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Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 29
Attorney Bolton

Get some waivers of some of the deadlines. Planning Boards have 90 days to take action on
applications that can be waived by the applicant so we can ask applicants to waive time. They may or
they may not. So we will have to deal with those issues, but there is no easy answer presently.

President Wilshire

So do we know if other communities or other cities have done anything with their Aldermanic
meetings?

Attorney Bolton
There is only one other City in the State that has Aldermen as we have discussed recently.
President Wilshire

Yes, we have.

Attorney Bolton

There are communities all over the country that are dealing with similar issues and some of them,
Massachusetts for example, the Governor down there has made several orders which waive certain
aspects of their State Laws that impose certain requirements. Whether our Governor or any other
State Official has similar powers, is not entirely clear to me that that exists. These are issues that will
have to be dealt with as they come up. | think having one or two meetings a month where you have a
chance of having 50 people in the audience is a lot better than having 10 meetings a month where you
have 20 or 30 or 50 people in the audience. But the Go To Meeting solution is not the whole solution.
As | say it is the audience, the gallery, the public that presents the biggest problem because those 50
people are all sitting close together in these chairs. They will all go home, they all have families, but as
| say, 1 or 2 or 3 meetings a month is better than 10 or 15.

President Wilshire

Thank you.

Alderman O’Brien

Madam President, | do have a question for Corporate Counsel if | may.
President Wilshire

You can.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 30

Alderman O’Brien

OK when we came up as the City Charter and when things stepped back in a long-ago era, the
business of the City should be conducted in public. But today the public means something totally
different. We have our good friends at Channel 16 which are taping this exact meeting right now
which is out there to the public. That was never founded or thought about in the original charter and
maybe as we address this issue, maybe we should look into something along those lines because it is
not like we are behind the closed door. We do make the meetings public, whether the person is
actually present or they can have access to live stream and | think Aldermanic Meetings are on a
couple times a day. So there is a lot to be said there of the streaming of these meetings.

Attorney Bolton

Of course locally we don’t have the power to change this State Statute. But if anyone knows any
elected official who goes to Concord on a regular basis.

Alderman O’Brien

And who would Corporate Counsel be thinking of?

Attorney Bolton

This would be something to look into. Obviously, some of these people didn’t have enough foresight,
but maybe next time it could be gotten right.

Alderwoman Kelly

| have a couple of comments; let’s see if | can organize this. | was going to ask the same question
Alderman Dowd asked. | was concerned about moving into Budget Season and potentially canceling
meetings. So | don’t know if you want to speak to that. But! also was concerned about the fact that
we don’t have our Aldermanic Chamber right now which | assume also gives us some technical issues
in terms of being able to call in.

Alderman Dowd

We were scheduling meetings. That’s why | mentioned the schools because to me, | don’t want to
bring 100 people into a school that has been thoroughly cleaned and now you have got to start over
again. It doesn’t make sense. So we do have some leeway in dates for the Budget. But we would be
pushing it for the last date. So we can move some of these meetings off, while we think about how we
are going to handle meetings and maybe we can petition the State to see if somebody up there can
make a logical decision and you know get a little more clarity. | mean | thought | heard from the
Association that they were thinking that if you televise the meeting and you had a call in for public
comment to a phone in that meeting, that you could meet some of these requirements. | mean, you
know, talking about an emergency well to me this is about as big of an emergency is you can possibly
get when you are talking about public health and possibly killing people, | mean you know if we don’t
do it for that, what the heck would we ever do it for? So | think we need to petition the State and get
some clarity and in the interim | am going to push some of the Budget Meetings off.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 31

President Wilshire

Director Kleiner, did you want to jump in on that?

Director Kleiner

So you brought up your Chamber and | wanted to give a little update there. So D.L. King has agreed
to work and continue on the Chamber. There are so few of them coming into the building at this point
we intend to try to keep that on schedule. But you bring up another point that is important and that is
the cleaning of buildings. So as we close we want to work on a thorough cleaning process which
means having as few people in the building as we can so that when we do open we’ve made sure that
our buildings are properly cleaned and there’s not any question when we open back up to the general
public. So while | understand Attorney Bolton’s, if we could have as few of meetings as possible, and
limit it, especially here in the small room of 208 where you are really compacting people in a limited
space.

