Search

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 18

President Wilshire

Dr. Storace?

Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Public Health

Alderman O’Brien, good question. It really is. | mean we've talked about this as a group and believe me, it's above
our pay grade when it comes to enforcement. | don't have an answer for you for that and | respect the Police
Department. | don't expect them - | mean they're overwhelmed just what they're doing and to go running here and
running there for masks, it can't be there.

The only thing that | can come up with that makes sense to me is that masks are required and | see that at some
establishments. The masks are required inside. It isn't a perfect world. We talked about masks are not always
perfect and if you are going to go out, | have an infectious disease doc says I'm not eating out until this thing is gone.
That's maybe on that side of the railroad track and we want to be in the middle of the railroad track. So there are
going to be environments where there's gonna be a compromise. You're going to take that mask off. There's going to
be particular matter going around. If there's a singer on stage, that's going to go farther faster than somebody across
the table from you. But that a calculated risk that you're willing to take and | can’t guarantee you if you wear a mask
and go into a bar and establishment that you won't get COVID. But that's a risk that you can make on your own. You
make that decision to do that. If 1 go to one of the grocery stores, should | be taking that same risk that there might be
other people there who are not wearing a mask, especially in many of our supermarkets that are amazing. We have
open food everywhere. My hair curls when | see dogs in the supermarket, but that's the public health nurse. But if we
had something that the city says that they're required to wear the mask and if they don't, well | can’t help you there.
I'm sorry, | don't have that answer. My kids would be flabbergasted to hear that Dad didn't have an answer.

Alderman O’Brien

Good try though. Thank you.

President Wilshire

Alderman O’Brien are there any Aldermen online with their hands up?

Alderman O’Brien

Yes, Alderman Clemons.

Alderman Clemons

Hi, can you hear me?

President Wilshire

Yes.

Alderman Clemons

Okay, thank you. My question on this is more on the enforcement as well. Can somebody articulate to me what the -
is this the same penalty that we had in the previous mask ordinance?

Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Public Health

Enforcement is not the side of my purview. It's your job to come up with a...

Alderman Clemons

Is Corporation Counsel available to answer that or somebody available to answer that question?

President Wilshire

Attorney Bolton is here. Tribal,

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 19

Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel

There is an existing provision in the codification of ordinances that says when no other penalty is provided a violation
is punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000. So that would apply here.

Alderman Clemons

Okay, thank you,

Alderman Tencza

Thank you. | think Attorney Bolton will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure, but as | read the ordinance as drafted as to
the questions of enforcement, it doesn't say anything here that the businesses are required to enforce the law. | think
the individual who's making the choice to go into the business, certainly the business has a right if they want to
enforce a mask mandate to ask them to put the mask on they can do that now. But if someone was to go into a
restaurant not wanting to face covering, | don't think they should feel that they need to fight with the people. | mean,
obviously, they can take whatever measures they believe are necessary to remove that person from their
establishment. They’re a private business they can do that but | don't see that the business would be liable for
anything other than not posting the mask requirements signs. | know that Economic Development was very good last
time in educating businesses and making sure people have what they need as far as supplies and things like that.

The other thing | worry about is not doing something like this because we're afraid of the few people who are going to
cause a ruckus in the community, right? That's their goal is to draw attention to themselves and to their issues and
draw a ruckus. | think we should kind of think more globally about everybody who's in the community coming and
going. | know my thinking on this issue has changed from our original debate that we had. Back then | thought well
no wearing a mask is, you know, maybe more a little bit about personal liberty and | think back then liking it to wearing
a seatbelt. My thinking has changed on this. Now, | really think it's more comparable to the issue of drunk driving
because no one has the ability to go out and drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol. When these laws are
debated in Concord, no one is up there saying | have an absolute right to get draft and drunk and drive drunk because
it puts yourself at risk but it puts other people at risk as well. It would be great, | think, some of the doctors talked
about this. He would be great if everyone said look I'm gonna look out for my fellow neighbor and go wear a mask
even if it's just to make other people feel more comfortable. Unfortunately, we see that there's not everybody in the
community ascribes to that same way of thinking. So | do think even if it's till the end of January, important to put this
in place now as Ms. Rosenblum said before, it's not going to help all of our family gatherings that we're going to have
over the next week but | hope people take her advice. | know my family will be taking her advice and testing forehand
just to make sure that we're not inadvertently affecting the rest of our family and loved ones. So thank you.

