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PROPOSED AMENDMENTS MADE IN BUDGET 11-25-19 AMENDED
R-19-185

RESOLUTION

RELATIVE TO THE SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATION OF $2,900,000 FROM
FY2020 ASSIGNED FUND BALANCE

In the Year Two Thousand and Nineteen

RESOLVED by the Board of Aldermen of the City of Nashua to appropriate $2,900,000
of FY2020 Assigned Fund Balance into the following accounts:

Fund Fund Dept Description Purpose Amount
Description
1000 | General Fund 191 School Capital District Wide Middle — $1,000,000
Improvements School Renovations
1000 | General Fund 194 Contingency for Education priorities 1,000,000

Education Priorities to be determined at a
future date.

6600 =| Internal Service 111 Benefits Self To fund costs 900,000
Fund Insurance Fund associated with
benefits

Total: $2,900,000

R-19-197

RESOLUTION

ESTABLISHING POLLING TIMES FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY
ELECTION ON FEBRUARY 11, 2020

CITY OF NASHUA

In the Year Two Thousand and Nineteen

RESOLVED by the Board of Aldermen of the City of Nashua that the City of Nashua
shall hold the Presidential Primary Election on Tuesday, February 11, 2020, and the polls shall
be open between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.

RESOLUTION:

PURPOSE:

ENDORSERS:

COMMITTEE

ASSIGNMENT:

FISCAL NOTE:

LEGISLATIVE YEAR 2019

R-19-197

Establishing Polling Times for the Presidential Primary
Election on February 11, 2020

Mayor Jim Donchess

Estimated cost for Presidential Primary Election: $36,130,
available within the City Clerk Department’s budget.

ANALYSIS

This resolution sets the polling times for the Presidential Primary Election on February 11, 2020.

Approved as to form:

Office of Corporation Counsel

Date: BZEY BEL 5 Zor 9

SPECIAL BOARD OF ALDERMEN

DECEMBER 2, 2019

Immediately following Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee Aldermanic Chamber

PRESIDENT LORI WILSHIRE CALLS ASSEMBLY TO ORDER PRAYER

OFFERED BY CITY CLERK SUSAN K. LOVERING

PLEDGE TO THE FLAG LED BY ALDERMAN JUNE M. CARON
ROLL CALL
PUBLIC HEARINGS

R-19-186
AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO EXCEED
THE AMOUNT OF ONE MILLION FOUR HUNDRED NINETY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS
($1,495,000) FOR VARIOUS IMPROVEMENTS AT THE SOLID WASTE DEPARTMENT FOUR
HILLS LANDFILL AND THE PURCHASE OF TWO REFUSE TRUCKS

R-19-187
AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO EXCEED
THE AMOUNT OF SIX MILLION DOLLARS ($6,000,000) FOR THE DESIGN AND
CONSTRUCTION OF A DIVISION OF PUBLIC WORKS OFFICE FACILITY

R-19-191
AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO EXCEED
THE AMOUNT OF ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN MILLION DOLLARS ($118,000,000) TO
FUND THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW MIDDLE SCHOOL AND
RENOVATIONS AND EXPANSION OF THE EXISTING TWO MIDDLE SCHOOLS

(PENNICHUCK AND FAIRGROUNDS), INCLUDING THE PAYMENT OF COSTS INCIDENTAL
OR RELATED THERETO

Testimony in Favor
Testimony in Opposition
Testimony in Favor

Testimony in Opposition

ADJOURNMENT

A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, November 26, 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; Alderwoman Mary Ann Melizzi-Golja led in the
Pledge to the Flag.

The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman-at-Large Ben
Clemons arrived after roll call.

Mayor James W. Donchess and Assistant Corporation Counsel Dorie Clarke were also in attendance.

REMARKS BY THE MAYOR

Mayor Donchess

Of course we all understand that we have an affordable housing issue in the City. Vacancies are very
low; rents have gone up as have housing prices, but we still have some very good landlords and one of
them | visited today that is offering, on their own initiative, affordable housing right in Crown Hill on
Harbor Ave. The couple of Kyle and Erin Worth have bought a building at the corner of Harbor and
Otterson, formerly a commercial building on the first floor with residences above. They are completely
rehabbing this into 15 units; 10 units on the second floor, five on the first and are offering rents starting
in the $700.00’s in the smaller units and going up a little higher for the units downstairs that are up to
two bedrooms. But they both work in the social service industry, they are very committed to affordable
housing and they have undertaken this project in order to offer very high quality, but affordable housing
in one of our neighborhoods, Crown Hill. | want to invite any of you to visit there and | want to thank
them for their contribution to the affordable housing issue that we have.