Alderwoman Kelly

| had two follow ups. One was that | think the State House is closed so | would reach out and ask
some of my colleagues what they are doing and how that might reflect us on us.

Alderman O’Brien

We are closed.

Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright

We are closed, we are done.

Alderman Dowd

They sent them all home.

Alderwoman Kelly

And then the only other comment | have and | know | am not super close to a microphone, | have a
long list of things that | know this is going to affect and things that we are going to have to touch. So |
am wondering how we might meet and address those things. Even if we say we are canceling all
meetings, well OK at some time we might need to address rent or utilities or how much the non-profits
are getting swamped and how we might be able to help them. So there are going to be things that we
are going to have to address as this continues on.

President Wilshire

This is very fluid; | mean there are so many things that we don’t know yet.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 32

Alderman Tencza

Thank you Director Kleiner (inaudible) Solutions not going into homes at this time, it explains that once
the Health Department approves them to go into homes, they will communicate with the homeowners
and set up an appointment to go meet with the homeowner and do interior inspection if the
homeowner chooses to do so. Does that also extend to City employees, non-emergency City
employees, people whose water heaters are going to break in the next month or so and you know they
are supposed to have a follow up inspection done by the Building Department. I’m sure in Public
Works for people to have to go into people’s homes. Can we say tonight that that’s going to be, this
policy is going to be extended to those folks?

Director Kleiner

Well | can speak about Assessing. So Assessing right now whether it is Vision Inspectors or our
Assessors they will not be doing interior inspections at this point. The State is handling this the same
way so the Assessor that work for the Department of Revenue, they have suspended interior
inspections and entry into any home as has many municipalities across the State and | will give it over
to Justin.

Director Kates

So there are a couple of things that we’ve determined that we have to continue at least for a period of
time that | really don’t want to continue but we have to do it. So one of them is building inspections.
We are trying to figure out some way to limit the possibility of exposure as they go into a building. | will
let Bobbie talk a little bit about how they’ve come up with a sort of a decision matrix for those
employees similar to what they did with the Fire and Police Departments. But again, it still doesn’t
prevent the exposure and it is something that we want to try and take every precaution possible to
ensure the safety of the employees.

The other are that does concern me significantly that we can’t stop right now until we get some
assistance from the State and Federal Government is the bus service. So FTA has put out guidance
to our Transit Department and it is basically like we are not going to give you any guidance at all and
that’s where it stands. So there are concerns with shutting down a service like transit particularly when
we look at para transit, we have identified that as an essential function because we need to get people
to medical appointments and those types of activities. But you know how a bus works, there’s lots of
people on it. They are in close quarters and we want to try and limit those types of activities. So those
are some things that we will have to continue at least in the short term until we get some support from
the State and Federal Government. And then I'll let Bobbie talk a little about the decision matrix they
came up with.

Mayor Donchess

Just on the buses, one issue is that Federal Transit has said that if you stop the buses you cannot pay
the drivers. So you know they would go without pay for as long as the buses were not running. There
is a lot of Federal Transit money in the system so they pay for the vast majority of it so we have to
follow their instructions.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 33
Director Bagley

Well thank you. Just as the idea was to reduce the opportunity for infection or to at least break the
chain of infection, this decision tree unlike with Police and Fire where they have to respond and they
have to go in and they have to deal with the emergent need of an individual. With this decision tree if
certain questions are asked in particular around the fever and the symptoms, if the answer is “yes”
then the inspector will postpone an inspection until further notice. If the answer is “no” then they go to
the next question which is “have you come into close contact with someone who has a laboratory
confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis”. If the answer to that is “yes”, again they are going to postpone the
inspection until further notice. If it is “no”, they can proceed with the routine inspection as usual but
following some social distancing guidance, that’s also written on the sheet as well. Avoid shaking
hands or direct contact because as a part of our culture we do tend to greet one another that way as
professionalism, but in this case, we want to make sure that that is avoided. Stay at least six feet
away from the individual at all times when possible. Minimize what you touch, while conducting the
inspection, again avoid touching your own eyes, nose and mouth. After completing the inspection,
was your hands at least 20 seconds and use hand sanitizer. So again putting some of those very
same, very basic prevention practices in place will help reduce exposure, contact and spread of this
infection.