Alderman Klee

Thank you President Wilshire. | really took a long time to have to think about this and after hearing all the numbers
and so on, it became a no brainer for me. It was something that | was going to support. One of the things that | know
that my colleagues that are up in the State House is that we're very familiar with the New Hampshire Constitution,
specifically the Bill of Rights, Article 3 society, its organization and purposes and it talks about society. It says when
men enter into a state of society, they surrender up their natural rights to this society in order to ensure the protection
of others and that's what we're doing here. We're trying to protect others. It's not just for us. | have been double
vaxed. I’ve got my booster. It doesn't mean that | can't get it. We all know that | can but the higher percentage of
people that are getting it and ending up in the hospital are those that are unvaxed. The ones that are having more
critical care needs are those that are unvaxed.

| have spoken to both heads of the hospitals and | know that our ICU beds are overflowing. Not that long ago, | spoke
to one that we had eight patients that had been a couple of days sitting in the ER. During that time, that was eight
patients sitting there. That day, they were able to free up 18 beds. By the end of the day, there were no more beds
available in the end. That's scary.

We received emails, ad nauseam from, and | don't mean that in negative terms, for and against. | respect everybody
that’s for it. | respect everybody that’s against it. The ones that hit me were ones that spoke about patients being
taken care of not in the ED, but in the waiting room - three days. Three days of sitting in a waiting room. If we can do
anything to slow one of those people from not having to be there, | think we should take every single effort that we
can.

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 20

Businesses that don't want to enforce this, | understand that frustration. | understand that aggravation. I've sat in line
where some poor cashier has had to argue with someone please put on your mask. The person didn't care enough to
put on the mask just to protect her. Shame on them and shame on the businesses that aren't going to at least try to
enforce it. I'm not saying they've got to get down in the dirt, but at least tried to enforce it. When | hear that we are
(inaudible) patients out to other States, it scares me. It truly scares me. | have my own health issues and when | hear
that surgeries are being canceled, or that patients go into the hospital and no love one can come in there, | know I've
talked about the loss of my brother In September but | was able to stand there and hold his hand. Prior to that we had
patients that died without family members and the only thing they saw was the family on the phone. | don't want to
see us go back to that. That is just scary.

| want to add that we can't just decide we're not going to make rules because there's somebody that's going to be out
there protesting or somebody that's going to be out there screaming and yelling at us. We have to make rules for the
greater good of the society and we had it built into the Constitution of New Hampshire and | think we should uphold it.
So thank you.

Alderman Jette

Thank you, Madam President. Regarding enforcement, | agree with some of the previous speakers. | don't think we
should decide what to do or not to do because we fear that it won't be able to be enforced. | mean if that's your
philosophy, you got to do away with speed limits. We were out at the vigil tonight and there were cars speeding up
and down Main Street. You can hardly hear what was going on because of the noise. In my Ward, we have West
Hollis Street. I'm always getting complaints about speeding on West Hollis Street. You know the police do the best
they can but they don't catch everybody that speeding. Does that mean we should do away with the speeding laws?
Of course not. We establish a standard and we hope that people will abide by that. The fact that it won't be enforced
perfectly should not prevent us from doing the best we can. If we get a certain percentage of the people to comply, |
think we're doing the right thing.

| want to acknowledge all the e-mails that I've gotten. I'm sure everyone else has got a similar amount, but especially
from the people from Ward 5 that have sent me e-mails. | haven't been able to acknowledge all of them because
there have been so many. The arguments against the ordinance that we're being asked to pass tonight, some of the
arguments are legal arguments. Now | know a little bit about that and the arguments that have been made were
pretty much all dealt with last year when the city successfully defended a lawsuit against the mask ordinance that we
passed last year. Two Superior Court Judges said that the city does have the authority to pass this ordinance. Inthe
court's ruling, it acknowledged that the United States Supreme Court has decided back in 1905 they decided that
mandatory vaccinations did not violate people's constitutional rights and the New Hampshire Supreme Court has
similarly ruled that school vaccination laws did not violate the New Hampshire Constitution. The court ruling quoted
as Alderwoman Klee quoted about how certain laws are necessary for the greater good of society and this is one of
them.

