Good evening, welcome to the March Night Code and Regulations Committee meeting.

This evening.

There we go.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this council meeting tonight.

We invite you into the space, Lord, and we just ask that you give us wisdom to make the best decisions that we can for the people of Rockford.

We ask that you protect our first responders, and again, just give us wisdom and insight for us to make the best decisions for our city.

In your name we pray, amen.

I pledge to the flag of the United States America and to the Republic, which is nation under God.

Thank you.

And uh we also, before we proceed into the agenda, uh I'm gonna have uh Mayor McNamara come up to present a proclamation and a special recognition.

Thank you, Chairman.

Uh this evening we have one proclamation and uh one very special recognition.

Uh this evening to begin with, we have a proclamation for the Irish Marching Society Week, and we have the Irish Marching Society with us, or members of the Irish Marching Society.

I'm not gonna bite any of you.

I'm Irish, you're all right.

Good to see you.

Give that to you.

Whereas Irish Marching Society, Rockford is strictly a not-for-profit organization, chartered in 1976 and was established to preserve and promote Irish heritage within our community.

And whereas the Irish Marching Society continues to preserve, promote, and educate Irish and Celtic culture in the Greater Rockford community.

And whereas the Irish Marching Society's 50th Annual St.

Patrick's Day Parade will be held on East State Street on Saturday, March 14th, 2026 at 3 p.m., starting at 7th Street and 4th Avenue and ending on Water Street.

Patty Fest will be held at Prairie Street Brewing Company from 4 p.m.

This says to 9 p.m.

I'm guessing it goes a little bit longer, uh, with live Irish music and food.

Now, therefore, I Thomas P.

Maxmer, as a mayor of the city of Rockford, do hereby proclaim the week of March 9th, 2026 to be Irish Marching Society Week.

I just want to say sincerely thank you for the work that you do every year.

I mean, not just the parade, not just Patty Fest, but all the work you do throughout the community throughout the year.

Uh 50 years is really remarkable.

Just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you.

And Tyler, would you like to share a few words?

Yeah, uh thank you.

Uh your administration's been incredibly uh great to work with and supportive.

Uh thank you to the council as well.

I think this is my tenth year coming here and getting the proclamation, but uh it's our 50th year.

So it's a it's a big celebration for us.

And you know, 50 years ago, your dad was amongst one of those uh few hundred members that marched down State Street in the rain and and started this tradition.

So it's really cool to come full circle and and and and have you here.

Um so we made it to 50.

Uh looking forward to the next 50 years, and I hope to see everyone come down and celebrate us or celebrate uh St.

Patrick's Day with us.

So thank you.

Awesome.

Yeah, I'm gonna appreciate you.

Absolutely.

T-shirt.

I'll take it.

Thank you.

It looks like we'll see you there.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Tom.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

Next, we have a really special recognition.

Uh we are fortunate to be joined today by coaches and members of the Chicago Storm special hockey team.

If you would like to come forward.

And if your folks want to take photos, you can come on in.

We want you to be able to come in and take the best photo that you can.

You can keep coming this way, yep.

You can come right in here.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for being here.

Hi, thanks for being here.

Oh man.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Great, Lower.

So we are so thrilled that you you are here.

I want to make sure that I tell our audience uh here as well as at home uh a little bit about this amazing team.

So the Chicago Storm special hockey team just got back, like literally just got back from a competition in Toronto, which by the way, they went undefeated.

They had three wins and one tie.

If you can't see at home or in the audience, they're doing a little bit of a humble brag with their uh medallions that they have around their neck.

I'm loving it.

Um but this team is really remarkable.

It provides children and adults with developmental disabilities the opportunity to play hockey.

This serves about a hundred players from ages five to fifty-five.

It also focuses on much more than just hockey.

It focuses on sportsmanship, team spirit, confidence, and pride.

All of this in a really supportive environment.

And it's all led by volunteers.

I just want to say sincerely thank you to the coaches and mentors, and thank you to the amazing athletes and congratulations.

You are making us proud every single day, and you're going international.

That's amazing.

But just want to say congratulations and thank you for all that you do.

And one to see if any of the coaches would like to share anything.

