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Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 23
dealing with this and it really is time consuming. We have many hours of these Right to Knowlike Mayor
Donchess said, the first half that | was there, it’s been over 34,000 that we did hand out for you knowor did
for them. And then when Legal started taking over it’s been hundreds of Right to Know Requests and
Manuela has helped me learn more about the Right to Know Law and help me figure out howto do
redactions so |can help them out more too. So it’s been a lot for all the Departments, Assessing, anybody
who gets the Right to Know.

President Wilshire
Manuela is on as well, Mayor Donchess.

Mayor Donchess

Is she on too? Manuela works in the Legal Department. Karina works for Administrative Services and has
been cataloging the hundreds of Right to Know Requests, so there’s actually a catalog of these things. Is
Manuela here? Steve is Manuela around, is she on the meeting?

Attorney Bolton

Her picture is there, | don’t know if something has gone wrong.
President Wilshire

Yeah it looks like maybe something.

Attorney Bolton

It was on before but nowit appears to be frozen.

Mayor Donchess

Well she at one point was keeping track of her time and she’d been to like 943 hours on the Right to Know
Request.

Attorney Bolton

Over the last year it’s been over 1,100 hours. And that’s her, she’s a Legal Assistant in the Department.
Celia Leonard is a Deputy Corporation Counsel and nearly half her time over the last year has been spent
on Right to Know Requests. So we are hoping that the addition of this new position will free both of these
people up to perform their normal duties so that we can get back on the path that we prefer to be on. |
think Manuela is now back, although maybe frozen again.

President Wilshire

Yeah it looks like she may have frozen again.
Mayor Donchess

There she is.

President Wilshire

Manuela?

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 24
Attorney Bolton

Can you hear?

Manuela Perry, Legal Assistant

Can you hear me?

President Wilshire

Yes, we can hear you.

Ms. Perry

| can hear you, yes.

President Wilshire

Ok.

Mayor Donchess

| think she went off.

President Wilshire

| think so.

Mayor Donchess

Well if she were available, | think she’d just tell you that she finds this quite a lot.

President Wilshire

Ok. Alderman Cleaver, do you have a motion?

MOTION BY ALDERMAN CLEAVER FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-20-064, BY ROLL CALL

ON THE QUESTION

President Wilshire

The motion is for final passage by roll call, discussion on the motion. Alderman Clemons?

Alderman Clemons

Thank you. I'll just say briefly | was a bit taken aback during the public comment period with how upset one
of our constituents got over what the Mayor was saying. |, until that point, had no idea who he was talking
about because he never mentioned any names. But nowthat! Know it seems to make a lot more sense.
So | would only thank her for bringing that forward to let us all know who is responsible for a lot of this.
Thank you.

President Wilshire

Thank you, Alderman Clemons. Alderman Klee?

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 25
Alderman Klee

Thank you, Madam President. | am in favor of this position and I'll tell you why. When | worked for the
Department of Defense and even through the VA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, | dealt with FOYA.
That was one of my duties and one of my jobs. And when the Departments would get a request for any
kind of information they would forward it to me. | would go through, look through what documents needed
to be gotten. Then | usually sent it back to them telling them what documents | needed in order to do it. It
would come back to me for a review and if necessary, redaction and to make sure that nothing went out. |
usually sent it back to them so we did this back and forth and so on. The reason why we did that both
when | worked for West (inaudible) Airforce Base and when | worked for the VA was because it’s
impossible for every employee to know every little nuance of wnat can be given and what can't be given,
especially sometimes when it comes to numbers. Sometimes we were able to give a street address but we
couldn’t give the number of the street. If someone called and wanted a salary, at that point in time, we
couldn't give, they couldn’t say, “OK | want to know wnat this person’s salary is”. We could not give it. We
could give a range of what the position was. And sometimes just to save everybody it and as the Mayor
said, sometimes just the wrong answer can get you in a whole lot of trouble. So! think having one center
pointis the best way to handle all of these thank you.

