Board of Aldermen 4-28-2020 Page 21
But it again is so that the Police Officers aren’t treated unfairly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So |
would ask that we pass this.
President Wilshire
The motion is for final passage of Resolution 20-032 by roll call. Discussion? Alderwoman Lu?
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you, Madam Chairman. | think we should consider whether, my understanding is that crime was
down in Nashua. | haven't heard that the Police Department is under COVID-19 has affected them. | just
know that vacation time is something that a lot of the public is being required to take right now. | just
question why it is described as being treated unfairly to be asked to just follow the contract as written at a
time when (inaudible) is not over-tasked and at a time when we are looking ahead to later when people get
out of their homes and all of our services will be more heavily tasked at that time. | feel that we should
have a compromise of some type. | don’t know why the Police Department waited until two days before the
deadline to come to us and ask us to vote on this. | think Officer Testaverde said that May 1* is the
deadline. | just think we keep in mind that there will be things that we will need to do to minimize or address
the expenses that we are experiencing, perhaps requiring somebody to take their vacation time is not
unreasonable. Thank you.
Alderman Dowd
Can we have Deputy Chief Testaverde explain the urgency?
Jim Testaverde, Deputy Chief
Thank you very much. To answer some of those questions, first of all wnen the pandemic hit, everyone in
the City as you very well know, kind of went into high gear and as the Mayor stated before, this is still a 7
day a week process. For that reason, one of the very last, maybe number 97 on our list of things to do was
to go through the contract to see what items might be affected by the pandemic. After about a month or so,
| was approached by some of the Union Members to just say, basically the way they framed it was, “we
understand that you guys have a lot going on, we are sorry to bring this up, but there are several people
that are going to lose the days. Do you want us to just start taking them’? And | sat down with the Chief
and said, “No we don’t want you to start taking them”. We have been affected by the COVID-19. If you
give me a moment | can go into my desktop and try to pull it up but | am estimated, at one time we had as
many as 7 officers on quarantine. Right now we only have 2. But those keep shifting like the rest of the
country, into different pockets.
In addition to that, we always need a minimum amount of officers on the street so to ask officers to start
taking time off. Officers right now are allowed to take time off; they are taking it a day here or a day there.
But we don’t want 58 people to all of a sudden try to take block week vacations just to ... | know that there’s
nowhere for them to go but | don’t want them to just sit at home and just for the sake of burning the time.
When, hopefully soon, we get out of this pandemic and to address your concern Alderwoman, we have also
in the contract all 58 people can’t take time off at the same time. It is limited to any four per shift and there
will never be a time when | would turn to anyone here and say, "Unfortunately we have half of the officers
on the street right now because they are all off on vacation,” we just wouldn’t allow that to happen. | didn’t
use the term “unfair”, or if | did, | apologize. This is just something | don’t want to punish them for lack of a
better term for doing exactly what | expect them to do during a time of crisis and that’s coming into work
every day and doing their job. If that answered the question.
Alderman Clemons
Thank you. | just wanted to say that | am going to absolutely be supporting this 100%. People have had,
myself included, have had their vacations ruined by what has been going on. And in some cases, we’ve
