Board of Aldermen 02-22-2022 Page 36
to have them on the streets. | really appreciate them inviting me into the station, giving me a tour, and answering a
myriad of questions because | tend to be quite inquisitive.
| think the BOE runs the meeting pretty well. | Know Alderman Thibeault was there last night and people were asked to
put their masks back on. Obviously, it's hard to control a meeting with like 50 people in the audience. It's difficult. We
have a meeting around the meeting was already running along at that point. So you know, we take what we can and we
do our best. So | wouldn't harp on the Board too much about that. They're trying to do the best they can through a
tumultuous season.
| learned this past week about the downtown Infrastructure Committee apparently having meetings in January and in
February without that information being on the city website. Apparently, information was posted on the bulletin boards
and City Hall. That information to my knowledge, and that can be corrected, and that's fine can't be confirmed.
Regardless of it could, the city is now in a pattern or behavior where the citizens look to the website to look up the
agendas, to look at what's going on with the city. I'd be hard pressed to find a lot of people who drive down to City Hall to
look at a bulletin board to see when there's a meeting. | would doubt that anyone does that. | believe that it would be
disingenuous to say, oh we posted on the bulletin board. That's not fair especially considering that they are dealing with
an issue that, let's say at the very least is 50/50. It's controversial to say the least. There's a lot of public input and so |
believe we need to go above and beyond to bring this matter to the public, especially if we're going to be voting on it for
three years. It's a big deal whether you agree or disagree. This is sort of like a relationship that we have to have with the
city because there are going to be some winners and there's gonna be some losers, depending on what side you're on
how you feel about it. And so it would behoove us to do everything we can to make sure as much of the public has an
opportunity to speak at Downtown Improvement Committee meetings, or other committee meetings, or even here at the
Board, which obviously they get a chance to do that. But prior input before it gets to us | believe paramount.
| think moving forward, no | don't know what happened. | can't, you know, | can't ascribe intent to that would be unfair.
That would be wrong but moving forward, we have to do a better job of figuring out when these meetings are, making sure
they're posted, and making sure the public knows. | have constituents call. They ask me when the meetings are and |
need to be able to tell them. If | say look on the website and it’s not there, that's a problem. That's not fair to them. So
moving forward, | think we need to do a better job of informing the public about this barrier issue and making sure that
they have all the input that they can get regarding that issue.
And then finally the last meeting we had regarding the situation with Ms. Ortolano in my mind is unacceptable. There's no
need. Having that communication in the meeting was unnecessary, in my opinion. Also, it could have said “a citizen”. It
didn't have to say anyone's name. It could have just been brought to our attention. It wasn't something we were dealing
with. It wasn't an ordinance. It wasn'ta resolution. It was just information and not information we needed to know that
night, number one.
Number two - to openly accused a citizen, that could be my mother, if you decided to visit from New Jersey, a sister, my
neighbor up there, and | hope that this Board would want to be like alright let's discuss this into nonpublic because this is
not appropriate for public conversation. That at least that's my hope and to accuse a citizen of a crime of which there was
no proof, and that was verified later with the police report which is in the packet from a city employee, how can we have a
good relationship with the citizens? How can we say we have their best interests at heart? How can we say that we
represent them when we have members who work here accusing them of a crime without proof? It's just unacceptable
and | hope in the future the Board would act differently in those situations, or | don't know all the procedural things yet. |
still learning and so maybe that'll come with time but in the future, it's got to go down differently and | believe, in my
opinion, that the city owes Miss Ortolano an apology for that act because it wasn't right. Thank you.
m
Alderman Gouveia
Thank you, Madam President. I'd like to echo what Alderman Cathey said about the situation with Mrs. Ortolano. | feel it
should have been done on a non-public session and I'll leave that at that.
On a lighter note, | wish everybody a happy Tuesday 2-22-22. Saw the very festive door by the HR Department on my
walk up here this evening. | wanted to thank everybody also for speaking tonight either for or against any of the - well
mostly for the mask mandate. It's a very divisive topic. It's one both sides are very passionate about and | think it just
goes to show and | think our Board here has done great with good civil discourse which has been a real positive thing for
the City of Nashua. Thank you.
Alderman Dowd
A couple things related to Zoom. We passed tonight that you can’t Chair a meeting through Zoom. We rescinded the
