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Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 21

This is a similar recommendation. As the liaison to the Board of Health | am happy to sponsor it and |
support their position. Reading the Ordinance somewhat, well actually let me go back a little bit. In addition
to making the recommendation tonight, they have met | think three or four different meetings which were
very similar in public turnout to what we have been seeing tonight. Anybody saying, “Oh I’ve never seen
this kind of turnout before” has not been paying attention to the Board of Health meetings. Those three
health members manage their format in a way that they took all public questions and tried to engage in
education of public health principals and need making an effort to try to respond and interact with the
people who were commenting. So they’ve been working on this general issue of outbreak since really
February. More recently they have been looking at the curfew, following its imposition by Massachusetts,
but more specifically as it referred to the Thanksgiving Outbreak which this was brought up in advance by a
member of the public who was concerned, or actually a member of the Board who was concerned about
the runup to Thanksgiving being a known time of heavy drinking of heavy participation in bars. And yes, it
was Stated at that time that that person was observing heavy traffic from Massachusetts after a certain time
period. So that is what initiated the conversation.

The Board of Health had those conversations, they were unable to continue or make a recommendation or
have a discussion among themselves due to the amount of public comment specific to one position. There
was a presentation by the Economic Development Director summarizing many of the concerns that were
raised, but they focused on interacting with people. So they had to postpone the issue because there
wasn’t time, number one — for them to discuss it. And number two — they didn’t want to put businesses in
an awkward position by trying to implement something without providing proper notice or awareness. They
wanted to give the public an opportunity to become aware of the concern and to adjust its behaviors
accordingly.

What they did end up doing was they put out the emergency alert that COVID has escalated and people
should be mindful of not interacting with too much with different parties outside their family. They should
make arrangements to celebrate the Holidays in a non-traditional manner that keeps everybody safe. They
tried to increase public education. They continued to meet, they scheduled a number of additional
emergency meetings and | would like to note that these are doctors and in both meetings, the doctors had
to work around actual appointments that they had scheduled that they were not able to move. And then in
their most recent meeting, they finally had an opportunity to have some discussion and make a
recommendation, feeling specifically that this is urgent enough that they needed to make the
recommendation immediately.

The question was directly asked, “can we afford to wait a little bit? Can we phase this in? Can we try some
other things first?”. And based on their read of the increasing numbers and the models that they have been
using as well as having nationally recognized, this is urgent, this needs to happen now. This is partly
because we have a three-day weekend coming up where Christmas is going to be on a Thursday and then
there will be Friday, Saturday and Sunday where people have for recreational time and then similar
activities can happen next week with New Years. We saw a tremendous outbreak and increase in spread
much steeper in curve then we originally saw in April when we originally had the Statewide lockdown. And
we have been suffering that since. We have had more people who are COVID positive.

Healthcare has been doing its job though, they have been making sure that less people are dying. That is
requiring more use of ICU capacity. The ICU capability that we have in the City is not infinite at all, and it is
also currently flu season so that same ICU Ward needs to treat two major issues that are hitting our City in
addition to the regular ICU cases where somebody may be caught in a fire, or in a car accident or suffering
some other type of injury that requires Intensive Care. So the concerns that the Public Health Department
is reacting to is the increasing stress on ICU capability in the City; the increasing number of adjustments
that Public Health and the hospitals and care providers have had to make and the increasing number of
accommodations in order to handle an increased load of people coming in and presenting a greater risk of
spread.

Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 22

The healthcare industry has been mobilizing for this concern which it identified earlier this spring. We knew
that in the fall when people were coming in from outdoors, and when outdoor dining was no longer a
possibility and indoor gatherings replaced barbeques there would be a much greater exposure level. We
also knew that there would be a much greater exposure level in restaurants because more people would be
in the restaurants. There is a capacity limit which is implemented by the State, which recognizes this. We
also have a mask mandate which also recognizes this as well. So all of this would normally have been
presented by the Board of Health where they invited or specifically asked to interact with the Board of
Aldermen and attend this meeting and they did not. So | wanted to address a comment that was made by
one of the public comments with regards to preferential treatment being given to the Board of Health. Not
only did they not get preferential treatment, but they really haven’t been directly engaged in this. The
Public Health Department, which is our City staff was invited to present what they had last night, not as an
Agenda item but because we recognized that we had not done that and that we typically did. And this was
an important issue where we needed to invite them.

