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A Special Meeting ofthe Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, August 10, 2021, at 7:00 p.m. in the Aldermanic
Chamber and via Zoom teleconference which meeting link can be found on the agenda and on the City’s website
calendar.

President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan Lovering recorded.

Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan Lovering; Alderman Patricia Klee led in the Pledge to the Flag.

Let’s start the meeting by taking a roll call attendance. Ifyou are participating via Zoom, please state your presence,
reason for not attending the meeting in person, and whether there is anyone in the room with you during this meeting,
which is required under the Right-To-Know Law.

The roll call was taken with 12 members of the Board of Aldermen present: Alderman Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.,
Alderman Patricia Klee, Alderwoman Shoshanna Kelly (va Zoom), Alderman Richard A. Dowd, Alderman June M.
Caron, Alderman Benjamin Clemons (arrived late via Zoom), Alderman Thomas Lopez (arrived late), Alderman David
C. Tencza, Alderwoman Elizabeth Lu, Alderman Ernest Jette, Alderman Jan Schmidt, Alderman Skip Cleaver (via
Zoom), Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire.

President Wilshire

For those who are attending via Zoom, could you just tell us why you’re unable to be here this evening those of you
who didn’t do that when you were called on.

Alderwoman Kelly

I'm attending by Zoom to protect my unvaccinated children.

Alderman Cleaver

I'm attending via Zoom because of mobility issues and because of doctor's orders.
Susan Lovering, City Clerk

You have 10 physically in attendance and 2 participating via Zoom.

Alderman Brandon Michael Laws were recorded absent.

Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
PRESENTATION

Presentation on Governor Sununu’s Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative
President Wilshire

Tonight we have a presentation on Governor Sununu’s Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative and | believe the
presenter this evening is Karen Morton-Clark, RFW Advisor. Ms. Clark.

Karen Morton-Clark

Thank you very much and actually I'll you know why | am on Zoom why I had so hoped to be there in person is
because | had a terrible fall over the weekend and it resulted in this cast. So it was a little inconvenient for me to get
there but I’m thrilled and hope to be here and present a little bit more about the Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative
and also to provide an official designation at the end of this short presentation tonight.

I'd also like to give a special shout out to Cheryl Lindner and Donna Graham who have really accommodated me to
make this presentation virtually tonight and | want to just thank them for being awesome. So with that Mayor
Donchess, distinguished Aldermen, and Alderwoman, valued city employees, and valued citizens of Nashua, | will go
ahead and share my screen and begin the presentation. If at any time you're unable to hear me or | do have one
short video to share, please let me know that via chat because | should be able to see that or alert me somehow but |
think we tested it so we should be good.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-08-2021 Page 2

As mentioned, |am a CRSW and Recovery Advisor an advwcate for the Governor’s Recovery Friendly Workplace
Initiative and as such, | am the advisory assigned to the City of Nashua for the recovery friendly activities that we will
reference tonight.

One of the things that | like to lead off with is a definition by the American Society of Addiction Medicine of Substance
Use Disorder because that’s really going to frame our discussion and it really will help us to think about substance use
disorder in the way that we typically reference it as we move through the short presentation. So according to the
American Society of Addition Medicine: “Addiction is a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions
among brain circuits, genetics, the envronment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use
substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.”

| think it’s important to point out in this section that, “Prevention efforts and treatment approaches for addiction are
generally as successful as those for other chronic diseases.” As we begin to think about substance use disorder as a
disease and like any other disease, we would hope for parody in terms of policies in the workplace that would support
substance use disorder just like any other disease like heart disease or diabetes.

For those who may not know or be familiar with the initiative, I'll give you a brief overvew. The Initiative was launched in
March of 2018 by Governor Sununu and the foundation of the Initiative is to promote health, safety, and wellness for all
New Hampshire work places and employees. In our work, we always empower work places to provide support for
employees in recovery as well as those impacted by substance use disorders. What | mean by that is you may have
employees that are working for you currently who have a family member or a loved one that is impacted by substance
use disorder and we have a way to provide resources to that employee and to you as the employer to help support that
employee should they have that situation. Our Initiative always challenges stigma and in fact we have a whole training
on safe language that helps to challenge stigma and really is part of beginning to change the culture in the workplaces
that we work with. Last but not least, everything that we do does encourage employee retention and you're starting to
see those outcomes as well as employee motivation and productivity.

