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Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 15

the Fire. They cannot pick and choose on the calls that they receive; they cannot because of the
nature of their duty enforce the six-foot rule that we have heard about. We should maintain that
boundary in dealing with people. If we are isolating City Hall and other things, | do know there’s, |
would hope that everybody in the City would be on their best behavior and nobody gets arrested, but |
don’t think we are in that utopic place right now.

However, are we looking at our First Responders to limit the access such as the Fire Stations? It has
got to be bad enough going on these particular calls. And should we also look at the casual exposure
of these two integral facilities, Police and Fire, and as well, we do have some other programs that are
out there such as where people come into the Fire House for a Safe Station Environment. I’d hate to
see that program suffer, but are not some of those people some our less healthy than some of our
other citizens? So you know, | haven’t heard anything really, and | know you are speaking in general
terms and | don’t mean, if | am getting too specific, | apologize. But to me, those are very big concerns
to me, and are we at least with those Division Heads working to come up with a plan with this?

Director Kates

Sure so |’ll mention a couple of things. | am going to let the Police and the Fire Department; | think

later they are talking a little bit about what types of actions they are doing and they can talk about
some of the specifics. And I'll also let Bobbie talk a little bit about some of the work that her folks have
done to provide them with almost like a decision matrix so that they have a better indication of the call
that they are going to, whether they need to take some additional precautions or not.

So one of the things that we did do as part of that continuity review when we went with all the
Divisions, we included some of the Divisions that don’t report to the Mayor but we wanted to ensure
that we had them coordinated just the same way that we would with any of our City Divisions. So Fire
and Police were heavily involved in that and provided some insight related to the types of activities that
they need to continue. Some of them are very obvious, but we were able to work through and identify
some that are not really critical for us to continue through this crisis and helps to reduce the burden
and likelihood that their personnel are going to be in a dangerous situation. You know, things like
burning permits, those are the types of activities that we can curtail through this crisis.

One of the other things that has come up considerably that we have been working through and
working to try to identify some ability to try and get this stuff to the City is personal protective
equipment. So we know that is one of the global concerns right now,; it is not just even a City, State or
Federal concern; it’s the lack of personal protective equipment for responders. There’s been a lot of
efforts from the CDC to enable some provisions for other types of personal protective equipment to be
used by personnel and | know that that information has been pushed out and that’s enabling us to
provide service when we’ve got situations where there might not be the N95 Respirator that provides
the best level of protection. There are also efforts now related to how we would approach that type of
a response. Can we get information about how to keep that person outside, rather than inside if
possible? So those are behavior changes that we hope to have implemented in all the First
Responder Communities across the Country and | think that is something that we are seeing.

| will let Bobbie talk a little bit about some of the work that she did to assist the Fire and Police
Departments around identifying calls that come in and how to triage whether that person might be
somebody at risk for the Coronavirus.

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

Thank you, Justin. So when we think about our Public Health Infrastructure and our Public Health
System, Police and Fire, as well as our municipality and our school, all are part of that system. So you
know we have to think about the all on deck, all hands-on deck approach with this and we also need to
make sure that we can protect all those hands that are on deck. So we did work over the weekend
with creating a flow chart that would help prevent exposure to infectious respiratory diseases. In
working with both the Chief of the Police Department and the Chief of the Fire Department and some
of the folks that were there, we went through and developed a process of questions that would allow
for the Officers and the Fire Fighters to be safe in their encounters. And you are right, so they can’t
pick and choose and they can’t say, “No I’m not going there” because that’s a part of our job as
protecting, preserving and serving the public.

So there’s a flow chart that was developed. Chief Carignan came up with a set of four questions that
are based off the screening things that we have for healthcare professionals. And we just created this
flow chart that helps the officers and the firefighters. Sorry I’ll pass that around that way. And so you
know it was preempted also by dispatch, these questions being asked ahead of time so that the
officers and the firefighters and AMR know what they are going into when they are going on the scene.
So this set of questions here just allows for them to again reiterate these certain questions: Do you
have a fever greater than 100.4 or are showing signs of symptoms of a lower respiratory illness such
as a cough, shortness of breath. And if there is a “yes” to that or an affirmative to that question, then
we want the fire fighter or the officer to put on their surgical face mask that they can use.

If they have come into close contact with an individual who has a laboratory confirmed COVID-19
diagnosis in the past 14 days, if the person answers “yes” in that encounter, then we are asking them
to maintain social distancing as much and as long as they possibly can, because at some point in time,
they do have to get closer to the individual. And then also there’s a question, “Are you physically able
to meet the responder outside”. And so if the individual can come outside, then the responders do not
have to go inside of an apartment or into a house. If they can, the person will come outside, if they
can’t, then we want again, for officers and our fire fighters to use the personal protective equipment
that they have as they are interacting with the individual.

And then it just goes on of how to dispose of those gloves, the mask and again washing hands
afterwards, in-between each encounter. These are things that we are taught; | trained as a Fire
Fighter, probably under you Alderman, probably under Chief Rhodes as well. And so these are things
that we are taught initially and it doesn’t hurt for these reminders to be there, because again we want
to make sure that our Fire Fighters and our Police Officers are protected at all stages.

Alderman O’Brien

And you express a very point; so when a provider, AMR or a Fire Fighter or the Police Officer asks you
to step outside and | just want the public to know this, under these extreme circumstances, they are
not being rude, they are asking it for their particular safety as well as the patient’s particular safety.

We would hope that our citizens would be compliant as that matter of safety to those requests.