So having a Board of Health member who is an expert on this topic only be able to make his comments in a
three-minute period during public comment is very unusual and | think the President recognized that by
giving him slightly more time. | do not know what happened to that speaker and where he is tonight but |
do know that in his comments he referenced a letter and gave the impression that he intended to be able to
present more or was under the impression that he would be able to and he was not. So | just want to clarify
that no special favors were done to the Board of Health that they didn’t earn and that they are entitled to as
the Board of Health that our City has appointed to this role. They are doing what they are supposed to do,
they are making recommendations that they are supposed to make.

And then finally | just want to read part of the Ordinance which is in the Agenda for anybody who is
watching and wants to see the full script. | am only reading part of it but it says specifically, “whereas there
is currently a State of Emergency in the State of New Hampshire due to the outbreak of the COVID-19
Pandemic. Whereas on March 11", 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak was characterized as a pandemic by
the World Health Organization. Whereas the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have
advised that COVID-19 is spread mainly by person to person contact and that the best means of slowing
the spread of virus is through practicing social distancing, and minimizing personal contact with large
groups and in environments where the potentially deadly virus may be transmitted, including in particular
spaces that present enhanced risks because of large numbers of people present or passing through that
may be spreading the virus through respiratory activity or surface contacts.

These were specifically areas that were noted in the previous Board of Health Meeting as why the high risk
behavior happening after 9:30 was being targeted, why the restaurant industry is being targeted. The
restaurant industry is the only industry where we have exempted them from mask wearing in order to do
business because you cannot consume a beverage or food without taking your mask off. Because
everybody is indoors and breathing vapors out, that means everybody is basically congregating in a cloud
that everybody is sharing that allows COVID-19 to transport itself. Now many businesses are bigger than
others or smaller than others and have different variables at play. They have different types of ventilation,
they have different types of air flow and air flow is a factor, the filtration is a huge factor too.

So this is the concern that Public Health can’t set a specific guideline for every single individual restaurant
at this time based on the CDC Guidelines because it would exclude many restaurants but it would also
require inspection of all of those sites. And while inspections are done regularly in order to operate, it is
known to the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Health is aware that there is no way to do that in a timely
manner during a crisis and during a COVID-19 outbreak. It’s not feasible or at least it wasn’t determined to
be feasible by the Board of Health at their last meeting to implement anything specific or targeted before
Christmas and before New Year’s. There was a lot of discussion and interest in the Board of Health
continuing to meet and | would remind the public that these are special meetings, not their regular
meetings, they are putting a lot more extra time than they typically would into this as a pandemic would
suggest and they are taking times away from their own practices and the patients that they have, in order to
advise the City.

Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 23

But the Board of Health does intend to work on a phased re-opening plan. But they felt that enough time
had passed, the outbreak level and frequency was such that they needed to take an action immediately.
They needed to make something change because of the level of outbreak that we are seeing and because
of the trending that we are seeing. So it has been suggested by many in the public comment that we look
at phasing this in; it’s too late, we should have done that earlier. We should really have been working on
this back in September, but phasing it out is an option and is a plan and there are no specifics that are
available because, number one) it shouldn’t be an arbitrary phase out plan, it should be the Board of Health
looking at and evaluating the situation and making that recommendation. And number two) there has to be
an agreement between both Boards because either the Board of Health or the Board of the Aldermen can
remove this mandate once it is put into place. So if we add a curfew, the Ordinance actually says both
entities could remove them.

So these are some of the conditions that were apparently a little bit confusing. | do not think that Board of
Health believes that 9:30 is any kind of magic number. As it is stated in the Ordinance, they are trying to
reduce the likelihood of exposure and they are trying to reduce the opportunities for transmission. They are
not under the influence at all that this is going to be stopping anything on a dime or anything like that. They
are also aware that arbitrary numbers don’t necessarily mean anything and that’s why they are hesitant to
compare our current city size, population and dynamics to another City like New York where there is a very
different set of variables and a very different population acting and interacting with those scenarios.

