Search

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 9

Mr. Sullivan
That’s right.
President Wilshire

Alright, thank you both very much. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. Sullivan? Alderman Lopez?

Alderman Lopez

More of a comment. | just wanted to make it before the Mayor signs off. At the election yesterday we did
have an individual who had difficulty with the masking requirements for voting and he presented evidence
that he had some developmental disabilities, he was escalating emotionally very quickly. He had some
verbal stuttering and he was very, very agitated when he left and Nashua Police made sure to help de-
escalate out of concern for him. | was very impressed with how the officer approached it, | was very
impressed with how the officer was able to calm him down and reassure him that he was going to be heard,
he was going to get his chance to vote.

President Wilshire’s son did a very good job of making sure we had a contingency plan for people who
were not able to vote with the mask on, which preserved their ability to keep their eyes on the ballot box so
they would meet them in the back area, they could fill out the voting around the corner and then they could
watch as Barry brought it to the ballot box. So we had a contingency plan but the experience of walking into
a room where everyone around you was suddenly alarmed by you not wearing a mask was pretty intense
for that individual and it was Nashua Police who did a very good job | think of managing the person’s
symptoms, meeting them where they were and reassuring them that they were safe and that they were
welcome where they were. So | just wanted to pass that on to you as a little bit of good news.

President Wilshire
Thank you Alderman Lopez. Deputy Testaverde, | hope you'll pass that along?

Deputy Chief Testaverde

| absolutely will, | love the feedback; positive is always better than negative. But we love the feedback,
thank you very much.

President Wilshire

Thank you. Did anyone have questions or anything for Mr. Sullivan before we let him go? Hello? | thought
| heard someone speak up, | guess not. Thank you, Mr. Sullivan, and thank you Director Marchant.

Mr. Sullivan
Thank you very much.

READING MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS

There being no objection, President Wilshire declared the minutes of the Board of Aldermen
meeting of August 11, 2020, and Special Board of Aldermen meeting of August 24, 2020 accepted,
placed on file, and the reading suspended.

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 10

COMMUNICATIONS REQUIRING ONLY PROCEDURAL ACTIONS AND WRITTEN REPORTS
FROM LIAISONS

From: Donna Graham, Legislative Affairs Manager
Re: Communications Received from the Public

There being no objection, President Wilshire accepted the communication and placed it on file.

PERIOD FOR PUBLIC COMMENT RELATIVE TO ITEMS EXPECTED TO BE ACTED UPON THIS
EVENING

President Wilshire
If you could give your name and address for the record, we would be happy to hear you.

Beth Scaer Beth Scaer, 111 East Hobart Street. | was just wondering are you taking action on R-20-071,
Issuing Bonds for $8 million dollars?

President Wilshire
No we are referring that to Committee; there won't be any action on that this evening.
Ms. Scaer Ok that’s all | wanted to ask, thank you.

Bob Keating Bob Keating at 5 Coburn Woods. | am speaking as a member of Granite State Organizing
Project and first | want to each the concerns that the Aldermen have expressed to the Mayor and his wife
Vicky and hope his course and Vicky’s course is very short and they are healthy very quickly.

| am speaking on upcoming discussions tonight about the School Street flats. | have spoken as a member
of Granite State Organizing Project before, but tonight my remarks are going to be primarily comments
about the project’s financing. Our concern is that there is a proposal to have $2.5 million dollars of City
Funds in the form of a Bond that is going to be used for this project. It is being framed as public good: it is
clear that without this project there would be no need for additional parking as there is 78 spaces there
currently. So the question is, is that you know why are we taking a public resource, the parking lot currently
which is generating revenues and that we are selling that property over to a private developer and
essentially is going to be $2.5 million dollars of City Funds plus an additional $100,000.00 for other
infrastructure related requirements for this project. Clearly we have not done that for a number of the most
recent projects that have been approved for the City including the Henry Hangar and Corriveau Routhier
and certainly the Marshall Street properties.

President Wilshire
Mr. Keating, are you talking about a specific thing we are taking action on this evening?

Mr. Keating Well my understanding is that you are going to be talking about the financing for the School
Street Flats?

President Wilshire
Ok, | don’t see that on the Agenda this evening.

Mr. Keating It is not? It was, at least | had heard that it was on the Agenda that was posted.

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 11
President Wilshire

But we are not taking action on it this evening Mr. Keating. So the first Public Comment Period is only for
items that we are expecting to be acting upon this evening. We are not acting on that this evening.

Mr. Keating You are not going to act, you are just going to discuss it. Ok, well | will stop my remarks at this
point then.

