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Board of Aldermen Page 19
September 27, 2016

LeBrun in the Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee that why don’t we just leave this until January
1%. It’s important when the community says please do this that we answer that in a very
conscientiousness way. | haven’t heard any firm concerns or arguments against doing this other than
the process orientated ones, which again, we’ve already set precedence with other issues that were far
less impactful where we had a lot less to take credit for. All | have heard is there might be something
else, there might be more to look at and | would invite anyone who is interested in doing more research
into this to get involved in the Cultural Connections Committee and the One Greater Nashua effort and
the many immigrant support organizations in the city. You don’t need to hold up the legislation to do that
because this has been going on for a long time.

Alderman Dowd

There is a piece of legislation on the floor and there is also an amendment to that legislation on the floor.
| would suggest that we vote on the amendment and if it doesn’t pass then we vote on the legislation as
it was presented because that is what came out of committee and see what happens.

Alderman Schoneman

In response to that last comment, | will join those who say they are not going to support the Mayor’s
proposal that comes out tonight. | attended that meeting as well and believe that the compromise that
came out was pretty good. This legislation; | certainly accept that it was somewhat driven by the
Chamber of Commerce and the United Way but the draft of this legislation comes from
WelcomingAmerica.org. Part of their strategy in New Hampshire, and | just don’t like that the City of
Nashua is being co-opted by congratulating ourselves on being the Welcoming City that we are that |
have experienced, that we are now endorsing an organization which does way more and may in the
future do way more than the things that we think they are doing today. Part of their strategy is to
mobilize local groups to do a number of things including trying to get legislation through the local Board.
That’s a stated goal, it’s a milestone and it’s in their publications that they want us to do and part of the
drafting from this comes from the WelcomingAmerica.org. | feel that we are being co-opted. That
language is still here but the amendment that came out of committee takes out the specific endorsement
of the Welcoming America Initiative but it includes much of the language. The language didn’t change
and that’s why | say that | think it's a reasonable compromise. It’s gets the language the
WelcomingAmerica.org wants in here, which apparently we are willing to follow, but it takes out a specific
alignment with that organization and | think that’s a reasonable position. | will not support the newly
revised alternative that the Mayor presented.

Alderman Siegel

| am going to address a couple of things and | am sympathetic to Alderman Dowd’s concept that we do
have something in front of us but these comments are all associated with that. With all due respect to
Alderman Lopez, if the legislation before us was to congratulate all of the people that were involved in
the efforts that are on-going like the Cultural Navigators or the United Way efforts or the Chamber of
Commerce efforts and we were congratulating them for all of the good work they do, that in fact would be
like the typical type of proclamation that we have before us that all of us would support and it would go
through just like that, this is not that and let’s not pretend it is. We are talking about us as a city and we
are virtue signaling on the municipal level which is comical. | would be more than happy to congratulate
people for the actual work they do, but instead, we have to virtue signal on the municipal level and okay,
I’m willing to accept that because compromise is what we do here but that legislation is now tying us to
an organization which clearly members are uncomfortable with. Again, there was an hour and fifteen
minute discussion about that. Normal compromise is okay, the real essence here, which everybody
wanted and everybody was fine with, was that we are a Welcoming City and we don’t want to have
anybody perceive that we are not a Welcoming City and that was a great compromise. All of a sudden
the waters are muddied and | would be more than happy to discuss this. | have enough information on
the Welcoming America Initiative. I’m sure not many people went through all of the 990’s. Has anybody

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September 27, 2016

out there gone through the 990’s and actually look at the money that actually being granted and look to
see where the money came from? Look at the actual resources on here and read them? I'd be happy to
quote that but I’m not going to quote it from this piece of legislation because we vet that in committee. 1’ll
go to committee and discuss it if you want but | would be more than happy to discuss what it is that we
have before, that was before us out of committee. | think it's a complete mistake if we want to vote on it,
we are voting on whether or not to accept the Mayor's amendment and just vote directly on that. That’s
not the way we do business and for good reason.

