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Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 15
MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF O-22-003

ON THE QUESTION

Alderman Clemons

Roll call please.

Alderman Moran

Thank you Madam President. | was fortunate enough to join the Public Health meeting as an alternate because
Alderwoman Timmons could not attend. We heard some data from the doctors at the local hospitals and the medical
staff. This seems like a very pragmatic ordinance to temporarily extend this for thirty days. | will have to acknowledge
everyone that spoke on both sides, | think it is very important that the public have public input whether you agree with
something we do or not. | think public dissent is American and we should be doing that as much as we can. We may not
always agree, but we need to listen to each other.

Masks and COVID for me is very personal. | lost my father to COVID. He was 52 years old. So | take any precautions as
you can as serious as possible. With that being said, | also understand that the medical community is not always right
and | am part of the medical community. I’m a healthcare worker. Sometimes we have a tendency to have a white coat
mentality and we tell you what is right and we don't take into your opinion. Fortunately science is pretty black and white.
Yes the efficiency of cloth masks is not as effective as N95 but we’re trying to do something to relieve the burden of our
healthcare workers in the hospitals.

| can say that it seems like that the endemic is in sight and that we all want to get back to living as normally as possible
without masks. | believe that and | hope this is the first and only vote that | would make to extend this mandate given the
data that I’ve been seeing and that | can read and understand myself without having the Board of Health explain it to me.
We are going to have a sharp decrease very soon but | do think the current decreases that we are seeing are in part due
to these masks that we’re wearing today. That’s alll have. Thank you.

Alderman Lopez

I’ve been volunteering with the United Way to help the hospital workers that need to be tested in COVID because they’re
spread very thin. They’re already being supplemented by FEMA doctors. They're already being supplemented by
National Guards people. They’re struggling too. | empathize with the healthcare workers that have to make decisions
about what risk to put their families in while continuing to practice their careers and work in their practice. | hear and see
many healthcare practitioners considering different areas of work opportunities to be educators, opportunities to work in
healthcare fields that are a little bit more voluntary, particularly hospital workers that are being pushed very hard. As
difficult as COVID-19 has been on all of us, it has been very difficult for hospital workers who didn’t get a summer off,
didn’t get that return to the way things were we all enjoyed when our community transmission was low. They've been
working throughout the whole year wearing mask their whole shift - sometimes 24/7 depending on what roles there are.

| Know multiple residential care facilities have created an isolation model where staff have been recruited to stay on site
for two weeks or one week at a time to minimize the number of people coming in and out of those sites. That comes with
it some financial opportunity but also some serious personal sacrifice. | think the medical community has been doing as
much as it possibly could to offset the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic. | think as politicians, we probably could have
done more many, many opportunities and many, many times if we’d known, if we had better perfect information, better
insight. What we do have, we use.

Scientific data is helpful in predicting outcomes and theoretical models. We rely on those for everything from testing the
weather to organizing mass transportation. Those models say or have said that we were going to see the surge that we
saw in January due to holiday in home interactions and we did. The onset of Omicron did start to coincide with that but
there was a prediction that it could get much worse, much faster if we didn’t intervene so we did. We did implement the
mask mandate.

In the original legislation for the mask mandate that we’re discussing tonight, the Board of Health did reserve the right to
revisit it in February because the models show that there was likely the possibility that this surge wouldn’t be low enough
that it couldn’t just return. So as usual, we have the choice between us to stop or keep going. Do we stop what’s working
and potentially let a resurgence happen, let our hospitals face even more overwhelming, oversubscribing | think that was
used in the Board of Health meeting, or do we just assume that everything will go away like a miracle. | don’t see
miracles. | think we need to do everything we can to protect the people that we love. | think we need to do everything we

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 16

can to protect people we don’t know. If that means wearing a mask, | think many people will chose to do that because of
the leadership that the city shows. There will always be people who will not follow laws. We don’t make laws for people
who are going to break them unless we're specifically trying to target them with penalties. Most laws are designed for
people who are going to follow them out of a sense of responsibility to their city and a sense of responsibility to their
community. So while we did hear from some people tonight who are unwilling to follow rules unless the agree with them,
we also heard from a lot of citizens who are willing to do what is necessary to help other people and who will abide with
uncomfortable situations if necessary.

Alderman Jette

Madam President would it be in order — | noticed that the Chairman of the Board of Health is here. Would it be in order to
allow him to explain to us why the Board of Health is recommending that we extend the mask mandate?