They do feel very strongly that this needs to be passed. Our own Public Health Department has presented
the data that | got credit for | guess, in the minutes, they are the ones who compiled that data and it is
available on the Public Health Department updating live to the public. This is a problem, this is a concern,
and | think as the Mayor suggested this is something that we are all going to have be facing as these
holidays come up. We are going to need to make changes, we are going to need to protect our family in an
unusual manner and | know, everybody knows that COVID-19 has dragged on. It’s a situation and a
scenario that we never should have found ourselves in, but we have found ourselves in it. That doesn’t
mean that it’s less lethal and it certainly doesn’t mean that you are less at risk. If we overload our
healthcare facilities we start to see deficits, we start to see testing taking longer and longer to process. We
start to see interventions and contact tracing slow down. We start to see less and less availability of
hospital beds that people need and supplies and resources that people need. And that’s where we are
starting to head into, that’s why they want to intervene before we get to the trouble point.

They have steered us well in the past with the masking ordinance and other recommendations. It’s not just
because | am the liaison to the Committee that | support them, | have spoken to many of my constituents, |
have spoken to many health care providers and | represent a Ward with a lot of vulnerable people with
different levels of access to healthcare. | empathize with what has been said with regards to the economic
distress that businesses are finding themselves in and | believe we have not done enough as a City, a
State, or a Country in order to ameliorate those situations and create a paradigm where a person does not
need to go and put themselves and their families at risk in working a second job or late night job in order to
pay their rent. | think we need to do a much better job of advertising programs like our COVID relief
program which helps people avoid getting behind on rent or avoid getting behind on utilities. | think we
need to be looking at how we can do a better job of making local resources available to people who qualify
for them such as City Welfare Resources.

| think at the State Level we need to improve things like the unemployment application system and there
are several member of the Board of Aldermen who are at the State Level and | know they are going to go
after this because of the disaster that we saw earlier this year. And | absolutely think that we need to make
changes at the Federal Level, spending 9 months just to get $600.00 or so of cash in hand a nebulous
amount of money given out to different states to disseminate for business relief and then wrapped together
with all kinds of other business that the Government has to do does not give me any kind of confidence that
this is a situation that the Federal Government was prepared for, is executing well or is planning for. | know
obviously as everybody else here does that we are about to see a new administration take office.

Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 24

| hope that they take it much more seriously, | believe they do, but right here in Nashua | can’t change
everything in the United States. And | can’t change everything in New Hampshire. But | am an Alderman
who was elected to make decisions for Nashua and | am choosing to listen to the recommendation of our
Board of Health, the recommendations of our Department of Public Health and the constituents who are
concerned about their specific vulnerability to death or dying. Thank you.

President Wilshire

Ok the motion before us for final passage ...
Unidentified Speaker interrupts with profanities
President Wilshire

Unnecessary, you will be removed from the meeting if you continue that. Motion is to recommend final
passage of Ordinance 20-044 by roll call. Further discussion on that motion? Alderman Dowd?

Alderman Dowd

Yes, | have the utmost respect for the Board of Health and we jumped on their recommendations when
they first came out. We shut down businesses and then we gave them, working with the Board of Health,
the guidelines to meet. These businesses went out and spent a lot of money to put a lot of these
safeguards in place. They have been following them religiously and to just put an on/off switch and just
shut them all down is not good for the entire City. | understand where they are coming from, but they have
done a great job at limiting the exposure to COVID-19. | won’t go into all the details but | think if we shut
these businesses down, people will go elsewhere and bring COVID-19 back here, because those other
cities haven't done as well as we have.

All of the businesses are willing to work with us if there’s an outbreak, they are willing to adjust like a
(inaudible) and change some of the requirements until they get to a point where it is safer. But until we
have data that says that there is an outbreak coming out of these establishments, to just shut every one of
them down is not fair, definitely not fair.

It affects the employees that work there, it affects the people that own those businesses and have put a lot
of money into it. And also they pay taxes and our tax revenue would go down including the employees and
two of these establishments raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for our charities who right now are
strapped trying to help people who have been affected by COVID-19 and won’t be able to do that work if
these establishments are shut down. So | am definitely against this curfew because | think it is too large a
move that is not required in that degree. We need to look at ensuring that people are compliant and | think
many of these businesses are, and even overly compliant. Because they understand that it is their business
that they are protecting. So they enforce the rules and if the rules have to be tweaked, then we can tweak
them. | cannot see just pulling the rug out from all of these businesses that have done so much to protect
the citizens of Nashua so far. It’s just not fair. Definitely not fair and it’s a hell of a thing to do just before
Christmas. Thank you.

