Board of Aldermen 10-13-2020 Page 44
would come to every public comment in a meeting even though he was repeatedly told that these concerns
were not in the purview of the Board of Aldermen, he would do it anyway. And when asked why he was
doing that, he said that he found it amusing, it was a habit and for entertainment, but he was calling his
neighbors criminals. He drove them out of their location. When they moved | met with them, shortly before
they left and they said that they just couldn’t handle being (inaudible) and threatened with criminal action
during Board of Aldermen’s meetings repeatedly which happened over a course of years.
So those were (audio cuts) | wasn’t really, | don’t care what kind of language people use. If they want to
swear to me in the face, | probably have done it on the record myself so | am not going to throw stones
there. But | do think it was worth bringing up that there should be some level of decorum and respect in our
rules, if the public demonstrates an inability to (audio cuts out) of their own volition and | think that’s the
case. | think some members of the public come with an ax to grind and they will (inaudible) people and use
it as their personal podium with the bullying. So | raised those concerns but in the course of the Committee
Meeting, Alderman Dowd pointed out that essentially my concerns were met by making sure that
comments were respectful in tone and were subject to the purview of something that the Board even had
relevance to. So | just wanted to clarify the comments that | was making. | wasn’t particularly interested in
tone policing. | just want to make sure that someone isn’t overtly misusing the microphone when we give it
to them.
Alderman Klee
Thank you, Madam President. | wanted to kind of speak to something actually before | became an
Alderman, before | was actually elected to the Board. | sat through a lot of meetings that you all had had.
And there was one in particular that really stuck out with me. It was a meeting that went well into the night, |
think it ended somewhere after midnight. And we sat on those very hard benches with the less than
adequate cushioning and | was squirmed and wiggled through that entire meeting and couldn’t walk for a
day afterwards. It was as long as it was more because of the public comment. The public had the right to
comment. The public brought some very good points to it and | think it was worth hearing them. The thing
is that no matter how much we tell people, please don’t repeat themselves. We do it here as Aldermen and
people are going to do it because they are there and they want to have their voices heard. It’s not that they
want their 15 minutes or so on.
But | do think that for the most part, | think when the public is trying to make their point, they can do within a
specified time frame, whether it’s 3 minutes or whether it’s 5 minutes. | do think they can get their points
out with that. And like today when you have 64 people who want to speak at a well packed agenda, | think
that we do need to have some kind of time limits. | also remember at that particular meeting there was an
individual citizen who came and very nastily spoke to an Alderman, directed their comments specifically to
that Alderman. | was taken aback by the anger that was in that particular person’s voice. When that was
done and the Alderman got to speak at the end of the meeting, | remember a couple of Aldermen that
almost demanded an apology from that individual who had actually left the room but they wanted it on the
record that they were demanding an apology from that particular person.
We don’t do that. We sit there and we take the beating or berating and | have no problems with it because
truthfully | am elected official and | think | signed up for that and that’s kind of the way life is. | do have a
problem when a private citizen comes in and not just says something bad abut a City employee. They
have a right to do that and as was mentioned you have the right to question it. But we have sat through
meeting after meeting after meeting where private employees that are hired, not appointed, but hired are
called names; names that | think are less than appropriate language. And that’s where | think that we do
have to some kindness. And as Alderman Lopez pointed out, no | don’t want to be tone police, but | do
think that we should try to expect at least some decent conversation. We can disagree politely without
having to do name calling, without having to truly rude behavior. And although | do agree with what
Alderwoman Kelly said, you know, my definition of rude may be something completely different than hers or
Alderman Dowd’s or yourself, President Wilshire.
The bottom line is | like the changes that we made to this. | think it’s necessary and | do think we need
