AN ORDINANCE 0-98-74
and Reading
Referred to committee on OCTOBER 13, 1998
PLANNING & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMM.
7
chetSef
NOVEMBER 24, 1998
Av ag etek deteeea eee Fyrsee sa uevcbanwancesa teeta se neesme renee
Approved ¢
hte wap (Date)
A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, September 22, 2020, at 7:30 p.m. via
teleconference.
President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan Lovering recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan Lovering; Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr. led in the
Pledge to the Flag.
President Wilshire
As President of the Board of Aldermen, | find that due to the State of Emergency declared by the
Governor as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and in accordance with the Governor's Emergency
Order #12 pursuant to Executive Order 2020-04, this public body is authorized to meet electronically.
Please note that there is no physical location to observe and listen contemporaneously to this meeting,
which was authorized pursuant to the Governor's Emergency Order. However, in accordance with the
Emergency Order, | am confirming that we are:
a) Providing public access to the meeting by telephone, with additional access possibilities by
video or other electronic means:
To access Zoom, please refer to the agenda or the City’s website for the meeting link.
To join by phone dial: 1-929-205-6099 - Meeting ID: 84347939789 Passcode: 794985
The public may also view the meeting via Channel 16.
b) Providing public notice of the necessary information for accessing the meeting:
We previously gave notice to the public of the necessary information for accessing the meeting,
through public postings. Instructions have also been provided on the City of Nashua’s website at
www.nashuanh.gov and publicly noticed at City Hall and Nashua Public Library.
c) Providing a mechanism for the public to alert the public body during the meeting if there are
problems with access:
If anybody has a problem accessing the meeting via phone or Channel 16, please call 603-821-2049
and they will help you connect.
d) Adjourning the meeting if the public is unable to access the meeting:
In the event the public is unable to access the meeting via the methods mentioned above, the
meeting will be adjourned and rescheduled. Please note that all votes that are taken during this
meeting shall be done by roll call vote.
Let's start the meeting by taking a roll call attendance. When each member states their presence, please
also state whether there is anyone in the room with you during this meeting, which is required under
the Right-To-Know Law.
The roll call was taken with 15 members of the Board of Aldermen present: Alderman Michael B. O’Brien,
Sr., Alderman Patricia Klee, Alderwoman Shoshanna Kelly, Alderman Richard A. Dowd, Alderman June M.
Caron, Alderman Benjamin Clemons, Alderman Thomas Lopez, Alderman David C. Tencza,
Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 2
Alderwoman Elizabeth Lu, Alderman Ernest Jette, Alderman Jan Schmidt, Alderman Brandon Michael
Laws, Alderman Skip Cleaver, Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathnght, Alderman Wilshire.
Mayor James W. Donchess, Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton, were also in attendance.
Alderman O’Brien
| am present, | can hear the proceedings and | am alone.
Alderman Klee
| am present, | can hear the proceedings, | am alone and | am home due to (audio cuts out) distancing.
Alderwoman Kelly
rm here, | am alone and | am attending remotely due to the Governor's Order.
Alderman Dowd
Yes, | can hear everyone, |am here alone and | am practicing social distancing in accordance with the
Governor's Orders.
Alderman Caron
Yes, | am here, | am alone, | can hear everyone and | am practicing social distancing.
Alderman Clemons
| can hear everyone andl am here at my home alone.
Alderman Lopez
| can hear everyone and see everybody; | am with all of you but there’s nobody in the room with me. And
City Hall is closed so we wouldn’t be able to meet there anyway.
Alderman Tencza
| am present, | can hear everyone andl am alone.
Alderwoman Lu
Present, | can hear everyone andl am alone.
Alderman Jette
| am here, |can hear you and | am staying safer at home with my wife.
Alderman Schmidt
| am present and lam alone in the room.
Alderman Laws
rm here, | can hear you and! am alone.
Board of Aldermen — 1/12/16 Page 4
President McCarthy
As my Ward Alderman | would like to talk to you about snow plowing.
Alderman McGuinness
| enjoyed the inauguration the other day and Mayor Donchess | look forward to working with you.
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
First of all, welcome to our new members around the horseshoe. | guess as snow plowing goes 1’ll call
my Ward Alderman who is Alderman McCarthy.
Alderman Schoneman
Welcome to the new members here and | look forward to working with all of you and | am looking forward
to working with Mayor Donchess.
Alderman Siegel
I’d like to thank Mayor Donchess for the meeting that we had last night, it was very well attended and
there was a lot of good information. Also thank you to my colleagues on the Board for attending and
providing some good insights. | look forward to working with everybody.
