Board of Aldermen — 3/22/16 Page 10
benefit but nobody came out at all. | presume they knew about it but they didn’t show up and | thought that
was a bit curious. The other thing is | am sure everyone saw the academic piece of work that | distributed and
| didn’t do that for a flip reason. The title of that was Glacier’s, Gender and Science — A Feminist Glaciology
Framework for Global and Environmental Change Research. | used that as an example and that was
something that was actually funded and somebody accepted money for that and that actually went through in
Oregon. We can all laugh at that but it’s us laughing and saying what a ridiculous waste of money, how could
“they” spend money that way. In some sense we are also a “they.” There is a continuum of responsibility such
that at a certain point it’s my belief; that legislation that comes through as grant money is ridiculous enough
that it's incumbent upon us to say maybe not. We have another crisis, an OPM crisis; other people’s money
and we use it a lot and we are addicted to it and we have to remember that whatever money comes in to fund
these things isn’t the magic oak tree and somehow it’s associated with taxpayer dollars, not necessarily as
direct as Nashua taxpayer dollars from property tax but nonetheless we should respect all sources of this. My
sense is that this does not warrant a yes vote and by voting no on this we are saying okay, we recognize that
there are limits to what is worth accepting or not.
Alderman Lopez
| also attended the meeting and as the liaison to the Board of Health | should have been more prepared the
first time it was introduced to explain to my colleagues what was being attempted by the Department of Health.
| was satisfied by their explanation that they want to focus on the impact on Nashua citizens that changes in
our climate have; Lyme disease and heat stroke. These are things that we should know and we should allow
the Public Health Department to plan for so there isn’t a corresponding impact on the health department
because of things that we didn’t try to find out in the midst of another health crisis like the opioid crisis. | think it
makes sense to allow the resources and | am in support of the bill. | think we should give our own departments
the credibility that they deserve. If they decided that they needed the resources to pursue specific objectives
and the filled out the grant for it, | think we should be satisfied with their judgement unless there is an obvious
red herring. My think my colleague, Alderman Siegel raised good points about making sure that we don’t just
accept money but | think they have valid reasons for doing this.
Alderman Schoneman
| too attended that meeting. | don’t think that we can equate climate change planning to the opioid crisis. The
opioid crisis is an emergency. One of the questions discussed was are we going to discover anything new.
Emergencies are new discoveries, there was nothing new. There is an understanding that if there is a change
in the climate it could result in an increased incidence of Lyme disease and perhaps sun stroke for the elderly.
We know those things exist now and can cope with. The opioid crisis is different and it seemed to appear out
of nowhere. The primary product of the $40,000 is going to be literature, pamphlets and signs perhaps that
warn people about how to avoid getting Lyme disease and how to avoid sun stroke. Those are things that we
already know about. While knowing about how these things might affect folks in Nashua is important, | think
that we already know and to further study it for the purpose of producing pamphlets and signs seems to me to
be not a wise way to spend the money.
Alderman Wilshire
This wasn’t just about pamphlets and signs; this was about creating a strategic plan to react to certain
catastrophes.
Alderman Lopez
| respectfully disagree that the opioid crisis came out of nowhere. A lot of people who were working in the non-
profit field were fully aware that this was happening and were advocating for this effect. The awareness in the
public eye only emerged after it started to impact, in an undeniable way, people all over the city. | think that
was the result of not having a coordinated plan as it unfolded. It wasn’t a surprise for many of us and we’ve
been doing as much as we can to try to keep it from getting to this point. We just didn’t have the resources or
the public education or the awareness.
