Board of Aldermen 09-10-2019 Page 26
constitute discrimination and that they would be reaching out to Legal and we haven’t yet heard what
Legal’s opinion was. So | guess I'll ask Attorney Bolton; is this discriminatory, are we opening the City up
for a lawsuit if we allow these placards.
Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel
It is not illegal discrimination.
Alderman Lopez
So it is discrimination in so far as up is up and down is down and those are different things.
Attorney Bolton
It doesn’t burden a fundamental right nor is it based on a suspect classification.
Alderman Laws
| would also to point out that if any group of citizens is feeling discriminated against and they would like to
organize and put together a presentation and come in and present it to Committees and the Board of
Aldermen and try to get free parking at the Library we will absolutely encourage them to do so. The
adverse of that is | do not want to discourage the future politicians and world leaders of America, | mean
they did a hell of a job getting this together and trying to convince us. And | think if you look at the cost
benefit analysis of what we lose versus what we would potentially gain it is kind of a no-brainer, especially
when you consider that there is sunset clause in it. So | don’t really understand, sorry.
Alderman Dowd
Yes I’ve become even more conflicted because | was highly enlightened by Alderman Schmidt’s comments
and having spent 18 years supporting education and building schools and helping students learn, | feel
conflicted, not voting for this. There are a couple concerns | have, one how this functions in practice ought
to be part of the study and | think | would have preferred that we have a time definite to come back and
evaluate how it has been going. But! certainly don’t want to deprive the students from going to Library. |
also think there would be better ways than the current process that is outlined for them being to be able to
get a parking pass. | think having spent 35 years in logistics, that is not the most logistically satisfying way
to do it. | think that it probably should be looked at before implemented to see if there is a better way of
doing it. So having said that, I’m more inclined to support this in the short-term as a study if those things
are met, then it becomes part of the overall study. The other thing that | am concerned about, if it has any
type of severe impact, which it may or may not, depending on who is speaking on the funding for the
Downtown Improvement Committee, | would like to see this Board address that and in the future and try to
make that right to the Downtown Improvement Committee.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you so Alderman Dowd, | wanted to answer some of your questions and | have actually been waiting
patiently hearing the conversation. But in terms of how the students came up with how this would be
implemented, this was well-researched, we worked on it for about 3 months. We met with Jan McCormack,
we met with Tim Cummings, we did have discussions with downtown business owners. Some of the things
that came up and the reason it is a little clunky but the reason we went that way was because we talked
about using a code through your app and we thought that was much easier to abuse. Then we also talked
about just issuing students, but that doesn’t allow you to check how many spots are being used at a time.
So we really did think about and talk through these things. We agree, going in, getting it and coming back
is where we landed after talking through a lot of different things. | think that’s why it being a pilot is going to
be really helpful so we can have that discussion.