President Wilshire

Dr. Storace are you willing to give a few minutes since you are here?

Dr. Anthony Storace

Good evening. Thank you for allowing us to be here. One of the things running it across and | think is important is the
fact that this is something unique that has never happened to us at this magnitude. Yes this managed to kill a lot of
different people but times were different, techniques, education was minimum. We're writing this book as we’re going. |
apologize if there’s a lot of confusion because there’s a lot of confusion for us too as well as we listen to information
coming down. | apologize. There’s probably been a lot of politics involved in it as well but we and science don’t like that
at all.

| can tell you that the masks do work. I’ve worn one for 40 years — 10 to 12 hours a day. I’ve never had a patient say hey
doc take it off it doesn’t work. It does work. Yes the Omicron and the Delta particles are small and can get through but
one of the things that all of us wearing the mask help protect is it knocks down most of them and that helps us.

I'll also bring your attention, without naming names, the last time we were here one of the Board of Aldermen came down
with COVID. | think that that was the only person, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but | believe truly it was because
we were all wearing masks. Yes how did we get, how did he get it, | don’t know. | don’t go home with him. | don’t watch
him. He’s not on surveillance. We know that this last variant — and there’s other variants out there — but luckily it looks
like they’re dying out. This last variant had the bad news extremely infectious. The good news, not as (inaudible) as
Delta. The vaccines that we gave out who I’ve know many people who have been vaccinated who have gotten Omicron.
So that happens. | know one person in particular personally who’s gotten COVID three times. | personally think he
should be a study model for the case. While that’s true but each one of those cases was verified by a nucleic acid test
which is very, very sensitive to what is going on.

So we know it’s there. We predicted the surge. We were getting tired. We got a little bit lax. We went out and partied at
Christmas and Thanksgiving and we told you there would be a surge and even a spike on top of the surge. They were
thinking that by mid-January based on the models from the University of Washington, also from John Hopkins, thought
that this would kind of crest in our area by the second weekend of January. Now they're predicting it’s more like the first
weekend in February. Yes if you go on the CBC website and you look at the graph, you'll see we're coming down. When
you look at those graphs, you have to remember it’s also like looking at a stock graph. Is it going down? Should | buy?
Oops is it going back up or is it flattening out? We don’t know. We just don’t know. We’re hoping it’s going in the right
direction. The bad news is it’s not going in the right direction fast enough that we feel comfortable saying take the masks
off, we can go ahead, there will still be some spread but it will be reasonable.

One of the things we feel the masks have done significantly is help the hospitals and we know that that’s a problem. We

have National Guards in our hospitals here in Nashua filing in for people. It’s been a tough road as Mr. Lopez has talked

about. Yes there’s financial gain but there’s a huge personal price you have to pay when you work those hours under that
kind of stress, etc., etc.

I’m not a pediatrician so | can’t answer any of your questions regarding the schools. The school mandates for masks
come from the School Department. | have some of the staff here who’d be more than happy to share the data if you’re
data driven. If you’re tired and you don’t want to hear it, that’s okay too. | understand. | look at the data every day. Like
I’ve said last time, studying for infectious disease for the last two years just to try to keep up and watch the changes. One
week we hear one thing. The next week we hear something totally different or a variation on that. That’s the book being

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 17

written and the sound you hear is the person erasing what was just said the last week before. Again, it’s changing. Any
questions you might have? Thank you for consideration. Again if you want to hear from the staff, please.

Alderman Klee
Thank you Madam Chair and this question may be for Corporation Counsel. I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls relative to the
previous mandate and this is basically just an extension of it. Defining businesses and so on and did that also include

churches and private schools within the city limits obviously?

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

We in the Legal Department have discussed this and we believe it would not include churches or would include private
schools.

Alderman Klee
Thank you.

Alderman Comeau

Thank you Madam President. In preparation for the meeting tonight, | have been doing a lot of thought to the term
“representative government” and how to interpret that. | know it’s not feasible or practical to entertain the idea of sending
every ordinance and resolution to the public for a vote every time that we discuss something so they depend on us to do
that for them. There’s basically two ways that I’ve come up with that you can look at that. The first is that they ask
somebody to go and make their decisions for them and the second possible interpretation is that they ask somebody to go
deliver their voice. So which one are we? | think that it’s probably both. The right answer to most things is it’s in the
middle. It’s both. It depends on the situation. If there’s a topic that we’re debating that we feel that the public is 50/50 on,
| think they expect us because they voted for us to vote our conscious, our ideals, and our values.

