Search

The Organizational Meeting of the Board of Aldermen for 2018-2019 was held Sunday, January
7, 2018, following the termination of the Inauguration Exercises for the 109th City Government
in the Nashua High School North Auditorium.

City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch called the Assembly to order at 12:40 p.m.

The roll call was taken with 15 members of the Board of Aldermen present.

His Honor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in
attendance.

City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch entertained nominations for President of the Board of Aldermen
for 2018-2019.

ALDERMAN WILSHIRE NOMINATED ALDERMAN-AT-LARGE BRIAN S. MCCARTHY

MOTION BY ALDERMAN WILSHIRE TO CLOSE THE NOMINATIONS
MOTION CARRIED

VOTE ON ELECTION OF ALDERMAN-AT-LARGE BRIAN S. MCCARTHY TO THE OFFICE
OF PRESIDENCY OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN FOR 2018-2019 BY VOICE VOTE
MOTION CARRIED

City Clerk Piecuch declared Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy duly elected President of the
Board of Aldermen for 2018-2019.

Oath of Office administered by Corporation Counsel.
City Clerk Piecuch stepped down and President McCarthy presided.

President McCarthy called for nominations for Vice President of the Board of Aldermen for
2018-2019.

ALDERWOMAN MELIZZI-GOLJA NOMINATED ALDERMAN-AT-LARGE LORI WILSHIRE
FOR VICE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN FOR 2018-2019

MOTION BY ALDERWOMAN MELIZZI-GOLJA TO CLOSE THE NOMINATIONS
MOTION CARRIED

VOTE ON ELECTION OF ALDERMAN-AT-LARGE LORI WILSHIRE TO THE VICE
PRESIDENCY OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN FOR 2018-2019 BY VOICE VOTE
MOTION CARRIED

President McCarthy declared Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire duly elected Vice President of
the Board of Aldermen for 2018-2019.

Oath of Office administered by Corporation Counsel.

Organizational Mtg. - 1/7/18 Page 2

President McCarthy called on the City Clerk to distribute the envelopes containing the numbers
for the drawing of the seating in the Aldermanic Chamber.

Seat #1 - Reserved for Vice President Wilshire

Seat #15 - Reserved for President McCarthy

Seating was drawn in the following manner:

Seat # 2 Alderman Gidge

Seat # 3 Alderman Harriott-Gathright

Seat # 4 Alderman Dowd

Seat #5 Alderman Klee

Seat # 6 Alderman-at-Large Laws

Seat #7 Alderman Lopez

Seat # 8 Alderman Caron

Seat #9 Alderwoman-at-Large Kelly

Seat # 10 Alderman Jette

Seat # 11 Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja

Seat # 12 Alderman-at-Large Tencza

Seat # 13 Alderman Schmidt

Seat # 14 Alderman-at-Large O’Brien

President McCarthy called for Nominations for three members of the Board of Health for
2018-2019.

ALDERMAN WILSHIRE NOMINATED DR. ANTHONY STORACE, DR. CHARLES T.
CAPPETTA, AND DR. STEPHANIE WOLF-ROSENBLUM AS MEMBERS OF THE BOARD
OF HEALTH FOR THE ENSUING TWO YEARS

Hearing no additional nominations, President McCarthy declared the nominations closed.
VOTE ON ELECTION OF DR. ANTHONY STORACE, DR. CHARLES T. CAPPETTA, AND
DR. STEPHANIE WOLF-ROSENBLUM AS MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH FOR

THE ENSUING TWO YEARS BY VOICE VOTE
MOTION CARRIED

Organizational Mtg. - 1/7/18 Page 3

President McCarthy declared Dr. Storace, Dr. Cappetta and Dr. Wolf-Rosenblum duly elected
as members of the Board of Health for the ensuing two years.

Oath of Office administered by Corporation Counsel.

President McCarthy presented his Committee Assignments to the members of the Board of
Aldermen.

