Board of Aldermen 08-09-2022 Page 29
Thank you, Madam President. A lot of things were said about Zoom and getting rid of. | will only speak for myself but I'm
sure that many of my colleagues feel the same way. It wasn't an easy decision. It wasn't something | think that we made
lightly. I think it was something that we thought about, we debated within our heads, and so on.
In my contacting other municipalities, | can tell you that everybody does things a little differently. One of those specifically
Keene, they don't allow any kind of public comment at full Boards. They only allow it at subcommittees. The public
comment, as far as they're concerned, happens at the committee level and not at the Board of Aldermen. I'm not
advocating for that, I'm just saying that we all do things a little differently. Another and not just one, many of them don't
allow what I call “for free for all” non-germane, non-agenda type of a comments. They only allow agenda items and
anybody speaking of anything else. Again, we allow for more than that.
So for so many people to say that we're trying to hurt people, trying to cut things off, and so on, | disagree with them. |
think we've really tried to do as much as we can. | don't think that we should stop staff from being able to do this. | think
it's allows them to have their life and it's going to in other words save money for the city in the long run. As time goes by,
maybe we should review Zoom to see if our telecommunication people can work on it but right now, | think as | think the
word was used, we need to put a pause on it. | believe that we're always transparent.
And for the person who mentioned that now they can't access - they can't watch meeting because they can't access
Zoom, yes they can. The thing is if you can access Zoom you have some kind of communications, you can watch it on -
even if you don't have Comcast, you can still watch it on the internet. There are ways of accessing so on both live and
after the fact. So it's just a different way. It'll be a new learning. | think someone made a, | thought it was rather curt
comment, that seniors are just going to have to learn. Well no, they don't have to learn. | have a lot of seniors that are
incredibly intelligent but when it comes to technology, their anxiety levels go way up to here. So | don't think that they
should have to learn to be able to Zoom.
| think | probably belabored this enough and | apologize for taking any more time. But | think that our Board is very
transparent. | think we were wrong to say this the way we said it but we also have a technology hole as far as this is
concerned. There are a lot of things that we cannot do. | don't know how we cut people off at least at this point and we
are different than a private company. So that's it. Thank you.
Alderman Moran
Thank you, Madam President. One - | would just like to acknowledge that the Nashua community, especially Ward 4, lost
two Nashua residents in a senseless act of violence last week. We had two murders in the city and now their families
grieving in the city for this violence. There are connections to my agency and this one particular victim and | just want to
extend my thoughts to those victims’ families and to say kudos to the Nashua Police Department for bringing the people
allegedly responsible for the crimes to justice so quickly, and giving our city a sense of safety in a relatively quick fashion.
The next thing - public comment. | went back and forth on it. At the end, | voted to support it because | feel like it needed
to be taken away temporarily. | think we need to bring it back. | think we need to find a way that allows the public to
participate and for President Wilshire or Committee Chairs to be able to interject when profanity or other inappropriate
things are happening just like some - | think we had a member waving inappropriate thing last month and President
Wilshire shut it down right away. | think access to our meetings is essential. | think we should be available to our
constituencies and that you should be able to speak to us in multiple forms, including the Zoom. There are alternatives
but | think we should look for ways to allow if technology allows it to be better supervised. Keep in mind that the few that
really brought this to the Board - the few members of the public that made these inappropriate statements who disgraced
themselves on Zoom. They have a gimmick. They have a brand that they're building and | caution my fellow Board
members to not allow their gimmicks and brands to ruin it for the other citizens in the city or let them - our purpose to do
good for the majority and in the silent majority as Alderman Timmons stated earlier to derail the good work that we're all
doing for the city, in the Mayor's office, and the city employees. Don't let gimmicks and brands destroy the ability to be
involved with our constituency.
Last week | was wanting to talk about | was on local public access. | hope it’s aired. | was assured it was aired this past
Monday but | want to bring up that BRBTV — Bartis Radio and | can't get the
Alderman Lopez
...oroadcast.
Alderman Moran
