Board of Aldermen 3-24-2020 Page 4
can be a lot of people gathered together. If any one person on the bus happens to be infected, and we
know that people can be infected without having symptoms or mild symptoms, they could potentially infect
a lot of other people. There have been cases down in Connecticut where one person attends a gathering,
spreads it to others, it gets to others, so we suspended the fixed route bus system until the epidemic
passes a bit. We have though beefed up on the paratransit or call for ride system so that people who need
to get to an essential appointment which would include medical, pharmacy, going to the grocery can call
and get a ride and they would be charged. So expanding that number of people who are eligible for this
service; usually it is just ADA or disability qualified. It will be expanded to include the essential trips that |
mentioned and people would be charged normal price of $1.25 per trip. So we hope that will help with the
need for people who really have to get ... in order to limit the disease and limit the spread of the disease. It
just seemed like contained buses which carried a number of people could be a very likely place where the
virus could spread.
We have many people who are working very hard on this in addition to all of those that | mentioned, | mean
we definitely have heroes in Nashua and those include, of course, our medical workers who are going to
work every day and potentially get exposed to the virus and have to come home and wonder about how
their family would fare if they did get the virus. We have our First Responders, Police, Fire, we have
people working in the pharmacies, even the people who work in the grocery stores, because the
supermarkets we see many, many people, the essential service, of course, to keep the supermarkets open.
So those are some of the steps we are taking, Madam President. And we are praying that the steps |
described and the others that we may take in the future will help keep the number of infections in the City
of Nashua and this entire area to a manageable level. | would just urge everybody to take care of
themselves like we are here, please wash your hands, use hand sanitizer which | will do right now and
keep your distance; no hand shaking, try to work remotely, do anything you can to limit contact with a lot of
other people. So | think that concludes what | had intended to say about the City’s response to
Coronavirus. We owe thanks to a lot of people, we have volunteers, | didn’t mention this yet, but we have
many volunteers who are working hard to reach out to the students who don’t have enough to eat and who
are distributing hundreds of meals every day at various schools around the City. And in addition, some of
the fixed route buses will be used to go to three locations beyond where or away from any short trip to the
school and that is going to start | think sometime this week, so there will be three additional sites using the
fixed route buses to carry the food.
So again, thank you to everyone who is involved. It has been a huge community effort, everybody is
pitching in and it is just wonderful to see that happening.
Madam President, the other item that | wanted to address is one that | wouldn’t normally get into in great
detail but | know that the Board of Aldermen is not holding many Committee Meetings during this time and
therefore | at least wanted to outline the details of O-20-011. The reason | need to do this tonight is to give
those who are attending either in-person or remotely a sense of what it is that we are trying to accomplish
here. As you all know and we have discussed this many times, City Health Care costs have gone up
considerably, $3.3 million the current fiscal year and are projected to go up $3 million next year. This $6
million dollar increase is a major expense, a major increase in itself; it represents a 3% tax increase. The
causes are multiple, increased claims, increased prescription drug cost, a workforce that is aging and other
price increases. So | asked the Administrative Service Division and Financial Services to come up and
work with our consultants, Work Place Benefit Solutions to come up with what are called Plan Design
Changes to see if we could bring costs down or reduce the rate of increase.
So they have met and they have come up with recommendations that could save considerable money for
the City and for the Employees as well. The first group that we are proposing that we ask to meet these
plan design changes for are the unaffiliated or the so-called merit employees. These are a group of
employees that, we did pass merit legislation, in the last couple of years and they benefited significantly
from it. We met with them about the changes that | am going to prescribe back earlier in the month on
March 12" here in the Auditorium and it was attended by many people and there were very few comments
and it seemed that all questions were successfully answered.