Just some quick accomplishments to share with you. Currently we have just over actually 280 workplaces participating
in Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative representing over 70,000 employees and the City of Nashua tonight is joining
those workplaces here. People have engaged in a recovery friendly workplace activities nearly 15,000 times since its
inception and we have not only outreached to 15 States but now 23 States who have also reached to us and we're in the
process of sharing best practices and there are States that are very interested in replicating our model as some already
have such as Rhode Island. We built out over 10 trainings, especially when we became remote during COVID times. To
date, we have over 170 businesses trained by our Recovery Friendly Workplace advisors and some of the virtual
trainings that we offer.

So we’re often asked well how do we support Recovery Friendly Workplaces and | want to share that we always try to
deliver a customized approach so different size organizations, municipalities, towns, business, organizations, all different
sizes, all stages of readiness, and all different cultures. So what we always want to hear first from folks is what are your
needs, and what is your culture like, and where are you in terms of readiness to develop a recovery friendly culture. As
advisors, we also connect you to statewide and local resources and certainly | know you're probably all familiar with your
local resources but we often have a request to communicate and connect to statewide resources that could be beneficial
to the city as well. One ofthe ways we’ve already done that is I’m the advisory for the City of Manchester as well and
we've already exchanged some information back and forth with the City of Nashua to help drive what we’re going to do
over the next year and beyond.

We always have tools, materials and templates that we provide for each workplace so we make it as easy as possible for
you to create something that you might want to share with your employees. As | already mentioned, we have no cost
trainings and do support employees and their loved ones as well. We also will connect recovery friendly champions to
chair policy resources and samples. Everyone has policies — I’m sure the city has policies and so forth but it may be that
you want to review those and we can easily connect you with others who have amended, or upgraded, or changed their
policies in a way to support recovery.

We're all about peer connections. Any time we can make connections peer to peer, we find that peer to peer
connections are important often if somebody has a wait time or they can’t do the proper level of treatment. This would
come through your recovery community organizations or sometimes employees are trained as recovery coaches and
even CRSWs that provide internal support and augment an EAP program, an HR, and other efforts like a wellness
committee that you might have.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-08-2021 Page 3

We do provide guidance for any committees that you would like to create following your designations and we will also
provide support in terms of any survey that you might like to execute to determine the needs of your employees. So with
the City of Manchester we did execute a survey. We had a really good number of respondents and out ofthat, the City
of Manchester shared with us that the most important topic that they would like more support and information on is
compassion, fatigue, stress, and burnout. So we actually have something that we’re going to be presenting and you'l be
included in that at no cost | might add to address that particular focus. Last but not least, we always will have ongoing
dialog. I’m always available for you to reach out to and we try to provide a structure that will allow you to continue to
grow over time and further develop your recovery friendly culture.

So | mentioned the trainings a moment ago. These are all the trainings that we current have in progress. Some ofthem
have become in person. There are a lot of self-paced options which | know that a lot of the employees in the City of
Nashua have been participating in. We also have the online only trainings that people can access as well. Ass|
mentioned, we’ll be adding that compassion fatigue training within the next month.

So we’re also asked well what can employers do. You as a city employer you might say well what can we do to further
the Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative and support individuals in their recovery. So this is a very quick bulletized list.
It’s actually also in much more detail from the SAMHSA site. There’s a link there that | can send to you following this
presentation. The first thing would be is perhaps through a survey as an example to identify issues and assess needs
and then at that point you can review that with myself as the advisory. We can talk about possibly revising policies or
taking a look at those and always providing ongoing awareness and education to employees as it suits each department.
| realize each department is a little bit different too so we would want to talk in a little bit more detail about that to ensure
that we’re meeting the specific needs of each department.

Employers | know are always focused on safety and we always try to kind of reinforce that prevention focus for
employers as well as employers are in the position to connect employees to resources, to support groups, and then
obviously periodically evaluate how are things going and what kind of changes do we need to make to continue to be
successful. | will share with you as an example, there’s an employer in Dover, New Hampshire, called “Cameleon
Group” and they actually have progressed so far that they actually have someone from the recovery community
organization come in and run an all recover support group during company time for anyone who is interested on a
weekly or even a bi-weekly basis in some instances.