Alderman Moriarty

We could have had a unanimous vote here tonight | think with the compromise that came out of the
committee. | get along with Alderman Lopez very well and | like a lot of things he said tonight. He did
point out that the people who showed up were all in support. There are some people in the audience
who are against but they just haven’t spoken and understandably so because there is a bit of perception
or stigma attached with voicing your opinion against this topic. There are a lot of people out in this city
who would have been for the version that the committee came up with but that has been ruined. The
best thing to do is absolutely send it back to committee. No one has made that motion so | am going to.

MOTION BY ALDERMAN MORIARTY TO RE-REFER R-16-068 AS AMENDED TO THE
PERSONNEL/ADMINISTRATIVE AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

ON THE QUESTION
Alderman O’Brien
Point of order, Mr. President, isn’t there already a motion on the floor?

President McCarthy

A motion to re-refer is in order.

Alderman Moriarty
Roll call.

Alderman Cookson

| am trying to determine which amended version it is that we are sending back to committee. Is it the
amended version that came out of committee or is it the amended version by the Mayor?

President McCarthy
It is neither; we were referring a piece of legislation to the committee.

Alderman Cookson
| thought Alderman Moriarty’s motion was as amended?

President McCarthy

It hasn’t been amended.

Alderman Moriarty

Point of inquiry then, can you recommend what the best way to make the motion would be?

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September 27, 2016

President McCarthy

The motion that | accepted from you was to re-refer the legislation to committee.

Alderman Moriarty

Ultimately it doesn’t matter because we are going to end up going back, the idea is to get it back to the
committee so we can at least have the discussion on the new piece of legislation and have the
opportunity for a unanimous vote.

President McCarthy

The committee can take any number of actions once given back a piece of legislation. They can return
the same amendment that it recommended the first time, it can recommend a new amendment, it can
recommend the original passage or it could recommend indefinite postponement.

Alderman Moriarty

Okay, my goal is to simplify so I'll be specific here then. My motion by is to refer the current copy that is
being considered which is the amended version which Alderman Lopez...

President McCarthy

That motion would not be in order. What is before the Board that can be re-referred is the original
legislation.

Alderman Moriarty

Okay then in order to make a motion that is in order...

MOTION BY ALDERMAN MORIARTY TO RE-REFER R-16-068 TO THE PERSONNEL/ADMINISTRATIVE
AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

ON THE QUESTION

Alderman Siegel

| do appreciate what my colleague; Alderman Moriarty is trying to do. We are trying to come to the best
resolution but unfortunately, the bouncing back and forth itself is a problem. | believe, as probably
Alderman Moriarty believes, that with the compromised solution | thought we were getting a unanimous
vote. | think a unanimous vote would be very useful. Again, | don’t like these types of legislation. | think
it's great when people do things and we recognize the people that do things but | don’t believe we should
be cheerleading ourselves this way but that’s my opinion but | would be happy to vote for this legislation in
compromise because that’s what we do. To go ping-ponging back and forth and having basically the
same type of discussion; | am not sure | am in favor of that. I'd like to get this resolved. | would be happy
to start reading off pieces of data that | have gathered about this but | don’t think it’s relevant. You know,
why | personally can’t stand this organization from what | found out about it. Well, | can’t stand is probably
a little harsh but | am not comfortable is probably more accurate.

Alderman Lopez

First | would like to point out that most of the resolution does actually congratulate organizations and
businesses and what’s been going on in Nashua and | would argue that most of the work has been done
by the communities that are represented here tonight. However, my understanding of the process that we

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are in now is that | made a motion to replace the originally proposed legislation while we were discussing
that originally proposed legislation. | don’t see any reason to send the whole resolution back to the
committee when we have already discussed it in committee and everybody who was able to go there went
and presented their arguments. Out of that meeting we had two outcomes. One was the committee
recommended an amendment which could be introduced and voted on here after my motion is dealt with
and the Mayor did respond directly to the comments of the committee and offered a substitute version
which very explicitly states what we are getting into. Again, that was vetted by corporation counsel so |
feel like the steps we should be taking here are voting on my motion and then making a motion on the
original version and if that needs to be amended then fine. There are three options right now and we
could literally go through all three of them.

