A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, February 25, 2020, at 7:30 p.m. in Board
Room B166 at Nashua High School North, Nashua.
President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan Lovering recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan Lovering; Alderwoman Linda Harriott-Gathright led in the Pledge to
the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 13members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman-at-Large Ben
Clemons and Alderwoman-at-Large Shoshanna Kelly were recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess, Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
President Wilshire
| did hear from Alderman Clemons an Alderwoman Kelly, they are both away and unable to attend. Does the
Mayor wish to address the Board?
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Yes Madam President. So | had a few things | wanted to update you on. First the Currier was in town
yesterday and | mentioned before that they are seeking to do an annual project in Nashua. You might recall
that when the money that previously was the endowment for the Center for the Arts was moved to the Currier, a
couple of years ago, the Currier suggested that they would use some of that money to do an Art Project down
here on an annual basis. So they have engaged an artist by the name of Alisa Hamilton who has done sort of
community engagement type art projects in Cambridge, | believe in Boston and elsewhere to do a project up
here. Her manner that she works is she gets to know the community a bit and then using, of course, her
imagination, comes up with a kind of community engagement type project which she will do here in the fall.
She was here talking about the City yesterday with some people from Currier and was thinking about various
things she could do. So | am looking very much forward to working with her on what | think will be a very
interesting project for this coming fall.
Number two, you might have heard that Granite Pathways is being removed as the operator of the Hubs in
terms of the State’s Opioid Response. They are being removed as the operator of the Hubs across the State.
So the State has made the decision to terminate their contract at least in Nashua as of May. Now this is
important to the City’s Opioid Response. We, of course, started the Safe Stations Program back in 2016, then
the Hub & Spokes Model came after that and since that time, the Granite Pathways — an organization with little
contact, little presence in Nashua — was the operator of the Hub here. The Safe Stations Program, of course,
has worked very well. We took on an emergency situation and attracted, over the last several years, 3,500
thereabouts people to report and seek treatment.
Now the new Hub for Nashua, the new doorway, will be Southern NH Medical Center. They are going to take
over as of about May 10 or May 11 and then there will be about a 30 day transition while both agencies are in
place. This is good news because the hospital has a much, and | am stating the obvious here, but a much
stronger presence. People understand the hospital, they understand Nashua far better than Granite Pathways
ever could. They are very engaged in this, they want to work with the City, with the Fire Stations, with everyone
involved to try to make the State’s Hub & Spoke’s approach work here. Longer term, the State is interested in
trying to move all people into a single reporting location, the so-called “doorway”. And when and if that occurs
over time, that means that the Fire Stations could be phased out as the principal reporting locations for people
seeking help and treatment and seeking to get into recovery.
In the past we have resisted that because Granite Pathways didn’t really know us very well and it just seemed
like the State was just going to turn the switch and all of a sudden supposedly people would have to look for
some office somewhere that they could never find.