However if there’s a topic that’s overwhelmingly lopsided, | think that we’re doing a disservice to the public when we
ignore their very loud voice. So I’ve done a little bit of looking at some of these numbers and | know that we all get the
same e-mails. So we’ve all been reading them over the last week or two. Over 90 percent of the e-mail correspondence
that we’ve gotten is for us to vote no on this. | personally have received 100 percent of the correspondence to my
personal e-mail that was asking us to vote no on this. | kept track of the speakers tonight. It was about 70 percent
against and | did do a very, very informal poll on the Nashua Scoop which is the largest social media site in Nashua.

They have membership from every ward, of every political belief. They are roughly 50 percent larger than the next largest
group with 15,000 members and over 70 percent of the respondents to that poll are opposed to this mandate with
hundreds of responses in the last 12 hours.

| think that it’s our responsibility as public servants to serve the public. I’m not going to debate whether masks work, or
the science, or anything like that because I’m wildly unqualified to do so. We've been asked to represent the public and
it's very clear what the public wants. | don’t think there’s any debate about what the majority of the public wants us to do
and it’s our responsibility to do that. Thank you.

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you. | actually wanted to start out the gentleman from the Board of Health really did an incredible job and you
started off by saying I’m sorry. | just wanted to say thank you not just for serving but for really putting out why you put this
ordinance in front of us.

It’s going to come as no Surprise to anybody that | support this. | support our health workers. | support our Board of
Health and the job that they are asked to do. They are experts in their field and they are here like any other department
head whether it’s the Chief of Police, the Chief of Fire. If they’re telling us that this is the appropriate thing to do, then |
100 percent am going to be backing that. Thank you.

Alderman Dowd

Yeah I’m just going to make a couple points. One is | don’t think anybody likes wearing masks. | think if you took a vote,
nobody likes wearing masks. So that’s a given. | know | don’t like wearing masks. However, a couple of points. One —
we had a big scare. We had a family gathering and one of my 12 year old granddaughters came down with COVID. It put
the whole family in lockdown. Fortunately she had been fully vaccinated and it was a mild case. No one else came down

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 18

with it in the family and they were all tested. The big concern was one of my daughters has a 3 year old and a 1 year old
that were exposed. That really concerned the heck out of me because they’re susceptible and for them to get sick, and
go in the hospital, and god knows what can happen. That scared the heck out of me.

I’ve always said that if we’re not going support our Board of Health, why do we have them. They’re making
recommendations to extend. | wish we could extend it for only two weeks and see what happens, but they’re asking for a
month. | would hope at that point in time the trend is coming down. The reason New York is coming off the mandate is
because they’re trend is down. They have turned the corner. We haven't.

The other thing is recently I’ve had the opportunity to talk to several physicians — most of them at Dartmouth Hitchcock.
They all say please keep the masks for now. When we’re at a point where we see the numbers coming down, then we
can terminate it. | wish we didn’t call ita mandate. There are no police going around trying to arrest people for not
wearing a mask. The people that are talking against masks, they’re not going to wear them anyway. That’s up to them.
They won't wear them. The people that are currently wearing masks even with or without a mandate are going to keep
wearing masks. So it’s just more of the Board of Aldermen’s supporting the Board of Health and making a stand that says
we're concerned about COVID. We’re concerned about our hospitals being loaded and overworked. So | will be
supporting this.

Alderman Gouveia

Thank you Madam President. It’s been very clear to me. Ward 1 has spoken loud and clear against the proposed
ordinance for various reasons whether it be over a call, text, or in person, at the grocery store I’ve talked about this. |
think the big thing that | was hearing from a lot of the constituents was there’s no enforcement. What is the point of an
ordinance without enforcement? It sounds almost useless to me. As it’s been said, people who want to wear mask are
going to wear one with or without this mandate. People who do want to wear one are going to wear it with or without this
mandate. For those reasons, | will be against the ordinance tonight. Thank you.

Alderman Thibeault

Thank you Madam President. | just want to first off say are we really masking 2 year olds? | hope we’re not masking 2
year olds. So I’m going to vote for this extension on mask mandate. | don’t like masks and to be honest and pardon my
language, they suck. | hate them. | hate coaching basketball in them. | hate coaching baseball in them. They’re awful
but my vote is not out there to control people’s health or their political agenda. It’s a compassionate vote based on the
advice of the Board of Health that has doctors that we trust. When | see a medical professional even though | don’t agree
with them and | don’t because they call me obese, but | have to trust that what they’re telling me is accurate and they’re
trying to help me. Like Alderman Dowd said, what do we have them for if we’re not going to take their advice?