President McCarthy

Alderman Wilshire, can you please take the chair for a minute?

Recorder's Note: Vice President Wilshire was seated in place of President McCarthy

Alderman McCarthy

| think | see what is going to happen so I'll make a prediction and then I'll ask us not to let that come true.
From where | sit, | have the advantage of being about 6” higher than everyone else so | can see what is
going to happen. It looks to me like if this goes to a vote that amendment will probably pass by an 8 to 7
majority and the resulting legislation will also pass by an 8 to 7 majority, 7 members of the Board will be
extremely unhappy that that happened and 8 members of the Board will be mildly satisfied with the short-
term result. Frankly, | don’t think that’s a good result for us or for the community, 15 to 0 would be better
no matter what comes out of this. Let’s think about it for a minute, | think everyone around this
horseshoe agrees with the concept that we are a Welcoming City and that immigrants are very welcome
here in Nashua. | think that most of the things that we are asked to do by the list that Mayor Donchess’
amendment would add are things that we agree to do or that we are already doing. | read the list at the
committee meeting a couple of weeks ago. Everything that was in there with the exception of maybe
attending a yearly conference had to do with looking at how to be inclusionary in our processes and
those are things that are already being done by the city and by the One Greater Nashua. | would rather
see us take the time to come up with something that will make everybody happy. If there are issues that
have to do with the organization itself that we should be aware of then | would like to hear those. | think
that Alderman Siegel is right that those things should be done in committee and not here so let’s think
about what the long-term affect is of how we are going to do this. My personal opinion is if the
amendment gets around to me and | have to vote on it, | will probably vote yes. If the amended
legislation comes around to me then | will probably vote yes because of all the things that I’ve heard and
my belief that this is not a partisan piece of legislation and that it is something that helps us. | want to
warn you that | don’t think that’s the best thing for us to do necessarily in terms of coming up with a piece
of legislation that serves the people who are out there as best we can because | don’t think it will serve
them but that it will simply help to divide this Board over that point and we will fight this out for months
instead of trying to do something that | think we all agree we should do in the first place.

Recorder's Note: Alderman McCarthy returned to his set as President and Alderman Wilshire returned to
her seat as Vice President.

President McCarthy

The motion is to re-refer to committee.

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Alderman Clemons

With respect to your clairvoyance in how the vote is going to turn out, | think that it would be a colossal
waste of time to send this back to committee and the reason that | say that is because your 8 to 7
clairvoyance isn’t going to change because the fact of the matter is that what the people in the audience
want and what the organizations who represent, who by the way, when is the last time you have seen St.
Joseph’s Hospital, the Chamber of Commerce, One Greater Nashua, the Adult Learning Center, the
United Way, the library, the Cultural Connections Committee, churches and other organizations get
together behind a single piece of legislation and come before us and say please pass this and we are
going to vote 8 to 7 no? That’s ridiculous and you are wasting their time if you send it back to committee
because we are not going to agree 100% on the Welcoming America Initiative so we should either vote it
up or vote it down tonight.