President Wilshire
Alderman Lu?
Alderwoman Lu

| appreciate Alderman Klee’s description of her experience with this. | wish that | heard that sooner
because it’s very helpful. | feel that, | wonder if there has been education, you know, how much training we
have given to the various Departments. This just seems like standard operating procedure to some extent.

| mean atleast as far as, | don’t mean the number of requests that are received, | understand thats really
high. But it seems to me that every Department needs to be trained to, that was wnat | came into this
meeting believing that each Department should be prepared to address this. But! take Alderman Klee’s
comments — my concern is that it’s centralized and there is one individual that becomes like a gatekeeper
to some extent.

| also want to take the opportunity at this point to ask about whether its — can an individual ask for
information without it having to go through their attomey? Because | know that the lady who Alderman
Clemons referred to, | believe, the woman who spoke very upset about this, has told us all in her letters to
the Board of Aldermen that when she’s tried to get information on cases subsequentto a case which she
did hire an attorney, that we no longer allowed her to deal as an individual with City Hall. And | just wonder
if that is the case?

Attorney Bolton
May | respond?
President Wilshire

Attorney Bolton?

Attorney Bolton

That is untrue. We have answered every single Right to Know Request that she has made. We have not
refused to deal with her because she is or because she isn’t represented by an attorney on any particular
Right to Know Request. We have had some difficulty in determining when she is being represented by an
attorney and when she is not. One of her complaints has been we have sometimes copied her attorney
who is representing her in many things, in some cases where she says he is not representing her. The fact

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 26

is, itis a violation of an attorney’s disciplinary rules, meaning we could get barred if we address her on
something she is represented by an attorney on without copying that attomey. So we err on the side of
caution, when in doubt, the lawyer who is representing her on a great many things gets a copy. If she
doesn’t want him to spend time, if she doesn’t want to be charged, she can tell him not to open it, not to
read it, not to look atit. But it is absolutely untrue that we have forced her to be represented or prevented
her from being represented or failed to respond to her request for documents. That is categorically untrue.

President Wilshire

Anyone else? The Motion before us is for final passage of Resolution 20-064. Alderman Lopez.

Alderman Lopez

Yeah, | was on Page 3 sorry and there’s a lot of little squares going on here. So first | want to ask a quick
question to Alderman Clemons just to be clear. There were two speakers that sounded really upset, were
you speaking, | think one was Laurie Ortolano, but the other was another Laurie? Which one were you
referring to?

Alderman Clemons

Definitely Laurie Ortolano.

Alderman Lopez

OK so! wasn’t clear on that. And then the second thing is Attorney Bolton just did a pretty good job of
demonstrating part of what | was about to say. With regards to the Right to Know Requests, everybody's
job in any kind of a serious administrative position is going to be how to communicate with people and how
to communicate with the public and then the different regulations that are involved in whatever field you are
in; whether it's FERPA for education or HIPAA for healthcare or Right to Knowwhen dealing with the
public. But there’s definitely deeper levels of nuances that it’s not fair for people who are hired for one job
(overlapping conversation) — it’s not fair for someone who is hired to do a specific job like be an Assessor
or a City Clerk or DMV or whatever to also be expected to know that sophisticated level of detail. So |
appreciate that the Legal Department has taken that role on and | think it’s largely a reason why Nashua
has been winning all the cases that are brought againstthem. They are very careful and very meticulous
with how they attend to that. | think by expecting all of our staff to dedicate their time and professional
effort to this element or this area, | think that’s going to take away from City Services. | think we already
stretched very thin, we are already having a number of struggles just keeping things operating with City
Hall having to open or close or change whole procedures, | don’t this is really a good time for a huge
number of Right to Know Requests.

