVID started, | have been sick once - not one cold,
nothing. Again, that's just me. Everybody else has different immune systems. | was sick all the time before. Not all the
time but | get a cold every year just like everybody else. So for me and my family, my father, we haven't got sick. So for
me it worked. It doesn't mean it's for everybody and in six days, it's not going to be for anybody that doesn't want it. So
that's it. Thank you.
President Wilshire
The motion is to suspend the rules to allow for a second reading.
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you, Madam President. As we go through these subsequent motions here, I'd like to give you something to ponder
and to think about. The past Board and this Board. This was a true profile and courage when you look at it. We were
faced with some really tough decisions. Now | come to remember in my history that there was a court case that went all
the way to the Supreme Court, Jacobson vs. State of Massachusetts, where that basically said that the State and political
subdivisions can make up laws to try to protect the many. It says Americans, you know, it's not an infringement on your
rights that you give up a little bit for the public good and the public safety. Heck if you look at the history, they locked
away and isolated Mary Melon aka Typhoid Mary to keep her from infecting the population.
So at this particular juncture, none of us here were doctors and yet we had to rely on what we had and fortunately we had
in-house experts with Director Bagley and the Board of Health which brought us information that we could disseminate,
answered our questions, and tried to make an educated decision. Now where’s the profile from (inaudible), it wasn't
popular - not too many of the people. If they wanted to choose to walk the tight wire without a safety net, that's their
choice. They are Americans but that's not something that's within our purview of luxury. We have to look at the city at
large and make a decision that is best for all - everybody and that was tough. So I'd like to recognize the Board of Health
for this and | would like to recognize the past Board and this Board for those tough decisions that you guys came up with
in trying to protect the best way that we could. Did we get it right 100% but we tried and | think that we did it.
Now as far as if you use a fountain pen like | use, the ink won't be dry on this and within six days. I'm not going to hang
my hat on six days. But I really would like to thank everybody here that supported this particular mandate. You did your
job. You protected the citizens as best as we possibly could and | think members of the Board of Health and the Boards
are to be commended. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.
Alderman Lopez
So the specific motion before us is for a second reading in order to be able to have the conversation and vote on this
tonight. If we don't give this a second reading, it's pretty worthless because it will be referred to a committee, probably the
Board of Health, and then it would expire. The mandate that it's trying to rescind would expire before it was actually
heard. In the Board of Health meeting two months ago, in January, it was necessary for them to make a quick decision on
