vision2020
Re: City Council Update
In response to Saundra Lund's post last night, here's a brief summary of the
Council meeting.
The Council passed a Public Nudity ordinance on first reading, which means
they will consider it again at their next Council meeting. Three Council
members, Steve Busch, JoAnn Mack, and Jack Hill, wanted more time to work on
some of the language in the ordinance, which a first reading provides them.
Two Council members, Mike Thomason and John Guyer, wanted to pass the
ordinance as it was presented last night and pass it under suspension of the
rules requiring three separate readings. They voted against the ordinance
on first reading (presumably to protest that it wasn't being passed last
night.) Mayor Comstock, although he couldn't vote last night, expressed his
interest to see the ordinance passed last night as well. (The Mayor only
votes in the event of a tie.)
The applicable section of the ordinance they passed under first reading
reads:
SECTION 1: That Moscow City Code Title 10, Chapter 1, Section 16(A) (B),
and (C) be, and the same is hereby amended as follows:
A. No person shall willfully expose to view or fail to cover completely and
opaquely any portion of such person's anus, cleft of the buttocks, genitals,
any portion of the pubescent female breast below the point immediately above
the top of the areola on or in any public place or place open to public
view.
B. It shall be a defense to exposure of failure to cover the pubescent
female breast below the point immediately above the top of the areola that
the person was in the act of breastfeeding at the time of such exposure or
failure to cover.
C. This Section shall not apply to a person who is prepubescent.
For the full ordinance, contact Moscow City Clerk, Chris Bainbridge
<cbainbridge@ci.moscow.id.us>. Or check out the city web site....
The City Council chambers were full last night, with people speaking for and
against the ordinance as presented. KLEW TV was videotaping the proceedings
and there were several newspaper reporters in the audience (including the
Argonaut), so check out local papers for their versions of the meeting.
Most of the work for this ordinance was probably done in 1998, when the
Council was considering it at that time, so I'm not surprised that it was
fairly easy to pull it together in such a short time.
I appreciate Saundra's comments regarding breastfeeding. Our society still
has a long way to go to create a nurturing and positive atmosphere that
encourages mothers to breastfeed their children for the first several years
of their life. In over eight years as a childbirth educator, I heard many
stories about women who were shunned by family or friends because of their
decision to breastfeed, or because they continued to breastfeed beyond the
time that other people thought was acceptable.
Let's get to work.
Pam Palmer
P.S. - It's a good idea that Saundra sent a copy of her post to the City
Council. I found out yesterday that the MV2020 comments aren't considered
by the City Council unless the email is addressed to the City Council as
well. I ended up forwarding every MV2020 post on the topless issue to the
City Clerk yesterday (before the Administrative committee meeting) and asked
her to make sure that they were presented to the Council for their
consideration. She forwarded them to Gary Riedner, the City Supervisor, who
was going to make the decision on what to do with all the comments.
In the future, if you want your comment to count for something, send a copy
to all the City Council and the Mayor. Since it's the Council members that
make the decisions, I did not include the emails for the City attorney and
the City Supervisor in this message. Their plates are usually pretty full,
and it's the Mayor who will direct work assignments to the City Supervisor,
who in turn directs work to the City Attorney.
Back to TOC