Board of Aldermen — 12/12/17 Page 7
off of the drugs entirely and not be repeat offenders. It won’t be 100% successful, none of the programs ever
are, but it will certainly reduce the number that we see coming back.
Alderman Lebrun
At this time, it appears to me from the discussion there appears to be some loose ends to this entire thing. It
doesn’t seem that it has received proper and complete vetting. At this time, | would be voting no.
Alderman Moriarty
The Mayor is certainly right, and so is Alderman Dowd, about the idea of a recovery coach and the utility of it.
The whole organization — Alcoholics Anonymous Step 12 is based on that very fact. There are hundreds of
recovery coaches that work for free in Nashua. They do that for their own sake, to keep themselves; by helping
someone who is also in recovery, one keeps yourself in recovery, it keeps yourself sober. So the idea that
there’s no alternative is not quite true. The most important thing is beds, so I’ve spoken to — personally, | know
a few people that are in opioid recovery and the main thing is beds. So that when you decide that you want to
recover and you need a place to go, once you're out after 30 days then you need what AA would call a
sponsor. Of course, AA Step 7 states that all groups have to be self-supporting on their own and neither solicit
nor receive funds. So even if the city wanted to contribute money to AA, they couldn't.
I’m a little ambivalent because | completely agree with the purpose. And this organization, Revive Recovery,
from people that I’ve asked, they have a good reputation. They don’t take private insurance which, for
whatever reason, tends to indicate it’s a for-profit organization. But you don’t know; these types of
organizations, they all make money, so I’m not assuming that they’re out to make a lot of money. They’re
doing good work. There are other organizations like Revive Recovery in the area; Aware Recovery in Bedford,
Keystone Hall, of course, could use a little bit of money, and there’s GateHouse. So of those recovery-specific
organizations that are out there, they’re all equally justifiably able to receive the funds that we’re presently sole-
sourcing to Revive Recovery, without a competitive bid. We have other nonprofits in general that come in for
the whole CDBG process. Is the City of Nashua going to get in the business of hiring staff that do drug
addiction recovery? Are we going to get in the business of hiring people at the Nashua Children’s Home? Why
not give $40,000 non-sole sourced to the Nashua Children’s Home? Maybe I’m not clear, but | am in support of
the whole concept of a sponsor: the concept of a sponsor is to the very heart and soul of long-term recovery,
without a doubt. But the mechanism and the process by which this organization was selected, they may be
good people — and | think they are — but | think it should go, since it’s government-taxed dollars — and
interestingly enough, just this morning | spent a couple of hours taking Acquisitions 101 training and the idea of
sole sourced justification; you have to jump through hoops to do it. And the fact that we’re spending tax dollars,
we need to be careful about this. | would rather this be competitive and we consider other organizations; they
bid on it and then the money will go out that way, or they come in through CDBG. So today, I'll be voting
against this.
Alderman O’Brien
My comments are not to convince anybody on their particular vote; I’m not meaning that at all. But being at
both the budget hearing on this matter and the finance committee, | wish you were there because | think you
would have gotten a lot more information. But the information that | received proved that we're basically
building a puzzle and we’re fitting in particular pieces into this puzzle to get to the goal to help our people who
are affected by this type of crisis and to get them clean again. Now, in the budget hearing where the three
people showed up, | was very impressed with their professionalism and the information they gave us. But |
think they used an example of a place in Providence where they had many more than the one that we’re
seeking. This one person coming in is sort of like the Dutch boy with the dam, but you’ve got to start
somewhere. The problem is here, the problem is now, and it’s not going away. So in order to stem the tide, |
think we should support this, and the reason is because we’re letting people go through the process, we’re
getting them somewhat cleaned out, but they need the coach. And it was explained at the budget meeting that
for a person to get on the road to recovery, such as to figure out different daily types of things — what bus to
take to go get a job; are you working; or things that are happening in the work — and instead of getting into a