Now that being said, they have the right to ask those wnenever they want. That's guaranteed by law, so
we have to respect it. So! think we have to be adaptable and we have to look at creating a role that meets
the evident need for these requests. | think the complications involved and the nuances that are appearing
throughout the course of this are an opportunity for that position to also provide guidance to other city staff
and say, “Ok these are best practices for these questions through myself or through Legal”. | think we can
get better at it at both dividing the responsibilities so that it’s not taking away from full responsibilities of City
Staff. And | think that we can get more specific with how to create a system that’s more efficient and easier
for the public to access. | think it’s important that we look at this because there’s a large number of people
that are involved in generating documents that are subject to Right to Know that are not City Staff. They
may be Committee Chairs or participants or even Aldermen, nobody here went to school for howto be a
legislator. So we all have to go through training at the beginning of what not to do and don’t reply to all and
don’t share your opinions you know off the record with too many other Aldermen and accidentally create a
quorum. There are areas that we all have to be trained to do and | think it’s important for the City to
recognize it’s vulnerability as well as its strength and say that it is going to provide a resource for people
who may not have that background.

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 27

And then finally | also, | was on the Board when that particular staff was being targeted repeatedly as well
as other members of the Department, his brother and we had to have some conversations about what
public comment is supposed to be used for and whether you are allowed to berate City Employees, the
Mayor, whoever you feel like apparently during public comment when it is really supposed to be your
opinion on activities that are to be acted upon like Legislation or issues thatthe Board of Aldermen can do
something about. We are not really supposed to get into things like Human Resources, HR issues and
that. But it seems to be the tendency of some members of the public to come and use the microphone as a
chance to publicly express themselves in a way that their target could interpret as bullying. That can create
a very hostile workplace. We don’t want to see our City Staff subjected to any undue discomfort. It’s very
easy for them to be exposed to that if for example something is not redacted or if somebody who is looking
for one thing suddenly finds a million of other things that there may be no substance to them but nowthey
have information that they can tug on and trace it through its logical conclusion.

So | think it’s important for us to have this position. | think it will improve both our ability to provide Right to
Know information and our ability to improve our internal mechanisms for doing it. And then finally | think it
will help us assure internally our staff and then volunteers that the City of Nashua understands Right to
Know Laws and has enough staff to adequately address those needs.

President Wilshire
Alderman O’Brien?
Alderman O’Brien

Thank you, Madam President. |am going to support this Resolution. | see this as a very sad state of
affairs. Here we have a situation where one our citizens has deemed themselves or any citizen could deem
themselves as sort of like a watchdog of what we do here in the public format. And that’s why we do have
the Right to Know Law. But what has happened here is | think it has gotten a little bit too much out of hand
so therefore | would support this to have this new position.

We cannot, | mean part of our goal of being an Alderman is to try to give the best City Services we can to
the public at the best price that we can. And if we have employees that are at the whim or having their time
taken up by only a couple of citizens, then that’s not really efficient Government. So | do support this and |
think would help alleviate this problem. But with that being said, it’s almost $100,000.00 and my question
is to the Mayor and to Corporate Counsel, are there any city agencies that do charge for documents that
anybody so requires under the Right to Know Law. Do they charge for if somebody gets in a car accident
to get the Police Reports or anything else like that? And if we do and if we are entitled to receive a nominal
fee for the request of these documents, can that money be applied to the salary of this new position.

Attorney Bolton

| can respond if that’s ok.
President Wilshire

Please do.

Attorney Bolton

Alderman O’Brien there’s certain documents and an accident report might be one of them where the
Legislature has seen fit to set a price for obtaining one. And | think in the case of accident reports it might
be $10.00. Generally speaking, however, under the Right to Know Law, we are prohibited from charging
any fee other than the actual cost of making copies if we make a copy. Mostly, given the modern age, we
are sending documents electronically and we are not actually making a physical paper andink copy in
which case the Legislature has provided that we cannot charge anything, zero. So if we only knew

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 28
someone in the Legislature, maybe that could be fixed. But that’s the state of affairs as it currently exists.
Alderman O’Brien

| thank Corporate Counsel. | seemed to have heard that before, so | will refer this to Alderman Klee. You
hear that Alderman Klee?

Alderman Klee

Yes, | do.

