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Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 19

our purchasing system, that Citrix Remote Desktop allows you to do that. So we had 100 people that
had access. We had 20 licenses, which at that time fit us because most commonly the people that
you would see using this capability was your Division Directors or employees that had reasons that
they might need to sign on during the night or weekends. It doesn’t fit in a situation like this where we
will need essential employees to be able to access systems while working remotely from home.

So what we needed to do was to purchase additional licenses, but that caused a challenge in itself
because we didn’t have enough servers to put these licenses. So we have to purchase additional
servers, roughly $25,000.00 in cost plus the additional Citrix licenses, roughly another $26,000.00 in
cost. So that’s two big pieces right there. Then we have our phone system. So in order for people to
be able to answer their phones and not have people in the building, our IT Department has identified
what they call “soft phones”. So the phone will, instead of ringing to a desk here, it will ring to the
employee’s phone, should it be their cell or their home phone at home. But the public will think they
are calling the same phone that they always called here at the City. So we have to purchase those
licenses.

Another challenge, we didn’t have the hardware and the laptops and the Chromebooks and like for all
of our City employees to be able to sign out. Generally employees that have had laptops and
Chromebooks and things like that are the Board of Aldermen, Division Directors, so we needed to
order additional laptops and Chromebooks, which | will tell you right now are going at a premium
because everyone else is buying them as well. So today we purchased two Chromebooks, 20 laptops
and our IT Director is working on more. There’s going to be more challenges, so as we look to have
people working remotely, our IT Department is also working on increased security in what we call “two
authentication” so there is some software purchases that he will need to make there, just to strengthen
our security. We are in a good spot but whenever you have this amount of people accessing remotely,
it is a good thing to look at. And we have a very dedicated team and a very experienced team on that.

There’s a number of challenges with having people work remotely. There are payroll challenges. So
right now everybody in the City has some supervisor that approves their timecards through Kronos.
We are looking at the Payroll Department to really look at paying people pay to schedule so that we
don’t need all those people to remotely dial in and approve timecards. What that will do is that might
mean some adjustments down the line, but really when you are working this remotely you don’t want
to have so many people having to tax the system. The other thing is purchasing, we are working to
make sure that should there be an emergency request, or some items that the Police Department or
the Fire Department or the DPW who are actively working need that we can make sure that those are
met and that we can make those purchases and make them as quickly as possible for them. So we
are working with our Purchasing Department, we are working with HR and Payroll and we are working
with IT.

The other Department that has really stepped up and is taking a big role is Risk. So as we look to
close City Buildings, that means access to the buildings and that’s where Risk comes into play. So
they will be dealing with setting up employees that do have access to continue to come into the
building and making sure that our public does not have access to come into the building until we are
ready to provide our services again. So you will see on your desks this evening, there is a Press
Release that went out that we did make an addendum to our contract on the revaluation. This was
approved by the DRA and interior inspections for the revaluation have been temporarily suspended
effective immediately. The other part that we have already worked on is there are no performances
being held at Court Street. So we took that as of last Friday, we asked all of our tenants at Court
Street to suspend any performances. That’s working along with the social distancing put out by the
CDC.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 20

Also Arlington Street Community Center was closed as of Friday. So the Community Center generally
follows Nashua School Systems and they did that in this case as well and reached out to all their
community partners. So we continue to work with Director Kates on who the essential personnel are
as well as the other Division Directors. They are reaching out and Director Kates this afternoon put
out a cry to the Division Directors to let us Know who these personnel are so we can work on building
access, we can work on soft phones, we can work on Citrix, remotely access, those are going to be
key things that we need to work on in the next upcoming two days to make sure that essential services
can be done remotely and that we can continue to serve our Departments and our Divisions as well as
the general public.

Alderman Clemons

Thank you for that, | have a few questions. Obviously with closing the buildings there comes a couple
of things that came to mind. How are we handling the City Clerk’s Office for vital records and things
like that that people might need as well as the Motor Vehicle Department?

