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Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 24

Alderman Clemons

Yes, | do have a further question. On the buildings where and forgive me the only two | can think of
are the Hunt Building and Court Street where the City has tenants, | don’t know if we have any other
buildings. Can you name those and what are we doing with those particular buildings?

Director Kleiner

So currently there is Court Street and there is Hunt and then there is the Arlington Street Community
Center that our City Buildings currently work on. We are asking tenants of Court Street to vacate as of
Friday. And there’s a number of reasons there. As we look at essential services and cleaning, we are
concerned about keeping those buildings healthy. It takes a lot of cleaning; we don’t want masses of
people in those buildings if we don’t have the essential personnel to keep them cleaned and with this
virus there is a lot more cleaning than you would normally think of. And of course as | told you
Arlington Street Community Center is already closed.

Alderman Clemons

So my question on that is will, since people are going to be unable to use their offices, are we going to
suspend their rent that they have due to the City? And then my second question on that is one of the
tenants is Liquid Therapy which is a restaurant. | know that they may decide to take the Governor up
on this thing where you can do take out or you can serve. So how is that going to affect that particular
business and of course my first question about the rents that we are collecting?

Director Kleiner

So we are working with individual tenants on rent situations. It is more important to us to deal with the
safety and the health of our residents. If need be, we can work out a rent situation, we were taking a
different approach with Liquid Therapy at the moment and our Risk Department is in active
communication with them, should they decide to take up the Governor on the takeout situation.

Alderman Clemons

OK thank you.

Alderman Klee

Yes thank you and thank you for all of your efforts, we do appreciate it. My first question or comment
way back in the days of the ‘80’s an ‘90’s, the Federal Government came out and said there would be
no more paper checks, they will all be e-checks and they worked with people who didn’t have the
ability to get accounts, to get accounts and gave them literally 90 days and that was that so just food
for thought on that one. The other one is | don’t know if any of you can answer this, especially with
school closings and trying to do virtual classrooms and so on, my concern is for the library. Is that
being shut down? Are people still going to be using the library? Do we have any information on that?

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 25

Director Kates

| can talk about the library. So regarding those other buildings that we don’t have direct control over,
we have asked them to take the same measures and the library is particularly concerning. They
provide an essential service to the community, particularly for those that are vulnerable. They are also
a location where, unfortunately due to the circumstances, people might not be at work, they are not in
school, so you would think “Oh this will be a great opportunity to go to the library and use those
resources. But when you think of the library, there’s lot of interaction, it’s sort of, it is really the
opposite of what we want people to do right now. So we have asked them to take the same measures
and we will continue to work with them over the next week to see if we can provide any assistance to
them in trying to meet those same types of goals.

Alderman Klee

When you say “take the same measures” are you talking about the essential / non-essential, maybe
not have the Children’s Reading Program or something of that nature.

Director Kates

Yeah so in the case of the library so when we went through the exercise to identify what the essential
functions of the community were, the library had many that we were able to defer after the emergency.
One of the big ones that we were looking at was access to the internet, because we are trying to
ensure that people can get information about what’s going on right now but we still really want to try to
prevent people from going inside of buildings and sitting down, touching things, getting in close contact
with other people. So in that case, going back to those Task Forces that we had talked about, we may
look to identify an alternative to that same mission. So can we set up Wi-Fi hot spots? Can we direct
people to the services of Comcast which opened up their Wi-Fi for free during the crisis? So there are
other ways that we are trying to get that same level of functionality in the community without having
people go into situations where they might be able to contaminate other people or objects without us to
be able to keep control of it.

Alderman Klee

And just can | put one more question in, I’m not sure you can answer this, this may be the Mayor and
so on. | know when the Mayor spoke at the beginning he mentioned something to the effect of that
those employees might not be charged leave and | guess that’s my concern about our City Employees
that are essential have to be here and how are we going to be dealing with their leave if they don’t
have enough leave and they’ve been quarantined, | have some grave concerns about that.

Mayor Donchess
Ok so in the policy that we have presented to you ...
Alderman Klee

That was your second page?

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 26
Mayor Donchess

Yes it says in essence “employees who should isolate or quarantine themselves due to a potential
exposure or cannot make necessary child arrangements should do so and the City will continue to pay
the employee their regular wages without requiring them to use any personal leave time”. But they
may be asked to work remotely to the extent they are able to do so and then there’s a link.

Alderman Klee

Thank you so much | appreciate that.

Mayor Donchess

Again we don’t people coming to work who are sick. That is the worst thing that can happen so we
want to make it very clear that if you are not feeling well you should stay home and you will not suffer
any consequences because of that.

Alderman Klee

Thank you.

