Board of Aldermen 04-09-2019 Page 23
Alderman Laws
| am just going to say that I’m going to vote against re-referring it. | spent a good part of my weekend
negotiating the terms of this and trying to come up with some kind of compromise that everyone could
agree with. All of the amendments actually weaken the original legislation, it’s not like anything is making
any stronger so the people who were for it in the first place are probably still going to be for it; and the idea
was that the people who were against it would be able to come on board by having a little bit of leniency
written into the law. So that being said, | feel like the amendments are ready to be voted on by the whole
Board and hopefully have that opportunity tonight.
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
I’m not going to vote to re-refer it back to Committee but that being said, | think we have had some
legislation come forward in the past year where once it got to the Full Board there was significant
discussion that made members of the Board feel like it needed to go back to Committee to be discussed. It
is also not unusual in my time on this Board as well as on the Board of Education for what you thought was
a finished piece of legislation coming to the Board, and then finding out that someone would like to amend
that at the Full Board. And it was discussed there and if the Full Board felt this was useful and let’s just
discuss it, amend it, and move forward, we have rather than taking additional time.
| feel like we’ve had this | believe Alderman Clemons is ready to speak to it based on his earlier comment.
| feel at this point we should just listen to the amendment and then vote the amendment up or down and
then make a decision on whatever comes out of that. An Ordinance that is amended or an Ordinance that
is not amended and goes back to what we had and then decide where we should go from there. But |
guess | just want to clarify that it's not standard procedure every time someone says “Oh I'd like to amend
something that comes before the full board that it goes back to Committee”. | think the circumstances have
been interesting especially in the piece of legislation that you referenced about filling vacancies. Thank
you.
Alderman Schmidt
| am going to vote to re-refer this. The reason is that | wasn’t on the original Committee that discussed this.
| didn’t like that at all, it was just full of punishments and | didn’t think that was the best way to deal with this.
| received this amendment in an e-mail and | liked some of the changes but | really need more information
on this. | can’t make a decision just by reading this, | need to hear more about it. And just having it
presented won’t do enough. | will attend your, should we send it back, | will attend and listen and
participate, because | think there is more in this than should be and perhaps a few things are missing. So
thank you.
Alderman Lopez
I’d just like to speak to the example Alderman Klee gave regarding referral with regards to the election.
Personally | was in favor of referring that because it included a public comment and the public didn’t have
an opportunity to review it before the public comment changes that were suggested. And then some major
changes were suggested throughout Public Comment that | thought bore looking at. In this situation, | think
the public has very thoroughly reviewed it, | think there has been plenty of discussion about it and we had
the discussion at the Committee level to move it forward. There was a motion to amend it; I’m not
personally in favor of the amendment because basically of what Justin commented on in public comment
because | think removing the possession aspect of it, neutralizes most of the intent of the Bill in the context
of us being a City not a State.
So | personally am not favorable to the amendment, but | don’t see a purpose in referring it if we don’t even
approve the amendment because we would be referring it with no actually confirmed reason. So in my
opinion the only reason to even considering referring it would be is if the amendment was proposed and
then the ordinance was amended. If somebody had second thoughts about the amended version and