We've heard a couple of Aldermen say about their Ward. Well my Ward, I’m getting 99 percent to my personal e-mail -—
maybe 95 percent — saying that they actually want the mask extension. We support the people of Nashua but there’s
90,000 people in Nashua. There’s not 300 people on Facebook, or 50 e-mails coming to us, there’s 90,000. How many
80 year olds are on Facebook and how many of them do we have in the city? They’re not voting. They’re not voting
anywhere. We've got to protect them as well. They’re people. There’s probably a lot of 17 year olds that aren't on the
Scoop or these other Facebook pages taking informal polls. We have to protect everyone and we have to be here for
everyone not just people voting on these polls. | thank you to Ward 8. Their e-mails have been extremely respectful even
if the few that have said that they do not want an extension have been extremely respectful and | thank that. Some of the
ones coming from to us generally have not been as nice.

If we do not extend this mask mandate, it doesn’t impact the schools. That’s a completely different unit. The Board of
Education has to follow that. So we won't be changing that. City Hall’s not going to be changing. A lot of businesses will
keep their employees masked up. If they have to be masked for 8 hours a day, | don’t know why going to Shaw’s for an
hour and a half is such a deal for us to put on a mask. | really don’t. Again, I’m not having anybody tell me politically how
to vote. I’m voting my conscious based on what my Ward wants, and what | believe they want, and what | believe the
Board of Health is telling us. Again I’m not going to debate the science of it because you can go down and pretty much
find anything on the internet that you want. The numbers did go down in schools this week a little bit and I’m hoping that
that means there’s going to be a change soon that we see these going down and we can actually get rid of the masks
hopefully. Hopefully at the end of the four weeks. | also agree with Alderman Dowd about | wish we could address this in
the next meeting as well if numbers go down. Maybe we could get rid of it in two weeks. I’m going to be for it. So thank
you very much.

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 19

Alderman Timmons

Thank you President Wilshire. I’m also going to support the mask mandate. It’s not surprise to anybody that | would not
do this. | have children that works in Elliot and one works at Southern Regional. They were masks all day long. They
see people dying all day long. They say masks work. | believe it works. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been taking care
of a sick grandchild that had COVID. By the way I’m not COVID free because I’m in a gen study. | have two boosters
already and in the gen study, anybody knows gen is Johnson and Johnson. I’ve been in that study for the last two years.
In the last two years, one of the things they say in the study 1) | can get vaccinations before most people. | got the
second booster already. Who in this room got a second booster already? During my study, they say you need to keep on
wearing a mask. It’s important. So | will be supporting mask mandate because | do believe they do. | go to Mass
General so that’s in Massachusetts and anybody want to follow up on that, that’s why | would support this.

Alderman Cathey

To me, the primary issue is does COVID and more specifically the Omicron variant warrant a mask mandate? If it does,
I’m going to need some people to show their numbers, show their work because the Omicron variant is 91 percent less
likely to kill you compared to Delta. That’s from Kaiser Permanente. A board member and the former FDA Director
recently said that we need to end mask mandates. As we know that we heard before, New York is ending their mask
mandates. England ended their mask mandates. The CDC came out and said natural immunity meets the vax mandate
against Delta. The CDC came out with its own study that said there’s only 1.8 percent change in case rates of people
who wear a mask versus people who do not wear a mask. That means out of 90,000 people who live in Nashua, we’re
trying to protect 1,100 people not from dying, not from going to the hospital, just from catching the case alone maybe. No
other public policy would dictate a mandate over an entire populous over such a small rate of change. It doesn’t make
any sense.

We've already heard that the masks don’t work. The microns of the virus get through. The Board of Health put in a mask
mandate in May of 2020 or June of 2020 — | forget the exact date - | apologize and we had it for a year yet cases still
surged in the winter. This year had a mask mandate — cases still surged. That’s two bites of the apple for a mask
mandate and it didn’t work because it doesn’t work. Mask mandates historically across the world, in multiple cities, in the
US, Europe, wherever you check once a mask mandate is in place, the cases still surge regardless of a mask mandate
because it’s not about the mask. It’s about what the virus does. It’s a virus. It’s going to do what viruses do. It has an
infection rate of 7 to 10 people. If you get Omicron, you’re going to affect likely 7 to 10 people around you. That's like a
measles rate.