Alderman Siegel

My remarks probably won’t get any applause. | honestly would love to go through this but again, | feel
very strongly that this is not the place for it. | don’t want to see this go back to committee but | actually
think the Alderman McCarthy is pretty insightful; however this passes it should be pretty much
unanimous. It won't be if we try to jack this. To waste time at the full Board instead of doing that before
committee where we can have an interactive discussion is crazy. | think we should just vote on sending
it to committee and | would recommend that we do send it to committee. And, this idea by the way, that
somehow this represents everybody and everybody’s opinion, again, has everybody done the same
amount of research? | can guarantee not. I’m sorry, | think it's wonderful that people have come out and
| wish that they would come out for frankly more substantive things like the budget or the pension gap
that we have. Come out for that; that would be helpful. Other than that, this should go back to
committee if you really want to have a substantive discussion because there is no time urgency. The
time window has passed for the Welcoming America Initiative week and that was said in committee.
That’s why the compromise came about to begin with, there didn’t seem to be any benefit, it didn’t
matter. The week had passed and the city wasn’t going to commit any resources so what was the point?
It made a lot of sense. Alderman Caron initially suggested the compromise and it sounded good to me
but again, we have a different motion before us but it should go back to committee.

Alderman LeBrun

Why do we feel so intensely that for whatever reason that we have to come under the umbrella of an
organization when we can simply resolve this by the Mayor putting out a proclamation which would
proclaim Nashua as a Welcoming City? Why did we need an organization to tell us how to do that?

Alderman Dowd

Normally if additional information could come forward and be more enlightening, | would more than
willing to send it back to committee. | happen to have attended the committee meeting but | wasn’t a
voting member but | was listening. Quite frankly, from the discussion that happened that evening with
the voting members of that committee, | don’t see the result changing so it’s going to come back to the
full Board again. | would prefer that we take some type of action tonight and | agree that it should be 15
to 0 with the Welcoming Initiative but | don’t see where anybody in other cities has been negatively
impacted by doing this. I’ve heard no mention of anything that was adversarial to Manchester or any
other city that has adopted it. If it is up to me | would say let’s vote on the amended legislation and if it
doesn’t pass then we vote on the legislation that came from the committee which | assume would pass
but maybe not. | think we ought to at least vet those this evening.

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Alderman Moriarty

| can take a hint, Mr. President and offer another compromise. We could have a unanimous vote in
probably less than two minutes. | will be happy to withdraw my motion if Alderman Lopez withdraws his
motion.

President McCarthy

You can withdraw your motion or not and it’s up to Alderman Lopez whether or not he withdraws his. Are
you withdrawing your motion?

Alderman Lopez

| think if everybody on the Board is serious about the welcoming part of this then we will have a
unanimous vote after this but | also think that honestly, | don’t see the concerns that have been raised
and | thought | was listening to and compromising when | made that motion at the
Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee meeting and | thought that the Mayor also responded to
those concerns appropriately so | am not withdrawing my motion. If the rest of the Board would like to
vote my motion then we can vote on the recommended version.

President McCarthy

Alderman Moriarty, did you withdraw your motion to re-refer?

Alderman Moriarty
No.

President McCarthy

The motion is to re-refer to committee and debate of that point is in order.
Alderman Wilshire

| don’t see any different outcome from the committee. | am not going to support re-referring this to
committee. | would like to vote this up or down tonight.

Alderman Schoneman

| do think that going back to committee would be a good idea. It sounds like there is other information,
Alderman Siegel mentioned that there is some information that he has and | understand his desire to
move it through and we could probably pass the goldenrod copy tonight if that had been the motion. |
would also point out about Manchester; my understanding is that it didn’t go through right away. It came
to the City of Manchester and | believe Mayor Gatsas, a number of years ago and it was rejected and it
was vetted for a long period of time. In fact, it was the rejection in Manchester that caused the Office of
Refugee Relocation to hire WelcomingAmerica.org to come into Nashua to go after what they call the
talkative resistance here in the state to begin to put political pressure on people to get this thing passed.
It didn’t sail through Manchester and | think they vetted it and | it wouldn’t hurt to send it back to
committee and vet it here too.

Alderman LeBrun

If you want a unanimous vote then why don’t we vote on the original recommendation from the
committee proclaiming Nashua as a Welcoming City and have the Mayor put out a proclamation stating

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such? That’s all we need to do. We do not need an umbrella organization telling us how to do it. | think
we are all intelligent enough to know how to do it.