President Wilshire

Anyone else? Alderman Jette?

Alderman Jette

Thank you Madam President. | have a couple of things. The first thing and | hope that you come back to
me after this thing. My first thing is a question to Attorney Leonard. Alderman Klee sent us all a copy of a

Supreme Court case that one of her constituents provided to her, it’s the (?spelling) v the City of
Manchester which talks about whether or not the City has the right to adopt Ordinances affecting

Board of Aldermen — 3/22/16 Page 16
before that. It makes things easier on code. It doesn’t take as much of our legal resources.

The one thing that is comforting, | think, is that nobody has either expressed either publicly or privately to me or
my colleague’s discontent with the way code enforcement conducts their business. To address the present
moment and where we are now, | think everybody understands that they act professionally and reasonably.
We have to say, is there a fear going forward that may change? Of course there’s always a danger that a
government could be turned on its head, but there’s very specific training put in place so that reasonableness
is part of the training. Should the code enforcement ever get to the point where they become sort of the whip-
arm of government instead of something which is trying to do which | think most everybody out here does
normally that’s when we would come in and make a change necessary to rein them in. As I’ve said publicly,
our goal here is not to do something negative to landlords. In fact, | believe my colleagues can bear this out in
my committee, we’ve actively solicited input from city landlords and we’ve been unsuccessful in getting
anybody to talk to us.

I’m addressing the specific issues that people may have difference of opinion with, but let me go through the
various elements. Again, nothing has changed in the existing procedure. | actually would understand more of
the consternation should the legislation change what exists now. Some remarks were made about restaurants
owners aren’t here because they don’t know. In fact, | used to own seven restaurants and just sold them last
year. | am very familiar with conforming to health codes. If somebody had changed the administrative
procedure for fines for my restaurants, it wouldn’t have matter because I’m not a willful violated. | believe
almost everybody here, if not everybody in this audience, are now willful violators. | think you are all good
people trying to do the right thing. In fact, | think most people have said that they don’t have a problem with
code. Code’s first step is to say a complaint was made. A call is typically made to the landlord to get that
resolved. If they don’t hear back from either the tenant or the landlord within 15 days then they will go out and
investigate it at which point if it looks like progress is being made, and again good faith attempts are being
made to solve problems, everybody knows that fixing a roof is not the same thing as fixing a toilet. | believe
that code has acted that way. If they are going out there and seeing a good faith attempt to change thing, then
they are not going to even issue a warning. It is if they show up there and there’s clearly no good faith attempt
to do anything. At that point a warning is issued. Now the clock starts to click for a timeline to begin the good
faith resolution of the problem. It’s only at that point that we get to the differentiation between what exists now
and what we’re trying to achieve. If beyond that there is still a landlord that does not wish to resolve the
problem which was legitimately pointed out by code, now we go to court. What we want to do is not to go to
court. We want to issue a fine on a simple schedule. That’s what is going on here, plain and simple.

| understand that the legislation looks lengthy and it may be difficult to that kernel of things, and | apologize.
Legislation sometimes has to be written that way. | know there was a meeting that was help a few Thursdays
ago. | believe at the library by a bunch of landlords. | wish that either myself or some of my other colleagues
had been notified of that so we could have gone and probably helped you better understand that prior to even
the last public hearing. It’s not our intention to do things under the rug. We have a certain way that we
publicize the way legislation is introduced. This is really no different than any. In fact this got quite a bit of
front page coverage and most legislation doesn’t. If you actually look at what this is doing, the actually nugget
of what is going on here, there’s really not a change. Again, | don’t believe that anybody in this audience is
conducting their business as a willful offender because that is the only reason by which it would affect your
income stream. It’s not going to change anything. The responsibilities for tenants, if they tenants destroy
things, code already is aware of that. In fact, | had discussions with code. You can look on the city’s GIS
system and see violations. You can see certain properties, and it looks like they have a lot of violations. If you
ask code, they are aware of which ones are due to tenant issues and are not landlords. They will tell you that.
They are quite aware of that. They have a pretty long history of being reasonable. There’s no expectation that
will change.