Alderman Caron
| would like to thank Patricia and her staff for the good job they did at the inauguration on Sunday. We
did have a few little glitches but basically the whole thing went very well and for your first time being
totally in charge, | think it went wonderfully and thank you Alderman Cookson for allowing your daughter
to come and do the pledge. It was a pleasure having her participate. | welcome all of you New
Hampshire Alderman to this great horseshoe and | look forward to working with you, Mayor Donchess in
a different capacity that we did 30 years ago. Hopefully we can get done early before the snow gets any
worse.
Alderman Dowd
Also, welcome to the new members of the Board, | hope we have a very good year going forward. | was
at the Board of Education meeting last night. Sandra Ziehm was elected the President and Howard
Coffman was elected the clerk. Also | convinced them to name five members to fill out the Joint Special
School Building Committee. You will recall that we couldn’t do the organizational meeting after the
inauguration because they hadn't elected five people yet so filling out that committee will be Mr.
Hallowell, Mr. Farrington, Mr. Mosher, Mrs. Zienhm and Mrs. Oden. We will have a meeting on the 28"
an organizational meeting before we have the other meetings scheduled. Also at that meeting last night
the Board of Education took a vote and decided that they would close the public schools on February 9""
for the Presidential Primary because of the anticipated number of people to turn out.
Alderman Cookson
Welcome to the new members, | look forward to working with you over the next two years and continuing
to work with those that are returning. To the Inauguration Committee and to Patricia, | wanted to say
thank you for asking my daughter to say the pledge, it was very thoughtful of you and very much
appreciated and | think she had fun and she was very well behaved on stage.
Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 3
Alderman Cleaver
rm here and | am practicing social distancing, my daughter is with me.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
| am present, | am in this room alone, |am practicing social distancing and | can hear you.
President Wilshire
| am here, |am alone and! am practicing social distancing. Also with us this evening is — fm sorry Madam
Clerk, | didn’t mean to interrupt.
Susan Lovering, City Clerk
You have 15 in attendance.
President Wilshire
Thank you very much.
Ms. Lovering
You're very welcome.
President Wilshire
Also in attendance this evening is Mayor Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steve Bolton. Does the
Mayor wish to address the Board this evening?
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
Yes, thank you Madam President. Of course we have a number of items on tonight’s agenda. | am going
to mention a few of them which | think are definitely important. But before | get to that | wanted to report to
you regarding the Coronavirus. As you know tested positive, but fortunately | had not a serious case. |
went through 10 days of isolation and am nowreceived so | am back to sort of regular COVID life. But as
part of the developments with COVID, six people including myself in City Hall have contractedcases. They
are varying degrees of severity; a couple of people have recovered but others are still working on that. So
as a result of that outbreak working with Public Health, Bobbie Bagley, Director of Public Health and other
medical professionals, we decided that the best thing to do to prevent any further spread within City Hall or
to members of the public was to close City Hall again as we did back in March. That will take place for two
weeks. It’s like a two-week quarantine period for everyone who works in City Hall. People will continue to
work remotely mostly, although we do have some people in City Hall such as automobile registration
people who are handling automobile registration via mail, via e-mail and via a delivery service at the back
of City Hall. | visited there today, people are wearing their masks, are socially distanced, we are trying to
make sure that there is no further outbreak, no further spread of the disease, but those were steps we
thought we needed to take in the interest of safety of the public and, of course, of our employees.
On the Agenda tonight are a fewitems that as | said | would mention, Madam President. First, we have
one Resolution that would apply $4.5 million dollars of surplus to the taxrate. That will help us, that is what
we projected at the beginning of the year and this will help us keep the tax rate to the lowest we possibly
can getit. This is consistent with the amount of surplus that we have applied to the tax rate in prior years.
Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 4
| wanted to mention, Madam President, the escrows which were reviewed by the Budget Committee last
night. The escrows are a process that we have gone through for decades. What we do is we generate
surplus in two ways. First of all revenue which exceeds the budget estimates, $4.5 million of that as | said
is being applied to the taxrate. The other way that surplus is generated is we work throughout the various
departments work throughout the year to save money and not spend everything that is appropriated. Asa
result, we have money thatis left over at the end of the year. And in the so-called escrow process that is
reappropriated to various needs that the City has. Again, this is money that we have already collected from
taxpayers which is being redirected.
The biggest items are really deposits into reserve accounts of various nature. The biggest being nearly
half the money would be directed to the Capital Equipment Reserve Fund which is the fund from which we
buy equipment. As you will recall, Madam President and Members of the Budget Committee and the whole
Board, we didn’t budget much for equipment for the Capital Equipment Reserve Fund during the regular
budget and over some years now we have been using money saved of these so-called escrows to deposit
into that reserve account. We've also got money going into the reserve accounts for City Buildings for
other uses that we could detail. And there was one amendment recommended by the Committee which |
expect that you will adopt and pass.