ALDERMAN WILSHIRE MOVED THAT THE COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS BY THE
PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN BE ACCEPTED BY VOICE VOTE
MOTION CARRIED

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN

President McCarthy

| want to first thank all of the members of the Board for their confidence in my leadership, and
returning me to the Presidency. In a few minutes, the real work will begin. | was asked, while
we were lining up in the hall, by Alderwoman Kelly if | remembered my first inauguration. | said
that | did, and | can tell you that my first official act as an Alderman was to move to close
nominations for the Board of Health. It occurred to me, since we had that discussion in the hall,
that while | remember the inauguration, | don’t know where it was, because on that day, this
would have been a sandpit full of snow. So I’m pretty sure we didn’t have it here; | would have
remembered that.

But it points out some of what Nashua has been through in the last few decades, with building
not one but two of the best high schools in New England; renovating most of our dozen
elementary schools and all three of our middle schools to various levels; building new fire
stations; building police stations; upgrading all of our infrastructure, to the point where we have
the city that we have today. We've made tremendous strides, but there is still a lot of work to
do. We are at the turning point of being a great little city, and that, | think, is where the work
needs to be concentrated. We're going to need to rely much more on our downtown over the
coming decades; to support Nashua and to be its center for growth. And | think we need to deal
with those issues. We're going to need to deal with the issues of how do we compensate our
employees fairly. You heard in Mayor Donchess’ remarks all of the fine work that’s done by our
public safety officials, our public works officials, and everybody else who works for the city. We
need to keep that going, and we need to make sure that stays there.

We need to do all of that, and we need to do it in the constraint where the State keeps pushing
expenses down to us. We now carry $15 million in pension costs that we didn’t have eight years
ago, and that is paying for other than year-to-year cost, which is about $6 million or $8 million.
We're paying three times what we ought to for pensions, and we have no way to collect that,
except out of our budget, which is constrained at this point by inflation to grow at a little over 1%
per year. This should be an easy challenge and I’m sure you're all up to it. | look forward to
working with you all.

REMARKS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN - None

Organizational Mtg. - 1/7/18 Page 4
ADJOURNMENT

ALDERMAN WILSHIRE MOVED FOR ADJOURNMENT OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING OF
THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN OF JANUARY 7, 2018
MOTION CARRIED

The meeting was declared adjourned by President McCarthy at 12:54 p.m.

Attest: Patricia D. Piecuch, City Clerk

ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN

JANUARY 7, 2018

immediately Following
Inauguration Exercises NHS - North Auditorium

1,

2.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

CITY CLERK PATRICIA PIECUCH CALLS ASSEMBLY TO ORDER
PLEDGE TO THE FLAG LED BY CORPORATION COUNSEL STEVEN A. BOLTON
ROLL CALL

CITY CLERK PATRICIA PIECUCH ENTERTAINS NOMINATIONS FOR
PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN FOR 2018/2019

CORPORATION COUNSEL STEVEN A. BOLTON ADMINISTERS THE OATH OF OFFICE
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN FOR 2018/2019

PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN ENTERTAINS NOMINATIONS
FOR VICE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN FOR 2018/2019

CORPORATION COUNSEL STEVEN A. BOLTON ADMINISTERS THE OATH OF OFFICE
TO THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN FOR 2018/2019

DRAWING OF ALDERMANIC SEATING

PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN CALLS FOR NOMINATIONS FOR THREE
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH

Dr. Anthony Storace, 17 Cameron Drive, Nashua
Dr. Charles T. Cappetta, 129 Farley Road, Hollis
Dr. Stephanie Wolf-Rosenblum, 47 Berkeley Street, Nashua

CORPORATION COUNSEL STEVEN A. BOLTON ADMINISTERS THE OATH OF OFFICE
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH FOR 2018/2019

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN
REMARKS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN

ADJOURNMENT

SIEMENS
Information, Qualifications, and Experience

Siemens ITS History

Siemens Industry is a division of Siemens AG. Siemens Industry, ‘

Inc. (SII) began operations October 1, 1979. With nearly 50,000 =>
1

U.S. employees, the company is unmatched in the US. © = | wi

ae ’ ; ' Wi 2

marketplace with its products, services and combined solution = | Ww
offerings. 2 = = oy
i ; w
e | s \ &\ex
Siemens acquired Automatic Signal/Eagle Signal Corporation in fi TT} \h' = TA

1997, Gardner Transportation Systems in 2000, and Republic

ITS, a U.S. leader in streetlight and traffic signal equipment installation, maintenance, and service in
2010 to enhance its presence in the intelligent traffic solutions (ITS) market in the USA. With these
business acquisitions, along with our extensive dealer network, Siemens Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS)
business unit has the ability to solve streetlight and traffic management problems throughout the
country and around the world.

Siemens ITS Locations

Siemens ITS is headquartered in Austin, Texas at 9225 Bee Cave Rd, Building B, Ste 101. We currently
employ 90 employees located in our Austin facility with an additional 200 in field offices around the
country. Engineering of Intelligent Traffic System solutions, including the development of associated
Intellectual Property (software products) are produced at our Austin headquarters. Siemens ITS also has
a manufacturing facility in Marion, KY where our traffic controllers are made. Additionally, Siemens has
an office in New Hampshire at 66 21 E Pearl St, Suite 2, Nashua, NH and employs about 30 employees
in the state. Our project office is located at 8 Progress Rd, Billerica, MA 01821.

Our Successes

Siemens’ project history completing group procurements for streetlight retrofits in New England is
strong. Over the last 3 years, we’ve completed the installation of over 61,000 streetlights at a combined
project value of approximately $25 million. This provides a strong base of recent, relevant experience
from which we can draw. References for similar projects are provided in the Comparable Projects
section.

CDM Smith (Audit Partner)

Siemens has chosen CDM Smith as our partner for the GIS Audit

and reconciliation with the Eversource billing inventory. Siemens

and CDM Smith have a long-standing relationship, and together Founded apap

ered Peels: ci

have completed several large streetlight audits, including
Manchester and Derry, NH and approximately 10 communities in
Massachusetts and Connecticut. CDM Smith will support this
project from its office located in Manchester, NH that includes

ern i]

es |
og Petar)

engineering, GIS, IT and management consulting staff. TE
Peisaa tlie
Tar i)
CDM Smith has been providing GIS services to the City of Nashua iene
for nearly 20 years. During that time, CDM Smith has worked in eet en ?]
fra Re te

the following areas:

* Supporting the architecture of the City’s GIS system and geodatabase

9225 Bee Cave Rd rr WW. Siemens. usa.coni
Building B, Ste 101 512-837-8000
Austin, TX 78733 Page 9

A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Monday, December 23, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.

President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan K. Lovering recorded.

Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan K. Lovering; Alderman Ben Clemons led in the Pledge to the Flag.
President Wilshire

Before | ask the Clerk to take the roll, Alderwoman Shoshanna Kelly is participating by telephone
and under the terms of the State law that allows her to do that, she needs to explain why she can’t

attend, if she can hear us, and who she is with, if anyone.

Alderwoman Kelly stated the reason she could not attend, confirmed that she could hear the proceedings,
and stated who was present with her.

Alderwoman Kelly

Yes | am out of town, | am by myself and | can hear you.

President Wilshire

Acknowledged that those present could hear Alderwoman Kelly as well.

The roll call was taken with 15 members of the Board of Aldermen present. Alderwoman Kelly was not in
attendance but participated in the meeting via telecommunication.

Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.

