A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, April 25, 2017, at 7:34 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 Richard A. Dowd led in the Pledge to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 11 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Clemons, Alderman Deane,
Alderman Dowd, Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja were recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
The thing | wanted to talk about tonight is, of course, the budget which is on your desk. First is obvious. | am
introducing this second meeting in April as opposed to the first meeting in May. Therefore, two or three weeks
earlier. The point of that is to give the Budget Committee a little bit more time to consider it. Having served on
the Budget Committee, myself, | know how difficult a period of time that can be. This will give you two more
weeks so you can spend a few less consecutive nights at city hall. Possibly, next year | would be able to do it
two weeks earlier to give you an additional month from the way it was last year.
As an overview, Mr. President, the budget before you attempts to accomplish a few things. First, making the
significant educational step forward of expanding our kindergarten from half day to full day. At the current time,
5 of the 12 elementary schools have full day kindergarten. This would expand full day kindergarten to all 12
schools. | think this accomplishes a number of important objectives.
First of all, for the children of our community, the studies and research in this area shows very conclusively that
full day kindergarten has long term beneficial effects for kids throughout the remainder of their lives: better
results, lower dropout rates, higher grades, more success in life.
Secondly as an economic development issue, Nashua is one of not that many communities in New Hampshire
that still has only half-day kindergarten. Seventy percent of the kids in New Hampshire go to all day
kindergarten. This has been identified as an important objective at the state level by our new Governor
Sununu who is expanding and encouraging all communities to go to full day kindergarten. When people
consider a community in which to live or a business considers a community in which locate, it is one of the first
questions that come up. What are the schools like? Most people from other parts of the country would be
surprised by a community that only has half-day kindergarten.
We can accomplish this pursuant to the budget that was proposed by Superintendent Connie Brown, who
adopted a very imaginative creative approach which really accomplished the all-day kindergarten through the
reassignment of teachers and slight increases in class sizes at some of the elementary grades and the
secondary grades to accomplish this without a lot of extra money. Two of the things she cut, those being the
Clearway High School program, which she proposed bringing in-house, and the two teaching coaches, the
school board restored those cuts as being counter-productive to the educational mission of the city. The
budget that | propose would follow those recommendations.
The second thing that | think that the budget does is it helps us hold the line, maintain the quality of services
and the level of services in the face of a serious law enforcement and public health emergency, which is the
opioid crisis. We have a number of employees across our major departments working on this problem. The
firefighters are, of course, involved in responding to OD calls with narcan, and they have been doing that for a
couple of years now. The police department is involved in making drug arrests, fighting the illegal drug traffic,
and the school department is involved in not only educating kids but dealing with significant social problems
which have resulted from addiction from families that are deeply affected from kids who are not getting enough
to eat and suffering other ill effects of addiction or the close association with people who are involved with
illegal substances or substance abuse. They are doing a very good job.