So we are always asked by employers so what are the signs and symptoms of a substance use or how do we know if
somebody is using substances. Certainly we can provide a list of sort of those physical signs and symptoms but really
what | want to point out with this slide is that the best identification practice is to really cultivate open and honest
conversations with employees in a safe, supportive, and recovery friendly environment. Creating this environment is
really what becoming a recovery friendly workplace is all about and | know that our Declaration really does speak to that.
So when having a conversation about substance use concerns if you look at this circular diagram here, it’s always
important to remain mindful of being open, and honest, showing genuine empathy, and compassion, and leaving
judgement at the door sort to speak. We'll help you to develop a plan. You may already have some plans so hopefully
we can augment that and add some resources to your menus so that you can offer tangible support to any employee that
might be requesting assistance.

| wanted to reference a case study that was done with Genfoot America. If you’re not familiar with Genfoot, they’re
actually a manufacturing firm located in the North Country and they became designated right about the time | came on
board as an advisor. Since that time, and this will demonstrate too that recovery friendly culture is developing over time.
It doesn’t happen overnight. Since then five employees have come forward to seek help and they are hiring from their
local recovery homes and two of those individuals have now become shift leaders. The employees together decided to
form what they call a “Helping Hands Committee” and some of those individuals are certified as recovery coaches. So
they can talk to other employees that might not be quite ready to go the next step and can kind of partner with them to
get to the appropriate level of care through their employer. This is one company that over the course ofa little over two
years really attributes their change in recovery friendly culture to decreases in accidents and injuries, lost days, and light
duty days. Ofcourse, this would something we'd aspire to for all companies to have.

At this point, | wanted to play a short video for you. Waypoint, which in this particular case, this is the President and
CEO Borja in Manchester. They really have worked hard to develop an all-inclusive recovery friendly workplace so not
just recovery in terms of substance use disorder but in terms of mental health, diversity, and so forth. I'd just like to have
him explain in his words how they’ve been able to do that.

The video was then played.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-08-2021 Page 4

So obviously if you have any questions about that or some of the things that Waypoint or other recovery friendly
workplaces are doing, I'm certainly happy to answer your questions. | just wanted to reference some major resources.
We do giv a full training on the details of NH 2-1-1 and the Doorway which I’m pretty sure youre all familiar with as well
as Revive Recovery Center, the Public Health Network, and the Greater Nashua Mental Health Organization, and all of
those are key resources for us in your local area as well as we have a lot of national and statewide resources that we
promote. As Borja mentioned and as we are continuing to work very closely with NOMMI as well as a pilot program out of
Dover called the Dover Mental Health Alliance. We realize that there is a real correlation between mental health and
recovery and we always want to highlight that and also provide as | do with most every presentation the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline, the text line, and also a mention of peer support agencies which not everyone is familiar with. These
are agencies that provide no cost, pure base support for those with mental illness, and they also have warm lines. So if
it’s not a crisis, it is an opportunity to talk with a peer that you can just talk with and hopefully that is a bridge to the next
step in terms of somebody’s appropriate level of care.

This is our contact information here. Our website — recoveryfriendlyworkplace.com is a place you can go to find out more
information about the initiative and, again, if anyone watching would like to submit a letter of interest, that takes about
one minute and that’s right on our website. We also have a strong presence on social media. Borjais one of four
panelist that you saw in the last clip there and that entire business panel is on our Linkedin page or | can send you a link
to that.

So without further ado, I'm wondering if! can invite Mayor Donchess to read the City of Nashua’s Declaration.

Mayor Donchess

Well thank you. Madam President should | proceed?
President Wilshire

Mayor, please.

Mayor Donchess

Well first | want to thank Ms. Morton-Clark for all of the work that you've put in and for the important initiative that you’ve
brought to the State of New Hampshire and now to the City of Nashua. We definitely want to be a recovery friendly
workplace. | will go ahead and read the Declaration which you’ve referred to:

“Nashua is a welcoming city where the contributions of all are valued and celebrated. A strong
dedication to serving the community, teamwork, integrity and respect are the foundations of our
city government. The City of Nashua is committed to a healthy, safe and stigma-free work
environment. With our enrollment in the state’s Recovery Friendly Workplace initiative, we now
have greater resources to improve upon this commitment. This initiative encourages an
environment in which employers, employees and community members can collaborate to create
positive change and eliminate barriers for those impacted by substance use disorder and mental
health issues. In order to achieve a high level of employee health, employee safety and
productivity, we continue to encourage all employees to reach out for help and support for
themselves or a loved one. Nashua is connected with The Doorway of Greater Nashua, Greater
Nashua Mental Health, Revive Recovery and many other local organizations offering peer-based
support for people affected by or afflicted with substance use disorder and for those suffering from
mental health issues. Nashua is a caring community with a city government that strives every day
to help all in its embrace live their best lives and achieve success.”

