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Special Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 22
ADJOURNMENT

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN THAT THE NOVEMBER 24, 2020, SPECIAL MEETING OF THE
BOARD OF ALDERMEN BE ADJOURNED BY ROLL CALL

A viva voce roll call was taken to adjourn the Board of Aldermen meeting which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd,

Alderman Caron, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,

Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Jette, Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Laws,

Alderman Cleaver, Alderman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire

15

Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED

The meeting was declared adjourned at 7:28 p.m.

Attest: Susan K. Lovering, City Clerk

Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 23

So | asked CFO Griffin to verify these numbers, you know, what are the real numbers? So what he says is
that this agreement represents over the four years an increase of 16.5%. The proposal that we rejected in
June asked for 17.6%, $4 million dollars over the four years. This one, according to CFO Griffin is $3.7
million dollar increase over the four years. That represents an increase, an average increase of 4.125%
per year and about almost $1 million dollars a year. | don’t pretend to be a financial expert, but | have to
listen to what CFO Griffin is telling us and | find this proposal to be not all that much different than the one
that we rejected in June. It strikes me as being too expensive.

Some of my fellow Aldermen have pointed out, correctly | think, that our Fire Department, our Firefighters,
provide a great service to the City. They do a tremendous job. They are among the best, if not the best in
the State and as Aldermen Clemons pointed out, he thinks in the country. | don’t disagree with any of that.
But the question, | remember back in June when this was presented to us, the Firemen were saying that
they weren’t being paid appropriately. The question is if they are not being paid appropriately, then
whatever it costs, we ought to pay it and bring them up to an appropriate amount. | say this to the Firemen
and | say this to their supporters and some of my constituents who have called me about this, from what |
can tell, and no one has really told me that I’m wrong about this. From what | can tell, our Firefighters are
being paid appropriately. They are being paid as well as, if not more, than similar departments across the
State, even in Massachusetts.

| just want people to know, | mean | don’t know what an appropriate amount is to pay firefighters, but the
only way | can determine that is to look at what other Fire Departments are paying, what other cities are
paying. And, you know, are we paying less, are we being unfair to our firefighters and my research says,
no we are not, we are not paying less, in fact, we are paying more. Just so people know, our firefighters
start at around $50,000.00, a brand new firefighter, you know, high school graduate, no training, starts at
around $50,000.00 and that doesn’t count any overtime that he might earn on top of his regular salary. And
that’s the first year. As they go on, they get up towards and over $70,000.00 a year. Captains are getting
paid in the $90,000.00 range and with this new proposal they are going to get paid up to $110,000.00.

| don’t think and | am trying to be responsible to the firefighters and to the taxpayers. | don’t think what we
are paying is inappropriate. And we are asking all of our employees and other employees and other unions
are cooperating with this transfer to this high deductible insurance plan so we can afford providing
appropriate healthcare to all of our employees. And when the Mayor says we shouldn’t make exceptions, if
we do make exceptions, then how can we arrive at this new Health Care Plan if we allow some employees
to keep their old plans, their old HMQ’s, their old point of service plans and then try to get others to move to
this other plan? So for those reasons, | can’t support this.

President Wilshire
Alderman Klee?
Alderman Klee

Thank you, Madam President. | just wanted to, I’ve always from the beginning I’ve always hated comparing
one department to another department; Police to Fire, Portsmouth to Manchester, Manchester to Nashua.
I’ve always been very much against that. But I’d like to make some clarifications. | am not 100% sure, but |
am pretty sure that all of our firefighters that are hired must be certified from the Fire Academy and | think
that’s kind of a State Law in New Hampshire. That’s one of the differences also between Massachusetts,
New Hampshire. Massachusetts pays them to get licenses and so on. | think it was brought up at last
night’s meeting and | know Aldermen had asked that, we point out what all the differences are and | don’t
think we would have time to do that, but | don’t think it’s fair without actually having every single contract in
front of us and looking line by line. And | am not going to argue what is a good pay and what is not a good

pay.

| think this is a good contract that they worked very hard for and | think that we should move it forward and
pass it. So thank you so much.