Alderman Clemons

Thank you. So my question was going back to the quorum. We were briefly talking and so | am going
to direct it through you to Corporation Counsel. Is it your interpretation that we still need a quorum, a
majority of people present to establish a quorum under the State Law?

Attorney Bolton

In most cases, there is an exception requirement so it depends upon the exact circumstances. So why
is the meeting being held? What is the urgency of the meeting? If it is a near life or death situation
and there has to be a Special Board of Aldermen’s meeting and we find out about this eight hours in
advance, yeah, | think ;you can provide whatever notice is feasible under the circumstances and have
as many as necessary participate remotely. If this is an ordinary, regularly scheduled meeting and
most of what is on the Agenda is whether to put up a stop sign on some fairly small neighborhood
street, | don’t think that’s the kind of emergency that is going to allow physical participation of less than
a quorum.

Alderman Clemons

So | would just ask the President to think about if we are doing, we have to do meetings, that we take
a poll of members to find out, first of all who is going to be at the meeting, what is going to constitute a
quorum at that meeting and what is the maximum amount of people based on that that can call in?
And then prioritize who it is that can call in. If somebody is sick obviously, they’d be at the top but if
somebody is older than | am, then perhaps they would be on the top of the list as opposed to me
where | would probably be asked to come in. So | just think that there are some things that we can do
to keep business moving along and still follow the State Law. But obviously if we can cancel meetings
that would be preferable, but in the event that we have to, let’s see if we can work something out.

President Wilshire

OK will do.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 34

Alderman O’Brien

Thank you, Madam President. | would like to retro back a little bit to Alderman Dowd’s point. Many of
the Aldermen here that share double duty with me up at the State House are reminding the Aldermen
and the Mayor and all the listeners, we went to Concord the first day from 9:00 in the morning to 7:00
that night. And then the second day we went to Concord from 9:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the
morning. That is something like 30 hours of legislation. Do you think we could come up with
something better? Don’t hold your breath OK, so just to put it right there.

But my second retro question back, it was stimulated by Alderman Klee in looking at and Mr. Mayor it
may be directed to you on the second paragraph of Page 2 of your Proclamation, it says, “Including
essential employees”. Who are they? Are they the Police and Fire Fighters and if they do self-
quarantine, how long should they self-quarantine before they should come back to duty? And that
needs to be addressed | think to come up with that parameter if they are to be included into that.

Director Kates

I’m at the standards for quarantine now.

Director Bagley

And so for any one of us if we were to be exposed to COVID-19, the current recommendation for
quarantine is 14 days.

Mayor Donchess

And they would be covered by this policy as well.

Alderman O’Brien

They would be covered, OK, thank you. Sorry 35 years on the Fire Department. I’m deaf so | didn’t
hear exactly how long is the quarantine?

Director Bagley

14 days.

Alderman O’Brien

14 days OK, thank you so much.

Alderman Caron

Thank you. And | know next week we have like three meetings, so | guess we will have to think about
how we are going to handle that. But | have a question because we are looking at a Resolution for

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 35

$100,000.00 and Director Kleiner you said that there are 100 employees already able to remotely work
from home.

Director Kleiner

So there’s 100 employees that have access. There are currently only 20 licenses. So of those 100
employees, only 20 people could sign on remotely.

Alderman Caron

OK so you are trying to expand that. But my question to you is how many more people are you
looking that would be able to work from home to be able to sign? Because this is a lot of money and |
am just trying to establish, we have more than 200 people that work for the City. So how are you
going to choose who is going to be able to do that and how many more are you looking to add to this
licensing problem?