So whether you’re vaxxed, whether you have a mask, you’re going to get Omicron. The mask mandate is not the thing.
That’s not the thing that’s going to stop it. It’s a seasonal thing now. We've seen it twice two years. It’s going to go up.
It’s going to come down. So masking is not the one size fits all approach that needs to be used here. Much like a doctor
would not prescribe the same medicine to every patient, or fitness instructor would not prescribe the same routines to
anyone who’s using their health services. It’s all about the individual. It’s all about what they need. We are trying to one
size fits all this and make a mask mandate for an entire city that is unwarranted by the data and | don’t think that it is right
or correct. It’s especially unfair to businesses who have to enforce it either upon their employees or customers who walk
in the door. Thank you.

Alderman Sullivan

Thank you Madam President. We heard a lot tonight. There’s a lot of information out there. I’m going to rely on my eyes
and my ears. My eyes tell me that since we instituted the mask mandate in late December, cases shot through the roof
and now they’re coming back down regardless of the mask mandate. My ears tell me that the city doesn’t want this.
That’s all | need to hear. | think the policy that we set tonight dictates the direction of this city. | think we have to move
away from a culture of mandate and move to a culture of responsibility where we take care of each other.

If you are worried about a bad outcome from COVID, we now have effective vaccines. We have therapeutics. We have
two years going on three years of information. With all due respect to our healthcare workers, to everybody who’s on the
front lines of this, let’s think of everybody that’s been affected by this. There’s been millions of people that have been cast
into poverty because of this pandemic. There are countless people in this city that have lost their jobs because our
economy stopped. Let’s all go back to March, April, and May of 2020. This economy stopped and people lost their jobs.
People are tired. They’ve been vaccinated. They've done what they’ve been told and COVID doesn’t care. It goes up, it
goes down. It goes up, it goes down. I’m going to be voting against extending this tonight and | think we just have to
move to a cultural responsibility. Thank you.

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 20
Alderman Klee

Thank you Madam President. Again | have another questions and again it’s probably to Corporate Counsel. The next
time that the Board of Health | believe comes together would be on 2/9. That’s after our February 8". If they decided at
that time that the numbers were coming down and that we could lift this mandate, do we all have to come together or do
we have to wait until the next meeting, or is it something that the Mayor can cancel? We have to come together as a
Board of Aldermen and vote on that. Is that correct?

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

That is correct.
Alderman Klee
Okay, thank you. That answers it.

| just want to make a side comment. I, too, like surveys and | listen to my constituents. The truth is the majority of my
constituents have said they are for it. | can’t say that it’s 99 or 95 percent but | would definitely say a strong majority have
said that they were for. One thing | do find out especially on social media is that people have a tendency to speak out
when they don’t like something or they’re upset by something. Those that are for something such as this mandate feel
bullied and they're afraid to do it.

At the beginning of this pandemic, | think the people that didn’t want to be masked and didn’t want to be vaccinated, they
felt bullied because they would get bullied in grocery stores and so on — put on a mask, put on a mask. | think that the
tables have turned and those that are for masks are feeling bullied. | had a number of people that contacted me and very
specifically said please don’t use my name but | am for it. I’ve had a few other people that said that | could use her name
or forward their e-mail. The truth was | just got tired of everybody being bombarded with e-mails and didn't forward all
these e-mails to all of us but they are. They really do — | think it’s a mixed. | think the city is split and | think we literally
walked around and knocked on every door, we would find that we have a 50/50 within the city. I’m not saying 95/10. |
think really a 50/50 and as such, | think we have a Board of Health. If we don’t listen to them, why have them. Thank you.
| will be voting for it.

Alderman Lopez

| just had a question for Attorney Bolton. A question was made are we receiving grants that are requiring to put this
mandate into effect? I’m not aware of a grant being able to compel aldermen to vote a certain way. Is there anything that
was being alluded to that you’re aware of that would compel members of this Board to vote?

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

There is nothing. The motivation for this is not because we’re compelled by any federal grant. It’s never been brought up
by anyone other than those opposed to this. There were a couple other questions that were asked that | can provide
responses to. Someone said it was telling that no one could provide a response. The fact is, | can fully respond.