The issue came up last night, Madam President, of well why did this or was this considered by the
Committee one night before the final vote. And of course that’s something we wanted to think about and
we looked into wnat we’ve done in prior years. And what we found is that in prior years we have been able
to make the escrow proposals one meeting before we did this year, one Aldermanic Meeting. And this year
things were slower, really because of COVID-19. In order to figure out wnat your surplus is, you need to
have all of the bills that are provided by the vendors at the end of the year, the last month or so come to the
City and then paid and then all those bills reconciled so that you can come up with the final tally as to how
much money is left over.
Now sometimes the City does not receive — we are on accrual basis here — so sometimes the City does not
receive bills that were incurred say in June until late July or even early August. Then those have to be paid
and then the reconciliation has to be done by the Financial Department. This year some of the bills came
in more slowly. It was more difficult because people were working remotely so we were one meeting
slower. But | can guarantee you that, at least in the Mayor’s Office, as soon as we get the number we
proposed the escrows as soon as we could. Now you Madam President suggested thatwe should do it
earlier next year if we can and certainly this having happened, we will be glad to try to target the meeting in
August rather than the meeting in September to get this done. But this year we were significantly impacted
by COVID.
Now people on the Budget Committee asked, well could we have more time to consider this, this list of
escrows? We need to have the accounting done, the audit done by the end of the year, by December 31°
in a so-called CAFR prepared, that’s a financial report. We could wait another two weeks if you think that’s
really necessary. | mean it will make life more difficult for the accountants, it’s not ideal but given the impact
of COVID if you feel, you the majority of the Board feel you want to wait two weeks, it would cause a few
problems but would not be you know a disaster of any kind. So if you decide you want to wait two weeks
that would be alright under all of these circumstances. Again, we will keep this in mind next year and try to
make sure that we get it to you in August, one meeting earlier than we did this time. But again, really
COVID was what caused us the delay. And|am available to answer any questions regarding the escrows
and Mr. Griffin is on here as well if people have them. We talked through some of the issues with the
Budget Committee last night.
Of course we have the mask ordinance, Madam President, and! know that will engender a lot of
discussion but think it has helped protect us, us the community, the public members, all of our families,
our friends, our neighbors, from the spread of the virus. Nashua has had relatively few cases. | mean 900
but significantly less than the cities of similar size around us: Manchester, Lowell, Lawrence in part. |am
sure there are other factors, but that we have been quite careful about the public safety steps thatwe have
taken.
Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 5
Also, Madam President, | wanted to the request for the transfer to fund a Right to Know Coordinator. Now
this going to take a little discussion because there’s some detail here and people have asked some
questions which | think we need to answer. Just for members of the public, the Right to Know Law says
that anytime a citizen requests any documents or any number of documents, the City must respond and
produce those documents with certain limited exceptions, no matter howlarge the volume, no matter how
many requests are received, no matter how many employees are working part time or half time or no
matter how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it is taking for the City to respond to these requests.
So about two years ago, we began receiving a deluge of Right to Know Requests regarding -— first
Assessing then other departments. Back in the summer of 2019 | believe, early summer, we had already
produced 34,000 documents in response to hundreds of Right to Know Request. At that point, the Legal
Department got involved because we didn’t want people just working full time on Right to Know Requests.
There is other work to do in City Hall believe it or not and | know you know that very well. So the Legal
Department began to handle them and since that time there have been hundreds more Right to Know
Requests. We estimate, and we’ve got two employees here on the meeting tonight, but we estimate that
there, well we know that there are four employees who are spending about half their time for the last two
years on Right to Know Requests from one or two individuals. And if you count up what the staff time and
the benefits are, that’s around $200,000.00 a year. That doesn’t count Attorney Bolton and Administrative
Services Director Kleiner and others who spend significant time but not half time. Frankly, and you can
hear from two of them, and we’ve got Manuela Perry from the Legal Department and Karina Ochoa from
Administrative Services on the call who can tell you a little about wnat they’ve gone through. But they need
some relief, people are getting burned out from just working on Right to Know Requests so much, so we
need a Right to Know Coordinator to help do all this work.