So the legal arguments that people make about the violation of their rights and we don't have the authority to do this,
that was all dealt with last year by the courts. | can assure people that it's a pretty basic principle that your
constitutional rights are not defined by what you think they are. They're defined by what the courts say they are. |
acknowledge that people feel very passionately about this but the courts have said this is not a matter of a violation of
constitutional rights.

The other argument has been the medical argument. The arguments range from masks don't work, COVID is not that
dangerous, it'll just run its course, the dangers are exaggerated by big pharma and the media. The opponents refer to
various sources to support their arguments. You know those arguments are frankly lost on me because I'm not
qualified to evaluate them. There's been a lot of conflicting information about the medical issues. I’m not educated in
that. | don't know about that but we have a Board of Health which is charged with protecting the public health. They
have the qualifications and the expertise to evaluate all of this information. They listen to the opponent's arguments
made at their couple of meetings ago. When all these arguments were made, they recessed. They took a week to
digest the arguments, to research it, and they came back a week later and answered all of those arguments to my
satisfaction, and they determined that we are in a dangerous crisis. They determined that masks are an effective tool
in protecting the public health along with vaccination, distancing, hand washing, and they are recommending - they’re
imploring us - to pass this ordinance for public health and safety. I'm not going to look them in the eye and say thank
you very much, but I'm going to listen to some other people who are not as qualified as you are, I'm not going to listen
to you. I'm going to listen to the doctors and I'm going to respect the time and effort that they've put into this and I'm
going to follow their recommendation that they have made and | hope the rest of my colleagues see it the same way.
Thank you.

Cost Details

--- Year 3 ---
a ——————————____________—|
Rate
Item Name Hours Cost Notes
$/hour
Project Manager/Tech Services Manager George Russell* 50 1,000 $ 50,000
Engagement Manager Bob Bartis 50 1,000 $ 50,000 Karmeeanadl
Studio Control Room and Camera Art Colvin/Jasmine Torres share scheduled i"
Operators studio presence
Bob Bartis* (not separately priced)
Field operations George Russell*
Jasmine Torres Allen 25 700 $ 17,500
Program Editors Share scheduled in-
Content Review Art Gohan 25 700 $ 17,500 studio presence
Corporate, Activity & Financial Reporting Bob Bartis (not separately priced) Compliant with RFP
Financial Audit CPA -- $ 1,500 | Compliant with RFP
ili ices: Oscar Villacis 2 455 $ 10,000
Someries erence | Compliant wth
‘ Jasmine Torres Allen (not separately priced)
Policy and Procedures Manual. Bob Bartis (not separately priced) Compliant with RFP
(coordination with Performed in
Annual Survey Comcast) - $ 5,000 | coordination with
Comcast
Legal Services Dan Alpert -- $ 3,500 | as needed
Fees -- os $ 3,000 } Music licensing, etc.
Insurance -- -- $ 5,000 | Compliant with RFP
Utilities and Janitorial/custodial Services -- -- $ 2,000 | Per RFP Addendum 1.
Equipment -- - $ 2,000 | asneeded
Reimbursable Expenses o $ 1,000 | supplies, mileage, etc.
Total $ 168,000

Notes

*

Bob Bartis and George Russell are officers of BRBTV. All others are independent contractors.

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 21

President Wilshire

Thank you.

Alderman Schmidt

Thank you, Madam President. My daughter's a nurse in Dover - the first hospital that came out and pleaded for help.
I'd asked her how she was doing. She works the recovery room. She was taken from the recovery room to work in
the ICU. The ICU was full. People were dying. She held hands with people who were dying. It was horrendous.
We're doing terrible things to our hospitals by not paying attention. Every day | go to the DHHS website to see what's
happened the numbers that are following. Today's numbers haven't dropped, but | was told 19 people have died.
Yesterday 19 people died from complications from COVID. Over the weekend, seven people had died. Four of them,
| believe, we're younger than 60. | didn't know exactly how many in each age range, but they're younger. People are
dying younger. Delta is dangerous for younger people. We don't know how bad it's going to be for Omicron. We
don't know yet. This is scary. It could be just that it runs through the community and people get a little sick or it could
be that our vaccinations can't manage this. We do not know. The best way to prevent this is to prevent it. Wear the
mask. Stay out of places where there are people who refuse. If there are people who won't comply, that's on them. If
you go into a place and nobody's wearing a mask, | leave. | don't think it's fair of them to cause me to have less
freedom because they want to go without a mask. | don't think it's fair. Our society is built on rights and responsibility.
The responsibility is that you care about your community. Part of caring about your community is wearing the mask,
especially when we have numbers like this. Nineteen died yesterday. Nineteen who wouldn't have died otherwise
just from somebody passing the disease on to them. Thank you.

