Board of Aldermen — 12/12/17 Page 9
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
Mayor Donchess, my understanding is that this is a one-time funding to get the ball rolling and get the position
in place, anticipating that in the next year they will be able to develop a budget that will support this position.
But it’s kind of helping them get their start-up together. Is that correct?
Mayor Donchess
That’s correct. The context with this is we have an evolving situation where we're trying to react as quickly as
possible to new circumstances. In the first year, we had 1,200 people report to a safe station and be directed
into treatment, mostly through the Partnership for Successful Living. They’re either going to outpatient,
intensive inpatient, intensive outpatient, regular outpatient; they go into residential treatment at Keystone Hall,
or other treatment avenues. But several things have evolved: First of all, the number of people who are
coming back for more than one time to a safe station has definitely climbed, to the point where it’s about half of
the 80-100 people who are reporting every month. This isn’t a big surprise because it takes — according to the
experts — an average of three attempts to get into long-term recovery. But this is something that jumps out at
you when you're looking at this all the time. One gap in all of this is that when someone goes to Keystone Hall,
for example, which is the partnership for Harbor Homes, and they complete their 28- or 30-day inpatient
program, there is no further service. Not that they don’t care, not that they would like to help, but they don’t
have the capability; they don’t have the resources. So a person is just released to the world. A person who is
one month into sobriety is still suffering severely from a serious brain disease. If you listen to the experts, you
know that it takes a year to two years to recover to a fully normal thought process. So after a month, many
people are still confused; they have difficulty. They still have a lot of strong urges to relapse, and may have
trouble thinking through daily decisions. Where do | get the bus? How do | get a bus pass? Where can | look
for a job? How do | find an apartment? Because if the person goes right back to their previous circumstance, if
they go live with the derelicts that they were living with before, the chances of relapse are very, very high.
Therefore, based upon an evaluation and kind of an approach, adopted not just by me but by everyone that’s
involved in Safe Stations — the fire department, Harbor Homes, AMR, the hospitals, as well as others —
seemed like the best way to fill a gap in the short term, to try to respond to a changing situation. We do have
still 30-some fatalities every year, this year. Even though overdoses are down by 25% or so, there still, in
2017, will be over 35 fatalities. Therefore, it seemed that the necessity to respond quickly with a pilot program,
working with the most successful and really only ongoing recovery program in Nashua, made sense, rather
than to try to bog this down with months of red tape and review and RFPs and all of that. The idea is to
respond quickly and effectively to a situation that we see evolving, and which is changing on a fairly rapid
basis.
President McCarthy
The motion is for final passage. Would the clerk please call a roll?
A viva voce roll call was taken which resulted as follows:
Yea: Ald. Wilshire, Ald. Tencza, Ald. Cookson
Ald. Dowd, Ald. Caron, Ald. Schoneman,
Ald. Melizzi-Golja, Ald. O’Brien, Ald. Lopez
Ald. McCarthy 10
Nay: Ald. McGuinness
Ald. Lebrun
Ald. Moriarty 3
MOTION CARRIED
Resolution R-17-160 declared duly adopted.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS — ORDINANCES — None