And while you say a few words, I want to make sure that we bestow a special gift to each one of the players and the coaches, and by way of the form of a challenge coin where we provide individuals in our community who have gone way above and beyond, and this team certainly has.

So thank you.

My name is Mike Riley.

I'm the head coach for the Rockford location.

Um the difference that this makes in these kids' lives, and I say kids, even though when you include all five rinks, some of them are as old as I am.

It's just unbelievable the difference that it makes.

Um every time I'm out on the ice with them, I see something that every single one of them does better than they've ever done before.

And I mean, it just how could you not keep coming back after that?

And the difference it makes in their socialization.

Um I at the closing ceremonies up in Toronto, I had one of the moms say that I mean their son is in his second year, and he for the first time in his life actually has friends.

I mean, how how can you not love that?

You guys, you do all the hard work.

All I do is just steer the ship.

Thank you guys.

Well, the one thing we wanted to know is these are spread ranks, five ranks all over the Chicago land area.

So there's well over a hundred players in this program.

It's also been more than 25 years, so it's one of the oldest programs.

And the neat thing about it is a lot of these kids have benefited from the city services that you guys have provided, whether it was learning to skate through the programs here through our city, and it's one of the very few cities that do have programs out there for special needs.

So that's a highlight on Rockford in itself.

Just want to say again, congratulations.

You guys are so inspiring and keep out there working your skills, and it's just really remarkable.

And coaches just want to say I say it quite a bit, but number one thing all of our kids need is people who care and love on them.

And you obviously do that, and we're really grateful for you.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Thank you, Chairman.

Do you mind if I just have one more second?

Absolutely.

Go ahead.

So yesterday, uh thank you.

Yesterday, late last night, was made aware of longtime family friend and longtime Rockford advocate and Sunil Purie passed away.

Uh Sunil was one of a kind.

He was a remarkable human who gave uh an immense amount of his time and his treasure to our community.

He, as many will know, has done quite a bit of development in our city.

Uh you're hard pressed to go to a portion of our community to not see where he's had an impact.

If you put that aside, all the professional and business portion, you can look at organizations from the YMCA, the YWCA, Rockford Family Peace Center, Remedies Renewing Lives, the Peri Peace Plaza, uh Rockford University, and dozens and dozens of other organizations.

You can look at the fact that he spent 15 years as a member of the Rockford Public Schools Financial Task Force giving literally hundreds, if not thousands of hours of his own time to our school district.

You can look at the fact that he paid for every single one of our high school students for years to get free ACT and SAT prep classes.

He did a remarkable job serving our community.

And I would ask if council would join me in a moment of silence as we remember the contributions that Mr.

Purie provided our city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you, Mayor.

Before we proceed into our agenda, we also um have five public speakers.

You will have three minutes to address the council, and then you will be notified by alarm on my phone that your time is up.

And uh our first speaker this evening is Erica Reid.

In 2014, President Carter declared that male violence against women and girls is the greatest humanitarian crisis of modern times and the most unaddressed.

He wrote a book, a call to action, urged religious and government leaders to get involved, and met with press at home and abroad and held meetings at the Carter Institute.

For a brief overview, I recommend an interview with the stream on YouTube.

During his presidency, he established a commission on the civil rights of battered women in 1982.

During President Reagan's term, the Commission issued a final report in 1984.

The Attorney General's office issued the federal response, and in 1985, the Senate conducted hearings entitled Domestic Violence and Public Health.

These reports are of particular interest to me because they substantiate the need for mandatory domestic violence classes and continuing education for mental health licenses.

It's been almost 50 years, and these requirements haven't been implemented.

As a result, their malpractice rates remain the same or have worsened based on recent testimony to the Arizona Congress, it's gotten worse.

It's not an oversight.

Last month the mental health boards opposed minimal requirements, specifically one class and two continuing education hours.

They had a year to prepare.

This isn't surprising.

Lawmakers and citizens from New Hampshire recently testified in favor of an investigation into the coalition due to ongoing policy positions that harm victims.

They claim that the coalition doesn't operate independently, and I agree.

For example, I recently spoke with a policy director from Mississippi who told me that he went to the lobbyists for the social workers and adopted their position.

Since 2023, the coalition advocates have advised Illinois lawmakers not to address this matter.

