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Special Board of Aldermen Meeting Page 4
March 21, 2016

that and we need to understand how those connections are being made and reach out to make Sure that those
connections are being made community wide or 10 or 20 years from now our leaders will continue to only
represent a smaller and smaller population of Nashua and that’s not helpful or healthful for any of us. Another
big piece of what the Business and Civic Goal Group is working towards is the establishment of Nashua
Listens. You’ve heard Liz talk about the initial stages of One Greater Nashua forming in the first place and
kudos to the United Way for the work that they have done over the years but in particular for bringing New
Hampshire Listens in to have a conversation about what was happening in our community and recognize the
opportunities and challenges happening in our community. There are any number of conversations that we
may and will face as a community that may be difficult for us to have. If you look nationally at conversations
around immigration; the newest people coming to our country whether they are refugees or immigrants,
whether they are legal or illegal, those conversations are happening in a very difficult environment which not
often leads to positive outcomes. New Hampshire Listens helps to train local communities to have their own
version of that; to help have conversations in the community that directly affect that community. We are hoping
to establish that within Nashua, not to run it ourselves or have it be an individual social service agency but to
have it be truly a coalition of leaders and thinkers in Nashua who learn how to have challenging conversations
as a way to lead us forward. | think if you look at a whole of what we are trying to do, it is to build leaders and
help ensure that in 10 to 20 years from now when we might not be active at the table anymore that the new
leaders understand what our Nashua is about and that they feel they belong.

Ms. Galina Szakacs, Co-Chair, Business and Civic Leadership Goal Group for One Greater Nashua

My role is a little bit different in this presentation. | joined as a coach and as a person with cultural experience
in social life and cultural adaptation. | have worked for 23 at Pfizer as a manager. OGN is not a charity. Now
you have everything, this is the land of opportunity and the American dream. Then you think why they don’t do
it, why they are not good students or why they don’t work or why they are on welfare. Why don’t they
contribute to the country that opened the door? | would like to say that we all experience difficulty to establish
who we are in this country and in this city? All of your positions didn’t come to you very easily and so you
fought to be who you are in your identify. You try to make relationships with people and a lot of people don’t
understand you and you are here on your land. People who are coming here are not of this land. They are
different people. They don’t know what to do or how to behave and | have experienced that myself. Even if
they have the ability and capacity they are not sure that they can step in and say hello | am....because they
feel that they are guests. Unless you feel that you are one of us you will not step in and you will not say that |
have a problem or say that | have something to bring to the table and we have to understand that because
actually we are interested for them to come to our house. We are not a charity giving them gifts. We are
actually personally interested in diversity. Ve would like to help them to recognize their identity, to feel like
they belong and not guests and to tell them that it is okay. Come and tell us who you are and what you can do
and we will find a pertinently. | am in the Civic and Business Goal Group and it wasn’t an easy conversation at
first. What does that mean? Does that mean | have to cut a piece of my pie and give it to them? | already
have a good business and | don’t need to spend my time but in reality what happened was every new business
coming to Nashua make our economy stronger and sustainable because we are in constant change and you
don’t know what will come tomorrow. If you have a very narrow and very focused business you might not be
flexible enough to survey. If you can increase the variety of the business you not only bring different
customers to yourself but you actually make yourself more flexible. Another point is that it is a beautiful
garden. Coming to a new country, these people coming to you, coming to a new culture, they have special
genes in their DNA. To come and cross the border and know that people speak a different language and walk
on a different side of the road, you already have to have courage, you already have to be flexible and be willing
to learn. | have a friend from Ghana and he doesn’t use a fork, | could be very biased and say well, this person
doesn’t use a fork and | asked how come he doesn’t use a fork and he said in our country everything we eat is
a stew, we don’t have water in Ghana. They are a little bit braver than we are in our comfortable situation. If
you look, more than 30% of Fortune 500 companies’ were founded by immigrants. They took a risk; they had
nothing to lose, the already lost their home and their country and they will live here for many years before this
will become their home. Every foreign born worker with an advanced degree creates 2.5 jobs for American
born workers. After decades of steady growth Nashua experienced a negative net immigration. My question is

Special Board of Aldermen Meeting Page 5
March 21, 2016

if we have the most educated immigrants then how come they don’t stay? How come the people are leaving
and New Hampshire has 2,000 unfilled high-tech jobs right now? What is wrong? That does not paint a good
picture. It means my daughter will go live in another state after she graduates from college. It means that
educated diverse people who can create 2.5 jobs for us will leave too. | think they are leaving because they
don’t feel that they are welcome. Look at us, what color we are; | went to the Chamber of Commerce, | went to
Rotary because | was invited. Look who is there, there are no diverse people there. So what, they don’t have
ideas, they don’t have talents? Or, is it that they feel uncomfortable to invite and talk and ask how you are;
where do you come from or what can you do. That is my point about why OGN is not a charity. We don’t take
this grant for three years and give to poor and unfortunate people who came here or live here for 20 years.
OGN is a project and should sustain 10 years after now and it’s good for the city and restore the cycle of
dependence and start the cycle of contribution. That’s all, thank you.