That is the Declaration that we have worked on with the Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative and again | want to
thank Ms. Morton-Clark for bringing this to us and working so closely with our employee team who are all here. Thank
you all for all of your efforts, city employees in helping us bring this initiative forward.

Karen Morton-Clark

Thank you Mayor and with that | would like to invite Chery! Lindner on my behalfto present you with the Recovery
Friendly Workplace official designation certificate. I'll read what is on the certificate as she is approaching:

“State of New Hampshire by his Excellency Christopher T. Sununu, Governor, Recovery Friendly Workplace
Designation

Special Board of Aldermen 06-08-2021 Page 5

Be it hereby known that I, Christopher T. Sununu, Governor of the State of New Hampshire present a Recovery
Friendly Workplace Designation to the City of Nashua. Recovery friendly workplaces encourage healthy, safe,
and stigma-free work environments where employers, employees, and communities can collaborate to create
positive change and eliminate barriers for those impacted by addiction. This certifies that the City of Nashua has
met all ofthe requirements of the Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative. On behalf ofthe citizens of New
Hampshire, | commend you for your hard work and dedication in becoming a recovery friendly workplace.
Signed — Governor Sununu as of June 2021”

Congratulations!

Mayor Donchess

Thank you very much. So canwe bring the team up and have a picture?
President Wilshire

Yes. Certainly.

Karen Morton-Clark

Great Job. Thank you. We're going to highlight that on our social media. Thank you for doing that everyone whose
participating.

President Wilshire

Thank you very much.

Karen Morton-Clark

Okay and | will just sign off now unless | hear any questions.
President Wilshire

| don’t see any.

Karen Morton-Clark

Okay, great. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present and I'll look forward to working with all of you in the
coming weeks. Thank you.

President Wilshire
Thank you very much.
ADJOURNMENT
MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN THAT THE AUGUST 10, 2021, SPECIAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF
ALDERMEN BE ADJOURNED, BY ROLL CALL
A viva voce roll call was taken to adjourn the Special Board of Aldermen meeting which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd,
Alderman Caron, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,
Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Jette, Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Cleaver,
Alderman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire 14
Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED

The meeting was declared adjourned at 7:30 p.m.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-08-2021 Page 6

Attest: Susan K. Lovering, City Clerk

Recovery Friendly Workplaces:
Good for Employees, Good for Business

City of Nashua - Designation
Tuesday, August 10*, 2021

Karen Morton-Clark, CRSW
RFW Advisor

recovery
friendly

recoveryfriendlyworkplace.com

Copyright© 2019 by the State of New Hampshire

> What is Substance Use Disorder (SUD)?

© Py... A Ss A American Society of
5 Addiction Medicine

The American Society of Addiction medicine adopted the following definition of addiction
in 2019:

“Addiction is a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among
brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People
with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and
often continue despite harmful consequences.”

They also note, “Prevention efforts and treatment approaches for addiction are
generally as successful as those for other chronic diseases.”

recoveryfriendlyworkplace.com
Copyright© 2019 by the State of New Hampshire

Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative

Led by Governor Chris Sununu
Launched in March of 2018 Os a
Promotes health, safety, and wellness “Qs
for NH workplaces and employees .
Empowers workplaces to provide
support for employees in recovery and
those impacted by substance use
disorders

Challenges stigma

Encourages employee retention and
productivity

recoveryfriendlyworkplace.com

Copyright© 2019 by the State of New Hiampshire

> Some Key Accomplishments to Date

¢ Close to 280 workplaces CHAMEL ‘EON e ©
participating, representing

~70,000 employees ® Ny =
¢ People engaged in RFW activities

nearly 15,000 times Weert DUNKIN’
¢ Outreach to ~15 states
e O 1 0 . b | bane t l So Entrepreneurs TE io.
ver 10 trainings built out, over “easterseals Shrmnc oF « Pup

170 businesses trained by RFW

recoveryfriendlyworkplace.com
Copyright© 2019 by the State of New Hampshire