One of the questions was by what State Statute do we have the authorization to the Board of Aldermen to enact
something like this. The answer is RSA 47:17 XV which authorizes city councils which in Nashua’s case is the Board of
Aldermen to enact ordinances which they deem to be for the wellbeing of the city. You tested that last year when we had
an ordinance requiring face coverings. We went to court and NH Superior Court upheld this Board’s decision to enact
such an ordinance and cited that provision of State law.

The other Statute that was raised by one of the speakers is RSA 31:5. Chapter 31 is the powers of towns. It’s specifically
not applicable to cities and other municipalities who can appropriate funds through a Board of Aldermen, city council, or
town council. It only applies to towns that appropriate funds by way of a town meeting. 31:5 speaks to such a town
petitioning the Superior Court to enable it, to hold a special town meeting to enable a supplemental appropriation. For
those of you who have been on this Board for any length of time knows that routinely when necessary the Board has the
authority to have meetings where supplemental appropriations are made. That’s not what this ordinance is. There’s no
appropriation in the ordinance at all. So for both of those reasons, RSA 31:5 doesn’t apply at all. Thank you.

Alderman Lopez

| just had a follow up question to - a cultural responsibility was referenced earlier. The earlier mask mandate required

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 21
business — well it stipulated that businesses were required to have face masks on all customers, clients, patrons,
whatever. The new mandate that we've recently enforce to emergency 1, it requires businesses to post a sign but it
requires the individuals to be wearing masks. Am | accurate identifying the distinction?

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

There is a distinction. | don’t Know that you’re quoting precisely the language of the prior ordinance as compared to the
one before you today. There is a distinction much as you have outlined.

Alderman Lopez

Thank you.

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you. | just wanted to respond to a few things that have been said. One of the things that has been asserted is that
we have to listen to our citizens and | agree with that. | 100 percent agree with that. However, we also have the
responsibility to protect those who don’t have a voice or can’t have a voice. My two year old son he is unable to be
vaccinated. He is not here at the Board of Aldermen telling us how he feels about this and you prefer he wouldn't
because he would be destroying the room but he doesn’t have a voice in this and he cannot protect himself right now.
Those are the people — him, and there’s lots of other people we are supporting through this. Someone said in public
comment they almost mocked the idea that one child death is too many. One child death is too many and so is one
grandmother, or one brother, or one friend. Thank you.

Alderman Comeau

Thank you Madam President. | would just like to add my oldest daughter is currently a nurse in a long-term care facility
right here in Nashua. So she’s also on the front lines of this. She opposes the mandate herself. Both my children have
had COVID. So | certainly understand the sensitivities to it. My doctor has also told me that | should lose weight and | still
get to decide whether | want to eat that steak or not. So I’m choosing whether or not to take that advice. When | get on
my motorcycle, | Know the right thing to do is put my helmet on. Sometimes | do, sometimes | don't. | apologize to my
daughter if she’s listening but that’s we have the right to do. We get to choose for ourselves. We should be able to
choose for ourselves on what to do.

As far as listening to the public, | just feel that if members of this body go ahead and vote their conscious against the will
of the people, that’s a disservice to the public and it goes against what they’ve put us here to do for them. Thank you.

Alderman Cathey

Thank you Madam Chairwoman. | have a clarification for Corporation Counsel. Earlier when it was asked the definition of
“business” and if it included churches you were affirmative or negative on that?

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

| said it is the opinion of the Legal Department that the word “business” does not include churches.

Alderman Cathey

Does not include churches. Okay. Thank you.

MOTION BY ALDERMAN CATHEY TO AMEND ORDINANCE O-22-003 TO INCLUDE A PROVISION BETWEEN
NUMBERS 10 AND 11 THAT STATES THAT CHAPTER 1, SECTION 12, OF THE NASHUA REVISED ORDINANCES
REGARDING THE PENALTIES FOR VIOLATION DO NOT APPLY

ON THE QUESTION

Aldermen Clemons

Can the good Alderman or Corporation Counsel explain what that amendment does?

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 22

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

The cited section is in your code — your big black book if you will which basically says that the penalty for violation of any
ordinance where no other penalty is specified is a maximum fine of $1,000. So the amendment would basically eliminate
that from having any applicability to the ordinance under consideration.

President Wilshire

Further discussion on the amendment?

Alderman Lopez

Can | request it by roll call?

