A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia Piecuch; Alderman Don LeBrun led in the Pledge to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 13 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Siegel and Alderman
McGuinness were recorded absent. Alderman Cookson participated via teleconference at 8:01 p.m. and
joined the meeting at 8:20 p.m.
His Honor, Mayor Jim Donchess, and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
A number of things have happened since the last meeting, but before | get to that | wanted to say that I’m very
glad that Alderman Dean is here to be recognized for his long service to the city. And in addition to the
resolution, | do have a letter and one of our new keys to the city, which | will be able to read later.
We had the holiday stroll on Saturday which was a great success. The estimates range from 20,000-30,000
people that showed up. I’ve heard both secondhand and firsthand that many of the businesses did very well.
For example, | went into Wine Not at their new location right down here and she was saying that they had
1,000-1,500 people come through on Saturday and they did a lot of business. And | think others did as well.
People had a very good time; Santa was really in fine form, so | think the whole night went very well. We need
to thank Great American Downtown and many, many people and organizations that worked to make that
possible.
In addition, Harbor Homes Partnership for Successful Living had their annual Thanksgiving dinner a week ago
today. They had Governor Sununu, Senator Hassan and others, including myself, serving, and it was overall a
really good event.
The other thing that happened is a week ago Friday there was the one-year anniversary ceremonies for the
city’s Safe Stations Program. We had ceremonies at all six of the fire stations, plus several other locations
throughout the city. Those occurred simultaneously at 9:00 a.m. Which leads me to the resolution on the
agenda, under New Business, that | am introducing to provide for grant funding for a so-called “Peer Recovery
Coach.” Everyone has worked very hard together to make Safe Stations a success. NFR, our fire fighters,
have played a critical role; Harbor Homes Partnership for Successful Living is now picking people up within an
average of, | think this past month, within 10 minutes. Of course, AMR is on top of it and provides very good
analytics and data regarding all of the people who report to safe stations. So far, in the first year, almost 1,100
people have reported. OD medical calls are down 24% from a year ago, which is a significant increase. We
know that nationally the opioid addiction tide is still rising to some degree; therefore, a reduction in the number
of OD’s is, | think, significant. And we’re tracking what’s going on very carefully. There is an overseeing group
that meets every two weeks to talk through the details of what’s happening with safe stations, and those
include myself, NFR, the ambulance company AMR, Partnership for Successful Living and their various
organizations — Keystone Hall and others involved in treatment, a new organization called Revive Recovery,
our hospitals, and some other people.
One trend that AMR has documented is that of the people reporting to safe stations now, in the last three or
four months, around half and in the last month, the month of November, a majority are people who are coming
in for at least the second time. This is not totally surprising because substance use disorder or addiction is a
very serious brain disease, once you get into the details of exactly what it is. For most people to achieve long-
term recovery, it takes more than one — | think the average is at least three attempts. It’s not very surprising
that people who have tried once and slipped out of recovery come back again. It has been shown that the
chances of success for long-term recovery, for a person who is seeking that and who is in treatment, are
considerably improved by having someone to work with on a daily or weekly basis; either a friend or very close
mentor, or a so-called Peer Recovery Coach. In order to keep more people in recovery, we need in Nashua a
stronger network of peer recovery coaches and a stronger response. | think we’ve done a good job and we’ve
