Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 7
Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED
O-21-083
Endorsers: Alderman Thomas Lopez
Alderman Patricia Klee
RELATIVE TO REQUIRING FACE COVERINGS THROUGH JANUARY 31, 2022
Given its second reading;
MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF O-21-083, BY ROLL CALL
ON THE QUESTION
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you, Madam President. | wanted to give this a positive as what we should recommendation for the motion.
However, though, | am going to listen to the debate on this particular motion. I'm not 100% sure but | made a positive
motion to discuss it and I'll leave it at that and I'll listen to the debate. Thank you, Madam President.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Discussion on the motion?
Alderman Dowd
Yes, I'm still not sure I'm going to support this. | have a lot of questions and quite frankly, | was hoping that we
wouldn't take any final action on this until next Tuesday's Board of Aldermen meeting.
| have talked to a number of establishments. First of all, | fully support our Board of Health and | know that we should
be doing all we can to support the Board of Health. However, when we passed this the last time we were in the midst
of the pandemic and we had no other alternatives. We had no usable vaccine. We weren't set up for testing and
masks were one of the things that could do a great positive thing for negating the spread. Now we're in a position
where we have the vaccines and you're fully vaccinated. The chances of you having anything severe from the
variants that are currently out there is much less.
So | understand that we're in a position where mostly the inputs | got on this were do not pass it. The people that
don't want it in place are already saying that they won't pay any attention to the ordinance anyway. The people that
are for it are probably already wearing masks and will continue to wear masks. So I'm not sure what passing this
ordinance will do for trying to get the assistance that | think the Board of Health is looking for. | would prefer that we
offer more places for vaccination and more testing. That seems to be the President's position at this point. | hope that
we could get input from the Board of Health as to what they think would be the positive impact of this and why they
want to do it.
President Wilshire
I'd like to invite them to come up if you have questions for them.
Alderman Dowd
| have no problem. Director Bagley if you'd like to join us.
Alderman Dowd
If | could just continue for a second. The businesses I've talked to are almost universally against the mask mandate
for a number of reasons. One - even during the last mask mandate every time they had somebody that didn't wear a
mask it caused a confrontation. | think with what's going on in the world right now. | don't think confrontations would
turn into a fight and be a major issue, which could end up requiring police action. The places that | talked to said if
they’re going to be the ones that have to enforce this, they're going to have to hire people and they're having problems
hiring people already to stand at the door and try to enforce the mask mandate. | don't know who we would get that
wants to stand there and have a fight for these people over masks. So I'm concerned about what the Board of Health
