A Phoenix Heights resident asked Alderman Hernandez why he voted in favor of the stadium. “That was at a point in the time when I couldn’t go around and knock because I broke my ankle. I had a couple of screws put in so I was laid up for a long time, couldn’t walk or anything. So I was mostly relying on phone calls at my residence as well as e-mails. My plan, of course, before I broke my ankle was to go down to Frame Park, walk through Phoenix Heights, walk through the rest of the district ‘cause this is a bigger issue than – yes, Phoenix Heights is adjacent to this, but it’s also a huge city issue as well so it has to be looked at from that larger spectrum. So from the volume of phone calls and e-mails that I had plus being in law enforcement that of course I track everybody’s phone call and I look everybody up and whatnot so I got a lotta phone calls and e-mails from people saying that they were in my district that weren’t. By the time I completely tallied it up it was basically one and the same. So I had to look at it from the bigger spectrum of the city and not just the neighborhood and this is one of the issues that, of course being a brand new alderman I get thrown in the deep end right off the bat. So you know within, like, two months of being sworn in I got hit the hardest decision that I made and especially being completely limited – my wife was pregnant and she had these really bad migraines so the house was completely dark and I can’t see to do anything and it was the most probably miserable time of my life. So, and, you know, just being stuck on the couch and then since everything that I was remodeling in that room had to go in the rest of my house I could barely take my crutches to the opposite end to go to the bathroom and come back and flop down on the couch. So, unfortunately, I had to strictly rely on just phone calls and e-mails but you know my initial plan before I took that fall was to, you know, walk around like the rest of the aldermen, go down, you know, throughout the district, including Phoenix Heights, {garbled}
At this point he was interrupted by Marty Larson asking about the Alderman’s ability to walk, at which point another resident offered to get Hernandez a scooter.
