Morano closing remarks calling for broader veteran participation

All right.

Thank you to everybody who came here to share their thoughts and experiences today.

If there's anyone in the room who wishes to speak but hasn't yet had the opportunity to do so, just raise your hand and fill out an appearance card with the sergeant at arms at the back of the room.

And we actually have nobody on Zoom at the moment, right?

So if there's anyone else present in the room who has not had the opportunity to do so, but wishes to, just raise your hand and let us know.

Hands, I'd like to note again that members of the public can submit written testimony to testimony at council.nyc.gov within 72 hours of this hearing.

And I'll just note to all the veterans advocates watching, either in person or online or on television, that,

you know, we had five members of the public come testify today, including three people that are at every hearing that we do, and I'm grateful for their participation.

This really is such an important issue, and I'd love to hear from either folks in the LGBT community or

in the veteran community about what I, as chair of this committee, can do to have a broader outreach effort and get more people participating.

Because I guarantee you there are more than five New Yorkers who could have offered substantive

feedback based on the administration's testimony today and substantive legislative suggestions, not only for the legislation that we're hearing today, but for future legislation concerning LGBTQ veterans.

So to everybody watching, and I know a lot of people do watch these hearings, email me, morano at council.nyc.gov, and tell me what you think I could be doing to,

I would love to have this hearing go on for five hours and fight with the chair of the New York City Council.

next committee because we're not done yet hearing everybody's solutions.

If we're hearing again and again from the same three or four veteran advocates, it's really difficult to move the ball forward for all of New York's veterans community.

And I've talked about before that, unfortunately, while we have a couple of people that are military spouses serving in the city council and a couple of people that are children of veterans serving in the city council,

there is not a single member of the current New York City Council that is a military veteran themselves.

And I only mention that because...

there's a huge perspective that is not being heard.

And the only way we can fill that gap and fill that void in lacking a veteran perspective is if this witness table is filled with people like Mr.

Pena and Mr.

Bellow and Ms.

Colhane and make sure that we're hearing what the needs of the veterans community are.

So I would ask.

Everybody in the veterans community, please help us spread the word about these hearings.

We have a lot of very important hearings coming up that I hope is going to do very substantive work on mental health-related issues, on small business-related issues, specifically affecting veterans.

And we want to hear from you.

Sincerely, it's not me.

Reading a pro forma.

speech.

They've stopped scripting stuff for me because I go off script so much.

So let us know what we can do to reach out to your communities better.