President Wilshire

Are you all set, Alderman O’Brien?
Alderman O’Brien

All set, thank you Madam President.
President Wilshire

Anyone else, final passage? Alderman Lu?
Alderwoman Lu

Thank you. | just wanted to clarify, we are voting on 20-064 but that is not the actual Resolution that forms
a new position, am| correct?

President Wilshire

This is appropriating money from various other Departments, from various accounts for the position, so itis
funding the position; so essentially yes.

Alderwoman Lu

Thank you.

President Wilshire

You're welcome. Any further discussion on Resolution 20-064? Alderman Cleaver?

Alderman Cleaver

Yes, thank you Madam President, | would just like to say that | believe that the Mayor and Attorney Bolton
and the entire staff has done a great job on Right to Knowunder very difficult circumstances. | would also
like to say that this position will hopefully be one of efficiency and lower cost because this has actually cost
us hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of this stretch and this should be more efficient and
less costly. So | think this is the way to go and we will make everybody more efficient and happy. Thank
you.

President Wilshire

Any other Aldermen before | call — it looks like Manuela has found her voice. [ll call on her if | could.
Thank you.

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 29

Ms. Perry

Yes, | have. Can you hear me ok?
President Wilshire

Yes.

Ms. Perry

Ok for the past year and a half or so | have been doing the Right to Know Requests for the Legal
Department. We get quite a few. We do keep track of them. The reason that | keep track of themina
chart and number them is that so no deadlines are missed and no documents are missed or anything
getting lost. Now with that being said, over this past year and a couple months, | personally, just myself,
have spent over 1,130 hours on these Right to Know Requests and Communications. That is not counting
the attorneys, Karina who is in the Administrative Services Department, Assessing, or wnoever else is
working onit. Thatis just specifically for me. | catalog everything, | write it down. We have to respond
within a 5-day period which means that there has to be letters drafted.

When we get requests for documents, they have to be reviewed to make sure that there is no confidential,
personal or that kind of information thatis not subject to the Right to Know. So that is extremely time-
consuming, because if | read it, then it gets reviewed and then it gets reviewed, because we don’t want to
make mistakes. And we have answered every single Right to Know Request that has come through our
office and then some. We also number the Communications that come into our office. We do not,
however, consider those the Right to Knowrequests. The tracking is for our office so we don’t miss
anything. And not once have we not sent a document, and we are talking hundreds of thousands of
documents, | have six boxes of requests next to my desk for this particular Right to Knowissue. So | mean
its been very time consuming and | would say it’s probably more than half of my time of what | soend on
these. Sol mean 1,130 hours, that’s quite a significant amount of time for the past year. So | think that
might be it unless somebody has any questions?

President Wilshire

We appreciate you. Thank you so much for everything you do for the good work you are doing in there and
for being here and hanging on there with us tonight. We appreciate that.

Ms. Perry

Of course.

President Wilshire

Alderman Clemons?

Alderman Clemons

Thank you. | just want to say thank you very much for your work and for serving the City of Nashua, both
the employees that spoke tonight and really all of the employees in City Hall and throughout the City. You
do a great job under tough conditions and | want to say thank you for everything you do.

President Wilshire

Anyone else? Ok the motion before us is for final passage of Resolution 20-064 by roll call? Would the
Clerk please call the roll?

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 30
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-20-064 declared duly adopted.

R-20-066
Endorsers: Alderman Richard A. Dowd
Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright
Alderman Thomas Lopez
Alderman Jan Schmidt
Alderman Patricia Klee
Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.
Alderman Skip Cleaver
Alderman-at-Large Ben Clemons
Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire
APPROVING THE COST ITEMS OF A COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE
NASHUA BOARD OF EDUCATION AND THE NASHUA ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL
ADMINISTRATORS AND SUPERVISORS, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF SCHOOL
ADMINISTRATORS, AFL-CIO FROM JULY 1, 2020 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2021 AND RELATED
TRANSFERS
Given its second reading;

MOTION BY ALDERM AN DOWD FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-20-066, BY ROLL CALL

ON THE QUESTION

Alderman Dowd

I'd like to speak to it.

President Wilshire

Alderman Dowd.