Susan Lovering, City Clerk

Vital checks will be assisting with the on-line Vital Records. They can also drop it off by mail as always
and we will make arrangements to go to the drop box and take precautions to be able to pick those up,
mail them back, or process in line and drop them in the mail.

Director Kleiner

Just to add to that, we do have a few essential staff members that will be in the building. We will
continue picking up mail at the Post Office and sorting that, looking at it to see if there is essential mail
that needs to be scanned to a Division Director. We have the drop box out front, we will be asking
people to use that Drop Off Box and we will make sure that the individual departments get any
documents that they need from that drop off and we will still get deliveries, your FedEx, your UPS,
things like that, we have already worked that out through our side entrance and secure access.

Alderman Clemons

What about the Motor Vehicle Department?

Director Kates

One of the things that we did when we went through our exercise to identify if there have been any
changes to the Division’s Essential Functions is we also asked them this time to provide any statutes,
ordinances, any requirements in charter that they have to perform some sort of a function. Many of the
challenges we are dealing with right now, Motor Vehicles being one of them, is related to the State
Operations. We have to ask for an addendum to the Governor’s State of Emergency to ask for some
of these things to be waived. This is the challenge, these things have been actually asked, well let me
back me up a little bit, we had a Conference Call with the State, all the Emergency Management folks
with the State every — right now Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon. And so on the Conference Call
what ends up happening is they provide an overview of what is going on right now and offer an
opportunity for questions. Most of the questions are around “are you going to do this, are you going to
do that” and in most cases the questions are “no we don’t have any plans to do that right now” and
then like an hour later that does happen.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 21

So one of the things that we are trying to do when we are dealing with this exercise is to be proactive
so that if there is, whether by an Executive Order as part of that State of Emergency, they are going to
cancel certain provisions of State Statutes that require us to do things here within the Community. Or
if it's something where there’s the ability for the Community to make the decision to cancel those
services, we will have everything prepared and ready to go for that. In the meantime, anything where
we are required to do it, we have to have some sort of a skeleton crew in the building to be able to pick
something up, take all the necessary precautions based on the guidance that Bobbie, the State Public
Health and CDC has offered to ensure that our workers are safe.

Alderman Clemons

So my question is this, | have to, my birthday was March 11, | have to register my car, how do | do
that.

Mayor Donchess

Well first of all you are a little late.
Alderman Clemons

No | actually | have until March 31°.

David Fredette, City Treasurer

Yes you have to March 31.
Mayor Donchess

So renewals you can do over mail.
Alderman Clemons

That’s my question.

Mayor Donchess

It still will be available.

Alderman Clemons

Is that service going to be open, also from a business point of view, there are still going to be accidents
on the road, there’s still going to be things like that. People are going to need to purchase cars. How
do we service those people in the City?

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 22

Mr. Fredette

I’m not really sure how. The renewals can be done by mail or on-line. So boats the same thing, most
of the bills we do in the tax office can be paid by mail or on-line, so those areas aren’t going to be too
big of a problem. The problem we have is with new cars and transfers of titles. We have been trying
to get something out of the DMV for the last few days and of course we haven't heard anything. And
unless that is waived, we have got a problem, because we have to deal with the person themselves.
We need the title; we need a lot of paperwork for those things.

I’ve talked to Manchester. They closed down their office today at noon. They are actually making
appointments with people who have new cars and transfers and need plates. That’s how they are
doing it, so they are actually meeting the public which is what | am told we are not supposed to be
doing. And | believe the City of Concord is doing the same thing, they are making appointments. And
we have thousands of people who buy new cars in a year, lots of new cars. We have a problem, that
is a real big problem and I’m not sure how it is all going to be handled.

Alderman Clemons

My suggestion is that we can’t close, we cannot close that Department altogether because we have to
be able to serve people, as much as we can, keep this economy moving.

Mr. Fredette

No we are not closing the Department; we have essential employees.

Alderman Clemons

This says here that City Hall is going to be closed to the public so that’s why | am asking the question,
“what is the plan’.

Mr. Fredette

It is going to be closed to the public but | just said most of these transactions can be done by mail or
on-line. But the new cars and the transfers is a problem.