President Wilshire

Thank you.

Alderman Harriott-Gathright

I'd like to say ditto to most of my colleagues here but more importantly, | want to say thank you to the Board of Health.
Thank you for the meeting that you had | think it was about a week ago. | was on Zoom. | heard those that were for
the mask. | heard those that were against the mask but more importantly if masks could save one life, then I'm for it.
As Alderman Jette said, that this has already been in the courts and we already did this process. So for me, it's a
win/win if we pass the mask. Thank you.

President Wilshire

Anyone else?
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. | had actually a couple of questions. Are we taking public comment tonight?

President Wilshire

We are not taking public comment tonight.
Alderwoman Lu

Okay. | just have two questions. | wanted to ask - so one of my Ward 6 residents asked about the increase and could
one of the doctors say what the increase in hospitalizations has been like percentage wise in the last week?

Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Health

We're getting the information.

President Wilshire

Oh, okay. They’re looking it up.

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 22
Alderwoman Lu

Okay, so I'll just go on to my other comment. | just don't understand why we wouldn't - So listening to the two sides, it
seems that some people feel like freedom is the right to go wherever they choose to go at any time and the people on
the other side say they have a right to be free of a mask anytime they want to be. | just don't see how we're going to
get a different response if we do this again kind of similarly to what we did in the past. | do feel that | don't understand
why we wouldn't change the protocols for dining in bars. | understand Dr. Storace you pointed out that people can
choose to go there or not but | don't think many people who we’re trying to convince feel that that's the difference or
that that that's relevant. I'm just concerned about whether we're going to do something that's effective. That's my
concern.

| had heard | been told that the rates went up 5% in the last, | don't know, three or four weeks. | just wondered if that's
correct and whether that's commensurate with the change, you know, the introduction of this. So I'm all set. Thank
you.

Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Health

Thank you. I'm not sure of the question. | do know that Stephanie had texted me and you might want to defer the
question to Dr. Stephanie regarding a hospitalization. She made a comment that regarding ER doctors as the
patients and switching them to different hospitals and she's hospital based so it's right up her alley.

| think the question that you're asking me about the restaurants and bars if I'm not mistaken, enforcement is a really
tough thing and | understand that. | think we as individuals, and one of Alderpeople — I’m not sure what the proper
term is — | just don’t want to offend anybody - said basically, you know, you walk in there and you’re not wearing a
mask, you can walk away and that's your freedom of choice to do that. If you decide that you think it's a risk and you
sit down, there's no way other than testing a person four days hence whether caught COVID or not. But in the fact of
going out somewhere depends on the setting, it depends on the number of people that are congested in an area,
depends on the load of virus that you get that converts you to COVID. So we know people can get in areas where
there might be COVID but there is a load within a 24 hour period that if you get high enough, and everybody's a little
bit different. It isn't so many (inaudible) one person or for another. So what happens is you can get in that way as
well.

So when it comes to going out, it is an imperfect world because | have yet to figure out how to eat and drink with my
mask on. So | don't mean that to belittle anybody but just as like humor, we have to use common Sense to say look |
take my mask here and people are on top of me. If I'm in a bar eating with people on top of me, this may not be a
good choice. Did that answer your question because I’m not sure what the questions was? Sorry about that.
Alderwoman Lu

Thank you. It did answer my question. Yeah it seems a lot of people can’t understand my questions, but | just had a
follow up if | could please.

Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Health

Sure.
Alderwoman Lu

Thank you. | understood better what | was trying to say to you but while you were talking. It seems like we’re — my
concern is that we're providing something so that our reasonable people who feel the way we do will be able to, |
guess, exercise their choices but what it doesn't seem to address what the problem is that we have is people who
won't wear a mask. People who are still going to be - it just seems that really all this is going to do is irritate a lot of
people but it's not going to incentivize masks and isn't that why we, you know, would come out here to vote for those.
That’s my concern, but thank you.

Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Health

| understand your concerns that are absolutely valid. In my world, in a perfect world, everybody would wear a mask.
Everybody would be thin and now we’re in stripes to look thinner. But we know (inaudible) just like Mr. O'Brien was
saying and | know he follows my advice all the time, but it would be great if we just said you know what we're in a
crisis here. It's World War Il. Everybody's jumping on the boat and going to fight but that's not the case.

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 23

Unfortunately, | wish it would be. | wish everybody would say you know what my New Year's resolution ahead of time
is I'm going to make the sacrifice to where the mask. It doesn't have to do about liberties or the Constitution. It has to
do with | want to protect and above my fellow citizens. | want to make sure that they're with me next year so that we
can party at a better time. That's all | can say but unfortunately not everybody raised probably think God the way |
look at think things.

Stephanie Wolf-Rosenblum, MD

This is Dr. Stephanie Wolf-Rosenblum. Thank you for our meeting and allowing me to speak. | failed to mention
before | reside at 47 Berkeley Street.

So in answer your question Alderman Lu, hospitalizations are up 12% and what the science of people becoming sick
with COVID is that they become sick and then after the first week is when they have an increase in complications and
death. So that's what we call a lagging indicator. So hospitalizations being up are likely to be followed by an increase
in deaths. That will put an additional strain on our hospitals. You've heard some information from Director Bagley
about the state in our hospitals. What | will tell you is I've had a personal conversation with the head of the
emergency department in one of the hospitals and what they said is that the reason people are being treated in the
waiting room and in the emergency room is because they're calling hospitals in other States. Ten different
possibilities and the answer they're getting is we're in the same boat you are. We're full. We can't help you.

Last year when COVID first surfaced and we didn't understand that we were going to have to live with this disease, we
shut things down. A lot of places, you Know, went into lockdown and businesses closed. That's not what we're
proposing here and we're not proposing anything that's permanent. What we're saying is that we are in crisis now and
that we know one of the ways to avoid the crisis of any one of us or our loved ones going to the hospital and dying
because the just isn't enough oxygen. There aren't enough respirators. There aren't enough doctors. There aren't
enough nurses. This is not theory. This is happening throughout the country and we don't want that to happen in
Nashua. If not everybody wears masks, and not every business enforces it, and people take heed to the fact that the
Board of Aldermen and the Board of Health have given this very serious consideration and are still recommending a
mask mandate, | sincerely believe and based on my discussions with people, | do believe we will have an increase.
Studies have shown that mask mandates do lead to an increase in use. It's not 100% but it can be enough to protect
us. Thank you.

President Wilshire

Thank you.

Chuck Cappetta, MD

Thank you President Wilshire. The discussion that Alderman Lu brought up was about we’re in it perhaps, maybe
that's a strong word, we already passed what the minority might be thinking about, okay, and what | mean by that is a
medical school over 40 years ago, you know, were taught that the patient is always right. Listen to your patient.
They'll tell you what's wrong with them and things like that. So once you graduated from med school you start training
and | remember to and my first job was down here in Nashua that every interaction | went with, | went into the room. |
was afraid when | said something that seemed to be opposed to what that patient was thinking about. I’d say, oh my
god, I'm gonna lose them as a patient. They're not gonna like me. They’re going to spread the rumor that Dr. is blah,
blah, blah and | have sleepless nights. | said, what did | do wrong? What did | do wrong? You know and yet | could
put my head on my pillow at night and say everything | talked about with the families, and to this day, parents who had
me over the years | always say first and foremost, don't listen to anything | tell you.