President Wilshire

You can request a roll call.
A viva voce roll call was taken, which resulted as follows:

Yea: Alderman Sullivan, Alderman Moran, Alderman Clemons,
Alderman Comeau, Alderman Gouveia, Alderman Cathey 6

Nay: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderman Lopez,

Alderman Jette, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd,

Alderman Thibeault, Alderwoman Timmons, Alderman Wilshire 9
MOTION FAILED

Alderman Thibeault

Yeah | have of points. One clarification. Just to make sure. | said 95 percent of the e-mails | was getting from my Ward
not 95 percent of my Ward. | don’t want my Ward 8 freaking out. I’m getting more — like | said, 95 percent of my e-mails
and probably most of the people | talk to have said they are for the extension. So | don’t know if it’s just the part of the
city, is it the specific people I’m talking to? I’m trying to talk to anybody. It doesn’t matter political party. It doesn’t really
matter. Id’ like to talk to everybody in my Ward if | could and | got almost 10,000 people or over 10,000. You can’t get to
everybody but that’s what I’m kind of getting. | just wanted to clarify that.

Alderman Lopez

It’s worth noting some people may not have noticed it because it’s very subtle but a large number of the e-mails that we
received very early this year were actually a form bot. All of the e-mails were identical. People’s names were inserted
into it, in caps sometimes, and sometimes multiple times. Additionally, | do look at the e-mails that come through
specifically to see who’s weighing in from Ward 4 that | might not know or may not have reached out to me before. None
of the ones that | received that were forwarded to the Board at large were from Ward 4. The majority of them were not
from Nashua.

Alderman Thibeault

Sorry. | remember what | was going to say. So one of the Ward 8 people that | did talk to wanted me to mention this. I’m
just going to throw it out there. If the Athletic Director is listening if we could have — | agree that kids playing sports inside
— basketball if they could take down their masks to play because they’re running back and forth, back and forth. | think it’s
taking a lot of them air out of their lungs. | wish at least that we could do. | know we can’t debate on it but | would like to
just throw that out there because | think that’s a concern. It’s not an outdoor sport where you can kind of get the air.
Thank you.

Alderman Comeau

It may shock him as much as it shocks me but | agree with Alderman Thibeault. | just watched my son wrestle in a mask
and | don’t know how they do it.

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 23

As far as the Facebook comments that | made earlier, | was trying to do some due diligence in reaching out to the public.
I’ve listened to many meetings going back months regarding a lot of topics. It seems like there’s always been mention of
sentiment on Facebook one group or the other, polls, public opinion surveys. | would find it interesting if this was the topic
that we were supposed to discount the opinion of people on social media where we give weight to that voice on other
topics.

Like | said earlier, I'm not going to rehash everything that | said because we'll all be here til midnight. We shouldn't be
debating the science whether masks work, whether they don’t. That’s really outside of our purview. The only thing that |
keep coming back to is whether we should be mandating them. You can believe that masks work. You can want to wear
a mask. You can want everyone else to wear a mask and still be against a mandate. That’s more or less where | fall.
Like | said, my daughter is in the healthcare field. We wear them when we have to and then we don’t wear them when
you don't have to. It should be everyone’s individual choice to do that on their own without being told that they’ve had that
voice taken away from them. Thank you.

Alderwoman Timmons

Yes thank you President Wilshire. Is it possible to move the question because it’s just going around and around.

MOTION BY ALDERMAN TIMMONS TO MOVE THE QUESTION
MOTION CARRIED

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF 0O-22-003, BY ROLL CALL
A viva voce roll call was taken, which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderman Moran, Alderman Lopez,

Alderman Jette, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd,

Alderman Thibeault, Alderwoman Timmons, Alderman Wilshire 10

Nay: Alderman Sullivan, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Comeau,
Alderman Gouveia, Alderman Cathey 5

MOTION CARRIED
Ordinance O-22-003 declared duly adopted.