As far as the timing goes, ten days or less, | believe Ms. Marchant was very explicit in not putting that in the
legislation because different situations requires different timeframes. A roof, for example, clearly is going to
take some time. If you have a boiler situation where parts are on order, it’s unreasonable to expect that
somebody making a good faith attempt is going to get fined because a part is not available. Code has never
acted that way, nor would we, as aldermen, ever wish to have legislation that would allow that to occur. If that

Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 25
establishments that are selling liquor as opposed to State Laws that are governed and enforced by the
liquor commission. So | asked Attorney Leonard if she would review that case and give us an opinion as to
whether or not that case has any effect on our ability to adopt this Ordinance. Could | ask her that, through
you.

President Wilshire

You can. Attorney Leonard?

Celia Leonard, Deputy Corporation Counsel

Yes, thank you, Madam President. | did review the case, that case was specific to the City of Manchester
trying to put in a secondary licensing scheme for establishments selling liquor. It specifically concludes that
while that proposed Ordinance in Manchester was found to be preempted that the Court did not conclude
that all municipal regulations affecting State Licensing’s are void and that there has to be a factual and
legal analysis as to whether or not a local ordinance and regulation would have the effect or intent of
frustrating the State’s authority.

As you are all aware, we have unique circumstances, similar arguments were put forth for the mask
ordinance and the City successfully defended that through various (inaudible) both statutory preemption
and constitution. We make similar arguments here. It is an interesting factual and legal scenario currently
where the State Laws themselves have been altered through Emergency Orders of the State. Those
Emergency Orders, while they may not be a statutory scheme, certainly affect one and the City’s, this
proposed ordinance, although | cannot guarantee anything, and do not know what a Court would do, | think
it is not clearly illegal and there’s very good arguments that the City’s, that this proposed ordinance does
not frustrate the State Authority as it is currently put forth through the emergency orders.

Alderman Jette

Ok, thank you, may | follow up.
President Wilshire

Alderman Jette.

Alderman Jette

So given the legal opinion that we can adopt this ordinance, | would like to speak in favor of it. | will try not
to repeat what Alderman Lopez so well spoke about the reasons for adopting this. But! would like to add
some things. You know the public comments both at our meeting last night and tonight and emails that we
have all received from the public and | want to assure the public that | have read all of your emails and I’ve
listened to your phone messages. You know | hope you forgive me and the other Aldermen who haven't
responded, | can only speak for myself. | haven’t responded to all of them because there have just been so
many and | have had to spend time preparing for these meetings myself. But | did hear them, | did read
them.

But | would just like to point out some people have said that there is a complete lack of scientific evidence
that would support this Ordinance. First of all, people have spoken about the Massachusetts curfew and
said that has had no effect and they cases have skyrocketed in Massachusetts. | don’t think that’s correct.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has shown that since the curfew was adopted in
Massachusetts, the number of new confirmed cases has leveled off, you know, has plateaued and has
started to go down. There was a high of 4,735 and it is down as of Monday a little over 3,000. So there has
been a plateauing of those numbers and a significant reduction.

Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 26

Someone else sent me a copy of an article from the Lancet — which is a British Medical Journal saying that
this article showed that a curfew had no effect whatsoever. Well | read the article and as a matter of fact
the article talked about public measures having a significant effect. VVhat it did say was a curfew had less
of an effect than a complete lockdown but it still had an effect. So comparing it to a complete lockdown, it
has less of an effect than a lockdown but it does have an effect. And 1! would just like to read something
from the CDC issued guidance for public health strategies. This is guidance to local governments and what
they should do dated December 11". And it said that there is a risk of infection through exposure to
infectious respiratory droplets and aerosols even though no symptoms are apparent because transmission
can occur from asymptomatic infected persons. So people that don’t have any symptoms can carry the
virus and spread it.

