Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 23
But the Board of Health does intend to work on a phased re-opening plan. But they felt that enough time
had passed, the outbreak level and frequency was such that they needed to take an action immediately.
They needed to make something change because of the level of outbreak that we are seeing and because
of the trending that we are seeing. So it has been suggested by many in the public comment that we look
at phasing this in; it’s too late, we should have done that earlier. We should really have been working on
this back in September, but phasing it out is an option and is a plan and there are no specifics that are
available because, number one) it shouldn’t be an arbitrary phase out plan, it should be the Board of Health
looking at and evaluating the situation and making that recommendation. And number two) there has to be
an agreement between both Boards because either the Board of Health or the Board of the Aldermen can
remove this mandate once it is put into place. So if we add a curfew, the Ordinance actually says both
entities could remove them.
So these are some of the conditions that were apparently a little bit confusing. | do not think that Board of
Health believes that 9:30 is any kind of magic number. As it is stated in the Ordinance, they are trying to
reduce the likelihood of exposure and they are trying to reduce the opportunities for transmission. They are
not under the influence at all that this is going to be stopping anything on a dime or anything like that. They
are also aware that arbitrary numbers don’t necessarily mean anything and that’s why they are hesitant to
compare our current city size, population and dynamics to another City like New York where there is a very
different set of variables and a very different population acting and interacting with those scenarios.
They do feel very strongly that this needs to be passed. Our own Public Health Department has presented
the data that | got credit for | guess, in the minutes, they are the ones who compiled that data and it is
available on the Public Health Department updating live to the public. This is a problem, this is a concern,
and | think as the Mayor suggested this is something that we are all going to have be facing as these
holidays come up. We are going to need to make changes, we are going to need to protect our family in an
unusual manner and | know, everybody knows that COVID-19 has dragged on. It’s a situation and a
scenario that we never should have found ourselves in, but we have found ourselves in it. That doesn’t
mean that it’s less lethal and it certainly doesn’t mean that you are less at risk. If we overload our
healthcare facilities we start to see deficits, we start to see testing taking longer and longer to process. We
start to see interventions and contact tracing slow down. We start to see less and less availability of
hospital beds that people need and supplies and resources that people need. And that’s where we are
starting to head into, that’s why they want to intervene before we get to the trouble point.
They have steered us well in the past with the masking ordinance and other recommendations. It’s not just
because | am the liaison to the Committee that | support them, | have spoken to many of my constituents, |
have spoken to many health care providers and | represent a Ward with a lot of vulnerable people with
different levels of access to healthcare. | empathize with what has been said with regards to the economic
distress that businesses are finding themselves in and | believe we have not done enough as a City, a
State, or a Country in order to ameliorate those situations and create a paradigm where a person does not
need to go and put themselves and their families at risk in working a second job or late night job in order to
pay their rent. | think we need to do a much better job of advertising programs like our COVID relief
program which helps people avoid getting behind on rent or avoid getting behind on utilities. | think we
need to be looking at how we can do a better job of making local resources available to people who qualify
for them such as City Welfare Resources.
| think at the State Level we need to improve things like the unemployment application system and there
are several member of the Board of Aldermen who are at the State Level and | know they are going to go
after this because of the disaster that we saw earlier this year. And | absolutely think that we need to make
changes at the Federal Level, spending 9 months just to get $600.00 or so of cash in hand a nebulous
amount of money given out to different states to disseminate for business relief and then wrapped together
with all kinds of other business that the Government has to do does not give me any kind of confidence that
this is a situation that the Federal Government was prepared for, is executing well or is planning for. | know
obviously as everybody else here does that we are about to see a new administration take office.