Alderman Dowd

Just a quick thing, | Know you are probably doing this but it seems like in Washington, they've lost the
ability to do it. When people call in and you are going to have other people assisting you, if they ask
the same question, they should always get the same answer. Because if you start getting different

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 17

answer, social media will blow that up in a heartbeat, so even if you have to write down, “here’s the
official response answer’ for the people that help you, it would go a long way. Because like | said, if it
gets out in different answers, people are going to pick up on that and then they won't trust the call in.

Director Kates

Sure. So one of the things that we had talked about today, again we’ve done a lot of this stuff, we’ve
just never done it to this massive scale. We've set up call centers before related to natural disasters,
so if we’ve got a major Noreaster that comes through the City, we’ve had a line set up where people
can call in and report non-emergency related things, “I’ve got a tree down in the middle of the road
here” or “I need a bottle of oxygen re-filled at my property”. Those types of things, things that we don’t
want people calling 911 for. The challenge that we recognized during those incidents going back to
the whole Lessons Learned/Continuous Improvement, if you have to have a shared document, shared
location where everybody who is answering a phone in the City can see that one location. So that way,
the messaging that goes out, that question and answer is the same regardless.

So Public Health has already started to develop some of the like frequently asked questions related to
the health side of things. As we start seeing some of the consequences that are non-public health-
related like, “Il need food”, “I need things ...” that are outside of the scope of COVID-19, we are going
to add those types of things to our canned responses that we are providing back to citizens and it will
all be in one central location so that way if they call Public Health or if they call the Mayor’s Office of if
they call Public Works as an example, they all have the same information to be able to provide back to
the residents.

Alderman Dowd

So Lesson Learned from the Middle School Project that would cut down on some of your calls is to
have a place where people can go look at frequently asked questions and then they won't have to call
in and ask you again. You can grow that list as you get more questions and more answers.

Director Kates

Exactly.

Alderman Klee

Actually that was my comment and my question, these shared documents and frequently asked
questions, they will be accessible by the public?

Director Kates

Yes, we would want the same information that we are pushing out via the phone to be the same
information that’s on the web. So it all has to be on the same platform and that’s the concept behind
the Joint Information Center. So having all of the folks who do external relations with the community
all have to be in sync on the messaging that they are pushing out. Even something as simple as if we
send out a Press Release, we need to have all those players review it first so that way there’s not
something that’s not correct in there that goes out and then we have to send out a separate Press
Release from the other Department to explain those things. So as much as possible we want to have

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 18

streamlined communications with just one direct avenue for the media to get information or the public
to get information.

Alderman Klee

Follow up, thank you | really do appreciate that and | want to comment to the Department of Public
Health. That one page that you have on the COVID-19 | have shared that and | have gotten a lot of
really good responses. Thank you for all the information that you have on it, you have the CDC
information, the one-page information that explains what is and what are the symptoms thereof, it’s
been very helpful. Thank you. So that really goes a long way.

Alderman Lopez

Do you have plans for making sure that information can be disseminated to people who are deaf or
people who are speaking different languages?

Director Kates

Yeah so that was one of the concerns that we had brought up at our leadership meeting this morning
was to ensure that any of the materials that are put out there can be done in multiple languages. IT
did go through a process to ensure that the translate function on the web site is functioning properly
and is working. They also sent us sort of like a fact sheet to enable us to let the public know about that
type of information and we pushed that out through our Joint Information Center.

The thing that the Joint Information Center will help us to do is to leverage the resources that we have
in other Departments to do translation services because as an example, our office doesn’t have that
capability if we send out a Press Release. | can’t translate those things. So the School Department
has some of those capabilities, Public Health has some of those capabilities, so we can share the
wealth to ensure that any of that kind of stuff, regardless of whether it is specific to that Department or
not, can use those same services.

Kim Kleiner, Administrative Services Director

Good evening, just to build off of that, so everybody knows if you go to the City’s Web Site through
Google, Google Translation, and that point was raised today just to build off of that. So where we are,
we have started working with Director Kates and Director Bagley what seems like weeks ago now but
probably not that long. Originally the Mayor came to you and asked you for $50,000.00, so let’s start
there. That really was Phase |. We needed those funds in order to purchase supplies in order to have
overtime and some temporary help to keep City Hall clean, not only City Hall, all of our City Buildings,
Public Health Building, that was really Phase |. To keep the residents and the employees that are in
our buildings safe. So we thank all of our City employees for working hard, cleaning their surfaces,
cleaning their areas. We thank our City Building Staff for going over and above. That was that first
Phase.

So now as we look to move to the Second Phase and we look to have people work remotely like
Director Kates said, that is challenging in a municipality. You’ve seen much more of it in the private
sector. So currently, we have over 100 employees that have access to Citrix and for those of you that
don’t know what Citrix is, Citrix is a software that allows you to dial in remotely and access our City
Systems. So whether it be Kronos our payroll system or whether it be Lawson our financial system

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Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 19

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

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

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

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

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

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 20

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

Alderman Clemons

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

Susan Lovering, City Clerk

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

Director Kleiner

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

Alderman Clemons

What about the Motor Vehicle Department?

Director Kates

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

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 21

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

Alderman Clemons

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

Mayor Donchess

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

No | actually | have until March 31°.

David Fredette, City Treasurer

Yes you have to March 31.
Mayor Donchess

So renewals you can do over mail.
Alderman Clemons

That’s my question.

Mayor Donchess

It still will be available.

Alderman Clemons

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

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 22

Mr. Fredette

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

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

Alderman Clemons

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

Mr. Fredette

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

Alderman Clemons

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

Mr. Fredette

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

Alderman Clemons

That we don’t have an answer to.

Mr. Fredette

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

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 23

Alderman Clemons

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

Director Kleiner

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

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

Mayor Donchess

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