Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 5/9/2017 - P13
Board of Aldermen — 5/09/17 Page 13
Alderman Dowd
| withdraw.
MOTION WITHDRAWN
Alderman Siegel
| want to point out that | have no intention of restricting the comment period further than it is already. We often
times go well beyond 15 minutes. | think it is valuable for this Board to go beyond 15 minutes because very
often we have had people speak about issues which are very germane, and which we do want to act on. We
have a Substandard Living Conditions Committee which exists because of public comment that happened at
the final public comment period which, by the way, was added by legislation that didn’t exist before. This was
a creation of the Board and this idea, again, that we are restricting free speech, | just don’t buy into that at all.
Maybe it’s the fact that it’s an odd year or something, | don’t know. It’s just unfortunate that it’s been
misinterpreted as somehow a restriction on free speech. Our staff has to transcribe this stuff too. They often
have to transcribe things that are germane to the Board which may seem torturous but that is what we do.
This, | can’t disagree more that this is some restriction on free speech. We have restrictions on free speech in
here. I’m sorry, you can’t make that argument unless you then say | can go and if | opened up a pet salon, |
can discuss that and | can campaign for office and | can waive signs. Unless you are willing to accept that also
then you really not for free speech. Let’s keep in mind what we already restrict.
Alderman Moriarty
If you are at your wits end and your health is at risk and for some reason you don’t know where the ER is, the
fire department has the reputation of the place to go when you need someone to keep you alive. By analogy,
the Board of Aldermen, my issue isn’t that we know what's the subject matter is the jurisdiction of the Board,
but that the public doesn’t necessarily know what the jurisdiction of this Board. | like the idea of the public
being welcomed. If they are at their wits end and they want to complain about something and they need to talk
about something and they aren’t sure who to go to or what they do, they go to the Board of Aldermen. The
President in the past has done a good in saying we can’t cover that. You want to go to the Planning Board.
You can’t do this, you want to do that. That’s the perspective of the public that they Know and they will be able
to know that they can come here.
Alderman Clemons
I’d like to comment on the restriction of freedom of speech and say that what | originally said was that itis a
further restriction on speech. If this passes, we will further restrict people’s freedom of speech which we
already do for appropriate reasons. This being an inappropriate reason in my opinion.
Alderman Lopez
| still don’t feel it’s inappropriate. | think we tell the public that they have to sit here and watch us talk the entire
meeting so we can get things done from a practical perspective. Some people take longer to figure out how to
say certain things. We've already made decisions over who can speak. Everyone here is predisposed to
somebody who can get to the point faster. That’s not everybody. We talk about how we are representing the
people of Nashua, but we’re not considering everybody who wants to speak and ensuring that the period of
public comment after the Board of Aldermen meeting is actually something that somebody can have a
resolution. We're not protecting the other people who want to speak as well. If we say we have a 15 minute
period of public comment and we let a couple from Florida show up and spend 9 of it talking about an activity
that we can’t, we didn’t give our President any tools to say, unfortunately that is not under our jurisdiction so |
would appreciate you going to this place or that place. We're not setting up any ability to do that. | think that’s
a mistake. We should be providing effective guidance to the public.