Outside the household setting, close physical contact shared meals, and being in enclosed spaces, have all
been associated with an increased infection risk. Exposures at non-essential, indoor settings pose a
preventable risk to all participants. Indoor venues like restaurants and bars have been identified as
particularly high risk scenarios. So for people to deny that going to a restaurant or a bar and exposing
yourself to strangers and taking your mask off to drink and eat, there is the exposure that you are putting
yourself at risk to and you are exposing others to that is a non-essential activity that poses a risk. And to
say that going to restaurants is completely safe just isn’t supported, it just isn’t true, it is just not supported.

You know, people have also pointed to New York City and said that the statistics in New York show a very
low, less than 2% of the cases come from restaurants and bars. Well those statistics were after New York
imposed severe restrictions on restaurants and bars. They were closed for a long period of time and then
they opened on a very limited basis and the numbers started going back up. So they started imposing
more restrictions one of which was a 10:00 p.m. curfew that they imposed back in November. And now
they are closing them again, in order to control the increase in numbers. So for people to say that our
Health Department doesn’t know what it is doing, that it is imposing these restrictions without any basis, is
just wrong.

We are not, to say that we are just, you know that we gave these people guidance and they are complying
with it and now we are shutting them down completely is not true. They are not, the Board of Health is not
shutting them down completely. Maybe they should; but they are not. They are not shutting them down
completely they are asking them to close at 9:30 in order to reduce the amount of exposure and people say
they haven't given us any reason? They did explain, if we listen to them they’ve explained that as the night
goes on, people are drinking more, their inhibitions go down, their compliance with wearing the mask
lessens and more people start appearing and they lose their, they don’t comply with the guidelines as well
as they do earlier.

The other we that we have to remember is as | said last night, this is serious stuff; we are in a crisis. The
guidelines | just read to you indicate ideally people should not be going to these venues and exposing
themselves, but the Board of Health is trying to soften the blow by rolling it back a little bit and they are
asking us to approve that and hopefully that will have a beneficial affect which will avoid a complete
lockdown in order to deal with the crisis. So | ask my fellow Aldermen to please support the Board of
Health and vote for this ordinance. Thank you.

President Wilshire

Alderman Schmidt

Alderman Schmidt

Thank you, Madam President. First of all | wanted to thank everybody who wrote to us. | did read them all,
| couldn’t answer them all as my cohort has said, there have been so many. But! have written back and
forth with a couple of people. Specifically today | heard from a worker at Martha’s. | asked specifically

what are the protocols you follow. The return message was everything | had hoped for, that people are
actually told to leave if they can’t comply with the mask ordinance.

Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 27

This is vitally important, what’s also vitally important are jobs and we have to make sure that the people
who are living and working in our community are not put out on the street because they can’t afford it. That
they are not going hungry or their children have to suffer because of this. This is important right now.

If | was a member of the Board of Health | would ask for this Ordinance, | would probably ask for more
because | think that according to all the experts, all the doctors, and epidemiology, the studies that | have
studied deeply proves that any time you are within a few feet of another human who might have this
disease, you will be open to it. And it could go through you and you could be fine but you could pass it on
to somebody else and that somebody else could pass it on to somebody’s grandmother and that person will
die. That’s not fair. So we have an option at this point, we can follow what the Board of Health has told us
which would be hard on a lot of people. We could ask that the folks down in DC do their job and make sure
that people who are unable to work in restaurants because they have people at home who can’t get sick
with this because it will be a disaster. We could ask our Governor to make sure that there is enough
support for us to take good care of everybody and the people who would like to go out can continue to do
so as long as they follow the rules.

Now when | was speaking with someone on the Board of Health, the question came up that are all the
restaurants and bars and such a problem? And they said, “No, no there’s a few places that act more like
nightclubs where people will stand shoulder to shoulder with no mask on to enjoy their drinks”. And this is
the part of the City that really has to take responsibility at this point. We can’t continue to close down
places like Martha’s and Boston Billiards at night simply at an arbitrary time because we know that a few
people may come in from Massachusetts yes, but mostly it'll be people who were there having a great time
just passing this back and forth. | understand 100 people in our City tested positive today, that’s because
people aren’t taking care. This is science, it’s worth paying good attention to. So until DC and Concord
catch up with us | am asking that we will make some changes in the mask law and we will ask for
punishment of the places that do not follow protocol and otherwise we allow businesses like Martha’s and
Boston Billiards and the other organizations that behave in an adult and careful manner that they should
continue. So | can’t support this and thank you for your time.