COMMUNICATIONS REQUIRING FINAL APPROVAL

From: David G. Fredette, Treasurer/Tax Collector

Re: Purchase replacement for one (1) 2019 Ford Police Interceptor Utility vehicle from FY2021 Capital
Equipment Reserve Fund (CERF)

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE, AND APPROVE THE PURCHASE

OF A 2020 FORD POLICE INTERCEPTOR UTILITY VEHICLE IN THE AMOUNT OF $49,516.50 TO BE

TAKEN FROM THE CERF ACCOUNT AND AWARDED TO MUNICIPAL VEHICLES OF

MARLBOROUGH, MA, BY ROLL CALL

ON THE QUESTION

Alderman O’Brien

And Madam President, may | speak to my motion?

President Wilshire

Alderman O’Brien.

Alderman O’Brien

Thank you, as we have heard and just to familiarize us again, this is replacing a Ford Interceptor that was

involved unfortunately in an accident. It is a first line piece for the Police Department. It responds on 911

Emergencies and it is definitely needed by the fleet to complete the Police Department's Mission and |

hope you all join me in joining in favor of this. And | see Deputy Chief Testaverde is also here and | am

sure he is here to speak on it, if there are further questions. Thank you Madam President.

President Wilshire

Thank you. You’ve heard the Motion is to accept and place on file and approve the purchase of 2020 Ford
Police Interceptor. Any 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 Caron, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,
Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Cleaver,

Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire 13

Nay: 0

MOTION CARRIED

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 12

Ms. Lovering

You have 13 yeas and 0 nays, | did not hear Alderman Laws, President Wilshire.
President Wilshire

Yeah, | don’t see that he’s on.

Ms. Lovering

13 years and O nays.
Alderman Klee

Madam President, Alderman Laws was having some problems before, | don’t know if he is still having some
that’s why he had gone to just shutting off his camera hoping that would help. So he’s probably
disconnected again.

President Wilshire
So that was 13 to 0, that motion carries.

From: Doria Brown, Energy Manager
Re: Update on the City’s Community Power Efforts

Doria Brown, Energy Manager

Hi, | am Doria Brown and | am so happy to be here and to see all of your faces for the first time in a really
long time so hi, how are you. | wanted to do a brief update on where | am with Community Power. | am on
a little bit of a cell phone / computer kind of situation to be able to be on camera with you guys so | don’t
think I'll be able to present the presentation. But | sent it over earlier, is that ok?

President Wilshire
That's fine.
Ms. Brown

Ok so | am doing a quick update on Community Power, | have a little outline on what | want to talk about
today in the presentation so | am going to talk about the status of the Community Power efforts. The idea
of joining with the collective communities who want to share a back office for a community powered
program and request that a member of the Board of Aldermen joins our Aggregation Committee so that we
can complete that group and start having regular meetings.

So first | wanted to do a brief background on what is Community Power, because | know that we might not
have heard about it in a little bit. So Community Power will allow the City to purchase electricity supply
from third party suppliers and on the wholesale market on behalf of its residents instead of Eversource
purchasing that power. The utility, which is Eversource, will still maintain control of the delivery portion of
the bill. So they will maintain the lines and sending that power to everybody’s home. Through aggregation
the City will be able to charge less per kilowatt hour than the utility while also potentially collecting one tenth
a percent brokerage fee from the third party supplier. That money will hopefully be able to be reinvested in
energy programs for the community and help us further our way to 100% renewable energy goal by 2050.
So this will really help us reinvest back in to our community and kind of own our own renewable energy
resources.

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 13

So right now the project status is that we are currently in a process of creating a draft aggregation plan
which is the first step to creating this program. | have a draft aggregation plan for the Nashua Aggregation
Committee to review when we start meeting. | have requested a lot of data from Eversource including the
number of energy accounts in Nashua and we found that we have 48,860 accounts and we use about
404,000 mega watts hours every year. So we are quite the user as the City. We have been attending
regular data meetings with the Public Utility Commission to work on rule making for this program so that we
can work with our utilities and get the data and information that we need to move these programs forward
as kind of what is a big step in this because we need a set of rules to be created in order for us to work with
our utilities and start our community aggregation. So that’s kind of one the big things that we’ve been
working on an kind of lobbying for as a City.

One program that we were considering doing is joining a back office with a collaboration of other
communities in New Hampshire. This will allow us to kind of share the cost of upkeep of this program. So
when you create a Community Power Program, you have to have customer service, somebody has to be
purchasing supply and maintaining all of these accounts. Like | said earlier in this presentation, we have
about 48,000 accounts so it is going to be very difficult for one Energy Manager to do by herself. So joining
this back office will help us have the staff and be able to free up the time to be able to maintain this
program. And in the future, we would like to reinvest and bring renewable energy together because when
you put all of our money together as communities, our dollar is stronger together.