Madam President there are a couple of issues on the Agenda that | want to mention. One is R-19-189,
this was recommended by the Budget Committee last night and would authorize us to do two things.
Most importantly, purchase a backup server for our computer system. We have seen, across the
nation, a number of cities have been hacked and then have been blackmailed by the hackers. This has
happened in | think Baltimore, Atlanta and smaller places. Some of the communities have paid
significant ransoms and have then realized some restoration of their systems, but not complete. The
IT Department here has been very diligent in developing many different security measures including
trial phishing with City employees to try to make sure that they do not respond to anything suspicious
but this is an additional step that will enable us to secure our system even more; which is to locate a
server off-site. It is a group of servers really but put on those servers all of the City data so that if we
were ever breached for any reason, we would be able to restore the data from off-site. So this is a
security measure that in my opinion is highly important. The Budget Committee of course
recommended it.

The same Resolution authorizes the purchase of the City’s first electric car. |, and this would be a used
Leaf, costing about $12,500.00. |, as the Mayor, have been driving for a long time a Public Works as |
did before. That would be used by someone else, | would use the Leaf and charge it at the charging
station right over on Elm Street. Again | think this should be the first of other city vehicles that we
acquire that are greener than the vehicles we have now. Again, this is a used vehicle, nothing very
luxurious, but certainly a vehicle that has a good range for in-city use.

| did want to mention, Madam President, the new version of the Collective Bargaining Agreement for
the civilian employees in the Police Department. We can certainly discuss this in more detail in the
Committee. This is a more expensive version than the one that was tabled last time. So we will
discuss the details, but at least see significant problems.

Board of Aldermen 11-26-2019 Page 2

Now, Madam President, over the weekend we have some great activities coming up. On Saturday, of
course, we have the Holiday Stroll, hope everybody can join us there. The City Government usually
parades down the street from City Hall up to the Hunt Building along with the entire community
basically. | encourage everyone to come, not only the Board of Aldermen, but of course all of our
citizens. It is a wonderful time, we have even more activities this year; music, Santa and other things
that families and children can attend. So | am looking very much forward to that.

Also, we do have Plaid Friday on the Friday right after Thanksgiving, before the Holiday Stroll. That is
promoted by Great American Downtown; you can wear plaid downtown, but the goal is to get people to
shop local as opposed to the Black Friday where the internet and the malls do a lot of business. This is
designed to get people to patronize our local businesses, our local entrepreneurs who offer a variety of
goods and services downtown.

And finally, Madam President, Thursday is Thanksgiving, | would like to wish all the members of our
City Government. | want to wish Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and their families; | hope you have a
wonderful holiday and a safe holiday. We do have the game on Wednesday night and so it should be a
wonderful weekend overall. Thank you, Madam President.

RESPONSE TO REMARKS OF THE MAYOR

Alderman Lopez

So | do appreciate that we are making progress on increasing the housing stock that is available. The
term “affordable housing” as | typically understand it is below the median income level, which in Nashua
is like $66,000.00 a year. | personally think that we have a shortage of low income housing which is
less than 80% of median income, so families that are making less than $55,000.00 | think there is not
enough units that they can afford, especially considering that the recommended housing expense is
about 30% of your income. | think by and large many Nashuans are paying way more than 30% of their
income for housing.

| do recognize that we have developers that are willing to help contribute to that and to be supportive of
that and | think it is a huge step forward from last year where City Officials were not willing to call the
housing situation a crisis. | think it very much is a crisis so we need to be welcoming of all strategies
that will help people in Nashua afford housing.

Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja

Yes just regarding R-19-189, | think that this IT’s work to secure a back-up server is certainly very
critical and | know they came to PEDC and presented their concerns and the efforts that they have
made. So this is certainly a major step forward that will also make all of their other measures effective
in securing our data. So thank you.

President Wilshire

Let the record reflect that Alderman Clemons joined us at 7:36 PM. Ok there being no objection, | am
going to suspend the rules to move out of order and allow the presentations by the Boys & Girls Club
and Alexis Durant. I’d like to welcome the Boys & Girls Club first.

There being no objection, President Wilshire suspended the rules to move out of order and
allow the presentations by the Boys and Girls Club and Alexis Durant.

e Presentation by Boys and Girls Club — Photovoice & UMAP

President Wilshire to recognize Cindy Heath and Lelia Melon

Board of Aldermen 11-26-2019 Page 3

Leila Melon Hello. Thank you very much for having us and thanks for moving us out of order.
Unfortunately you moved us of order so that the children from the Boys & Girls Club could come and
present, but you notice that they are not here. It turned out we didn’t get that notice until it was too late
and they, between shortage of staff, given that it was close to Thanksgiving and transporting the kids
here, it was just too much for them. So unfortunately you get me and my colleague here. So forgive
us.