Alderman Dowd

Yes this came before the Budget Committee last night. It was unanimously approved. It’s a one-year
contract for the supervisors and administrators in the School Department. There’s a total of 52 employees,
the base pay increase is 1.5% for one year, and very few, if any, changes. Minor, minor changes in the
wording, so | highly suggest that we pass this.

President Wilshire

Thank you. Alderman Dowd. Is there any discussion on Resolution 20-066? Seeing none, would the Clerk
please call the roll?

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 31
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-20-066 declared duly adopted.

R-20-067

Endorsers: Mayor Jim Donchess

Alderman-at-Large David C. Tencza
Alderman Patricia Klee
Alderman Thomas Lopez
Alderman Jan Schmidt
Alderman-at-Large Shoshanna Kelly
Alderman-at-Large Brandon Michael Laws
Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright
Alderman June M. Caron
Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire

ESTABLISHING THE USE OF FUND BALANCE FOR TAX RATE
Given its second reading;

MOTION BY ALDERMAN SCHMIDT FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-20-067, BY ROLL CALL
ON THE QUESTION

President Wilshire

You've heard the motion, is there discussion on the motion. Alderman Lu?

Alderwoman Lu

Is there someone that could address the questions that we heard from Mr. Teeboom regarding the
Ordinance that he referenced: it is referenced in the Mayor's letter. | couldn’t understand what the base
rate was.

Alderman Dowd

Yeah, | don’t see Mr. Griffin on here and I'm not sure the Mayor is on either.

President Wilshire

| just saw Mr. Griffin he’s on.

Alderman Dowd

| will defer it to Mr. Griffin.

Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 32
President Wilshire

Mr. Griffin.

Mr. Griffin

Madam Present, other Members of the Board, this particular approach that is encapsulated in the Mayor's
letter is the same approach that has been taken for at least the last 10 years. | believe it was taken the
previous several years in calculating the percent of unassigned fund balance to total appropriations. If you
may recall, for those of you that were present probably 2 and 3 years ago, the resident had questions back
then and we successfully indicated thatthis is a past precedent and that the calculations have been done
very consistently which is a key component of any accounting system. That's why we use the NRO
language in this particular Memo that is dated September 1, 2020 and September 1 on previous years to
the Board of the Aldermen. So! personally as the CFO of the City (inaudible) the calculation and it has
been for those relatively newer Aldermen it’s been the same calculation that I've done for the last 10 years.
Thank you.

President Wilshire

Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Attorney Bolton.

Attorney Bolton

| can add to thatifl may. We have the highest possible bond rating that a municipality can get. The rating
agencies write a summation of why they provide the bond rating that they do. And when it comes to
Nashua one of the things they say is the fact that we maintain a more than adequate fund balance. And
that has been true for several years now and those rating agencies which don't give high ratings away on a
whim, found this approach to be acceptable to them and, in fact, desired by them and it plays a big part in
the very good rating that we achieve. | think we’d be fooling around with something that works if we were to
take that speaker’s advice and tamperwih the Ordinance as it is written.

President Wilshire

Thank you, Attorney Bolton. Mayor?

Mayor Donchess.

Madam President, may | elaborate slightly. So Alderwoman’s Lu question basically | think was about you
know, what we are trying to accomplish. The Ordinance says that we need to have 10% of the amount of
the City Budget in the Undesignated Fund Balance. We have more than that: we have, Mr. Griffin can give
you the exact number, but somewhere between 11% and 12% and after the conclusion of all of this we will
have added to that balance which typically we do so it gradually goes up. | mean ina way | wish that we
didn’t have to reserve so much money but in the financial climate we face right now and with the Ordinance
in place and everything, itis really an operational necessity and certain is necessary to maintain the bond
rating.

President Wilshire

Thank you, Mayor. Alderman Lu are you all set with those answers.

Alderwoman Lu

Yes. Just a quick, so the total of the fund appropriations are what we need to have 10% of in our balance

on June 30", correct? And so the total fund appropriations are (inaudible) that got budgeted and
appropriated for 2021, is that correct?