The communities in this program include Nashua, Lebanon, Hanover and Cheshire County. We are
currently actually in the process of working with legal representation that’s being funded by Lebanon and
Hanover to incorporate this group and it will be a non-for-profit called Community Power New Hampshire
and for short it would be CPNH. So that’s kind of like the programming that we are trying to form to start
this effort as a community. My computer froze for a second. Actually, this might be a good time to pause
for questions. | Know | am very much talking quickly.

President Wilshire

Does anyone have any questions? Alderman Cleaver.

Alderman Cleaver

| would just like to say thank you to Ms. Brown, nice to meet you very much and also | would like to be a
member of the Committee, | volunteer to do that.

Ms. Brown

Thank you, awesome.

Alderwoman Lu

Just a couple of simple questions. A back office is just another name (audio cuts out).
Ms. Brown

| apologize, but | can’t hear you.

President Wilshire

Alderman Lu, we can’t hear you.

Alderwoman Lu

Ok.

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 14

Ms. Brown

| heard “back office”. If you want a little bit more information about the back office, | can send you a one
pay information sheet that | have about a joint back office for Community Power if that would help.

President Wilshire

That would be great, if you could send that to the full Board that would be great.

Ms. Brown

| can definitely do that. | also have a link for a website that we have created to kind of educate people such

as yourselves about Community Power and this back office. So my next slide, oh | am sorry, did you have
any more questions?

Alderman Lopez

Actually | just wanted to suggest to Alderman Lu, because | know she’s struggling with her IT. Your phone
is pretty audible, what | would suggest is stepping away from your computer because your computer audio
is being picked up on your phone and creating that reverb. If you take a couple of steps away while you are
using your phone | think we could probably hear.

President Wilshire

Well thank you IT guy. Anyone else have any questions for Doria Brown. Did you want to continue Doria?
OK.

Ms. Brown

| do. So my last slide is that | am hoping to establish bi-monthly meetings for October/November to get
members up to speed about the aggregation planning and then do monthly thereon after. Lastly, we need
a member from the Board of Aldermen to get this going. And after completing the aggregation plan, the
role of this committee should be to participate in the Community Power NH picking programming that helps
further Nashua’s Climate & Energy Bill Reduction goals. So that was the end of my presentation. So if
there are any further questions, | am happy to answer them.

President Wilshire

Thank you so much. We appreciate you being here this evening to bring us up to speed.

Ms. Brown

| appreciate you having me, it’s been awesome.

Alderman Dowd

Doria, is part of this all the solar we are putting in on all the buildings in Nashua including all the schools?
Ms. Brown

No, this is not a part of our solar programming but once we do purchase those solar installations, this could
become part of our Community Aggregation Program where we can sell any excess solar that we generate

back to our community, or not sell it but give it back to our community to help with energy bill reduction. So
it’s not part of the program right now but there is potential for us to work that into the program in the future.

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 15

Alderman Dowd

And | know that you’ve been working with us very closely on doing the solar on as many schools as we can
and it is ultimately going to save the City a lot of money and electricity.

Ms. Brown

Yes.

Alderman Dowd
Thank you for that.
President Wilshire

Anyone else? Seeing none, thank you very much again for being here this evening we appreciate and we
will get back to you on a member of the Board. Ok?

Ms. Brown

Awesome, thank you so much.

President Wilshire

Thank you so much.

MOTION BY ALDERWOMAN KELLY TO APPROVE THE CITY JOINING A COLLECTIVE OF
COMMUNITIES WHO WANT TO SHARE A BACK OFFICE TO SERVICE THE COMMUNITY POWER
PROGRAM AND NOMINATE ONE BOARD OF ALDERMEN MEMBER TO SERVE ON THE CITY’S
AGGREGATION COMMITTEE FOR COMMUNITY POWER, BY ROLL CALL

ON THE QUESTION

President Wilshire

Any discussion on that motion? Alderman Lopez?

Alderman Lopez

One of the Board of Aldermen is the minimum, could we leave (audio cuts out).

President Wilshire

Could we what?

Alderman Lopez

Should we have an alternate.

President Wilshire

Should we have an alternate?

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 16
Alderman Lopez

Yeah?

President Wilshire

Well we can certainly talk about that, | don’t know how all this came up so I'd have to look at what brought it
to this point.

Alderman Lopez

We can always amend it, | was just asking because | would like to hope for the best and prepare for the
worst.

President Wilshire

Thank you Alderman Lopez; anyone else? Alderman Lu?

Alderwoman Lu

Thank you. | didn’t realize we were voting on this tonight and was hoping to speak with Doria. Is this
something that we need to decide tonight. | haven't really had a chance to talk to her. | actually had a
couple other questions but (audio cuts out).