My name is Leila Melon. | work for the National Park Service, a program called the River’s Trails &
Conservation Assistance Program. Cindy Heath, who is here with me, works for GP RED a non-profit.
We have worked on this project since this summer with Foundation for Health Communities and then of
course the Boys & Girls Club here. The point was to have them join a cadre of four other communities
around the State with what was originally a healthy eating active living program of the State where we
worked with children to have their voices heard for what they wanted to see for getting or transporting
themselves, walking biking from where they were to places that they liked to play; so City parks, ball
fields, etc.

We did two projects with them, we did PhotoVoice and UMap. PhotoVoice has also been done for 4
years here in the City of Nashua. Your Health Department has performed it with the Boys & Girls Club.
The kids were used to that. It’s where you take both of these programs are done nationally for a
number of years. PhotoVoice they take cameras around with the question of “how do | get myself from
my home, my school, wherever | am to places | like to play and recreate; and what’s good about the
places | go and what doesn’t work”. So what could be improved? So they take pictures of these things
that they like in their communities and then we had those pictures printed and mounted for them. We
had a display down here in your rotunda for the last month. We had it up on display at the City Library
also.

Then the second part of the program is we do UMap which is we look at a map with the kids and they
tell us where they want to go. They map those routes, then we look at them and analyze them and say,
“OK what were the nexus of projects that we could try to work on and bring to your policy makers to
have your voice be heard”. So that is the synopsis of what we did with them. Cindy is going to go
through the actual work that they have done and come up with our signature projects and our action
steps that we’ve done.

Cindy Heath It probably won’t be hard for you to imagine me as a ten-year-old, but | hope you can. So
thank you so much for giving us some time to share the work of the students that we worked with at the
Boys & Girls Club. So | am Cindy Heath as Leila said with GP RED which is a National Non-Profit that
has a project that supports children’s’ voices in community planning. So this was a project that was
supported by the Foundation for Healthy Communities. As Leila said, this was the 5" community that
we’ve worked in in the State, so we are really pleased to be able to work with the folks here in Nashua
which has a history of supporting the youth voice. So we are really pleased to be able to enhance that.

What | thought I’d do is just share the photos and give you a brief summary of the project and give you
an idea of what the students saw in their work. Then we will summarize at the end and Leila will come
back and share about next steps for us. So here we go, so if we can go back to big screen, | think I’ve
got the clicker working now. There should be a slide show icon on the very top. OK thank you very
much.

So starting with the conclusion, this project is all on-line so at the end we will have a link to that so we
can show you how that actually works. But we plotted the data that we collected between the
photographs and the mapping project where we had conversations with the students about where they
felt they liked to go in the City, where they felt they were safe going in the City and where they felt a
little bit unsafe or maybe had some concerns. So what you are seeing on this map, this is a screenshot
of the on-line version of this project. Ve have these data points; the red points represent the places
that the students they might be a little unsafe or fearful. The data we collected is all available for

E | E K Project
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Board of Aldermen 11-26-2019 Page 4

looking at and making decisions about and communicating further with the students about some
improvements that they think might be made.

The green points are those positive areas where they felt that they could walk safely or could access
their recreation and places for leisure safely. So there are probably about 50 data points, we had about
15 students that we worked with. So we collected a lot of information that helped and form the
signature projects that you'll be hearing about in just a little bit.

All of the photos and formed the signature projects and the action steps that we are proposing that the
Boys & Girls Club work with the City on and | do want to acknowledge several of the Department Heads
that we’ve communicated with, some of them only briefly, wno have been super-supportive about how
to implement some of the suggestions that the students have come up with. Many of the suggestions
were around beautification and the students felt very positive and supportive and were very pleased
with how much beauty there is in the City, so there were a lot of pictures of flowers as a result. Each
student was asked to choose out of their 40 or 50 photos that they took, one photo that represented the
positive aspects of the City and one photo that represented where they thought improvements could be
made. So this is an example of where they thought improvements could be made and safety in the
trails by having the trails have a clean surface.

Again beautification and managing graffiti in the City was one thing that was pointed out. They thought
the Bike Share program was fantastic and that it was well used. One theme that seemed to emerge
was trash, concern about trash and keeping the City beautiful. We did meet this afternoon with the
students and with Nick from the Parks & Recreation Department so there is going to be an action step
of including some of the Boys & Girls Club Members in the regular monthly clean-ups that take place at
Mine Falls Park.

Art & Sculpture was one of the things that the students thought was a positive aspect. Again more
flowers, they seemed to really like the color and the flowers and how it makes the City look beautiful
and they want to see more of that. There was a concern about homelessness; so there seemed to be
some interest in taking some action about that somehow and supporting the City’s efforts on the
homelessness issue. Again, trash was a theme.

| want to point out the quality of these photos, as | am sure you’ve seen in the other photos, but it is just
fantastic what the students come up with. With very little instruction they were able to focus and write
these captions that were | think very effective. So again, more flowers, more trash, more flowers. This
was an interesting point of view where the perception of the student was that roads are narrow so
people getting out of the cars when they’ve been parked might have some concerns as the cars were
driving by them.

