Board of Aldermen 8-11-2020 Page 3
Alderman Cleaver
| am here, | am alone and | am practicing social distancing. | can hear everyone.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
| am here, | am alone and | am practicing social distancing in accordance with the Governor.
President Wilshire
| am here, | am alone and | am practicing social distancing and | can hear everyone. The first thing I’d like to
say is | would like to wish Alderman O’Brien well, he won’t be with us this evening, he is a little under the
weather. So my best wishes to him for a speedy recovery.
Alderman Lopez
Madam President, may | just ask the Clerk to note for the record that Alderman Schmidt did show the Board a
bird.
President Wilshire
Thank you Alderman Lopez. Also joining us this evening is Mayor Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steve
Bolton. Good evening Mayor, do you wish to address the Board?
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
Alright, well Madam President thank you very much and it is nice to see you all on a very warm August evening.
| had a few things | wanted to get into tonight. First of all, an update regarding the City’s COVID-19 response. |
see that Director Bagley, our Public Health Director is on the call and she and the Public Health Department
continue to do a very fantastic job in helping the community contain the spread of the virus. We receive periodic
updates and right now, as of yesterday, Nashua had had about 800 cases, COVID-19 positive. We have
currently 34 active cases, we have talked about the contact tracing before, but Public Health works with all of
those 34 patients, anybody who tests positive and then figures out who they contacted in the recent days and
then works with the contacts, in this case about 130 to advise them to quarantine to get tested and the
measures that need to be taken to protect themselves and the public from the potential spread of the virus.
We have accomplished a lot; the number of positive cases that we find every month is going down. Right now
we have only about 2 cases, positive cases, patients in the hospitals together. At Nashua’s peak we were in the
range always — every week of 15 to 20 cases and of course we only have 34 active cases because most people
have recovered and unfortunately we have seen 41 deaths but no one has died for over a month. This has been
a great community effort, people have really taken to the masks and are wearing masks and taking other
measures that protect our families, our friends, our community because they know that that’s the way to contain
the spread of the virus.
Now on the Agenda tonight is an amendment to the mask ordinance which we all passed, which was proposed
by the Board of Health, which you all passed in recent months. The amendment would add some clarification to
the mask requirement. First of all, working with the Police Department and the Police Department has been
doing a very good job of encouraging compliance without formally citing anyone. The Ordinance would be
amended to make it clear that the owner of the business, the business which is open to the public such as a
store, a supermarket and the like, has a responsibility to ensure that the people who enter the business, the
customers are wearing masks.