Alderman Clemons

That we don’t have an answer to.

Mr. Fredette

No. We need the State to give us a waiver on that but they haven’t done that yet.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 23

Alderman Clemons

| mean is the State going to waive people from having to register their new cars that is my question. If
we do not have an answer than my suggestion would be that we keep City Hall open so that people
can conduct this business. We can’t just shut down; we can’t just shut that down. How is somebody
going to drive their brand-new car?

Director Kleiner

So we have been watching what other towns and cities are doing. All of the town managers have
been sharing information via a closed group and every town and every city has this one issue that they
are trying to work through. And Director Kates, through Emergency Management, we are trying to get
an answer on that. But the majority of services can all be done on-line or by mail. There was some
question to the State as to whether people that have temporary plates, if they get pulled over is this
going to be an issue, we just haven’t gotten answers to that one question yet. We did receive answers
today from the Department of Revenue, for instance, on exemptions and credits and things of that sort.
The Department said your local Board of Assessors can waive if those documents are late. By Statute
they can. So we know information like that and we are learning more and more every day. And it may
be, if we have to look, | wouldn’t advise appointments when we are looking at not having the public
come into the building. That seems kind of counterproductive to me. But the other issue we have is
we have 590 people in the City who still get live paychecks. So we are having to figure out how we
are going to get these employees their paychecks. And right now the way we have it worked out, is
we will bring the School Department District Office the live checks for them and the other live checks
will be here and on Thursday an employee will be able to call in and we will bring them out their
paycheck from the payroll department. | mean there are things that you wouldn't think of normally that
we are having to think of different things and how we service people.

Although | will tell you Director Budreau sent out an e-mail to all of citywide employees, asking
employees, please sign up for Direct Deposit if at all possible. Also sign up to have your Direct
Deposit slips e-mailed to you, | mean these are things we’ve said before, but it is not until you get into
an emergency situation like this, that it circles back around and you really see the need. So | mean |
wouldn't advise, | mean | believe we will come up with a solution. Working with the State to that issue
but | don’t believe that it is one that should hold off this type of response which is going to ensure that
our residents and our employees and our community remains healthy.

Mayor Donchess

Remember that this is just Day 1, you know, so the Governor announced Sunday, made the School
announcement, that was yesterday and then only today announced the bar and restaurant. So they
are dealing with a lot of issues and there are 240 some Cities and Towns and all the Town Halls and
City Halls, certainly all the City Halls and | assume all the Towns have to deal with this same thing.
And since what we are doing is consistent with what the State, in terms of the direction they are
moving, they are going to have to provide some relief on this because in the end they’d be saying that
we have to keep 240 Cities and Towns open which is really inconsistent with their entire direction. So
in the end, they are going to have to come up with something or agree to delay as to when people
have to register their cars. It is just, again we are just in Day 1 and | believe there will be something
worked out over the course of the next week.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 24

Alderman Clemons

Yes, | do have a further question. On the buildings where and forgive me the only two | can think of
are the Hunt Building and Court Street where the City has tenants, | don’t know if we have any other
buildings. Can you name those and what are we doing with those particular buildings?

Director Kleiner

So currently there is Court Street and there is Hunt and then there is the Arlington Street Community
Center that our City Buildings currently work on. We are asking tenants of Court Street to vacate as of
Friday. And there’s a number of reasons there. As we look at essential services and cleaning, we are
concerned about keeping those buildings healthy. It takes a lot of cleaning; we don’t want masses of
people in those buildings if we don’t have the essential personnel to keep them cleaned and with this
virus there is a lot more cleaning than you would normally think of. And of course as | told you
Arlington Street Community Center is already closed.

Alderman Clemons

So my question on that is will, since people are going to be unable to use their offices, are we going to
suspend their rent that they have due to the City? And then my second question on that is one of the
tenants is Liquid Therapy which is a restaurant. | know that they may decide to take the Governor up
on this thing where you can do take out or you can serve. So how is that going to affect that particular
business and of course my first question about the rents that we are collecting?