President Wilshire

Thank you, Alderman Schmidt. Anyone else? Alderwoman Kelly?

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you and thank you for everyone who came last night and has joined us this evening, it’s definitely
been eye opening hearing from everybody. | want to commend the business owners in Nashua and
throughout the country. It’s not easy being a business owner right now, especially if you are in hospitality.
My brother is a chef in Chicago and they closed all indoor dining so he has since had to find new work so |
know how hard this is. It’s not easy for us either, it definitely is a tough conversation and we hear it from all
sides. We've heard from people last night, we’ve heard from the Public Health Board and where | come
down on this is | feel very strongly that we need to continue to support our Board of Health and their
recommendations. Unfortunately we don’t have a national approach so that means at the local and state
level we have to make these decisions and listen to the experts who are telling us what they think can help.
If you told me 2020 was going to be a pandemic | would have laughed at you.

But | am not a scientist and | am not a doctor and | feel very strongly that the people, all across our City are
employed to tell us and advise us whether it’s health or the wastewater treatment plant have been really
well thought through and put in those positions. And so the United States has the highest level of COVID-
19 and we are here because so many people have refused to listen to doctors until now or refused to listen
to Public Health Officials. And so | know it is not going to be easy.

Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 28

One of things I’ve done a ton of the digging into the studies as well and one of the ones that | read today
was talking about it’s not just about curbing, it’s also timing is really critical and so the fact that we are going
into a long week and maybe most people have two weeks off, our two of the top ten going out holidays are
there is really heavy on my mind. If everyone has looked up the number of COVID cases since
Thanksgiving they will see why and | think we are going to be going into a very hard month coming up.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, there is a vaccine, this is a short-term solution here. We are not
saying this is going to happen forever, but | have to support our Board of Health and the Scientists and the
Epidemiologists who are telling us that this is the right way to go.

President Wilshire
Anyone else? Alderman Laws?
Alderman Laws

Alright, | wrote down some notes but | am not good at reading notes. | do appreciate and I’ve said this
before and | am sorry for being redundant, but | appreciate what everyone has said. | appreciate that we
have public comment. | appreciate everybody who has emailed, everyone | have talked to on the phone in
the last week. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone talking to people about this. | certainly
appreciate the opinion of my colleagues and | know for me it is a conflict, not doing exactly what the Board
of Health recommends that we do. But for me it is also personal and | am not a health expert, but | have
been a bartender for 20 years so | would consider myself an expert in how that industry works.

This is not going to do anything positive. Now | appreciate Ernest Jette saying that the numbers have gone
down or flattened in Massachusetts since the curfew was implemented and perhaps they have but
correlation isn’t causation, | mean we don’t know that that’s because of the curfew. Certainly | know at the
bar | work at just off the top of my head, there’s probably another 10 restaurants or bars that people —
employees from those places come to see me when they get out of work. If they can’t come see me, they
are going to go somewhere else. They are either going to go to another town, they are going to party in
their houses, because that’s what people do. People who are in this industry, they like to drink, you know.
So | don’t think it’s going to do anything to stop that.

| don’t disagree that the idea of telling people that they should be wearing a mask all the time and be
distancing from each other, but if they are sitting down in a restaurant they can take their mask off and eat
and drink, | don’t disagree it’s ridiculous and you are not going to find much argument from me about
whether or not we should shut down restaurants entirely. | mean | would say that would be appropriate in a
situation like this. But there’s this word that keeps getting tossed around whenever people are talking
about this, pro or against it and that word is “arbitrary” and this 9:30 curfew is just an arbitrary measure and
| don’t think that we should be basing the way that we make public policy off of something that is arbitrary. It
doesn’t affect any of the restaurants that are open for lunch, it doesn’t affect breakfast spots, it doesn’t
affect churches were people are jam packed together.

