agenda city of watsonville city council/redevelopment agency meeting

Verbatim transcription of audio recording of City Council March 22, 2011 Meeting
Member Bersamin:
Well first of all Delia you can ah you have the right to request time for a presentation. Just request it
from the Mayor I’m sure he’ll give you the time. Um one thing I want to say is that the issue that Mr.
Bulaich is talking about normally I will not address because the City has a great deal of new business. But
what ah has me concerned is when he uses the fact when Ms. Mendez sends her students to help make
points. So I’m going to take the unusual step of addressing him this evening. First Mr. Bulaich this
process took the City ten years the City defended Measure S which was your successful initiative to stop
fluoridation. We did that three times at the Superior Court at the Appellate Court and we took it all the
way to the State Supreme Court. Each time the Court founded that your initiative is superseded by
California law. At this point the City went into negotiations for four years with the State of California
and that forced us in the end by order of Governor Schwarzenegger and the Department of Public
Health to move toward fluoridation. The State said to us in the end if you do not fluoridate we will fine
you $200 a day. The Ad-Hoc Committee met and we did not force the contract, we took time to go over
the contract, Council woman Bilicich was a part of it, we did not rush it. I would say to you that um the
City has closure on this issue. You might not have closure and I’m happy to sit here as you attack me
personally but I will tell you this right away, don’t use students to make your point. As a former high
school teacher with my former government teacher in the audience I’ll say to you it does you no good to
use students, make your point and if I don’t address it it’s because this Council has a severe budget crisis
to take care of and I do not want to use City time. I will let the students know ?, I come from farm
worker family, there are two Watsonville’s in this town. One is for those folks that have dental insurance
and that who can fight for dental care. The other one is para nosotros que no hablamos bien el ingles
mucho de nosotros no tenemos documentos y no tenemos aceso a aseguranza de los dientes. Those
kids that comes from families that don’t have dental insurance who don’t have parents who can speak
up for them in English to dental insurance companies those kids have just as much right to dental care as
anybody else. So am I in favor of fluoride? You better believe it. Our young kids in this town have a
dental care epidemic. If you go to any of the primary schools in the City the teachers will tell you that
many kids come to the classes and they are complaining of dental problems. This town is an ag town 80-
90% of the people who do the work in the fields are undocumented and many of them don’t have
access to that care. Salud Para La Gente the County Health Services, the Health Trust for Watsonville
Community they are all telling us that there is a dental care epidemic amongst our young people. Do we
need fluoridation? Hell yes we do. And I’m not going to apologize for that if you want to come back and
waste my time you certainly can but I will not address you again. You are wasting the City’s time, your
issue is closed. Thank you Mayor.
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