The Frederick Mayor and Board of Aldermen held a public meeting on September 7, 2023, at 7:00 PM. The meeting included a proclamation for Aortic Disease Awareness Day, approval of minutes, consent agenda items, four public hearing items (budget amendment, traffic signal contract, pension plan revisions, and Parks and Recreation Master Plan), an appointment, and public comments on various topics including rent increases, environmental concerns, and accessibility.
Pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and America. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all. So we are calling an audible this evening. Tonight we are proclaiming Aortic Disease Awareness Day. And so if you are here this evening to join us for that proclamation, I'd ask you to come down to the front. The board can join me on the floor. Proclaiming this aortic disease awareness day is not the audible. The audible is that usually I have a nice piece of paper that I can read from where I read a whole bunch of facts about aortic awareness disease. And then we formally proclaim it and hand that piece of paper to you. But that doesn't stop me. I don't need a piece of paper to proclaim this aortic disease awareness. That's just the formality of having you here to talk about aortic disease is really the more important part about the proclamation. So at this point, what I'm going to do is turn the microphone over to you and let you talk a little bit about who you are, who's with you, and why we're doing this proclamation. Well, thank you so much, and thank you so much for having me. Many of you might not even know what an aorta is, but that is the light line, the highway of all of the blood that flows from your heart to the rest of your entire body. Now, a lot of you probably have heard of John Ritter, beloved community doctor. He unfortunately passed away due to a misdiagnosis. And I am someone that was fortunate enough to survive. So many years ago, seeing that there was a lot missing from within the community, I decided to create along with a couple other people a nonprofit organization that specializes in providing support and resources to patients, survivors, and caregivers during the recovery and management of aortic disease. And so we do that. We do that in a variety of ways. So we're we're finding a lot of followers, and we're really able to provide a lot of resources. And with me here today is another one of my board members, Terry Cook. She's also a survivor, as well as our IT producers with us today, too. Josh Hernandez. But there's just way too much information to try to basically educate the community on one day. So we take the entire month of September to do that. So this is known as Aortic Disease Awareness Day, and our goal is really just to provide that support and help save lives. So thank you again so much. Well, thank you. We very much appreciate you helping us to understand more, to educate us and for doing what you do. We thank you for working with others for being a survivor and for taking that experience and doing what you can do to help so many other people. We're appreciative of it and happy to help make this proclamation to assist you in your efforts. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. And and we will get that fancy piece of paper and get it to you because that's important also. That's wonderful. Thank you very much. We have minutes to approve August 3rd, 2023 public meeting. So move for approval. Second. Motion by Alderman Shackelford, second by Alderman McZemC. All those in favor, that is 4-0. Alderman McShane is absent, having notified us that he would not be present for this evening's meeting. Mayor's comments, none at this time. Aldermanic business and comments. Alderman Russell.