Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 46
Alderman Laws
Thank you Madam President. First off | want to wish Happy Holidays to all of my colleagues. | also want to
say that I’m glad that we had the outcome that we did tonight but | want to speak specifically to any of my
colleagues in the bar and restaurant industry who are still listening. Just because we didn’t vote for a curfew
tonight doesn’t mean that it’s time to relax. We have a tremendous amount of responsibility to the public to
keep them safe even when they don’t believe that’s what we are doing. And trust me, | know how annoying it
is to constantly tell people to pull their mask over their nose and to tell them to sit down at a table and tell
them that they can’t have a party of more than six and they can’t move chairs around. If any of you who
come into the bar that | work in, understand that we are all hanging on barely and | need you to do the same.
| need you to all start focusing on the ordinance that’s in place and start doing everything that you possibly
can to keep people safe because it is our responsibility.
The Board of Aldermen have given us the opportunity to continue working and the only way we are going to
stay in business is if we do the right thing and protect everyone. So thank you, Happy Holidays everyone, |
love you all. Have a good night.
President Wilshire
Thank you Alderman Laws. Alderman Jette?
Alderman Jette
Yes, thank you Madam President. | want to congratulate Joel Ackerman an outstanding citizen here in Ward
5 on his reappointment to the Conservation Commission. | too extend Happy Holidays and especially a
Happy New Year to everyone. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you Alderman Jette. Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
Yeah | want to wish Happy Holidays to all of my fellow Aldermen and definitely a Happy New Year. | wanted
to, | already spoke at length about the changes we had to make to the homeless vigil. We also had to modify
our usual decorating the Veteran’s Home thing. And so | want to thank Alderman Klee for really stepping up
with all the other thing we have been doing, well personally I’ve been very committed to other things like
mobile crisis and all kinds of stuff like that. And | was concerned that the extra changes we had to make this
year in order to keep it socially distant, in order to make food delivery instead of a party like individually
packaged and safe and all of that kind of stuff would be difficult to overcome but she really stepped up. And
she got a lot of people involved and engaged to support it so we were able to fund raise enough to give the
Veterans all a Christmas Dinner, a ham dinner by Solstice. And then we also have gift cards for the winning
Veteran’s Hallways, they usually get into a competition over who can decorate their hallway the most so |
really want to say thank you to Trish for stepping forward with that. Alderman Jette is the clerk for that
organization so thank you to him too.
And then | was thinking along the same lines as Alderman Laws about needing to comment on what we did
tonight and what we will be doing moving forward. So | think it’s important for the restaurant industry is that
there is no Board of Aldermen meeting for several weeks so this cannot be taken off the table, but in the
event of a crisis, it’s important for the other public members who are concerned about risk of transmission and
outbreak and that kind of stuff to know that we did literally keep in on the table. But based on a lot of the
feedback | think it would be good for me to do a little bit of what | was recommending to the other Aldermen
who were proposing Legislation.
