READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0Reading\u2019s Committee of the Whole meeting was briefly disrupted Monday night when protestors against city violence began angrily shouting at council.<\/p>\n
The protest came in the wake of an incident where three men were shot outside a bar around 2 a.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n
Protestors had gathered outside city hall in what was billed as a \u201csilent protest,\u201d but a handful of them came into council chambers where the Committee of the Whole meeting was in progress.<\/p>\n
As council was in the middle of hearing a quarterly financial report, the protestors began shouting at council.<\/p>\n
Public comment is not permitted at Committee of the Whole meetings.<\/p>\n
Council President Donna Reed ordered the protestors be removed by police if they could not adhere to the rules.<\/p>\n
As shouting continued, Reed recessed the meeting for about 10 minutes.<\/p>\n
Prior to the start of the meeting, Reed said she was saddened by news of the shooting and made a brief statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will be working with the mayor and with Michael Toledo (president and CEO of Centro Hispano) for a meeting in the morning of June 13, tentatively, at this point,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it seems to be a good day to bring stakeholders together to discuss the issues surrounding our youth and to make the city a better place for them,\u201d Reed said. \u201cWe look forward to the community joining us, and I will leave it at that for today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reed said the time and location have yet to be determined.<\/p>\n
During the remainder of the meeting, a few protestors remained and silently held signs at the camera livestreaming the meeting.<\/p>\n
In an online post about the protest, organizers said they want the city to aggressively apply for state grants for community-led intervention work.<\/p>\n
Before the end of the meeting, Reed said council was not ignoring the fact that people were at the meeting trying to express their strong feelings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe welcome you to come at the next council meeting where there will be public comment next Tuesday night,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Melissa Ventura thanked the members of the public for being at the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for being here today and voicing how you feel, and being passionate about it,\u201d Ventura said. \u201cYou know, we are passionate about what we believe in, and we want to see change in our city. Someone literally just got shot at City Park.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAside from speaking at council meetings, I feel like, as councilmembers, we should be meeting with these, with our residents, in regard to these issues,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we’re not speaking to these individuals directly and addressing their concerns, whether we can help them or not, they want to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilmember Jaime Baez Jr. said he would remain after the meeting to hear the concerns of the public.<\/p>\n
He also invited a maximum of two councilmembers to remain with him.<\/p>\n
No more than three councilmembers may meet outside an advertised meeting, in accordance with the Sunshine Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0Reading\u2019s Committee of the Whole meeting was briefly disrupted Monday night when protestors against city violence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[43891,87206,2716,1091,5028,87205,128,1095,130,129],"class_list":["post-196329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-centro-hispano","tag-city-violence","tag-donna-reed","tag-jaime-baez","tag-melissa-ventura","tag-michael-toldeo","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-council","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}