A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, September 27, 2016, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch; Alderman Sean M. McGuinness 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 and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also present.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
A number of exciting and good things happened over the last couple of weeks. We had the music
festival on Friday and Saturday which worked out really well. We had the farmer’s dinner on Sunday
night. The Legacy Playground was opened after a long period of working on that. We had the award of
being 16" as the best place to live in United States by Money Magazine. Tonight we have some very
good appointments on.
One very sad thing is that Dominick Giovinazzo, a long-time leader from the Boys and Girls Club, passed
away and his wake is tomorrow.
Because the issue of the Welcoming City is going to be voted on tonight | wanted to spend most of my
time on that. | brought this resolution to join the Welcoming America Initiative on behalf of Nashua at the
request of both the Chamber of Commerce and the United Way who have been involved in the effort to
make new residents of Nashua, both from outside the country and inside the country welcome for a long
time. | thought and still obviously think it is a very strong move for Nashua. | appreciated their
leadership in this area and so | sponsored the resolution that is before you. | think there are a number of
reasons that we should take positive action on this. If we want to build a stronger economy, a stronger
job base, a stronger tax base and a more vibrant community, we need to attract new residents; both from
within the United States and without. New Hampshire is the second oldest city in the country and there
has recently been publicity about Maine and New Hampshire facing the very serious problem of an aging
population with younger people not staying. Now Nashua, fortunately, if you really look at the numbers is
younger, still getting older but younger and more diverse by far than the State of New Hampshire as a
whole and that’s an opportunity and an asset for us. 13.5% of Nashua residents are foreign born and
that does not include the children of foreign born residents who might be school kids or older teenagers
or even adults. The biggest problem that is raised by the Chamber of Commerce and man of the
employers that we have is the inability to find qualified or any employees to fill jobs that are now open.
This is BAE and across the board. We need more people moving to Nashua. As | mentioned a couple
of weeks ago, if you look at the trends for the last four or five years, Nashua would have lost population
were it not for immigration of considerable amounts; 3,000 to 4,000 people. We need new residents,
immigrants from outside the country and elsewhere to help us start businesses to fill jobs and to provide
diversity and vitality for our community and to help us work towards a prosperous future. Take Rivier
University, last week they had a recruiter go to India to recruit Indian graduate students to come to that
university. They are one of our leading college and university level institutions. They attracted 500
students from India and they are hoping to attract that many more to be part of their computer science
program on a constant basis. This is a huge source of revenue for Rivier. Each of those students faces
$445 per credit for 36 credits so this is a major source of their recent success and one that we want to
encourage and promote. If you look to the Money Magazine article which suggests that Nashua is the
16" best to live, they sighted a number of things; low unemployment, downtown Renaissance and one of
the things that they mentioned was diversity and that we have begun to establish ourselves formally as a
Welcoming City and as part of the Welcoming America Initiative. We are trying to, in passing this, trying
to speak to a number of different groups. Number one, to the foreign born residents that we have who