I'm telling you facts and giving you my medical opinion on how we think your family member could be treated but do |
expect them to perhaps listen to everything | say. So in those early days, | want them to go home and go do this, go
do that, etc, etc. and when they came back when they | found out they hadn't followed the rules that | had set up as
the doctor, | kind of said, Wow, | must not be doing my job right. | learned over time as a seasoned veteran now that |
am evidenced by the top of my head and the hair color is that, you know, | still say what I've said before but | don't get
caught up in the background noise. | say that nicely because people's value systems, people's emotions, people's
situations are different. So in my consultation with the family, we're going to have our private conversation, we're
going to go set up a care plan but as long as | can see it as patient centered care that's based on true information
they’re giving to me, I'm going to do my best abilities give them the facts that they need. | feel like I've done my job
and that's kind of what we're asking you here to do is we're hearing everybody's opinion but in the case of the Board
of Health here, we're just providing in our best knowledge science based and all of us three are scientists, you know,
and that we're just saying, we're just offering information that we feel is strongly going to protect and defend

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 24

everybody's ability to survive this pandemic. Will they listen, probably not? Not everybody but (inaudible) just like I'd
like to think everyone thinks what | do is important in my office but | Know for a while they may not follow through but
again, once they leave, I'm still gonna defend them. |'m still gonna work hard to try to maybe turn them around on a
vaccine. Not so much COVID but any other day I'm talking about whatever, you know, but I'm gonna just swallow my
pride if you will and just say all I'm here for is to serve you and that's what the Board of Health is doing. So that's why,
again, | can | employ you. Let's not get caught up in what people think about us. How it may be perceived, you know,
but just say hey we're doing the right thing for everybody and that's how we should think about this. Thank you.

Unidentified Male Speaker

Ask the public what they want.

President Wilshire

Stop speaking out or we'll just disconnect Zoom.
Alderman Klee

Thank you, Madam President. While we've been sitting here and as my colleagues have spoken and as the experts
have spoken, | have watched Zoom and I've watched people making faces. I've seen people putting fingers down,
people putting fingers up. These are people who are adults. These are people who we call grownups. | pray they
have no children but that is who they are because they're acting like children. If we're going to act like children, maybe
we shouldn't have any rules.

But | think Alderman Jette spoke it perfectly. Just because there are people, a group of people who say, | don't want
any rules doesn't mean we don't have them. Society needs rules. This is not a rule. This is a four week - or actually |
should say a one month ask. That's all it is. Is there a provision in there that says hey, you know, we're going to
extend it? Not really. It says that we’ve got to come back and vote. We're gonna have a new Board; we're going to
have different times; and we're going to have different numbers. | don't think it's a lot to ask of the public. So for
those who feel that they can act like children, and put up signs, and put up fingers, and make funny faces like a five
year old, please don't go to the restaurants because | don't want to sit with you.

The bottom line is there are a lot of elderly people in my Ward who can't go out of their homes. Elderly people who
have a limited life. Maybe its 10 years that they have but they have a limited life and I'm going to ask them to give up
one more day, one more week, one more month, and you can't give up a month. Shame on you. That's all | have to
say thank you.

Alderman Clemons

Thank you, Madam President. | have to say | turned my camera off so | don't make the faces that Alderman Klee was
just talking about because I'm frustrated with this conversation. To me, it's a matter of principle. | don't believe in
mandates. | will never vote for a mandate. | understand the frustration that people have and | understand the faces
and the gestures and that kind of thing because to me it's especially annoying to me because we had vaccines for
now for almost a year. The Doctors can correctly if I'm wrong, but the majority of the folks who are ended up on
ventilators in the hospital are those who are unvaccinated and | find that that is their problem and not mine. That's
where | come in with the frustration. For me, I'm going no on this for those two reasons.

Alderman Dowd
| don't know which way this is going to go but | asked Director Bagley. We have three meetings if this passes in the
time limit of this. Could you come back to each one of the Board of Aldermen meetings in that timeframe and give us

an update?

Bobbie Bagley, Director of Public Health

Yes Sir.

President Wilshire

Further discussion motion before us for final passage.

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 25

Bobbie Bagley, Director of Public Health and Community Services

President Wilshire did you want the number. | know that Alderwoman Lu asked for the availability of the hospital beds
so | just pulled this number up. This information can be found on the State's website under COVID-19.

Unidentified Female Speaker

Let the public speak.

President Wilshire

Jeff, can you the people on Zoom please? Sorry.