Steve Tobocman The Economic Development Imperative of Welcoming’

http://www.weglobalnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/New-
Hampshire-Nashua.pdf

Economic Impact of Immigrants in NH by NH Center for Public Policy
http://www.nhpolicy.org/UploadedFiles/Resources/Foreign05272015.pdf

NH Health and Equity Report Card by NH Center for Public Policy
Health and Equity in NH 2013 Report Card (nhpolicy.org)

Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 24

President Wilshire
Anyone else? Alderwoman Lu?
Alderwoman Lu

| just want to, thank you, Madam President. | just want to point out there has to be, you know what, | am
hearing that it’s not a good idea to compare to different places and it’s not a good idea to compare to
different functions. But! think when we evaluate a contract it is natural to try to get an idea of the market, |
mean that’s a natural — and | don’t understand how, | don’t personally understand how to do it any other
way, from my background in business, other than looking at market, looking at comparing it to something
else. And | think possibly we need to try to come up with a format of reporting that will help us make these
decisions better. So it sounds as though we are saying there’s too many, you know, you can’t compare
oranges to oranges or just to apples rather. But just going forward and not to minimize the work that our
CFO does to provide us back with some documentation to help us make the decisions. But! think that
going forward, we need to have some way to make or to interpret the differences. Because | do think that,
for me, the only way | can evaluate a contract is by somehow getting a sense of how it compares to others
in a market. You know, that’s how you pay people. That’s all, thank you.

President Wilshire
Thank you. Anyone else?

John Griffin, CFO

Excuse me, Madam President, John Griffin, CFO, can | just clarify some things?
President Wilshire

Mr. Griffin?

Mr. Griffin

| appreciate that very much, thank you. So Alderman Jette as he indicated last night, he sent me the work
that was done by the union and that information is actually correct. The issue that | want to bring to your
attention is that that’s the contract without the financial and medical incentive. I’m not sure if your Board is
aware of that. But by adding the medical incentive you can kind of picture the costing, it adds a 72% in year
3, same %2% in year four; so it’s a 1% increase in total but it compounds. Furthermore, that affects other
salary cost and affects pension, doesn’t affect medical but what’s in that — information that’s in your costing
sheets that has medical incentive. It creates a difference between the savings that | witness today from the
union of $420,000.00 as rounded off, down to $250,000.00. So the delta that Mayor Donchess that Mayor
Donchess is speaking of is about $170,000.00.

So | just wanted to make sure that you actually had those costings in your packets and that the Union,
maybe at the time was trying to compare the prior TA to the current TA without medical incentives. Medical
incentive actually costs more, therefore, the costing as Alderman Jette mentioned was roughly $3.7 million
in total versus the prior submittal of $4.02 million. So | just want to — | hope that helps. | just wanted to clear
that information to the best of my ability. Thank you.

Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 25
President Wilshire

Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Anyone else? Seeing no one, the Motion is for final passage as amended. Would
the Clerk please call the roll?

A viva voce roll call was taken which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman Klee, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd, Alderman Caron,

Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,
Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Laws, Alderman Cleaver,

Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire 12
Nay: Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Jette 2
Abstain: Alderman O’Brien 1

MOTION CARRIED
Resolution R-20-088 declared duly adopted as amended.

R-20-090
Endorsers: Alderman Richard A. Dowd
Alderman Jan Schmidt
Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.
Alderman Patricia Klee
Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright
Alderman Skip Cleaver
Alderman Thomas Lopez
Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire
AUTHORIZING THE PURCHASE OF LAND AND BUILDINGS AT 55 FRANKLIN STREET
(MAP 68, LOT 53)
Given its second reading;

MOTION BY ALDERMAN LAWS FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-20-090, BY ROLL CALL

ON THE QUESTION

President Wilshire

The Motion is for final passage of R-20-090 by roll call; discussion on that motion? Alderman Clemons?
Alderman Clemons

Thank you. | have a question on this. And my question relates to the fact that, and | can probably guess
what the answer is but | am going to ask it anyhow, because | know that this was discussed and came up
prior to us finding out that we were in a $6 million dollar hole from the State of New Hampshire. So my
understanding of this is that the way that it’s financed, it’s through a number of payments over the years
through the School Budget. So | imagine that the payments, | am just wondering, is this something that the
School Department is still confident that they can pay for through their Budget, considering the $6 million
dollar shortfall or should we hold off on this. That’s my question essentially.

President Wilshire

It looks like Alderman Dowd would like to respond. Alderman Dowd.

Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 26
Alderman Dowd

Yes, | thought that Mr. Donovan was going to be on tonight but they do have the funding worked out. One
of the uses of the school, one of the floors is going to be for the alternative school that we are currently
having to pay $170,000.00 lease on every year. That will used for the initial payments plus some other
funds that they have set aside for this building. And the other will be for the Kindergarten children on a
different floor and they will be separated and there will be no interaction between the two, because when
we took Kindergarten into the elementary schools, the schools were already full as far as classrooms, now
it's a strain. So this will put all of the expertise on teaching the youngsters in one school and free up some
of the space in the other elementary schools.

We were also able, “we” not me, that was a former life when | was on the Board of Ed but | am the liaison
to the Board of Ed, and we were able to get the majority if not all of the furniture for that school for nothing.
It was donated to us by a company that went up in Merrimack. In fact, we had so much material that some
of it got donated to the Children’s Home as well. So the expenses for the building have all been worked out
by Mr. Donovan, | have full confidence in his ability to do that and it’s exceedingly important to acquire this
building so that after payment, there will be actually a positive impact on the Board of Education Budget
because the lease payments will be gone. So any other questions | could possibly answer.

President Wilshire
First | have Alderman Harriott-Gathright.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright

| just want to say ditto to the Budget Chair that location that we were renting off of Amherst Street for the
students, the older students it will be a great relief not to have to have to lease that building, literally. So in
my opinion it is a savings to the City. It’s not that we are actually spending more, because it’s going to be a
savings to the City because we are taking two different groups and putting into that building that’s already
there and in fairly decent condition.

President Wilshire

You all set, Alderman Gathright?
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
Yes.

President Wilshire

Thank you. Alderman Lopez.

Alderman Lopez

| just wanted to add on to what Alderman Dowd had said. The building site is better laid out based on the
presentation that was given to us where you can kind of control access on the part of older students to
floors with younger students on it. But it does allow for supervised job training basically for childcare
support and | have seen that effectively applied at programs like the Adult Learning Center. It provides
really good opportunities for teaching positive skill sets. And then additionally, | think it was also mentioned
that the transportation of students with special needs, due to its consolidated nature, would also be a
savings because we are not going to have to spread that out over quite as many school sites and that there
were potentially some staffing savings as well. So | think this is a better deal and a more efficient use of
spaces. | am looking forward to see it unfold. | know the Brentwood difficulty has been one we have kind of
been struggling with for years. So it is good to see a plan kind of coming together like this.

Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 27

President Wilshire
Alderman Schmidt?
Alderman Schmidt

Thank you, Madam President. There were a couple of other things, so much went into making this. There
is a nice chunk of federal funds that is going to be used for this. It was already a school so it is in many
ways prepared for us already. And school employees, because they are not in the schools at present will
be able to do most of the work that will have to be done to make this more appropriate for the younger kids
especially. So it’s like the perfect storm at this point; we need the space the building is there, it’s a very
good deal from a purchase point and they’ve brought all the pieces together to make it work. Thank you.

President Wilshire
You’re welcome. Alderman Klee?
Alderman Klee

Thank you, Madam President. | want to echo what my colleagues have said before me. It was well thought
out. When they talked about the funding of it and where they would be taking money from here for this
savings and so on. It was well drafted, | think it was a good plan and for as long as | can remember at least
since I’ve been an Alderman, there’s been discussion about Brentwood, the lease was coming up, there
were issues with it, having to bus students and so on. And | think there were even some parental concerns
about the whole school. And | want to echo what Alderman Lopez had said, that was one of the concerns
we brought up at the meeting about the separation of the students from different age groups. They were
ready to give us an answer, they had it well-planned. So again, with what others have said, | think we need
to move forward on this and vote to approve it.

President Wilshire

Alderman Clemons?

Alderman Clemons

Thank you, | appreciate everyone’s comments and obviously with the Budget Meeting when this came up |
had no issues with it, | do think it is a well thought out plan. My only concern was the fact that it is going to
take up a substantial portion of the budget of the School Department. But | understand that in the long run
this probably would be less expensive. | just am hopeful, | guess my only concern is just the future of our

education here in Nashua in general because of that major deficit that we are facing. But | will support this
after hearing from my colleagues, so thank you.

President Wilshire

Thank you. Anyone else? Seeing no one, the Motion is for final passage of Resolution 20-090 by roll call.
Would the Clerk please call the roll?

Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 28
A viva voce roll call was taken which resulted as follows:

Yea: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd,
Alderman Caron, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,
Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Jette, Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Laws,
Alderman Cleaver, Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire 15

Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED
Resolution R-20-090 declared duly adopted.