REMARKS BY THE MAYOR

Mayor Donchess

Well first it is two days short of Christmas and we have passed Hanukah so | wanted to wish everyone, all the
members of the Board of the Aldermen and their families and all of our citizens a Happy Holiday Season. City
Hall will, of course, be closed on Wednesday, and will be open the remainder of the week. Again, | hope
everybody has a wonderful Holiday Season.

| wanted to thank Alderman Tom Lopez today for holding the Vigil for the Homeless, which he has done a
number of years now. A group of people gathered out in front of City Hall including some of you to recognize
the struggle that those who are unfortunate in our community are going through and letting them know that
people are thinking about them and we are working on trying to make their lives better.

We've got a number of things on the Agenda tonight Madam President so | will try to be brief and | will address
my remarks to a couple of the things on the Agenda that | have reservations about which | have expressed in
the past to the Budget Committee in which for the reasons | will explain, | don’t think should be approved.
Those are two contracts that the Police Department has proposed that you approved. The first is one having to
do with civilian employees, lawyers, IT people and others; the other is the Uniformed Supervisors.

| view the Mayor’s job as one which involves looking at the fiscal health of the City and trying to propose
measures and make recommendations to you, the Board of Aldermen, who make ultimate financial decisions to
understand the budget, understand the numbers, look at the future, project where | think the budget and the
finances of the City are going and propose to you measures and steps which | think are in the best interest of
everyone, including our employees who work very hard and our taxpayers who also work very hard and have to
pay the bills. | think our job is to look at all of the City’s needs and take the big picture.

Board of Aldermen 12-23-2019 Page 2

Now a subject that we have discussed a number of times in the past is the health costs for City employees.
These costs this year are budgeted to go up 11% from last year. That is a $3 million dollar increase and the
projections suggest that next fiscal year, healthcare costs will go up another 8.6%. Now when you put those
two, the 11% this year and the 8.6% next year together, that is roughly a 20% increase in healthcare costs. For
a City employee making $60,000.00 with a family plan, that is about a 10% increase in compensation Because
a family costs about $2,500.00 this year, so over a two year period you would see about a $5,000.00 increase,
hence nearly for a $60,000.00 employee | guess that is a 8% increase in compensation over two years. Fora
$50,000.00 employee a 10%.

This is a cost item that we have discussed quite a bit; we have discussed it in great detail at the time of the
budget last spring. We had Ms., Kleiner and the consultant for the City do a lengthy presentation to the Budget
Committee in October with a whole series of slides discussing all of the ins and outs of the healthcare problem
and making recommendations, all of which we are following in order to try and control costs. The problem with
a $6 million dollar increase in a single line item is that it puts a lot of pressure, not only on services but on taxes.
So $6 million dollars equates to 3% increase in the tax rate; the one line item. So we will struggle, we did
struggle last year and we will struggle, when | say last year — in our current budge. We will struggle next year in
terms of trying to meet that one additional cost plus all of the other costs that go up and pay employees and
meet all the City’s needs.

| have said that | don’t think, under these circumstances, while we are still in the midst of these rapidly rising
costs, that we should approve labor contracts for our employees, regardless of how good they are. They are
good, they work hard, but everybody in Nashua works hard, including those who pay the bills. | have said that |
don’t think we should approve contracts which include raises above the cost of living which is 2%; 2% a year.
Now | was approached just in the last couple of days by someone who said, “You are kidding me”. When the
City’s costs are going up as much as they are, 8%, 10% over two years, based on wages, you know for the
health care, you are willing to pay the cost of living, | think you should try to tell our hardworking employees that
we’ve just given them an 8% or 10% raise and try to save off the cost of living.

Well in my judgement we want to be fair to our employees, we want to make sure that they don’t lose against
the cost of living but while we are faced with this kind of cost increase, | don’t think it is unreasonable le to say
that should be what we would agree to. The trouble with the two contracts, first the Civilian Contract, it does two
things; it increases wages about 11 %%, 11 72% over four years with a whole series of 3% raises. And
something that we have discussed in great detail before, which | won’t get into too much now, but it still does
expand the sick leave buy out, for the first time, people will be, if they resign but don’t retire, for the first time
they will get paid sick time as long as they have a certain amount with the City.