Ms. Jennifer McCormack, Director, Nashua Public Library

This slide is very aptly titled “Join Us.” | am really proud as the library director to be part of this initiative. I’m
proud to be part of this effort to change our city to make it more welcoming. There are other city services also
involved; the Public Health Department has been involved in this project since the beginning and the schools
are involved on a couple of levels. We are inviting any community leader whether it be elected officials or
anybody watching to come and work with us and at the very least embrace the values that we are talking about
that people that are new to our city no matter where they come from are important contributors and make our
city stronger and better and that we should be welcoming and asking people that are new with a different color
skin or a different language or a kooky way that they wear their hair, what do you have to offer that would make
our community better? If you could join us coalition that would be great. If you can just talk about us verbally
and just offer support that would be fantastic. We would love to hear questions from you. If you have any
particular interest in becoming involved you can speak with me, Liz or anyone up here.

Alderman Lopez

| have been working with One Greater Nashua since its inception on the Cultural Connections Committee and
the first thing | want to say is that the RFP, the Endowment for Health, the initial project was beyond the scope
of anything that the Cultural Connections Committee could have accomplished. | think the organizations in
Nashua and given the timeframe that we had to actually submit for it, the United Way was the only one who
could have stepped up and pulled this together as quickly as it was done. That’s not one of the things that was
dwelled on in the presentation but a lot of people had to work very hard very quickly in order to present
something that was a valid project and was also of use to the City of Nashua. | think that the Cultural
Connections Committee has particularly benefitted quite significantly. Among the leadership we have the
former Vice Chair Barbosa and Janeth Orozco who is a member. In addition, the project, the goal group, the
leadership and civic engagement has already benefited the Cultural Connections Committee specifically
because two of the alumni of the graduating Greater Nashua Leadership class, which was organized through
that Leadership and Civic Engagement Group as our current chair, Levon Colone and our incoming vice chair,
Rafael Calderone. It was my opinion when we started this project that there is a tremendous opportunity for
additional leadership in the minority communities around Nashua. There are already neighborhoods,
communities and leaders that have solved their own problems. They have created their own networks of
where to go to when you need to solve issues, how to celebrate together and how to experience Nashua. Last
years Latino Festival, we put a lot of work into reaching out to people who did not traditionally go to that
festival and when they attended they were surprised that the festival is large and well run; there’s food and
music. They didn’t necessarily feel welcome going on their own until they had that invitation. This is a two-
way street; we have an invitation through this coalition to experience cultural groups to become part of their
history. | think it’s an important project for Nashua to have moving forward because the two base challenges
that we have in terms of population is an increasingly large diverse population and an increasingly large aging
population. How do we pass on Nashua’s heritage to make sure that it is sustained as the elderly population
starts to decline and the new people start to come in? The way we do that is through this kind of engagement.

Special Board of Aldermen Meeting Page 6
March 21, 2016

| am particularly enthusiastic about this, | have been working with them since its inception and | think it’s a
great coalition program for the City of Nashua.

President McCarthy

Tracy | wonder if you might address how the Chamber is reacting to the coalition.
Ms. Hatch