Director Kleiner

So there’s two parts of it; there’s the part of buying the additional server to be able to house the
licensing that we need. We would actually like to get to a point where we do buy 80 licenses so that
we establish 100 licenses. There may be only some employees that sign on. It’s the difficulty in
figuring out when people do sign on. You don’t want to flood the system and you want to make sure
that you have enough capability. So the Division Directors working with Emergency Management,
they have figured out and identified who those essential personnel need to be. SO we will work
through that matrix of giving out those licenses but had 100 employees that had access, you know,
that had signed up when we only had 20 licenses. We got a flood of additional employee requests
since we have been doing this exercise. So we really think building ourselves up to that 100 is
important, just so we can meet critical functions.

There’s the $25,000.00 for the server, $26,000.00 for the additional Citrix licenses; then there’s
another $1,200.00 to $1,500.00 in soft phone access. Then they are still doing research on how much
the two-way authentication would cost and then there’s the cost of just today the 10 Chromebooks and
20 laptops. So right there you are already at about $80,000.00 and as we look at the additional
software, we want to make sure we have money for that without coming back.

Alderman Caron

OK | appreciate that and | am glad to see that your Division Directors are already looking at what
employees should be doing this because | am thinking of some departments that really are not, they
are essential but they are not essential at this point in time, because let’s face it, you are not playing
baseball, you are not playing basketball, all of these things are closed off to people. So staff in that
particular department, it’s not necessary for them to do that. They could actually work in the office for
an hour. But | just wanted to establish that $100,000.00 to make sure that people understood that you
may have 100 employees that can go on-line and work from home but not necessarily all at the same
time because you only have a limited amount of licenses. Alright, thank you.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 36

Director Kates

So | just want to add two items to that as well. So one of the things as part of the exercise where we
determine those essential employees is we also looked for opportunities to streamline the unique
operations that we are going to be working under. So as an example, Purchasing; instead of having
Division/Department being able to start a requisition and go through a process which they would need
access to Citrix for, we are actually going to set it up so that everything goes to Purchasing and they
are able to process that. So it is now only one license for that. Same thing for payroll, we are looking
to have payroll set up so there is only need for Kronos access. What will end up happening are
exceptions people doing overtime because they are involved in the disaster work. They would all
process that through that central mailbox and get it done that way. So that has been one thing we
have tried to do to limit that.

The other thing | think is important to note about the document that is front of you is about our ability to
leverage employees related to other types of disaster activities. So my number one concern is that
while we might be dealing with biddy basketball, we could be in need, great need of City employees to
take some sort of a part of disaster roles. So we want to have the ability to provide remote access if
we get to circumstances where those employees are doing weird things that they wouldn’t normally do.

Alderman Caron

Ok thank you, | appreciate that.

Alderwoman Lu

Thank you. | have a couple questions about — first of all, regarding meetings of the four Boards that
were mentioned. | wonder if there are ways of adapting to this situation where we can still meet but we
support the social distancing. My thoughts are you know, | don’t know how many of these four get
frequent visitors, | don’t go to all of them. The Board of Aldermen, unless it’s a public meeting, it is
frequently just minimally visited. And for cases like the ZBA, maybe holding more meetings with each
meeting involving only one case.

Now, the reason | am thinking this way is, am | right, it is my understanding that although we want to
flatten the curve, the nature of this is we are not going to reduce the number of illnesses or the rate of
infection but we make it more bearable for the resources to be able to handle it. So because | heard
that | am under the impression that we aren’t not going to — just really decreasing or increasing social
distancing, generally in the City is our goal. But we don’t have to eliminate every meeting. So | don’t
know if | understand that right.

