A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, March 10, 2020, at 7:30 p.m. in the
classroom at the Nashua Police Department, Nashua.
President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan Lovering recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan Lovering; Alderman Michael B. O’Brien, Sr. led in the Pledge to the
Flag.
The roll call was taken with 15 members of the Board of Aldermen present.
Mayor James W. Donchess, Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
First thank you again to the Police Department for hosting us here at the Police Station while City Hall is being
fixed, sol want to thank P.D. | have a couple of items this evening, Madam President. First | wanted to ask
you to consider passing R-20-022 which is on the Agenda a suspension of rules. What this would do, is provide
funds for the City to deal with the Coronavirus situation. Bobbie Bagley, the Director of Public Health &
Community Services is here and has been very active in terms of helping us along with Justin Kates to develop
an Action Plan addressing all the health issues that are currently pending, trying to make decisions about how
we should proceed.
As we have seen events of the last few days, Harvard and MIT both closed; we’ve seen other changes made
with respect to scheduling, a lot of cancellations. We are trying to foresee events that the City may have to deal
with. First, we do need to buy supplemental cleaning supplies, things we don’t usually do; wipe down all City
Services in City Hall and things like that. But also we have to think about the possibility that City Hall could be
closed or that a number of people are not at work and need to work remotely. Justin Kates and all of the
Department Division Heads are defining the City’s essential services. Some of those include, for example,
payroll, at City Hall we need to meet payroll no matter what. So in order to fulfill those essential functions, we
may need to have people work remotely. Now that really doesn’t happen that often. A few of the Division
Directors typically work remotely but that is not done on a large scale, especially a whole group of people doing
it at the same time.
We have a limited number of Citrix Licenses, which is the software license that enables someone to get on the
system remotely. We may need to acquire more Citrix licenses. In addition we may need to acquire additional
laptops for people to take home and work from home if they are needed for essential functions. | have asked in
R-20-022 for you to on a suspension of the rules basis, pass that Resolution which would transfer $50,000.00
for the use of the City in terms of dealing with the Coronavirus issues. This may not be enough, hopefully we
won't need it, but it at least will help us defray some of the expenses if some events that could happen do
happen in the next few weeks. So | would ask that you consider passing that under suspension of the rules.
Now the next item is one that you see on your desks which in this case | would ask just that you accept the
Budget Resolution which is our normal procedure under suspension and refer it of course to the Budget
Committee. It’s the full Budget is not on your desk yet but they tell me it is going to be here by 10 to 8:00; they
are binding it right now. You should have it by the end of the meeting. But overall | can give you an outline of
what is contained therein. The Budget as proposed, the core Budget is $284,000,000.00, which is up 3.25%
over last year. As we have discussed a number of times, the main issue in the Budget is the $3 million dollar
increase of healthcare costs this year; 8.6% after, as you will recall, a $3.3 million dollar increase last year.
Those two years together, $6 million dollars, equate to a 3% increase in the tax rate, just on that line item alone.
Putting aside healthcare, the Budget is up about 2.1%. The Budget also allocated and proposes the
expenditure of the $4.7 million dollars in temporary aid; this will be the last year of that unless it is somehow
renewed, that the State Legislature provided us in the last session.
