Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 20
Businesses that don't want to enforce this, | understand that frustration. | understand that aggravation. I've sat in line
where some poor cashier has had to argue with someone please put on your mask. The person didn't care enough to
put on the mask just to protect her. Shame on them and shame on the businesses that aren't going to at least try to
enforce it. I'm not saying they've got to get down in the dirt, but at least tried to enforce it. When | hear that we are
(inaudible) patients out to other States, it scares me. It truly scares me. | have my own health issues and when | hear
that surgeries are being canceled, or that patients go into the hospital and no love one can come in there, | know I've
talked about the loss of my brother In September but | was able to stand there and hold his hand. Prior to that we had
patients that died without family members and the only thing they saw was the family on the phone. | don't want to
see us go back to that. That is just scary.
| want to add that we can't just decide we're not going to make rules because there's somebody that's going to be out
there protesting or somebody that's going to be out there screaming and yelling at us. We have to make rules for the
greater good of the society and we had it built into the Constitution of New Hampshire and | think we should uphold it.
So thank you.
Alderman Jette
Thank you, Madam President. Regarding enforcement, | agree with some of the previous speakers. | don't think we
should decide what to do or not to do because we fear that it won't be able to be enforced. | mean if that's your
philosophy, you got to do away with speed limits. We were out at the vigil tonight and there were cars speeding up
and down Main Street. You can hardly hear what was going on because of the noise. In my Ward, we have West
Hollis Street. I'm always getting complaints about speeding on West Hollis Street. You know the police do the best
they can but they don't catch everybody that speeding. Does that mean we should do away with the speeding laws?
Of course not. We establish a standard and we hope that people will abide by that. The fact that it won't be enforced
perfectly should not prevent us from doing the best we can. If we get a certain percentage of the people to comply, |
think we're doing the right thing.
| want to acknowledge all the e-mails that I've gotten. I'm sure everyone else has got a similar amount, but especially
from the people from Ward 5 that have sent me e-mails. | haven't been able to acknowledge all of them because
there have been so many. The arguments against the ordinance that we're being asked to pass tonight, some of the
arguments are legal arguments. Now | know a little bit about that and the arguments that have been made were
pretty much all dealt with last year when the city successfully defended a lawsuit against the mask ordinance that we
passed last year. Two Superior Court Judges said that the city does have the authority to pass this ordinance. Inthe
court's ruling, it acknowledged that the United States Supreme Court has decided back in 1905 they decided that
mandatory vaccinations did not violate people's constitutional rights and the New Hampshire Supreme Court has
similarly ruled that school vaccination laws did not violate the New Hampshire Constitution. The court ruling quoted
as Alderwoman Klee quoted about how certain laws are necessary for the greater good of society and this is one of
them.
So the legal arguments that people make about the violation of their rights and we don't have the authority to do this,
that was all dealt with last year by the courts. | can assure people that it's a pretty basic principle that your
constitutional rights are not defined by what you think they are. They're defined by what the courts say they are. |
acknowledge that people feel very passionately about this but the courts have said this is not a matter of a violation of
constitutional rights.
The other argument has been the medical argument. The arguments range from masks don't work, COVID is not that
dangerous, it'll just run its course, the dangers are exaggerated by big pharma and the media. The opponents refer to
various sources to support their arguments. You know those arguments are frankly lost on me because I'm not
qualified to evaluate them. There's been a lot of conflicting information about the medical issues. I’m not educated in
that. | don't know about that but we have a Board of Health which is charged with protecting the public health. They
have the qualifications and the expertise to evaluate all of this information. They listen to the opponent's arguments
made at their couple of meetings ago. When all these arguments were made, they recessed. They took a week to
digest the arguments, to research it, and they came back a week later and answered all of those arguments to my
satisfaction, and they determined that we are in a dangerous crisis. They determined that masks are an effective tool
in protecting the public health along with vaccination, distancing, hand washing, and they are recommending - they’re
imploring us - to pass this ordinance for public health and safety. I'm not going to look them in the eye and say thank
you very much, but I'm going to listen to some other people who are not as qualified as you are, I'm not going to listen
to you. I'm going to listen to the doctors and I'm going to respect the time and effort that they've put into this and I'm
going to follow their recommendation that they have made and | hope the rest of my colleagues see it the same way.
Thank you.