Director Kleiner

So we are working with individual tenants on rent situations. It is more important to us to deal with the
safety and the health of our residents. If need be, we can work out a rent situation, we were taking a
different approach with Liquid Therapy at the moment and our Risk Department is in active
communication with them, should they decide to take up the Governor on the takeout situation.

Alderman Clemons

OK thank you.

Alderman Klee

Yes thank you and thank you for all of your efforts, we do appreciate it. My first question or comment
way back in the days of the ‘80’s an ‘90’s, the Federal Government came out and said there would be
no more paper checks, they will all be e-checks and they worked with people who didn’t have the
ability to get accounts, to get accounts and gave them literally 90 days and that was that so just food
for thought on that one. The other one is | don’t know if any of you can answer this, especially with
school closings and trying to do virtual classrooms and so on, my concern is for the library. Is that
being shut down? Are people still going to be using the library? Do we have any information on that?

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 25

Director Kates

| can talk about the library. So regarding those other buildings that we don’t have direct control over,
we have asked them to take the same measures and the library is particularly concerning. They
provide an essential service to the community, particularly for those that are vulnerable. They are also
a location where, unfortunately due to the circumstances, people might not be at work, they are not in
school, so you would think “Oh this will be a great opportunity to go to the library and use those
resources. But when you think of the library, there’s lot of interaction, it’s sort of, it is really the
opposite of what we want people to do right now. So we have asked them to take the same measures
and we will continue to work with them over the next week to see if we can provide any assistance to
them in trying to meet those same types of goals.

Alderman Klee

When you say “take the same measures” are you talking about the essential / non-essential, maybe
not have the Children’s Reading Program or something of that nature.

Director Kates

Yeah so in the case of the library so when we went through the exercise to identify what the essential
functions of the community were, the library had many that we were able to defer after the emergency.
One of the big ones that we were looking at was access to the internet, because we are trying to
ensure that people can get information about what’s going on right now but we still really want to try to
prevent people from going inside of buildings and sitting down, touching things, getting in close contact
with other people. So in that case, going back to those Task Forces that we had talked about, we may
look to identify an alternative to that same mission. So can we set up Wi-Fi hot spots? Can we direct
people to the services of Comcast which opened up their Wi-Fi for free during the crisis? So there are
other ways that we are trying to get that same level of functionality in the community without having
people go into situations where they might be able to contaminate other people or objects without us to
be able to keep control of it.

Alderman Klee

And just can | put one more question in, I’m not sure you can answer this, this may be the Mayor and
so on. | know when the Mayor spoke at the beginning he mentioned something to the effect of that
those employees might not be charged leave and | guess that’s my concern about our City Employees
that are essential have to be here and how are we going to be dealing with their leave if they don’t
have enough leave and they’ve been quarantined, | have some grave concerns about that.

Mayor Donchess
Ok so in the policy that we have presented to you ...
Alderman Klee

That was your second page?

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 26
Mayor Donchess

Yes it says in essence “employees who should isolate or quarantine themselves due to a potential
exposure or cannot make necessary child arrangements should do so and the City will continue to pay
the employee their regular wages without requiring them to use any personal leave time”. But they
may be asked to work remotely to the extent they are able to do so and then there’s a link.

Alderman Klee

Thank you so much | appreciate that.

Mayor Donchess

Again we don’t people coming to work who are sick. That is the worst thing that can happen so we
want to make it very clear that if you are not feeling well you should stay home and you will not suffer
any consequences because of that.

Alderman Klee

Thank you.

President Wilshire

Director Kleiner did you want to add something to that.
Director Ms. Kleiner

So | did. The Mayor asked Legal and HR and Administrative Services to look at this and we did quite
a bit of research and watched what other towns and cities were doing. We had a lot of employees
reach out to us with great concern as you can imagine. This is very common to how this being dealt
with in other communities. So | wanted the Board to know that we are not taking an approach that is
far from different of that of other municipalities but we need to keep in mind that our employees are, of
course, going through a lot of anxiety as is our whole community is as well. And so for them to find out
that their children were going to be home today and they were going to have to stay home, that
creates problems in many families, especially families these days who have two working parents. So
we are trying to work with our employees and the individual Division Directors are working with their
own to make as much arrangements as we can to still have them work remotely if possible and
perform some services, but also keep in mind the health of our residents, our employees and their
families.