President Wilshire

Alderman Lu, we can’t hear you anymore. | mean you said you had a few questions? She is still here, you
can ask questions.

Alderwoman Lu

My only question is could we defer the vote until we have a chance to review the program. | don’t really
know anything about this program.

President Wilshire

We are having a hard time hearing you Alderman Lu.

Alderwoman Lu

Ok.

President Wilshire

Doria is still on if you want to ask her some questions? Alderwoman Kelly?

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you. | wanted to just quickly voice over — thank you Doria for doing this hard work, | Know this is a
program that will allow us to do some more energy efficiency work here in the City which is really important
to us. We have been talking about this program in the Energy & Environment Committee for a number of
months so | am inclined to vote on this, this evening so we can move forward. | also just wanted to offer up
that | am happy to be on the Aggregation Committee, | would like to help support that. So that’s all | had.

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 17
President Wilshire

Ok thank you, Alderman Klee?

Alderman Klee

Thank you Madam President. | believe that, | don’t know if this will help Alderman Lu at all, but | believe
that Alderman Lu had asked Doria about the I’m sorry the back office and | know she is going to be sending
us a quick sheet. But maybe if that would be good that she could kind of give a quick little briefing, would
that be ok | don’t know and | don’t know if that would help Alderman Lu a little bit to understand it.
President Wilshire

| don’t know if it would. Alderman Lu?

Alderwoman Lu

Can you hear me?

President Wilshire

Yes.

Alderwoman Lu

| just want to point out that the Energy Committee, those meeting minutes, | don’t believe are available on
the website. I’ve never you know seen any minutes. So | really don’t have any of that information. But my
main concern, | guess I'd feel better if | understood whether Nashua residents have choices, etc. If it is an
exploratory committee, fine. But to say that it’s been very clear, | don’t think that, | wouldn’t know how to get
access to the Energy Committee Meeting minutes. Thank you.

Ms. Brown

If | could speak up for a minute, is that ok.

President Wilshire

Yes.

Ms. Brown

So the Environment/Energy Committee Meeting’s Minutes aren’t up because | have been having a hard
time being able to upload them, that is a thing that | do. So | could definitely send them to you. Also when
it comes time to talk about a back office or shared back office, | think that, my opinion, it might be better to
talk about in the Aggregation Committee because that group will have more time to learn about what CPNH
is up to in the Governance Meetings. | am sorry to interrupt your meeting and your process but | was
hoping to be able to talk more with the Aggregation Committee about moving forward with this program as
a part of the Joint Back Office and being able to come back and talk to you guys about it afterwards,
because it will all be a part of the Aggregation Plan. I’m sorry, anyway, I'll stop talking.

President Wilshire

That’s OK; Alderwoman Kelly.

Board of Aldermen 09-09-2020 Page 18

Alderwoman Kelly

Yeah Doria, so can you just explain so that everyone understands, when we are putting this Aggregation
Committee tougher, it’s not saying we are definitely doing this, it’s a planning portion of this correct?

Ms. Brown

Yes. So what we need to do right now is create an Aggregation Plan and the Aggregation Committee — |
know I’m saying Aggregation a lot — will create that plan. And then the Board of Aldermen will then review
that plan and adopt it. Then that plan has to go out to Public Comment before it can be established. So

there are multiple steps that we have to go through to get this through. So kind of being a part of that Joint
Back Office would be approved in the Aggregation Plan, that needs to be created and finalized.

President Wilshire
Thank you very much. Anyone else have any questions or concerns? Alderman Lopez?

Alderman Lopez

Personally as long as this goes to a vote, | am going to vote in favor of moving forward because we have
been talking about this since at least February. There have been multiple Mayoral Addresses on the topic,
we have had presentations and discussions in Full Board Meetings and there has been the Energy
Committee so | feel like as individuals were are interested in following a topic, we really need to do that and
not try to retroactively catch up when it’s already underway. Doria is doing a good job, she’s very
organized and she knows her material; we are lucky to have her. There’s a point where we have to
remember that our role is to Legislate and Fund not micromanage.

President Wilshire
Anyone else? We have a motion before us? Seeing none, will 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 Schmidt, Alderman Laws, Alderman Cleaver,
Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire 14
Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED
PETITIONS - None
NOMINATIONS, APPOINTMENTS AND ELECTIONS
Joint Convention with Edgewood Cemetery Board of Trustees
There being no objection, President Wilshire declared that the Board of Aldermen meet in joint
convention with the Trustees of Edgewood Cemetery for the purpose of re-nominating one Trustee

and called for nominations.

Trustee Maffee nominated Brian Law for a five year term to expire March 31, 2025.