Now the question | think we need to answer is, well why don’t the Departments just go ahead and answer
these things. The first answer which was some time ago when the Legal Department was involved, it was
that the volume was So great and we basically get at least one every day on average and one
communication can include many requests which can requesthundreds of documents. Sometimes there
will be a period of three days and there will be many, many Right to Know Requests coming in all at the
same time. So the first answer was well we can’t have people just working full time on Right to Know
Requests, because that could definitely happen under these circumstances. But the other answer is that
there have been — this is | don’t think well understood — many legal complaints brought regarding against
the City and its employees. For example, there have been criminal complaints lodged against the
volunteer members of the Board of Assessing, criminal complaints against those volunteers. Criminal
complaint against City employees in the Assessing Department. A multi-count litigation against the City
regarding what are alleged to be Right to Know violations, you know, kind of cherry picking out of these
many hundreds and thousands of documents, five, ten differentinstances when a lawyer can sort of allege
that there was some kind of technical violation. And there are numerous complaints that have been lodged
against City employees in the Assessing Department and elsewhere in agencies in Concord against these
employees seeking significant discipline against those employees. So we need to retain some degree of
confidentiality there so | won't get into that in any more depth.
The point being that any time, if any employee just responds but somehow makes an error because they
are not a lawyer, because they and [ll give you an example. They are nota lawyer, they are not schooled
in allthis, the law behind the Right to Know, the case law and exactly wnat is permissible and what's not, if
anyone slips up or at least arguably a little bit, let’s say they do it right 99 times but the 100" time there’s
some little error, they get sued. And the lawsuit that’s pending against the City requests legal fees which
purportedly already are $100,000.00. So they are seeking money damages against the taxpayers of the
City of Nashua. Now let me give you an example of the kind of case that I'm talking about, the kind of
claim, this is just one of many claims. After a criminal complaint was filed against one of the Assessors
which turned out, of course, to be groundless.
The Police Department though did a full investigation, interviewed everybody, spent a lot of time on this
criminal investigation. At the end of that, wen it was all over and no charges, of course, were brought,
Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 6
there was a Right to Know Request made to the Police Department for the “investigatory file”. Nowthe
Police Department, that’s a common term at the PD, investigatory file. They do a lot of investigations.
They have a meaning for investigatory files. And what that includes is all the documents that they have
accumulated as well as reports, written reports regarding all of the interview that they have conducted.
When the Right to Know is requested for all those documents related to this criminal complaint which was
found to be groundless, the Right to Know Request was made. The PD ok they want the investigatory file,
they assemble the investigatory file and they produce it. What's the problem? Well the plaintiff says when
| said “investigatory file” | meant the tapes of the interview. Well the Police Department says we don’t
include, you knowwe don’t— when we use that term and we produce these investigatory files we don’t
include the tapes because we don’t transcribe them, that takes too much time., too much money and time.
So we don’t normally transcribe them. “Well | meant that the tapes should be included” — OK.
Well in order to produce the tapes because there could be personal information because this was against a
City Employee this criminal complaint and it had to do with workplace conduct, at least alleged workplace
conduct. So they needed to transcribe the tape in order to produce them and make sure that they could
redact what needed to be redacted. So the PD and the Legal Department say, OK we will transcribe the
tapes at the City’s expense of course and produce them and we will give you a transcript and the tape. So
they agreed to produce them, but wasn’t done soon enough, wasn’t done immediately so there’s a lawsuit,
thatis a lawsuit. That’s one of many claims in the lawsuit against the City, many similar claims.
So the point being here, it’s not so simple that, oh well why doesn’t the Department just produce the
document because if anyone, it might be 1,000 documents it might be 100 different requests and if anyone
makes a mistake there’s a lawsuit, or arguably a mistake like this thing with the PD. That's why we need
the Right to Know Coordinator and that’s why the Legal Department needs to be involved. Now! spent a
little time on this because | know you've had some questions but we have had multiple, as | say, four
people working half time on these request for two years, a couple hundred thousanda year. This has
probably cost the City $400,000.00 so far, noteven counting the cost of all the litigation and all that, not
counting what the PD is doing with the investigations and with the transcribed, it doesn’t even count all of
that. So! think we need this Right to Know Coordinator to help us relieve these people from the duties to
track all of this to help with all the redacting, because given that we’ve been in this for two years, we can
expect that we will continue to get Right to Know Requests on nearly a daily basis.
Finally, Madam President, | would like next meeting and we’ve discussed this, you and I, to recognize the
wonderful people who put together the lighted kayak events this past Saturday and a few weeks before
that, a very beautiful event which is highlighting the beauty of our river. This is exactly wnat we were
looking for when we initiated the Riverfront Master Plan which we are just about ready to begin
implementation on. We think that this can be a great asset for the community, for the downtown, for the
City as awhole and this is the kind of spontaneous activity that! think should make us all feel good and
proud of the City and its citizens. So | am going to have a Resolution prepared for the next meeting and
we will name the individuals who were involved and ask them to come to the meeting. And | think the
President has said that’s a good idea. In any event, Madam President, that concludes my remarks, but |
will be available for questions and if you wish | could introduce, when the times comes, Corina and
Manuela.