Alderman Siegel

With regard to Alderman Wilshire’s point about the results out of committee, actually the results could be
very different because the results out of committee were a specific compromise before us and the
legislation that is before us that was proposed in modified form by Alderman Lopez could potentially
appear out of committee with a recommendation of one way or the other for that so that’s a very different
outcome and it’s an outcome that would be vetted in committee so | am sorry, committee does matter.

Alderman Caron

Mr. President, | have a question because | knew this was going to happen when we left that committee
meeting; that nothing was going change. Does the Board of Aldermen approve every organization that
the city belongs to? | mean this thing with the Welcoming America Initiative, can that be a separate thing
that the Mayor does separately as an organization and we do the affirming the City of Nashua as a
Welcoming City and maybe that would placate a lot of the Aldermen who have this real angst about the
initiative program? Nothing is going to change if we send this back to committee.

President McCarthy

Anything that requires things that will be acted upon by this Board such as the appropriation of budget or
entering into an agreement would in fact require coming to the Board. The Mayor is pretty much free to
take other administrative actions that don’t step on the authority of the Board of Aldermen other than that.

Alderman Cookson

Are we able to divide the question? Are we able to take the welcoming piece, as Alderman LeBrun
suggested and make a decision on that piece and then the issue that seems to be of concern to at least
a portion of this Board be taken up and discussed additionally with additional information and additional
details that might be available?

President McCarthy

The way one would do that is through the process of amendments. The motion that is in front of us is not
divisible because it’s simply to re-refer to committee.

Alderman Cookson

Understood; thank you.

Alderman Lopez

| would like to observe that we did cut it in half when we were at the Personnel/Administrative Affairs
Committee and that was my effort to understand where other people were coming from and | feel that the
Mayor did, in fact, listen to those concerns and stipulate and add additional materials to it that didn’t
increase what we were agreeing to but it limited what the original resolution was suggesting in response
to the concerns. We did cut it in half and then additional information was brought forward but apparently
it's not enough to satisfy people who had the position originally that this was not something that they
wanted to pass.

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September 27, 2016

Alderman Siegel

Roll call.
Alderman Schoneman

| would like to say that | support sending it back to committee. When | listen to Alderman Cookson read
the legislation that came out those years ago, frankly, that sounded so much more eloquent and beautiful
and encouraging about Nashua than this language that comes from WelcomingAmerica.org. | really
strongly recommend that we send it back to committee and come up with something that speaks for
Nashua itself and not something that is given to us by somebody on the outside who is giving it to us for
a reason for our endorsement. Something can happen in committee that | think could be better all
around.

President McCarthy

The legislation that Alderman Cookson was referring to was the adoption of the vision and mission
statements of the City of Nashua which have been in the ordinance books since then.

Alderman Schoneman

It sounded beautiful no matter what its source was and it still says the things that | think we want to say
for ourselves, we could reaffirm that.

Alderman Lopez
| appreciate that it sounded beautiful and | appreciate that the public taught Alderman Cookson so much

but | also think the public is very clearly signaling to us, most of it, that they are interested in this
particular wording in the resolution tonight.

President McCarthy

Is there any further discussion on the motion to re-refer?

A viva voce roll call was taken which resulted as follows:

Yea: Alderman Deane, Alderman Cookson, Alderman Siegel, 7
Alderman Schoneman, Alderman McGuinness, Alderman LeBrun,
Alderman Moriarty

Nay: Alderman Wilshire, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Dowd, 8
Alderman Caron, Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja, Alderman O’Brien,
Alderman Lopez, Alderman McCarthy

MOTION FAILED

President McCarthy

The motion now is to amend.

