A special meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Monday, March 16, 2020, at 7:00 p.m. in the
Auditorium at City Hall, 3% floor.
President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan K. Lovering recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan K. Lovering; Alderman Patricia Klee led in the Pledge to the
Flag.
The roll call was taken with 13 members of the Board of Aldermen present: Alderman Laws and
Alderman Jette were recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
DISCUSSION
Coronavirus (COVID-19)
President Wilshire
| am going to turn this over to the Mayor for discussion on the Coronavirus, COVID-19. Mayor?
Mayor Donchess
Well thank you Madam President for calling this meeting tonight and thank you everybody for
attending. We all are going to talk to you about the City’s response as we have planned it for the
response to the Coronavirus outbreak, COVID-19. | am proposing that you pass a couple measures
tonight which | will detail in a minute. But first, | want to thank the group of people that work for the
City that have been formulating the City’s Plan for some weeks now and have led our response to the
COVID-19 virus. We, of course, have on the front lines is Director Bobbie Bagley of Public Health who
has been working with the hospitals and thinking through the issues, the health issues that we might
be facing over the coming weeks and months. She has done a great job, along with Director Justin
Kates of Emergency Management. He’s been thinking about what to do, in terms of exactly how to
respond and how the City should react for a number of weeks now from his position in Emergency
Management. The same with Director Kim Kleiner, who has been thinking through many of the issues
that we need to do with technology and personnel and many of the other issues that we are going to
need to face as we move forward with respect to the City’s response.
| want to thank them and all of the other people who have worked hard; the Police Department, the
Fire Department, the hospitals. Everybody has been involved in talking this through. Of course we
want to take this very seriously. We already have one case in Nashua which was discovered the end
of last week and was confirmed over the weekend. Director Bagley has been on top of this case. It is
someone who traveled internationally, came home, was back for a couple of days before reporting
symptoms; then was tested and diagnosed within a couple of days, then on Sunday received a
diagnosis. She has been investigating this case, talking with the family and trying to determine who
else might have been at risk or who else could have been exposed. But fortunately the person with
the virus did not travel much around the City. So you will hear more about that from Ms. Bagley.
Also, of course, we have seen what happened in China and Italy and you all heard on the media how
important it is that we try to extend the curve, meaning reduce the number of cases that come initially
during the spike, so that we can enable our health care system to treat the people who need treatment
and so that the healthcare system will not be overwhelmed by an influx of many, many cases at the
same time. You’ve seen what actions that have been taken at the State level, first in terms of ordering