This happened again last week.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our next uh our second uh speaker this evening is Norma Joseph.

One second.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Thank you.

My name is Norman Jones.

And I am here to present you asking for your assistance.

I am the president of Iowa Sigma Chapter.

In conjunction with U.S.

swimming called Swim 1922.

This is our fourth annual clinic, and I am asking for your support and helping us to put on this clinic.

Swim 1922 was incorporated to increase the swimming participation and decreased drowning rates within African American, African American community by engaging local communities with swimming programs.

And ours is the outside clinic that we do at the Harkins Aquatic Pool where it used to be the fairgrounds pool.

And based on the incidents that happened with the little boy that drowned there years ago, we decided to have our clinic there so that this will never happen again.

So again, I'm asking for your financial assistance and supporting it.

We want to make this an annual event.

The children that come to this clinic every year love the clinic.

They learn a lot from it.

The parents are appreciative of it, according to the reports that we got from our exit interviews.

This year, we're bringing in a special guest on Olympian 2004 Silver Medal Olympian that's gonna come in and train the class.

She tried to come last year, but the storm the night before.

We didn't even know if we were gonna have a clinic because the storm is so bad.

But she's excited and coming back again this year.

I have a letter with information on it about the clinic for everyone in here with my contact information.

So again, please thank you.

We're asking for the community support on this program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our third speaker this evening is Prophet Youssef.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

In the book of Proverbs, the 31st chapter, the 10th verse.

It says, who can find a virtuous woman?

For her price is far above rubies.

What I want to speak about tonight, women's history month remind us of women leaders overlooked.

There's an African proverb that says women hold up half the sky.

Women constitute half the world's population, but still have not realized half of the world's potential.

Receive half of the world's resource or exercise half of the world's power.

But women have always been the invisible backbone, unseen, but stronger, transforming social movements and of anchored institution and society, our families, congregations, schools, and community.

March is women's history month in our nation and a chance to reflect on women's transformation impact on American history and turn into inspiration and action for the future.

The National Women's History Alliance, which champions women's history across the United States all year long, put it this way.

But when you when we don't know our own history, our power will diminish.

Our dreams diminish.

Multiculture, American women's are overlooked in most mainstream approaches to the United States history.

So the National Women's History Project champions their accomplishment and leads the drive to write women's back into history.

The impact of women's history might seem abstract to some and less pressing than the neat struggles of working women today.

But to ignore the vital role that women's dreams and accomplishments play in our own lives would be a great mistake.

We draw strength and inspiration from those who came before us and those remarkable women working among us to offer the women who helped build American contribution went unnoticed.

But the achievement, leadership, courage, strength, and love of women that I have is as vital as that of the men whose names are known so well.

As Dr.

Gerda Lerner has noted.

Women's history is women's right.

An essential and indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range.

I urge all homes, schools, library, community, organization, churches, politicians to focus their observance on women who struggle for equality.

Your mothers, your wife, your sisters, your aunt, your nieces.

Thank God for women.

I also been wanting to tell my nephew Cedric, who retired from the Army and the police department, and my good friend, United States Senator Tammy Duckworth, this for a long time.

And I'm gonna get it off my chest tonight.

I don't like you, I love you, and you can't do nothing about it.

And happy birthday, my good friends, and I wish you many more.

And God bless you and your family.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to my good friend.

Happy birthday to you.

Thanks for allowing me to speak.

Thank you.

Didn't want to cut you off in the middle of your song.

Next up is Denzel Winter.

Hi, I'm Denzel Winter.

And uh I'm here to say this is women's month.

And you guys are our backbones.

And I thank you for being that for us.

If it wasn't for you guys, there would be no us.

And I just want to say thank you.

Because, you know, my mother, when I was a young fella, well, teenager, she would always say, son, I'm going to teach you how to take care of yourself.

Because you don't need a woman.

You don't have to marry a woman just to take care of yourself.

I'm gonna show you.

And not only did I have a strong mom, I had a strong grandma.

And my sisters were all strong.

You know.

And the only thing I can say is, you know, you guys helped this country to be what it is today.

I know that people don't always look to you guys.

But they should.

Because y'all mean a whole lot to us, whether some of us men realize it or not.

You are our backbone.

And I just want to say thank you.