But the other thing | wonder if | understand correctly is that the exposure or that it is carried by people
but after two days on a surface, | thought | had read something about how long it survives on the
surface. And for that reason | am curious why everything has to be deep cleaned. I’m not against that
but | know that’s a large expense and | recall having read that there is a certain life ability to survive on
a surface. And if the schools are all going to be closed for two weeks, do we really expect there to be a
risk after two weeks of no one being in the schools? Thank you.

President Wilshire

Bobbie do you want to address that.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 37
Director Bagley

So there are a couple of different responses to the comments that you have just shared with us or your
concerns. If we maintain social distancing and you don’t give the virus the opportunity to spread from
one person to another, you are reducing the number of cases. That is also how you are flattening that
curve as well. With regards to the surfaces there is actually some information about how long the virus
does stay on different types of materials. So it can stay, I'll just read from this article that Ren
Beaudoin who is our Environmental Health Officer, Deputy Health Officer and Lab Director shared with
us at work.

It says, “Overall stability is very similar to HCOV-19 and SARS. They found that the viable virus could
be detectable in aerosols up to three hours post air isolation and up to four hours on copper, up to 24
hours on cardboard, two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. SARS exhibited similar half lives
in aerosols and medium estimates were 2.7 hours”. So it can be on a surface for a while but what
happens is that the viability of the virus decreases and so it may not be as infectious but it still can be
infection on a surface for a longer period of time. So that’s why we want to make sure that we are
wiping down surfaces with disinfectant that can kill it.

Alderwoman Kelly

So Manchester is cancelling their meetings and they're moving to remote meetings. There was a
Memo put out by the Governor around 6:00 p.m. this evening saying that we can do electronic
meetings. | am sure Corporation Counsel and other people will weigh in on this but it says that we can
do them remotely but we still have to have some place for the public to interface with us even if that’s a
room with just a speaker phone in it.

Attorney Bolton

Let me reiterate, that’s only a meeting to deal with this emergency. It is not a meeting for ordinary
business.

Alderwoman Kelly

OK also a new one | found, that’s not how | understood it, but also a new one that | found, but | know
that Manchester is going to...

Attorney Bolton

I’ve read the Memo from the Governor and the Attorney General.

Alderwoman Kelly

All right.

President Wilshire

Does anyone else have any questions for any of the Directors? Seeing none, thank you. Alright well |

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 38

guess that ends our discussion on the Coronavirus. | am going to ask without objection to suspend
the rules to allow for a communication from Mayor Donchess relative to the Coronavirus Emergency.

Communications

From: Mayor James Donchess
Re: Coronavirus Emergency

There being no objection, President Wilshire suspended the rules to allow for a communication
from Mayor Donchess relative to the Coronavirus Emergency.

President Wilshire

| would like to ask for a motion to accept, place on file the communication and authorize the Mayor to
execute the temporary policy on shutdowns and emergency leave due to Coronavirus, COVID-19.

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN TO ACCEPT FROM MAYOR JIM DONCHESS THE
MARCH 16, 2020 CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 19 EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION AND TO
ACCEPT IT AND TO AUTHORIZE THE POLICY

MOTION CARRIED

President Wilshire

I’d also like to suspend the rules to allow for the first reading of Resolution R-20-024 received after the
Agenda was prepared.

First Reading of Resolution R-20-024 Relative to the Transfer of $105,000.00 from Department 192,
Debt Service, Account 75200 Interest Expense into Various accounts.

R-20-024
Endorser: Mayor James Donchess
RELATIVE TO THE TRANSFER OF $105,000.00 FROM DEPARTMENT 192 “DEBT
SERVICE”, ACCOUNT 75200 “INTEREST EXPENSE INTO VARIOUS ACCOUNTS”
Given its first reading;

President Wilshire suspended the rules without objection to allow for a second reading of Resolution
R-20-024.

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN TO RECOMMEND R-20-024 FOR FINAL PASSAGE
MOTION CARRIED

Alderman Dowd

| had one thing first; did we ever find a place for Thursday’s meeting? Budget? It was supposed to be
at the Police Station but they are using their room for an emergency center. Fire Station?

President Wilshire

177 Lake Street.