PERIOD FOR GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT

Laurie Ortolano

Laurie Ortolano, 41 Berkeley Street. Just a couple things. Thank you for your thoughtful discussion tonight on the mask
mandate. | certainly was a proponent of lifting it and it doesn’t really bother me because | know that our surrounding
communities are available to go to to do your business. | choose to do that and then | don’t have to use the mask. | have
been a mask wearer very avidly and a big supporter of it but | changed my views about six weeks ago and | don’t use it
anymore because | did research on my own. | really feel that it’s not the right thing. | appreciate the thoughtful discussion.

| would like to address Alderman Moran. When you talk about the responsibilities we carry because of our hospitals, | think
it's unfair to put that on Nashua people. These hospitals are supported by all these other communities. It’s a regional
hospital. I’m not responsible for what goes on in the hospital and | can’t do anything about it. We as citizens don’t get any
data on the hospitals. Nothing comes to us with any consistency at all. Apparently it goes to the city but they don’t put it out
to us. All these surrounding towns don’t have ordinances and they put their people there. So | don’t understand why I’m
responsible for the Nashua hospitals or | have to feel badly because I’m not doing enough. When you leave restaurants,
bars, casinos, and clubs open, and those were where contract tracing showed when we did that that there was an issue.
Then what’s the point? | don't think kids doing sports doing sports should be in masks at all. | think it’s more harmful to their
health.

This is a business owner — Buckley. We have SURF and MPs on the top — mask required. Three miles away, we got the
two other restaurants in Hollis and in Merrimack. Come in without out. Is that a business owner that doesn’t care and isn’t
responsible to his duties to protect everyone in the hospitals? Should this business owner be doing business here to do
that? That’s what you put the business owners in. Now there’s a few stores I’ve gone in to Nashua, and | do mean very few,
and they actually let me not wear a mask. | went into a pet store and | literally was putting my mask on and the ladies said

Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 24

you’re the only one in here. You don't have to put it on. | don't feel like I’m breaking any big rules and | was literally the only
one in there. | went to another business, small one, the owner doesn’t wear a mask at all. He said you don’t have to wear a
mask. | don't wear a mask.

Alderman O’Brien

Thirty seconds.

Laurie Ortolano

| did it that way. Our data is coming down and the Mayor is not giving us the kind of information we deserve. You cancelled
in the last five meetings on masks, you cancelled public input three times. Two Board of Health meetings cancelled and one
Board of Aldermen meeting cancelled on masks. You want to know why people send e-mails that maybe are not so nice,
because you cancel us out. I’m okay with this mandate. I’m not going to fight it.

Alderman O’Brien

Time.

Laurie Ortolano

| have other places to go. Thank you.
Sara Dobbins

Hi, my name is Sara Dobbins. |’m at 1 Gettysburg Drive in Ms. Klee’s Ward | believe, right? | just want to start by saying
that | have a whole bunch of neighbors and we were not of the like mind. | understand that these Wards are huge and
they're encompassing a lot of people and | get that. My thoughts are a little scattered. | sat here and listened to the whole
meeting with an open mind. | tried to be as open as | could about it. I’m a mother of two. One in the Nashua school system.
| just tonight went to pick her up and there’s — sorry I’m having difficulty regulating my breath with this and being anxious but
beside the point, right? So | pick her up and there’s dividers on the cafeteria tables. | had no idea. | e-mail my Principal
prior and they said it was something that had been done last year and carried over into this year but there was no notification
that that was being done. | get precautions need to be taken but where is the communication?

On that vein of thought, | want to thank this Alderman. | am so sorry that | do not know your name. | only know a few, a
handful as I’ve been journeying my path of getting to know how the city politics work better. That’s basically my goal of
attending all of these meetings. Not all of yours but the meetings that | have been attending.

| just wanted to say thank you for the opportunity to shed voice on it because quite honestly as I’ve attended meetings, I’ve
seen more outrage about public comment being taken out than compliments or instances of public comment being given or
an opportunity for that to be given. | wonder is there a better more constructive way to get the input of the public so that we
can have these silent majorities that everybody is discussing to be able to input in a way that they feel less bullied. Sorry for
my — I’m just trying to be quick. | think that everybody should have a voice. You're right, everybody should have a voice. So
let’s find ways to do that. Is that not our job here in this committee as a whole?

So moving on, | wanted to say thank you for collecting any data and | hope that even a couple hundred voices means
something versus thousands because | do know that some of the groups that that poll was posted in had 15,000 members.
So you can’t tell me that it was all one way or the other but only 300 decided to participate.

Alderman O’Brien

Thirty seconds.
Sara Dobbins

Blew my mind. If no things will change, why are we mandating? | hear a lot of talk about a lot of stuff. If you don’t’ want it to
beat the efficacy because you can’t find anything on the internet, how are people getting information to, for, against, or
whatever to back up a mandate? It makes no sense. | heard way too many cases of vaccinated individuals passing onto
unvaccinated people. I’m an example of this and my infant son who is five months had COVID and it was brought into our
house that way.