There are just so many places where people are just by nature not intentionally necessarily by nature
violating these ordinances or violating what public health is telling us to do. For some reason we are
focusing at bars that are open after 9:30 p.m. It just doesn’t make any sense to me at all. And | don’t see
any information and I’ve been looking, I’m hoping for it. I’m a very open-minded person, | want to be
convinced, | want to feel good about this. | haven’t seen any information that says that a 9:30 curfew makes
any sense at all. And until | do, | definitely can’t support that. Now I’m kind of losing my train of thought
here. | don’t know. That’s it for now. | am getting a little, | am taking it too personally and | apologize for
that. Thank you.

President Wilshire

No need. Anyone else? Alderman Clemons?

Board of Aldermen 12-22-2020 Page 29

Alderman Clemons

Thank you. | want to thank everybody again who came to speak both last night and tonight and the folks
that sent emails, phone calls, things like that. | think I’ve heard from almost 200 people at this point which
is, again, probably a record. Even when we did the mask ordinance | don’t think | heard from this many
people so it is really a record and it shows that people do pay attention to their local politics especially when
it is going to affect them. And not to say that what we don’t normally do affects them, but this is an in your
face type thing. Basically what it comes down to for me is that the protections aren’t there. We heard that
earlier | think it was either today or late yesterday that Congress passed the stimulus bill and this morning
Trump is threatening to veto it because it’s not good enough. And as we all have heard it took 9 months for
Congress to even to come this agreement and so who knows? You can’t rely on Washington, DC
unfortunately. It’s a sad state of affairs, it doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat or Republican, you just can’t
rely on Washington, DC.

And so to the point that was made earlier, it does come down to the local municipalities. What is sad is that
Nashua had to make what | call a reverse decision. And it’s reverse in the sense that we made a very hard
decision based on what Nashua could control. And what | mean by that is that there are some places out
there in Europe and in other parts of the world where they shut down the economy and the Government
made sure that people’s businesses didn’t go under, that they would be there after the pandemic was over,
that people were able to make rent, they were able to feed their families, things like that. They really
stepped up, right? In this country we decided to kind of do it, pardon my French, by in a half-assed way
and that was back in the spring and everything expired pretty much in the middle of the summer.

So Nashua was faced with a decision, what are we going to do? Do we close down all of our restaurants
and bars? Do we close down the places that bring income to our citizens? What is the alternative? We
went with the alternative, the alternative was to close down our schools. We have control over that. We
can make sure our kids are taken care of, it’s not ideal but we were able to pull together, get the resources
to the public schools, makes sure that kids have internet access things like that. And that way we were
keeping that segment of the population safe because we had direct control over it. Unfortunately we don’t
have direct control over bars, we don’t have direct control over restaurants or where people go to gather.
We could try to do something here in Nashua, but people will go elsewhere, people will find alternatives,
they will do what they want to do. We can shut everything down if wanted to here in the City and it would
have very little affect other than to inconvenience people from having to go somewhere else.

| wish that we lived in a world where our Government cared about people enough where they could —
where we could say, yeah you know what, Boston Billiards it's going to be OK because we are going to
make sure we take care of you, we are going to make Sure that we take care of your employees and while
we are shut down you are all going to get paid. You know the charities are going to be taken care of, you
rents are going to be paid, utilities will be paid all that stuff and then when this pandemic comes over, you
will go back and be right back in business where you were. Unfortunately we don’t have a Government that
works that way. And it’s telling and it is sad because we pay a lot of money in taxes. So we have to
prioritize here in Nashua what we do. And what we can control.

And in my opinion we have done a pretty good job doing that. | was against the mask ordinance, however,
| do think that | agree with some of my colleagues who have stated that we ought to begin enforcing that.
I’ve always said that a low fine, | tried to amend the ordinance when it first came in to a low fine, because |
believe that is something that on a first offense would not be overburdened to somebody. And in addition
to that would probably make compliance a little better and | also support harsher punishment on the
businesses that are just blatantly refusing to support the laws that we made. | mean I’ve been in to plenty of
places and | have been told by different people that there businesses and they just don’t care about the
mask ordinance, they don’t care. They don’t follow health guidelines, they don’t follow social distancing
rules. Well, you know what? We ought to fine those places. We ought to go into those places and revoke
their occupancy permits, because you know what? There are places like Martha’s, Boston Billiards, Lui Lui,
The Flight Center, places like Liquid Therapy that follow the social distancing rules, follow the guidelines.