Board of Aldermen 08-09-2022 Page 8
Alderman Sullivan
Thank you Madam President.
President Wilshire
You’re welcome.
Alderman Sullivan
| am in full support of keeping the Zoom technology for these reasons. The reason why | read the communication in
regards to the cost. | feel the cost is negligible considering what we have and the resources that we have in the city. |
think that a reason that we should keep it is when you look at the landscape of the city and how people find out about
issues, | think while our website is pretty robust our local media is not. Well we do have a local newspaper here, it’s not
very well circulated. It’s only printed maybe once a week. Obviously there is an internet edition but it’s still. | think this
allows people to understand what’s going on at the city level.
| think that while | do understand Alderman O’Brien’s concerns, | think we’re maybe mixing messages because | did see
some ordinance being proposed about decorum, which | could understand and would welcome to discuss. However, |
think that given the fact that the technology is there — and once you give people something, it’s really difficult to take it
away. | think it allows the citizens of Nashua to understand what’s going on in their city. Now if we want to talk about
maybe it’s only for Board of Aldermen meetings and maybe it’s not for every single committee meeting, maybe that’s a
discussion that we could have.
As far as for the Aldermen to maybe count that as attendance while | have used it a few times for that, | mean to me if
we're going to take it away, take it away completely, including the Board of Aldermen. | would support keeping this as it
is. Thank you.
Alderman Klee
Thank you Madam President. | apologize. I’ve been doing a lot of homework. So this could take just a few minutes. I’ve
been contacting municipalities. | contacted the New Hampshire Municipal Association. I’m going to give you a few of the
somewhat like communities that | feel as well as one town. So Concord, New Hampshire, - no for Zoom. Manchester —
no for Zoom. As a matter of fact, Manchester said masks off, Zoom gone. Portsmouth — yes. They do have Zoom and
they allow public comment in their Zoom. | said, “Oh, do you get a lot of public? They said never.” So it’s easy to have
public comment and so on. So they’d don’t get a lot of people coming in. They don’t have the glitches that we have.
Peterborough — yes it’s a town. They do not have Zoom. Keene — they do have Zoom but not for public members. They
allow the minute takers and people who are giving presentations. Board members — every time a board member wants to
use Zoom, they have to be voted permission from the remaining members of the board. Litchfield -no. Those are just
some of the ones that had called and spoke to their Town Clerks and asked information from.
| queried the New Hampshire Municipal Association. They said almost all towns — no. Some of the cities have continued
it for various reasons and so on but the majority of them are not. Very similar reasons to what we’re looking at. We’re
looking at the technical glitches. | was at the Planning Board meeting last week. For anybody that was there, | Know
Alderman Caron was there as well. | think it was a 10 or 15 delay we had - as well as Alderman Thibeault was there also.
There was about a 10 — 15 delay. The person was trying to speak. It was going in and out. | was listening to it as | do
here. You couldn't hear it over Zoom. It was just really, really bad and very difficult to do that.
For me, | would say we need to get rid of Zoom. | don’t think we’re right there. | think it was a good thing to do at the
time. I’m not going to look at the cost of it because while | think every penny is important to look at, | don’t look at this as
going to break the bank kind of expense. | also look at the Board of Ed. | think it was brought up that they don’t have
Zoom. They don’t have the technology and they do pack their rooms. Quite a bit they pack the rooms.
Before the past two years, we were packing rooms as well here. We don’t pack them quite as much now because people
can do Zoom. I’ve spoken to a number of elderly people in my community who yes they would like Zoom and equally who
say | don’t do technology. So yeah. When | explained to them some of the situations and the glitches, I’ve asked them
have you zoomed. They said no, they don’t Zoom. They were told that once we get rid of Zoom, they no longer can
speak which is not true. They can still send letters. They can still call. | do return every phone call. | return every e-mail.
| think one of the members of the public said that just a few people returned his message. Everything that he basically
said to us was what he wrote to us. | can speak for many of the people around this horseshoe that we do read all the e-