So that is a summary, that’s kind of an example of the photographs; all of the photographs are located
in the report that you received as well. So one of the points of this project was to have exhibits, similar
to the PhotoVoice that has already been done. So we did have exhibits at the Nashua Public Library
and a reception for the students as well as here in the City Hall Rotunda, so we want to acknowledge
Donna Graham’s support in helping us achieve the City Hall Rotunda Exhibit which was up for just
about a month which was fantastic. So that got a lot of exposure. We are going to be having further
meetings. The students will be having further meetings at the Boys & Girls Club with the Library
Director. One of the suggestions was a pop-up library, the students wanted to see more libraries in the
City. The Library Director has been very supportive in talking about bringing the pop-up program to the
Boys & Girls Club to meet that need. Both the Police Department and the Public Health Department
Community Services have been very supportive about meeting those students. Those meetings have
not taken place yet, but we are going to be facilitating those in the future.

Tonight's presentation was intended to have the students which is part of the point of them
communicating their vision to you all. They are certainly open and Shea down at the Boys & Girls Club

Board of Aldermen 11-26-2019 Page 5

who worked with us is open if any of you wish to meet with these students to hear their thoughts, they
are certainly open to facilitating that with you.

All of this work and all of the data that we collected resulted in a conversation with the students about
what we call “Signature Projects”. So Leila is handing a one-pager that gives you a sense of what they
thought would be projects to focus on. Mine Falls Park was the first one; because the Boys & Girls
Club is so close to Mine Falls Park, a lot of them walk through it, a lot of them play in it. They felt very
strongly about having that be a park that was safe for them and lighting seemed to be a theme in the
park. So in talking with Nick this afternoon, we brainstormed that perhaps some kind of a solar lighting
installation might support that suggestion and one of the advantages of Nashua participating in this
project is the connection with the Foundation for Health Communities which has access to funding
throughout the year so that we can begin to support having some of these initiatives actually come into
play. So that is an advantage of having the City participate.

The Rail Trail and Central Street was another focal area and when we looked at the data on the maps
these were kind of where clusters of places where both the students felt they could go and like to go but
they had some concerns about going. So those helped us to find these Signature Projects, so more
beautification. Another theme was more Police Patrols and Nick did explain this afternoon that there
are bike patrols on Mine Falls Trails so that was a positive.

Then finally the Ash Street and Ledge Street Pathway, again more Police presence and then picking up
trash. So the Police presence, the trash theme, the beautification those seemed to emerge as we
talked with the students more and more. And then one of the things that struck us was that they
wanted to see more field trios to Nashua areas so that they could have peaceful outdoor experiences.
That was significant to us because nationally there is a great concern that children don’t get enough
outdoor time, they have too much screen time. The average number of hours spent at a screen is
between 6 and 7 hours for children. That is a big concern to everybody across the sector of psychology
and educators and community leaders.

So that was really positive, and the Boys & Girls Club and the Recreation Department can certainly
work together, and we will work together to try to make that happen.

So moving down from the Signature Projects we have these Action Steps that we have shared with
Nick and the Boys & Girls Club Staff. These emerged from all of us talking together about what next
steps to take and so the meeting is coming up and then collaborating on the cleanups and the pop-up
library. These kinds of specific field trips and grant writing opportunities to try to implement all of these
ideas. What we find in doing this around the country is that children at this age, mostly it is the Middle
School, Upper Elementary Age that participates in this program. They tend to point out things that are
fairly easy to accomplish. Sometimes they involve just collaboration between departments or agencies.
Sometimes they involve a little bit of money but there’s not much expenditure or effort that needs to go
into making these things happen to help them feel like their voice has been heard.

We just want to make sure we acknowledge, before | turn it back over to Leila, Shay and Janail at the
Boys & Girls Clubs who were very supportive and helped us work with the students. The staff of the
Nashua Board of Alderman, Donna — super helpful; Library, Parks & Rec, Public Health and the Police
Community Service Departments. The National Park Service provided funding for the project. GP
RED provided technical assistance and the Foundation for Health Communities, Healthy People,
Health Places Plan and the Active Recreation Work Group are the overarching sponsors of this work.
So I'll turn it back over to Leila for the final “where we go from here” and then we’d be happy to answer
any questions.

Leila Melon So this just brief, just the “what do we do from here” “where do we go”. A couple of these
meetings that we still hope to have with the kids at the Boys & Girls Club, we will organize that to
happen. Being in this cadre of four other communities around the State with Foundation for Healthy
Communities, it is a link for each other, they are linked via e-mail, a lot of funding opportunities go out
via that way and they can talk to each other and ask questions and get support since they have all now