Alderman Siegel

So now we get to just have a committee meeting at the full Board level. So now would be the time |
suppose to raise some of my objections. So, how many of you know what a 990 is? It’s a tax return by a

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September 27, 2016

501C3 and in the 990 they talk about the programs and how they spend and how they get their money.
This particular organization when it was first born had a big grant. Can anybody tell me where the
money came from? Nobody knows. Everybody wants to find out some magic boogeyman or whatever
but nobody seems to know where the money came from and | find that very interesting a little troubling.
It's not a conspiracy theory but it’s very unusual for a charitable organization to start-up like that with
absolutely no idea where its founding money comes from. In those 990’s you can also see where this
goes and how did it get their money and you can see it year by year. By the way, | will steal a line from a
CBS News investigator reporter who was describing these “grass roots” organizations; he called them
AstroTurf because they are not real grass roots. This would be that. The claim is that these are grass
roots organizations but in fact, the funding is not grass roots by any means. Again, it doesn’t necessarily
make it a bad thing but it’s kind of a little troubling. | look at that and | feel a little bit funny and even the
notations in the tax returns say they are supposed to get 1/3 of their funding after a while through public
means but that’s not happening except through fees. Their programs charge money and that’s how they
are sort of getting the additional support to get above that threshold according to the returns. But again,
that’s not necessarily a disqualifying element, every charity when it first starts off usually starts off with a
particular grant from a benefactor and they are given a number of years to get to that threshold. It’s a
little curious that the benefactors are a little unknown and that’s sort of troubling. Now, a lot of people
have said that they have gone on the website and I’ve carefully studied the website. Okay, fair enough.
l’ve gone on the website and frankly, a lot of it is gobble gook but there is nothing incriminating or evil
about gobble gook, it’s just the type of vacuous verbiage that we often see in a lot of organizations.
However, if one does go through the resources; | believe what is the...there is a learn and then there is a
resources page and then you can actually...you have to go through a lot of clicks and actually make a
real effort to download the actual documentation; those real PDF’s. Some people do it and some people
don’t, | did it. Some of the phrases in here are a little bit troubling because what does this really do, it’s
basically a primmer on how to put your message together to get passed the fact that people are skeptical
but not really in a friendly way the way | look at it, to me it looks very manipulative. Let me quote “use
these message themes to frame and introduce your stories, add to your materials and as fodder for
social media posts.” That’s kind of interesting. “Perception/Reality, about messaging.” This is on page 7
of a document called Stand Together. “A person’s opinion isn’t based on reality, it’s based on their
perception of reality. Listen to and understand your audience perceived reality and then craft your
messages to resonate with it and use these new messages to reshape perception.” Okay, now | kind of
have a little problem with this Orwellian approach to something which supposedly is virtuous. By the
way, one can actually look deeper into the actual overall theme of several of them because it’s not like
it's welcoming all of the immigrants that can certainly contribute to our community. It’s very specifically
targeted at a very specific segment which | think is unfortunate because it does everyone else a
disservice. | leave it up to you folks to vote because in this politically correct world | can’t mention
anything because of course, I'll get skewered one way or the other. | think actually that’s unfair. So we
have some very specific targeted group that then there is a specific means and there are a number of
these in here and that’s just one document; there are actually two specific documents where it’s sort of
this Orwellian message twisting mechanism that you can use as part of your toolkit. | find that a little
frightening and so | don’t want to be associated with that. I’m sorry, | find that unfortunate. Nashua is a
virtuous city. | think we are a great and welcoming city. Why do we have to be a city that needs to
associate with an organization that puts out as a toolkit an Orwellian message twisting machine? For
what purpose and funded by who? Why can’t | find that? | searched literally for three hours and | am
very open-minded about it, I’m not trying to find some evil...like oh, this is George Soros. If it is then it is,
| don’t care. | just want to know who is behind this and why. That’s sort of a little bit of a problem for me.
Again, we have a great city and we do well on our own. We already had a proclamation that Alderman
Cookson said something about which is hey, we are welcoming and so we also had out of committee a
message that was the same. We stripped ourselves of this, which | think people legitimately have
concerns with, | certainly did. They are not uneducated and by the way, | don’t believe that there is a
political motivation, in fact, in committee, | cautioned the Aldermen; we are not allowed to subscribe
motive to people’s reasoning. That is part of our code of conduct. To the extent that had happened to
me, shame on everyone, that’s not okay. I’m not subscribing motive, | think the motives are pure. | think
what happened is people just don’t research enough. | think all of the people who testified today did so