As | said, the Chamber is very focused on an economic development and a thriving and vibrant business
community, not just in Nashua but in Greater Nashua and across the state. |’ve been involved in the One
Greater Nashua Coalition since | took the position as the head of the Chamber and believe passionately in
what the coalition is trying to achieve, not because it’s a charity because it’s not but because | think it is in the
best interest of our community as a whole and particularly the business community. Our Board of Directors led
currently Paul Hebert for another five days; we have created a strategic plan for the Chamber for the first time
in a bit that specifically and explicitly incorporates the ideals and ideas of One Greater Nashua. We have
seven tenants, seven strategic areas that we will be focusing on that map in many ways to some of the things
that you have heard about this evening. For example, if you ask businesses in our community what the most
important issues that they face to their success, one of the top two invariably is going to be access to a skilled
workforce. The slide that Jared showed earlier that showed the non-white population of adults in Greater
Nashua was kind of really centered on Nashua itself, it wasn’t very explosive. Contrast that to the map on the
right hand side those 18 and under who are non-white; those are the employees and the employers 10, 15 and
20 years from now. If we don’t reach out today and welcome them in this community and that they have a
future here then we are saying that 20 years from now that we don’t want a robust business community. We
have built into the piece about access to a skilled workforce, the work that we are doing through One Greater
Nashua. Capitalizing on our diversity, that is one of our strategic points in the Chamber’s strategic plan. We
cannot be a vibrant, robust and attractive community that others, particularly young people want to come to if
we turn our back on the diversity that exists today and is only going to grow in the future. Those are two
examples of how the Chamber of Commerce has affirmatively and specifically incorporated the ideals and
objectives of One Greater Nashua into the work that we intend to do over the next three to five years.

Alderman Lopez

| want to say for the record that the chart that is presented here which says adults as a minority as a
percentage of the population and then children as a minority percentage, it’s my guess that this is representing
the comparative percentage. You could glance at this and be confused and say okay why are all the adults’
right there and the children are everywhere? What it is really saying is the ratio. If you have one person who
is Hispanic and one person who is white then they compare but if you have a large family of five children who
are Hispanic and then one child who is white; | think that’s what the chart is depicting but | wanted to double
check.

Unidentified Speaker

That is correct.

Unidentified Speaker

That is another factor that | think was interesting that we looked at this kind of statistical underpinnings. We
talked about the negative migration for Nashua and actually for the state as a whole, had there not been an
influx of foreign born individuals into our state, the state would have seen the population decline overall. We
only have grown because of non-native people coming into our community. Again, if we want to see our
population shrink and we want to have less opportunity for children and we want to see jobs go elsewhere

Special Board of Aldermen Meeting Page 7
March 21, 2016

because employers can’t find the skilled workers they need then we can ignore that but | don’t think that’s the
vision we want to see for our community.

President McCarthy

To me this slide and the one about the main stream job creation says to me that what we are seeing now is an
influx of people who are different in appearance, language and culture from the people who sit around this
horseshoe but common in the goal of hard work and creatively will create individual and community prosperity.
| think it’s imperative that we capitalize on that. At some point | want to retire into a community that will stay in
the manner of which | have become accustomed and somebody else is going to have to pay for that and that’s
going to have to be the next generation of entrepreneurs and business people who bring prosperity to the
community. | think it’s in our own enlightened self-interest to make sure that that pool of resources that can
produce community prosperity is unburdened and able to do so. | want to thank the panel for coming in and
doing the presentation and please keep in touch with the Board and let us know what else we can do to help.

ADJOURNMENT

MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ADJOURN
MOTION CARRIED

The meeting was declared adjourned at 8:22 p.m.

Attest: Patricia D. Piecuch, City Clerk

Building Strong Communities

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stronger together

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Community Leaders Identify Need to Bring Community
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Immigrant Integration Initiative

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Figure 1: What Works for Health?®

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| Morbidity (quality of life) 50%

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Tobacco use

Health Factors

Policies and Programs

County Health Rantings model ©2012 UWPHI

Summary Health and Equity Index
2006-2010 American Community Survey

Across indicators, Black and African American residents experience the most significant inequity, followed by Hispanic and Latino residents.
Over Crowding is the biggest predictor of inequity among all variables studied.

Single Average
Unemploym Family Mother High School Home Food Business Over Index by
Job Quality ent Income Poverty Household Degree Ownership Stamps Ownership Crowaing Race
White, non-Hispanic 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
Asian 0.8 0.0 0.9 0.0 0.7 1.1 1.6 0.5 0.8 43 1.1
American Indian 1.3 0.0 1.6 2.2 0.0 Ca 1.9 as 0.0 1. z
Two or More Races 1.0 1.7 1.2 1.7 1.5 2A 0. a
Hispanic or Latino 1.5 1.9 1.4 ‘i 2 ps 2.1 ee a ee
Black or African American 1.6 1.6 1.5 (aj gs 1.5 2.2 3B SBD

Average Index by Factor 1.2 1.2 1.3 1.6 1.6 1.7 1.9 2.2 30 5D

1.0 or less = No Disparity
1.1-1.4 = Small Disparity
1.5 - 2.1 =Moderate Disparity

Data Source: NH Center for Public Policy 2013 Health and Equity Report Card

A Coalition of Neighbors

We Value Our Growing
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Improved Health Outcomes

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