Thank you.

And our final uh speaker this evening is John Tech Brantley.

Good evening, uh Nair.

Uh all the persons, our sisters in the Rockford, Illinois.

First, I want to get honor to Reverend Jesse Jackson because I'm still carrying on uh his uh legacy.

Uh um uh uh keep hope alive and we are somebody during the uh during the 60s during the riot.

Uh we um the Black Sunday that happened in Alabama, black bloody sunny that happened in Alabama.

We did not allow that to happen in Chicago.

We was the vanguards at the age of 12 years old when we marched in Garfield uh in the uh and we marched in Garfield, Dr.

King, Redden Athanaphy, and Jesse Jackson was there.

We was the vanguards when we stood up against the Gestapo and the white supremacists.

We went toe-to-toe that day.

We fought for seven hours straight, fighting them and what it had.

I went home, badly beaten, but nevertheless, we were successful at uh defeating them.

Now, I just want to bring up the fact that we're gonna be in the St.

Patrick's Day parade, and uh I had two flags on my van parked across in the parking lot, and next to the Emerson uh building.

Now you the Emerson building, I consider uh white supremacist because the police came there and they told me they banned me from being in that building.

But anyway, uh parking in the parking lot across from them.

Someone decided to break both of the flags off of my van and what heavy.

I don't know what they thought they would get out of that, but nevertheless, I still gonna get some more flags and put back up there.

But I'm gonna get at uh what's happening with us.

Barbara School flourished from that lawsuit, and then I was at eliminating racism can talk about racism.

The YMCA can talk about racism.

The um the uh uh uh uh Rock Valley College can talk about racism, uh Illinois Rockford University can talk about racism, but when we talk about racism, why is this a problem when we talk about rape racism?

And I'm gonna tell you one of the reasons why.

Every one of you that if it's stalled correctly, it would control the slave for at least 300 years.

It's been 400 years since then.

My nephew is simply any member of your family or your overseers can use it.

I have outlined a number of different among the slaves, and I take these differences and I make them bigger.

I use fear, distrust, envy for control purpose, their intellectual sex, size, and plantation status on plantation, attitudes of owners.

Whenever the slave live in the valley on the hill, east, west, north, or south, have fine hair, coarse hair, or it's tall or short.

Don't forget you must pitch the old against the young, the young against the black, the dark skin against the light skin, and I can go on and on, but I'm gonna talk about right here.

Why should that we had two lawsuits?

And I'm not going to be able to finish.

I'm going to come back.

We got an election coming up.

We need everybody that's black to vote.

If you don't vote, our vote don't count, and that's why our politicians don't uh don't look out for us.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh can we have a roll call, please?

Aye.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Thank you.

So the first item on our agenda under resolutions is the Memorial Day Parade.

This event is scheduled for May 25th from 8 a.m.

to noon.

Organizers request city support for police, fire, and traffic control assistance.

Organizers anticipate costs similar to the 2025 event, approximately $17,000.

The parade will step off at 9 a.m.

and the route will begin at 7th Street and Fifth Avenue, ending at Memorial Hall on Wyman Street.

Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second.

Any questions or comments on item one?

Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Item two is coffee and cars.

This event is scheduled for the following dates April 5th, May 2nd, June 6th, July 4th, August 1st, September 5th, and October 3rd from 9 a.m.

to noon.

The event will take place on 7th Street between 3rd Avenue and 6th Avenue, and on 3rd Avenue and 4th Avenue between 6th Street and 7th Street.

Is there a motion to approve?

So motion.

Are there any questions or comments on item 2?

Seeing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Item 3 is No Kings 3.0.

The event is scheduled for March 28th from 11 a.m.

to 1 p.m.

Roads will close at 9 a.m.

The event will take place at 116th North Water Street, which is City Market Pavilion.

Is there a motion to approve?

Second.

Are there any questions or comments on item three?

Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

And item four is the Churchill Grove Garage Sale.

This event is scheduled for May 2nd from 9 a.m.

to 3 p.m.

The sale will take place in the Churchill Grove neighborhood.

Is there a motion to approve?

Are there any questions or comments?

Is that a is that a request, Alderman Trudemer?

Thank you.

All right.

Um seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

Second.

All those in favor, signify.