Board of Aldermen 05-14-2019 Page 41
have to put down health, illness, and or death in the Alderman’s family. Simple, it’s simple. Let’s not
water it down and make it more complicated than itis. You are being paid to be here.
When | was on this Board | was raising 3 children; worked part-time, ran a business with my husband
because he worked all the time so | was basically raising them by myself and | managed to be at every
meeting here. Very rarely did | take any time off unless | was sick. So if you want to be an elected
official, you can still have children, you can still have a pregnancy, you can still adopt, you can still
have a baby and attend every meeting. You can Skype, you can FaceTime or you can be on the
phone. This piece of legislation was written probably for somebody, you know, and if I’m correct | think
she’s pregnant she just put her name on the legislation which | think is a conflict now. Self-serving and
the mere fact that it should not be like this. These words on the original and the ones that were
changed covers everything, maybe you should just add in there ‘can be at the meeting by FaceTime,
Skype and / or telephonically’ like on does at the Board of Education. So there’s no reason why you
can’t attend a meeting unless of illness and/or death in the family. Thank you very much.
Michael O’Connor_ Hi Michael O’Connor, 42 Berkeley Street in Nashua. This is a long evening of
course as you know, but | was glad | stuck around. There were two positive things that | saw; | like
that decency act you have and the civil discourse. I’m just hoping that we will see some of that
directed towards Ms. Ortolano who | think has done yeoman service and | think it’s fair to say without
her hard work you wouldn’t even be aware of the mess that’s is down in the Assessing Office.
The second positive thing tonight is you have this recognition method. And you know, a little biased
obviously but | think Mrs. Ortolano deserves some recognition and | think if there is an official way for
you to do it, the Board should really consider that.
Lastly and you know | am going to try to do this very decently, | am going to try and be kind and civil.
This is a you know, | could claim some sort of maybe Irish disability or something. Alderman Jette, |
normally agree with you, | respect you and you seem a very reasonable man and | look around and
there are probably other ex-service people here. As a Vietnam Service Veteran | found extremely
patronizing your reference to people outside the Dalianis Building as smoking and the service had
somehow, you know, caused them to smoke, nonsense. Ok, ask any one of them, I’m sure, maybe
you are unaware but it would be as if you were saying “Oh these people over here, have this problem
because they are those poor people over there” pick your favorite group to stigmatize. Yeah you sit
next to them or you see them on the sidewalk, go over and talk to them but | am guessing and | don't
know, | can’t speak for them, but | am guessing that they don’t feel victims that you portray them to be.
And having been forced by the military to take up smoking, thank you.
Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street | followed all of this discussion on smoking and | think I’ve watched
all of you debate it for probably 7, 8 hours. | wish you would spend a little more time all of you in
debate on assessing. | think I’ve watched you really have discussions on it for just over an hour and
15 minutes. The presentation on the 30" generated about 25 minutes of comments but it was alll
compliments with the exception of Mr. Jette and | think Alderwoman Kelly asking some good questions
and hard questions which were very appreciated. Everyone was just lock step in agreement and
thought it was all wonderful.
It was an extraordinarily difficult meeting for me to sit and watch and listen to an individual up here
presenting about all the hard work when | knew what that individual was doing. And it was anything but
hard work. So I’d love to see you spend more time as a group, all of you, engaged in the topic of
assessing and give it a good 90 minutes in a Board Meeting for me. I’d love to hear that.
Secondly when it comes to Mr. Lopez’s comments about attaching e-mails to the minutes; every e-mail
that | have sent to this Board is not attached. And | don’t know that you have to request it but for me,
e-mails that came to this Board were not acknowledged either, largely, fully. So you know | feel like
anything | send to you just goes in the can. So I'd love to see these e-mails put with the record. And
last week when | wrote an e-mail to the whole Board and | requested through Trish who was on the
hiring committee, she said “Well it’s not separate it’s all the Board Members that you sent your letter to