The other contract raises wages again 3% a year for 4 years or 12% or 11 %%. Now the problem with raises
which go up more than the cost of living, year after year after year, if we had new revenue coming in which we
don’t really, or if we at least had a stable health care system, maybe we could afford that. But to approve these
contracts that have over the cost of living, year after year, long term contracts, we create a situation for
ourselves where the budgets for these departments are not sustainable. The only way we will be able to
maintain the budgets with the healthcare costs going up as much as they are and with wages going up more
than the cost of living at the same time, the only way you can sustain that is to either increase taxes or reduce
services or both.

| don’t think we want to create an unsustainable situation for the City, its employees, the people who rely on
services and the taxpayer. So | have suggested that the raises be limited to the cost of living, short term
contract we could do, there’s a lot of different things we could do but that’s what | recommend we do in terms of
the fiscal health of the City. The Police Department, of course, feels strongly that these raises should be
granted. | am looking for them to be a partner, to do more than just advocate for the Police Department and get
as much as they can but to be a partner in kind of helping to move the City forward. | hope they will reconsider
their position on all of this.

Board of Aldermen 12-23-2019 Page 3

In any event, I’ve already spoken on this longer than | intended to. It is the Holiday Season. So | will cease with
my comments on this. But again | will return to the beginning, | hope everybody has a wonderful Holiday
Season, regardless of your position on this and | know many of you disagree with me, but regardless of your
position on this | hope that we will have a good holidays and | look forward to our next two years together.
Thank you Madam President.

RESPONSE TO REMARKS OF THE MAYOR - None

RECOGNITION PERIOD - None

READING MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS

Board of AIGErmen ...... 0.0 ccc cc cece ee ne ne cee cee ce cee cen ce cen cen bend ee nee dee en ee ee neeens 12/10/2019
Special Board of AIDErmen ... 0.0... cece cece cece eee cee ne eee cae cesta sees nesses nee eee nee teenies 12/16/2019

There being no objection, President Wilshire declared the minutes of the Board of Aldermen meetings of
December 10 and December 16, 2019, accepted, placed on file, and the reading suspended.

COMMUNICATIONS REQUIRING ONLY PROCEDURAL ACTIONS AND WRITTEN REPORTS
FROM LIAISONS

From: David G. Fredette, Treasurer/Tax Collector
Re: — Bond Sale Plan and Debt Service Analysis for General Fund

There being no objection, President Wilshire accepted the communication, placed it on file.

PERIOD FOR PUBLIC COMMENT RELATIVE TO ITEMS EXPECTED TO BE ACTED UPON THIS
EVENING

President Wilshire

So our comment period is 15 minutes, if you could limit your remarks to 2 7% minutes that will give
everybody time to speak; give your name and address for the record, please.

Tracy Pappas 12 Swart Terrace in Nashua. Regarding the $10 million bond for the Public Works Facility; |
am a better writer than | am a public speaker. So for Board Members who didn’t see it, | wrote an editorial
which was published in the paper today and that gave more of the dollars and sense kind of breakdown.

What | am going to do is | am going to go through each facility to explain the health issues, because | am
not the person who went to the press and explained all the health issues in our facilities and | certainly think
those need to be dealt with. But the problem is that this bond doesn’t go near touching those health issues
for our employees. | am extremely concerned about the message we are sending to our employees, who
are in parks and rec and street department. We are telling them, your facilities are in such horrific condition
that we are going to take all your support staff and we are going to put them in a centralized location. You
are going to stay there in those facilities; actually one Commissioner who did vote for this said “squalor-like”
and | don’t disagree with that description.

| am extremely concerned about the safety issues, particularly in the Street Department for particularly our
mechanics. So my best way to go through this is to —| am going to hit each facility and | guess my main
beef with this is that our homework was not done and we didn’t get the figures.

| am going to start with engineering department. It has always had HVAC issues, mold issues, that was
going to take some money. For Transit that has worked out quite well, they have actually fixed that. And a
lot of my objection is we never got a quote on what it would cost even short-term to fix that HVAC and to
get rid of the breathing issues and | am very sensitive to that.