Alderman Klee

Thank you so much | really appreciate it. It just hit me as you were speaking about children being
home and thank you very much for doing that. But! also see that we have two representatives of the
teachers behind us. The teachers will be doing the remote teaching and so on. Will they be doing it
from their homes? Will they be doing it from inside the schools?

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 27

Alderman Dowd

So City Hall is closed, the schools are closed. Any consideration been given to the meetings of the
Board of Aldermen, the Committees, the Planning Board, the Zoning Board and every other
Committee that’s in the City. If we are trying to avoid large public gatherings, you know, something
has got to be done.

Director Kates

As part of the recommendation that | presented to the Mayor, one of the things that we had discussed
was that at a minimum we should be canceling any meeting that doesn’t require - is it required by a
statute, local ordinance, charter? Any of those types of meetings should be canceled. In those cases
where we have a meeting that is required by one of those, an RSA or a local ordinance, one of the
things that did come out from the Governor as sort of a guide as part of the State of Emergency Order
that went out was around provisions to conduct meetings in compliance with 91A but still dealing with
the emergency situation.

| Know you guys were talking about it a little before the meeting had started so | don’t know what the
interpretation is here but | know what the State Emergency Operation Center has been pushing to us
is to enable a meeting to still continue. It still must be published. The location must be known by the
public but the person who is leading that, the Chairperson of that Committee, could waive the
requirements for a quorum. Then everybody else would be able to participate via some sort of remote
access. But! don’t know what the interpretation is locally as to whether we can continue that or not.
But those were the recommendations that were made to the Mayor and | think that would at least
prevent as much as possible those types of large gatherings so that we can follow what we are trying
to preach across the entire City.

Mayor Donchess

So as we looked at what is really required, if you look at State Law, it is basically the Board of
Aldermen and that’s a City Ordinance twice a month, Planning Board, ZBA, plus the Finance
Committee is really the things that are required by Ordinance or by Law.

Alderman Dowd

So there are six of us on the Board of Aldermen that according to all the guidelines are more at risk
than others so we could call in.

Mayor Donchess
Yes.
Alderman Dowd

And can the call-in handle 6 or 7 people.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 28

Director Kates

Most tools can today, yeah. | know that is one of the things that we are talking about with IT is in
addition to that specific example is providing the tools out to employees to be able to a lot of remote
access.

Mayor Donchess

Could we do a Zoom meeting? Can there be a Zoom meeting?

Director Kates

Zoom or Go To Meeting — is one of the things that IT was looking at.

Mayor Donchess

We are working on that so people could participate remotely.

Alderman Dowd

So the other thing, now that they are getting all these licenses is video teleconference. Industry has
been doing it for years and that way, because if you rely on our TV system, you know, that doesn’t
work.

Director Kates

Sure.

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

The problem | think with these meetings that you are required to have or even meetings you desire to
have is they have to be open to the public and you cannot limit the number of people you can’t tell
them they have to wait so far away that they can’t hear you. You can’t bring people in one at a time to
the Zoning Board or the Planning Board. You have to admit everyone who wants to be admitted. So |
don’t think it is so much we are worried about all of you or all of us, although we are, but it’s the 50
people who may show up from the public because they are concerned that someone wants to put a
convenience store next to their house. You know, in a residential neighborhood or that sort of thing
and we don’t know how to get around that. There is no exception in 91A that would allow you to have
a Planning Board meeting and limit the number of people. So even if the whole Planning Board
participated by remote Go To Meeting or telephoning in or whatnot, you’ve still got your 50 or 100
people or whatnot of the public coming in, sitting shoulder to shoulder, in those seats.

Mayor Donchess

So the way to do it is if you can find a way to do it legally is to cancel the meetings altogether.