Board of Aldermen Page 25
September 27, 2016
such? That’s all we need to do. We do not need an umbrella organization telling us how to do it. | think
we are all intelligent enough to know how to do it.
Alderman Siegel
With regard to Alderman Wilshire’s point about the results out of committee, actually the results could be
very different because the results out of committee were a specific compromise before us and the
legislation that is before us that was proposed in modified form by Alderman Lopez could potentially
appear out of committee with a recommendation of one way or the other for that so that’s a very different
outcome and it’s an outcome that would be vetted in committee so | am sorry, committee does matter.
Alderman Caron
Mr. President, | have a question because | knew this was going to happen when we left that committee
meeting; that nothing was going change. Does the Board of Aldermen approve every organization that
the city belongs to? | mean this thing with the Welcoming America Initiative, can that be a separate thing
that the Mayor does separately as an organization and we do the affirming the City of Nashua as a
Welcoming City and maybe that would placate a lot of the Aldermen who have this real angst about the
initiative program? Nothing is going to change if we send this back to committee.
President McCarthy
Anything that requires things that will be acted upon by this Board such as the appropriation of budget or
entering into an agreement would in fact require coming to the Board. The Mayor is pretty much free to
take other administrative actions that don’t step on the authority of the Board of Aldermen other than that.
Alderman Cookson
Are we able to divide the question? Are we able to take the welcoming piece, as Alderman LeBrun
suggested and make a decision on that piece and then the issue that seems to be of concern to at least
a portion of this Board be taken up and discussed additionally with additional information and additional
details that might be available?
President McCarthy
The way one would do that is through the process of amendments. The motion that is in front of us is not
divisible because it’s simply to re-refer to committee.
Alderman Cookson
Understood; thank you.
Alderman Lopez
| would like to observe that we did cut it in half when we were at the Personnel/Administrative Affairs
Committee and that was my effort to understand where other people were coming from and | feel that the
Mayor did, in fact, listen to those concerns and stipulate and add additional materials to it that didn’t
increase what we were agreeing to but it limited what the original resolution was suggesting in response
to the concerns. We did cut it in half and then additional information was brought forward but apparently
it's not enough to satisfy people who had the position originally that this was not something that they
wanted to pass.
