Remarks by Henri E. Brooks
169 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 7
Chairwoman Aban. And Commissioner Ronda Odell.
While we're taking pictures, we do have one comment card. Director Chipton, Danielle Schaumbach, excuse me, as many times as I've heard that name.
Vice Chair Brooks. Thank you. Before we take this back to committee, well, we've already done it, but I think we should be clear to the director the information or our expectation of her on November 15th because she may need to reach out to someone and have someone at committee. So we need to make sure that we give her the information that we need so that we'll be comfortable casting our vote so that she'll be able to compile all of the questions and bring in expertise if she needs to, but be able to satisfy you and your vote that you need.
I just kind of need some information about this company, Trifecta, and I need to understand the need for us to use a temporary service for health department employees, and what kinds of positions are they filling?
brought to my attention we have one public health nurse respectfully let me ask you real quick what do you think is contributing to this issue because I know several nurses and quite frankly a couple of them went to texas recently so they went to school here in native memphians so what do you think is the problem what I think is the problem yes sir pay
Is there some way we could work out some kind of partnership with the schools such that maybe we could pay interns or pay, I don't know if you call them interns as nurses, but those who are doing their student nurses for lack of a better term.
Well, that seems like something that you could work out with a university or a college. such that it could be incorporated into the curriculum some kind of way, and they'll get credit, and that way you may get that license, higher up nurse, administrator to do that. But I guess it just has to be worked out. I have a problem with these private Oh, these private staffing companies. I've heard so many horrible things from individuals who go to work through these places whereby there's no protection, there's no benefits. Of course, we are at real estate, so that's just adding worse on top of…
Commissioner Brooks? Vice Chair Brooks? Thank you. I'll pull this item in order to be added as a sponsor.
Vice Chair Brooks? Thank you. I'd like to be added as a sponsor, please.
Vice Chair Brooks? Thank you, Madam Chair. Do you have any cards on this item? I do not. Okay. What I'm going to do after just a brief summary is defer this to committee meeting, to our next committee meeting, because we have a number of amendments, and I'm very grateful to Young, Gifted, and Green for the work that was done over the weekend to get this in shape and to make sure that this moratorium is strictly applicable to Shelby County. Now this moratorium will keep the projects, data center projects, from locking in on today's rules while we develop standards and those standards are…
Well, no, when I said, I think when I said... some other areas, if there was something else that you needed to add, or if you'd like to add regarding the County Powers Act or something like that, those are the kinds of things that we'll be looking at between now and November 18th, in addition to giving the attorney the opportunity to look at the amendments that were worked on and submitted by Young, Gifted and Green. And I thought you might want to add something to that.
Well, I wasn't asking you to make a comment about the form and legality. I thought maybe since we had a conversation and I submitted the document that you may want to add something, but I can understand if you do not. So with that, I'd like to just move to defer this so that we'll be able to bring you a complete document to our next committee meeting on November 18th.
Thank you. Thank you. I agree with everything my colleague said. Absolutely correct. And let me just say this. It's absolutely shameful that the state, the state of Tennessee, is using our children, using our children this way for this power grab, and that's all it is. It's about power and control. It's not about taking care of our children. Yes, we do need to improve our school system. We need to improve the county commission. We need to improve the city council. We definitely need to improve the state legislature, the House and the Senate. So we all need improvement. But that doesn't mean…
Good afternoon, everyone. Pastor Wilson, come on over here. How you doing? It is, I am honored to stand here on behalf of the Sheppard County Board of Commissioners and present to you as pastor for the day, Pastor Tori Wilson as chaplain for today, chaplain of the Board of Commissioners to serve during this 28th day September 26th at the will and pleasure of our chairperson. Before I hand this over to you, I want to say to my colleagues who do not know you that Pastor Wilson, one of those pastors in North Memphis that has his hand His head and his entire body on the knees of the community.…
Yes. Good afternoon, sir, and thank you for your presentation. Just a quick question regarding seniors. Do you aggregate numbers regarding seniors either by zip code, city council district, state house district, some way for us to look at the number of seniors? And then if you do or if you don't, do you partner with agencies that specifically work with seniors?
And you can break it down? I can find it. All right, thank you so much.
Commissioner Brooks. Thank you. I'd move to take items 12 and 13 from the consent agenda.
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
I guess I was more concerned with, and I'm almost out of time, these permit fees related to air pollution. My concern is that if we're going to raise these fees or we're going to tamper with them in any way, then that's a good opportunity for us to go in and try to fix the problem that we have that allow additional air pollution or pollutants to come in to saturate one community. And that would be on the health department. I think the health department has a role there that is specifically your lane. Is that correct?
Okay, I'm out of time, but I will... I'm going to have to circle back and repeat myself.
Thank you. I'm going to go back to, I understand the EPA does set those pollution limits and so forth, but I believe our conversation sort of drilled down to the local level when we were talking about policy. And we're talking about policy, creating policy that would meet the needs of our community. I don't believe that would be inconsistent It may be different, but it would not be inconsistent with federal law because all we're doing is talking about decreasing it such that because we have an issue here that you may not have in Ohio or Arizona or what have you. So a one size fit all would…
If it's not working for Shelby County, we're still getting contamination, ground and air contamination and pollution that's causing communities to have unhealthy impacts, health impacts, particularly those who are within a certain radius of places like Nucor, all of those data centers and such, then we need to adjust it to accommodate our community. That's what I'm saying.
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
But with the mindset and the purpose of ensuring the health of the citizens of Shelby county okay and so again just maybe next time when you come we could see the progress we're making around the policy question because you know we talked about informing the public about the complaint process. I know there is a process and people should have more in place other than a website. So we need to try to maybe expand the public process for complaints so people will know we can help them.
Just one-on-one, how to file a complaint. So there's some people do not know that they can file a complaint if they have health issues believed to be caused by pollutants. So it's just then environmental justice would also involve maybe not just more than checking that box, but educating the community about what it means.