Bobbie Bagley, Director of Public Health and Community Services

Yes, so this information can be found on the State's website COVID-19.nh.go. For our 193 card to the hospital group
where there's 13 hospitals. Right now they have 221 individuals that are confirmed with COVID that are hospitalized.
Three that are people they are still looking to get their results. The ICU bed availability is 2.8%, which is low. Total
number of staff hospital beds available is at 10.6%. So most of these hospitals are at capacity and as | mentioned in
our call with the hospitals on Monday, both of them reported very high census. They were holding patients in the ED.
They had a high number of positive individual patients with COVID in house. Most of the ICU beds were full. In fact,
one hospital had all the ICU beds full and the other had to open up a secondary ICU unit. So our hospitals are being
taxed and this is right now - remember the graph that | showed — we’re in a decrease, right?

What we're asking for this next month is for coverage to be in place to keep those numbers down because if the
hospitals are already stressed where we're in the downward slant right now, when those numbers go back up, this is
going to be worse for the hospitals. Individuals that are there in the ICU beds, the majority of them are COVID
patients, but some of them are not. It has already been explained that individuals that have COVID if they're in ICU
beds, they're going to be there longer, which means there's no bed. God forbid | got into an accident tonight, there's
no bed for me in these hospitals and this is what we're talking about. We still have other things that are going on.
One of our hospitals talked about people that are having diabetic emergencies, stroke, cardiovascular has gone up.
As soon as that snow hits, you see more cardiovascular things, more heart things going on. You can't stress these
hospitals any more than their own stressed. We talked about the fact that this is statewide. Dr. Stephanie Wolf-
Rosenblum talked about calling around so that mean we’re even call in hospitals beyond out of our State -
Massachusetts, and there are no beds. So again, we're just we're asking for something that will help all of us

Unidentified Female Speaker

Stop firing the nurses.

Bobbie Bagley, Director of Public Health and Community Services

The kids are going to go on break. They've got to come back to school. We don't want to see the cases go up in the
schools either.

Unidentified Male Speaker

Vote no.

Bobbie Bagley, Director of Public Health and Community Services

This measure of putting the mask on if it's too slow and decrease the amount of transmission that's going to be in the
community because people are going to gather together for the holidays. People are traveling. We know that there's
going to be more virus in our communities. We want to just stop the transmission of the virus in this time period and
we’re asking for your help to get that done.

President Wilshire

Alderman O’Brien, is there anyone else on Zoom?

Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 26

Alderman O’Brien

No, nobody from the Board.

President Wilshire

Okay, any further discussion in the chamber?

Alderman Caron

Thank you. | wasn't going to speak but | have a question though to the Board. How fast are you going to get this if
this is approved? How fast are you going to get this information out to the local businesses and get signs to them so
that they can get them up? That's number one.

Enforcing can be a real problem because | know it was the last time we had this. Unfortunately, people who don't
want to mask are not going to mask and they don't care. | understand what Alderman Clemons said that the people
who are in the hospitals that have COVID are unvaccinated but unfortunately, they are taking up space of people who
need those hospital beds because they have other issues. If they had just gotten vaccinated or put a mask on, we
wouldn't be in this predicament. | don't like to wear a mask but | don't go out of my house without a mask on. | know
that some of the grocery stores - all their staff wear masks. You're talking about an eight hour day. We're out there
maybe, you know, an hour and a half. But | think it's important that as a community and as a society, we should be
doing the right thing for our community. It's nothing personal to the members of the Board. We make that decision
based on what we feel is right for our community, whether you vote yes or no on this. It's your decision based on what
you feel is important to your community.

Now | thought about this all day since this came to us because I'm thinking a month how are we going to do this? The
more | hear and the more I’m listening, | just feel that it's the right thing to do. As Dr. Storace said, what happened to
society doing the right thing for their community? It's not about you. It's about what you need to do for the people
around you whether it's your family, your friends, or even strangers. So whatever the outcome is, we've made that
decision and those people as Alderman Klee mentioned that are putting up signs, and yelling, and screaming, you are
not helping yourself. You are totally being disrespectful. So I've changed my mind and | will be voting for this, this
evening. Thank you.

President Wilshire

Further discussion? Seeing none, would the Clerk please call the roll?

Unidentified Male Speaker

Public comment.

Unidentified Male Speaker

Speak at the voting booth.

Unidentified Female Speaker

Public comment.

President Wilshire

We're not having public comment this evening. Jeff would you please mute people on Zoom. Jeff?
Jeff Poehnert
| could use some help.

Alderman O’Brien

I’m helping you.