President Wilshire

Director Kleiner did you want to add something to that.
Director Ms. Kleiner

So | did. The Mayor asked Legal and HR and Administrative Services to look at this and we did quite
a bit of research and watched what other towns and cities were doing. We had a lot of employees
reach out to us with great concern as you can imagine. This is very common to how this being dealt
with in other communities. So | wanted the Board to know that we are not taking an approach that is
far from different of that of other municipalities but we need to keep in mind that our employees are, of
course, going through a lot of anxiety as is our whole community is as well. And so for them to find out
that their children were going to be home today and they were going to have to stay home, that
creates problems in many families, especially families these days who have two working parents. So
we are trying to work with our employees and the individual Division Directors are working with their
own to make as much arrangements as we can to still have them work remotely if possible and
perform some services, but also keep in mind the health of our residents, our employees and their
families.

Alderman Klee

Thank you so much | really appreciate it. It just hit me as you were speaking about children being
home and thank you very much for doing that. But! also see that we have two representatives of the
teachers behind us. The teachers will be doing the remote teaching and so on. Will they be doing it
from their homes? Will they be doing it from inside the schools?

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 27

Alderman Dowd

So City Hall is closed, the schools are closed. Any consideration been given to the meetings of the
Board of Aldermen, the Committees, the Planning Board, the Zoning Board and every other
Committee that’s in the City. If we are trying to avoid large public gatherings, you know, something
has got to be done.

Director Kates

As part of the recommendation that | presented to the Mayor, one of the things that we had discussed
was that at a minimum we should be canceling any meeting that doesn’t require - is it required by a
statute, local ordinance, charter? Any of those types of meetings should be canceled. In those cases
where we have a meeting that is required by one of those, an RSA or a local ordinance, one of the
things that did come out from the Governor as sort of a guide as part of the State of Emergency Order
that went out was around provisions to conduct meetings in compliance with 91A but still dealing with
the emergency situation.

| Know you guys were talking about it a little before the meeting had started so | don’t know what the
interpretation is here but | know what the State Emergency Operation Center has been pushing to us
is to enable a meeting to still continue. It still must be published. The location must be known by the
public but the person who is leading that, the Chairperson of that Committee, could waive the
requirements for a quorum. Then everybody else would be able to participate via some sort of remote
access. But! don’t know what the interpretation is locally as to whether we can continue that or not.
But those were the recommendations that were made to the Mayor and | think that would at least
prevent as much as possible those types of large gatherings so that we can follow what we are trying
to preach across the entire City.

Mayor Donchess

So as we looked at what is really required, if you look at State Law, it is basically the Board of
Aldermen and that’s a City Ordinance twice a month, Planning Board, ZBA, plus the Finance
Committee is really the things that are required by Ordinance or by Law.

Alderman Dowd

So there are six of us on the Board of Aldermen that according to all the guidelines are more at risk
than others so we could call in.

Mayor Donchess
Yes.
Alderman Dowd

And can the call-in handle 6 or 7 people.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 28

Director Kates

Most tools can today, yeah. | know that is one of the things that we are talking about with IT is in
addition to that specific example is providing the tools out to employees to be able to a lot of remote
access.

Mayor Donchess

Could we do a Zoom meeting? Can there be a Zoom meeting?

Director Kates

Zoom or Go To Meeting — is one of the things that IT was looking at.

Mayor Donchess

We are working on that so people could participate remotely.

Alderman Dowd

So the other thing, now that they are getting all these licenses is video teleconference. Industry has
been doing it for years and that way, because if you rely on our TV system, you know, that doesn’t
work.

Director Kates

Sure.

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

The problem | think with these meetings that you are required to have or even meetings you desire to
have is they have to be open to the public and you cannot limit the number of people you can’t tell
them they have to wait so far away that they can’t hear you. You can’t bring people in one at a time to
the Zoning Board or the Planning Board. You have to admit everyone who wants to be admitted. So |
don’t think it is so much we are worried about all of you or all of us, although we are, but it’s the 50
people who may show up from the public because they are concerned that someone wants to put a
convenience store next to their house. You know, in a residential neighborhood or that sort of thing
and we don’t know how to get around that. There is no exception in 91A that would allow you to have
a Planning Board meeting and limit the number of people. So even if the whole Planning Board
participated by remote Go To Meeting or telephoning in or whatnot, you’ve still got your 50 or 100
people or whatnot of the public coming in, sitting shoulder to shoulder, in those seats.

Mayor Donchess

So the way to do it is if you can find a way to do it legally is to cancel the meetings altogether.

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

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

President Wilshire

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

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

Yes, we have.

Attorney Bolton

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

President Wilshire

Thank you.

Alderman O’Brien

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

You can.

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 30

Alderman O’Brien

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

Attorney Bolton

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

Alderman O’Brien

And who would Corporate Counsel be thinking of?

Attorney Bolton

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

Alderwoman Kelly

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

Alderman Dowd

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

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 31

President Wilshire

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

Director Kleiner

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

Alderwoman Kelly

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

Alderman O’Brien

We are closed.

Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright

We are closed, we are done.

Alderman Dowd

They sent them all home.

Alderwoman Kelly

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

President Wilshire

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

Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 32

Alderman Tencza

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

Director Kleiner

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

Director Kates

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

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

Mayor Donchess

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