Board of Aldermen 12-23-2019 Page 4

My understanding is the plan is, the Police Department is going to take that facility over. The Police
Department tis absolutely terrific in Keeping up their facilities, so we are going to have to, by hook or by
crook, if we are keeping that building, we are going to have to fix the health hazards in that building.

President Wilshire

Ms. Pappas if you are going to go through the whole list, we are not going to have time for the other
speakers to have their turn to speak.

Ms. Pappas | was told an individual from the, | know $10 million dollars may not seem like a lot to you but
| think it is to other people. When | suggested that we get an expert to at least find out an estimate for the
cost of that system, | was told | said we need to get an expert, | was actually blasted and told that a former
Alderman who was an expert had looked at that. Now that person is extremely handy at fixing and
installing systems, but they don’t design mechanical systems, | think you need a mechanical engineer.
Street Department, no expert to fix the mold problems. In our garage we don’t have a lift, we have what is
called pits. If someone falls into one of those pits there’s no way to get them out. So I'll be real fast. Parks
& Rec no estimate to add to bathrooms, there’s only one bathroom in there.

So at the end of the day, when we have this problem probably, at least at the Street Department since the
first time the Mayor was Mayor, to try and ram this thing through for the $10 million dollars, December 23,
| think is wrong and | think it is a disrespect to the Parks & Rec Department, to the Street Department. And
| think it is disrespect for people who live near the landfill who are going to have to put up with all those
trucks there. Full disclosure, | am a neighbor of the Parks & Rec’s Department. So if | were looking out for
myself, | could keep my big mouth shut, stay home, December 23” and say well you know | tried, | voted
against this. This is not enough money to even to begin to go near things. | will tell you | am big into safety
and the day that that young man fell down that drain, that really changed the way | look at our system and
safety. | don’t feel comfortable with the way we’ve left the Street Department. Thank you.

Michael Carignan, Thank you | will be brief, my name is Michael Carignan, C-A-R-I-G-N-A-N, representing
the Nashua Police Department. | am here tonight to support both contracts in front of you regarding the
Police Department but | am willing to limit my conversations to the UFPO. Approximately a year and a half
ago we began the negotiations for this contract. At the time | was trying to be a good partner with the City
and stay within the spend cap limits that the Mayor had desired us to stay underneath. | had worked real
hard to do so, getting creative with some of the benefits that we offered people. Two of my Unions got
those benefits, when it came to the last Union without it, regarding the sick time, we were not allowed to go

| was asked to go back and renegotiate a little bit and try to come back with a compromise, | did that.

When | came back | was again told that it was not enough and we needed to get away from the sick time
and that | should look to give pay increases instead to the people. That was recommendations from
several Aldermen as well as partially by the Mayor as well. | did that, | renegotiated with the contracts,
correction with the Union, we came back and said, OK we have pay increases, we got rid of most of the
sick time. While the Mayor is correct, and the sick time benefit is not completely erased it now includes
resignation not just retirement, that is after 15 years of service, while other Unions in the City have 10 years
of service and it currently reflects 1 person.

So | tried very hard to come up with wage increases at your request to get this contract passed. The
Supervisors whose people that they supervise have less benefits than they do. We are not willing to give
that up, they've worked with me every step of the way. We came back with the wage increases. We were
told that the contract was too long. As a result, last minute decision last week, we agreed to take the fifth
off the table at the full cooperation of the UFPO to make it a four year contract. That four year contract, one
year has completely gone by, that’s the 2.25 wage increase; we are already halfway into the first 3% wage
increase and that’s within our budget this year. We are looking realistically at the next two years with 3%
raises for this Union who gave up a pretty hefty sick buy out benefit.