R-20-093
Endorsers: Mayor Jim Donchess
Alderman-at-Large Ben Clemons
Alderman Richard A. Dowd
Alderman Patricia Klee
Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright
Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.
Alderman Skip Cleaver
Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire
APPROVING THE GUARANTEED MAXIMUM PRICE AMENDMENT FOR THE PERFORMING
ARTS CENTER
Given its second reading;

MOTION BY ALDERMAN CLEMONS FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-20-093, BY ROLL CALL
ON THE QUESTION
President Wilshire

The Motion is for final passage of Resolution of 20-093, discussion on that motion? Seeing none, would
the Clerk please call the roll?

A viva voce roll call was taken which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd,

Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,

Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Jette, Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Laws,

Alderman Cleaver, Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire 14
Nay: Alderman Caron 1

MOTION CARRIED

Resolution R-20-093 declared duly adopted.

Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 29

R-20-094
Endorsers: Mayor Jim Donchess
Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire
OMNIBUS RESOLUTION REGARDING NEW MARKETS TAX CREDIT TRANSACTION FOR
THE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Given its second reading;

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-20-094, BY ROLL CALL
ON THE QUESTION

President Wilshire

Discussion? Alderman Jette?

Alderman Jette

Yeah thank you Madam President. So when | hear Alderman Teeboom say that he is going to eat his hat if
anyone really understands this whole New Market Tax Credit Transaction, | think to myself if the Fireman’s
Contract was difficult to figure out, that’s simple compared to this. But the truth is, even though | voted
against the Performing Arts Center, this is a way for the City to get approximately $2.5 million dollars
through this Federal New Market Tax Credit Program. It’s a way to come up with the $4 million that is a
requirement in order to go ahead with this project. And even though | voted against the project, it passed
overwhelmingly so | am going to support this because | am sure | couldn’t explain all of the details of it. |
have a general understanding of it and | know that as complicated as it is, it’s the way we are going to get
the $2.5 million necessary - $2.5 million that the City is not going to have to pay for in order to go ahead
with this project.

This project is going ahead even though | was against it, it's going ahead, so this is a way of getting $2.5
million rather than the City having to come up with that money. | wish that we had had more time to go
through all of the details, but in order to get it, we’ve got to meet this December 15" deadline. | know that
Director Cummings has been working very hard to bring this all together, it’s a very complicated process. It
takes time and the deadlines were not imposed by him they were imposed upon him. In an ideal world, we
would have a lot of time to explore all of the details, but we don’t. So to vote against this because I’m not
familiar with every little detail of it would be costing the City about $2.5 million dollars, which | don’t want to
do. So! am going to support this. Thank you.

President Wilshire
Thank you, anyone else? Seeing no one would the Clerk please call the roll?
A viva voce roll call was taken which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd,
Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,
Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Jette, Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Laws,
Alderman Cleaver, Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire 14
Nay: Alderman Caron 1

MOTION CARRIED

Resolution R-20-094 declared duly adopted.

Board of Aldermen 11-24-2020 Page 30

UNFINISHED BUSINESS — ORDINANCES

O-20-034
Endorsers: Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.
Alderman-at-Large Ben Clemons
Alderman Patricia Klee
Alderman Jan Schmidt
Alderman Richard A. Dowd
Alderman Thomas Lopez
Alderman-at-Large David C. Tencza
Alderman-at-Large Brandon Michael Laws
Alderman Skip Cleaver
Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire
EXTENDING TEMPORARY ADJUSTMENTS TO SITE PLANS TO ALLOW FOR GREATER
OUTDOOR SEATING AT RESTAURANTS
Given its second reading;

MOTION BY ALDERMAN SCHMIDT FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF O-20-034, BY ROLL CALL
ON THE QUESTION

President Wilshire

The Motion is for final passage, discussion on this Motion? Alderwoman Lu?

Alderwoman Lu

Just a question, is this the same Ordinance that we spoke with Director Marchant about last week
regarding this is specifically private property?

President Wilshire
Yes.

Alderwoman Lu
Thank you.
President Wilshire

You’re welcome. Motion is for final passage of Ordinance 20-034, further discussion? Would the Clerk
please call the roll?

A viva voce roll call was taken which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman Dowd,
Alderman Caron, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,
Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Jette, Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Laws,
Alderman Cleaver, Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire 15
Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED

Ordinance O-20-034 declared duly adopted.