City Council’s Public Safety Committee to Meet on Wednesday

Councilman John Kennedy told Pasadena Now on Thursday he will reconvene the City Council’s Public Safety Committee at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 13.

This is the second committee meeting since the pandemic forced city officials to cancel meetings.

“The issue of the Novel Coronavirus is all about public safety and figuring out a way to keep our residents safe and deliver critical services to keep the city running and figuring out a way for us to pay all of our bills,” Kennedy told Pasadena Now.

The 50-page agenda and associated reports may be read online here.

The committee could look at the city’s reopening process, which will be made clearer later today when the City Council conducts a special meeting to consider recommendations by the city’s EDTECH committee.

According to the City Charter, the Public Safety Committee’s mandate is to review matters relating to public safety, including police and fire services and crime prevention programs, as well as other related matters which the committee, chair, city council or city council appointees determine are within the scope of the committee’s review.

“We are doing a fairly good job with keeping our residents and visitors safe,” Kennedy said. “The place where we had the major concern right after the beginning, and it proved to be true, was skilled nursing facilities, boarding care facilities and senior facilities. We have not done a good job in that regard and I’m hoping that we can stop the transmission of the virus in those places because the people who live there deserve to be protected.

“They are the mothers and fathers of people who we come in contact with on a daily basis. They are the loved ones of someone. They are special and we need to figure out how to protect them.”