RESPONSE TO REMARKS OF THE MAYOR
President Wilshire
Thank you, Mayor, appreciate that. Response to remarks of the Mayor - anyone have any response?
Sorry | have alot of people on here so I’ve got to do a thorough job of looking. Ok seeing none.
Alderwoman Lu
rm sorry, Madam President! was slow to react. Thank you. Mayor Donchess mentioned the escrows and
| just, | am wondering if | should respond to that nowor wait until we are dealing with it.
Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 7
President Wilshire
If you want to respond to the Mayor's remarks you may, otherwise you can wait until we take it up.
Alderwoman Lu
| just wanted to respond to, | was a little bit confused. | understand this is a big job and it’s been slower, it’s
been more difficult because of the constraints we are under. But my understanding of an accrual system is
that we can predict our expenditures because we are accruing them as we go along and so for me that
explanation didn’t really explain to me why this has been somewhat short time frame to make this decision
on these items. | understand though that in the past it’s been more of a procedural thing where you knowit
is presented and itis done fairly quickly. But| just don’t understand the difficulty with accrual. If we were
cash accounting, | mean! am sure, | just thought that Director Griffin was comfortable — lm sorry my point
is that the accruals are done every year so | am not sure what took it so long this year. ’m sorry for talking
on and on.
Mayor Donchess
As | said it took only a few weeks longer this time than it has in previous years. So | think you
underestimate and John Griffin the CFO can address this or Kim Kleiner or the others that are involved.
But this is a $280 million dollar budget, a lot of independent departments they are making independent
orders, School Department, Police Department, Fire Department, Public Works. You know, as see from
the escrows there are hundreds of checks written every week and all of that has to be reconciled at the end
of the year. This is not like a little quick books thing or something like that. So | think you need to talk to
these people and understand the complexity of the job and the idea that this can just be done the day after
the year is over | think is a delusion. This takes a while, there’s a lot of work, there’s a lot of people
involved and yes, in prior years we have been able to produce, they have been able to produce it a few
weeks earlier. This time it took a little longer, this is the first time we’ve been through a COVID pandemic,
there was a lot of stuff going on. If we are stillin the pandemic, next year we will try to get it a few weeks
earlier as | said. And if you think it’s necessary to delay this, you can.
President Wilshire
Are you all set Alderman Lu?
Alderwoman Lu
Yes, | am.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Anyone else response to the remarks of the Mayor? Alderwoman Kelly? We can’t hear you
Alderwoman Kelly. No, can’t hear you. Ok anyone else have any response to the remarks of the Mayor.
Alderwoman Kelly, oh you're trying to connect to the audio, we'd like to have you present for the meeting
so we will give you a minute. Are you connected yet do you think? Now you’re on mute, unmute; can’t
hear you. Do you want to callin? OK. | can hear you now.
Alderwoman Kelly
But you'll be able to hear everybody.
President Wilshire
Are you all set Alderman Kelly? Alderman Lopez.
Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 8
Alderman Lopez
| just wanted to point out that this deafness awareness week, so | think we all just got a little bit of a taste of
what people are going through. So in all seriousness it would be nice if we had a deaf translator or
something like that in future meetings where we are doing these visually things, but yeah it was a good
solidarity moment we just had about the frustration people experience trying to speak and be heard and
also trying to understand what people are saying.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Alderman Lopez. Alderman Kelly?
Alderwoman Kelly
What is going on?
President Wilshire
We can hear you now Alderwoman Kelly.
Alderwoman Kelly
You can hear me now?
President Wilshire
Yes.
Alderwoman Kelly
Oh my gosh thank you. Is it too late to respond?
President Wilshire
No, ’ve recognized you. Go ahead.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you for bearing with me, | have no idea, | could hear everybody and then | could not respond. | just
wanted to say thank you to the Mayor for looking into what the procedure has been in the past and being
willing towards giving us more time in the future for the escrows.
President Wilshire
Ok, thank you. Anyone else? Seeing none, recognition period.
RECOGNITION PERIOD - None
READING MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS
There being no objection, President Wilshire declared the minutes of the Board of Aldermen
meeting of September 9, 2020 accepted, placed on file, andthe reading suspended.
COMMUNICATIONS REQUIRING ONLY PROCEDURAL ACTIONS AND WRITTEN REPORTS
FROM LIAISONS
