Board of Aldermen 03-08-2022 Page 28
They deserve our respect also and that respect should be extended to everybody whether that’s the public respecting us
or us respecting the public. It should be between everybody and not just the people that we like. Thank you.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you. | will go quickly. | first wanted to start by thanking the Mayor for putting together an event for Ukraine and I’m
looking forward to seeing the flag flown and getting together with community members to reflect on what’s going on there
and how we are all feeling about that. Thank you, | will be there.
| wanted to also take a moment to thank you, Madam President, for recognizing Renny who was a giant in New
Hampshire politics and will be greatly missed.
On a similar note, | wanted to thank the members who support me while | was out for a death in my family.
| also was encouraged to see the library come forward. It does need some real hard looks in terms of what we can do to
improve it. It’s a building that gets a lot of use and it’s really an important part of the community here in Nashua. The
Energy and Environment Committee has been talking a bit about it as well and we see that there can be some energy
efficient changes as we make these changes that could also help save taxpayers save money in the long run. So looking
forward to that project overall.
Just a little fun democracy is alive and well. Today is Town Meeting day for towns smaller than us. Quite a few people
have come out and used their right to vote to get their voice out. I’ve heard anecdotally that there’s just been a lot of
people out there. Thank you everyone for participating in the democracy. We do it here, but the vote is really important
as well. Thank you.
Alderman Jette
Thank you Madam President. | hope you'll extend me this personal privilege. | remember when | first became a member
of this Board. | remember President McCarthy telling us that we should work on legislation in committees and that is
where ordinances and resolutions should be vetted, questions asked. Just because you have a committee meeting
doesn’t mean the committee has to act on that ordinance or resolution at that meeting. If they have questions and the
people to answer them aren't there, it’s perfectly okay to hold it in committee until you can get the right people there to
answer the questions. So that when the committee makes a decision, a recommendation to the full Board, the full Board
can rely upon the committees having done its homework, vetted the issues, and come up with a recommendation as to
what the committee thinks is the best thing.
Now we re-referred a matter to a committee this evening and somebody mentioned that the committee met, and dealt with
this, and that we shouldn’t send it back to the committee. Well in that particular case, the prime sponsor of that legislation
was not able to be there. We find out tonight that he has requested that it be held and that we not move ahead on it. Well
we didn’t know that at the time, but | fully expect when you sponsor a piece of legislation whether it’s you as an endorser,
or the Mayor, or the Administration that somebody is there to present the ordinance or resolution to us and why they’re
asking us to adopt this. On this particular matter at that meeting there wasn’t anybody there. The Chairman looked
around and saw Ms. Kleiner and said Director Kleiner can you help us with this? She said “well I’m not here for that, but
yes | think I can talk about it”. So she was caught by surprise. John Griffin was here. He wasn’t expecting to talk about
this. | had a lot of questions and Ms. Kleiner did the best she could to answer all the questions, but she couldn’t answer a
lot of them and neither could Director Griffin. So we recommended final passage, but after that we found out more
information, we had more questions, and when you come to a meeting when legislation is proposed sometimes there is a
time schedule - a deadline we have to meet but usually not. It’s not like it gets put on a turntable and it’s got to go around
once and get off one way or the other. We have time to think about things to give it the proper vetting. We ought to take
that time.
When the prime sponsor of the legislation says “yeah | have no problem with it going back to committee so we can
discuss these things”. He was never given a chance to explain why he sponsored it in the first place. So this is the
second time within two meetings where the prime sponsor of legislation has asked for it to be held because they were not
able to come to the meeting and in one case the majority of us denied that, and went ahead, and then tonight a majority of
us said “okay we'll let it go back to the committee”, but a lot of us didn’t. So | would just like to ask us, we’re a group. We
all have the same goal doing what’s best for the City. We are a collegial group. We should be cooperating to try to do the
best we can and if someone asks out of courtesy to delay something, especially if there’s no deadline involved, to be able
to ask more questions, get more information. We ought to accommodate that. So in the future, | hope that when a
situation like that arises again, that we think about that and allow us to properly - | mean when the motion was first made