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with all pure and good intent and | welcome the commentary, | think it’s great that people are excited
about this stuff and want to make Nashua a better place but we can do that without associating with this
organization. There’s no value and that was even pointed out in committee, which, by the way, | didn’t
attend that meeting but | watched it. That’s my problem, the information contained in their fact filings and
the information contained on their website, as stated by them, not me. Draw your own conclusions.

Alderman Lopez

The information that is presented on their 990 is that there isn’t information so | don’t see any cause for
inferring any undue or inappropriate behavior because there is no evidence that this actually happened
and | think an advocacy toolkit or a how to communicate to the public is something you probably would
expect in a welcoming organization, an organization designed to empower people who may not actually
be that great at communicating, may have English as a second language; to me it sounds like a road
map for how to communicate with people to people who aren’t professional politicians or possessing of
advanced education degrees and just want to make a difference in their community and want to be
inclusive and want to say what they know is right as articulately as possible. | don’t hear any of what was
described as Orwellian. | think it could be summarized as just saying you may be in the situation where
you are walking into a group of people who believe something differently and you need to listen to them,
such as our audience here, and when you are trying to make your comments back, if you are trying to
push a point home then you need to start by understanding what their point is first. That’s basic
communication, not Orwellian.

Alderman O’Brien

| truly would just like to say that | am glad we are having this discussion, | have total respect for people
who are against it and people who are for it. I’m looking at the list that was put out by the Welcoming
America Initiative and you have to put some weight to look at other communities around America that
have really backed this. I’m sure it was vetted by their City Councils or Aldermen or Selectmen. Some
of these communities are no slouches; Akron, OH; New York City; Washington, D.C.; Columbus, OH;
and Boston, MA; and Battle Creek, MI. They all vetted this and voted for it. Somebody has to prove a
little bit more to me to change my vote. | don’t think these cities have been hog washed , | think they
have looked at this and vetted it and made the appropriate choice.

Alderman Cookson

| certainly would have hoped that other communities would have vetted a similar piece of legislation but
that doesn’t negate our responsibility to vet this piece of legislation. When we look at the City of
Manchester, did anybody look at the City of Manchester? | did. September 21, 2015; Committee on
Administration and Information Systems, there was a meeting that happened at 4:30 p.m. Chairman
Craig called the meeting...1 mean I’m not going to read all of this to you but what | wanted to point out is
that Alderman Long stated that there was an initiative and Mayor Lozeau in Nashua had signed a
recognition of Welcoming Week. That was somewhere prior to September 21, 2015. Alderman Ludwig
said so basically this is a good faith effort on behalf of the city. Alderman Long’s response, yes, there
are 32 cities in the country right now that have proclaimed themselves as a Welcoming Community.
Nashua is the only other city in New Hampshire to have done that. Weren’t we supposed to be looking
at this piece of legislation saying that Manchester and Concord were reasons why we should do it?
There is a proclamation and not a resolution. | had a legislative search done and there is nothing that
the city has done prior to September 21, 2015, legislatively to recognize us as a Welcoming City or
Welcoming Week or whatever the case may be. It may have been a Mayor’s proclamation but it was not
a piece of legislation that we, as a Board of Aldermen, took up. The City of Manchester vetting it
appropriately said hey, Nashua did it, here’s Mayor Lozeau, here’s the proclamation and | can read it to
you. No, we do our own vetting.

Alderman Clemons

| can’t speak for her obviously but | can imagine why Mayor Lozeau did this by proclamation.