Board of Aldermen Page 11
March 8, 2016
Alderman Siegel
Regarding the vetting process, | would point out that the person most appropriate to vet in a sense was
Alderman Lopez who is our health department liaison who was at the meetings | presume when this was
discussed. | would also point out that if one looks at the Human Affairs Committee meeting where this
was discussed at the committee level where everyone was present and it was supposedly vetted the
meeting minutes indicate that there was no discussion whatsoever so the opportunities to vet it at that
level didn’t occur for one reason or another. The appropriate parties were present and there was an
ability to vet but | guess that just didn’t happen in my opinion.
Alderman Lopez
Alderman Siegel is 100% correct. | probably should have vetted it when it came across at the initial
meeting. The discussion at the Board of Health meeting was to simply announce that the grant was at the
Board of Aldermen and there wasn’t more detail, to my knowledge, given about the substance of it. In the
last Board of Aldermen meeting, Alderman Siegel had already described the grant in a tangential way but it
is essence he was correct in how he described it and the concern that he raised about not knowing the
specifics, | agreed with at the time because | had not had any specific details about the $40,000 we were
accepting. Since then | have reached out to the Board of Health Chair and he has provided more
information and a much more detailed copy of the grant. He also forwarded it to the Board of Aldermen. It
is in my opinion something that is useful. | did listen to the minutes of yesterdays’ Personnel/Administrative
Affairs Committee meeting and | think what Bobbi Bagley was speaking of when she said that there’s a
great need; when Alderman Siegel has asked if the health department has all of the resources it needed
she mentioned specifically need for capacity and need for partners so while a focused approach on
substance abuse and recovery and the opioid problem at a detox level might only focus on the people who
are addicted. A public health model would actually include multiple stakeholders and community partners.
The kind of research that you would do to study climate change can also be used as an education tool to
engage people in discussing what the Public Health Department does. It could build more partnerships
and resources for the Public Health Department so having that information | am much more in favor of it
now than | was at the previous meeting. | would like to apologize to the Board for not making that
information available at the beginning. As Alderman Siegel said, it was a teaching moment and | am
listening.
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
Unfortunately | was not here two weeks ago when this came up but it has always been my understanding
that the purpose of this grant was really to give us some baseline information so our health department
could have a sense of where there might be a need to address issues related to climate change be it virus’
coming into the area or whatever but | have always viewed this as there is an unknown and this would give
us some money and resources to start looking at what we might expect and then provide some groundwork
for developing a plan to address those issues. | do agree with Alderman Siegel, when | got this document |
read the purpose of the grant initiative and had to reread it several times. In my mind though, very clearly, |
think the final product results summary is what kind of wraps up where this is going and why it would be of
importance to the city.
Alderman Cookson
Two quick points, one is that | am looking at the information that was provided, as a result of not having it
at the last meeting, it’s unfortunate that we didn’t have more information but now that we have it | just have
a few questions. | am looking at the table on the second page, it goes through several different outcomes,
specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound and | just want to verify that for the third row,
increased access to information regarding the priority, climate and health impact in the region that the time
bound is actually that this will occur in the summer of 2012? | am assuming not. Lastly there is a comment
