Board of Aldermen Page 18
September 27, 2016
again, I’m not sure that is complete of everything that the city would be asked to do and the Services that
we would ultimately have to provide. Again, what | heard this evening was very similar to what | heard at
the last meeting and that was that we as the City of Nashua have been welcoming for years. You came
to this country for whatever reason, for opportunity and you feel welcome and | think that we as a
community attempt to have that pervade everything that we do, we want to be welcoming and in fact, in
2002, there was a piece of legislation that was introduced, it was an ordinance, O-2-03; former Alderman
Fred Britton, Alderman Deane was a co-sponsor, Alderman Bolton at the time was a co-sponsor,
Alderman McCarthy a co-sponsor, Alderman Cote, Alderman Tollner, Alderman Plamondon and
Alderman Rootovich were all co-sponsors of a piece of legislation is 2002 that said Nashua is a proud,
vibrant, welcoming community. Nashua offers its people opportunities for personal growth, prosperity,
education, culture, heritage and recreation. Nashua is a city which responds to the needs of its citizens,
continuing to examining its processes to enable efficient delivery of services that enrich the quality of life.
2002, ladies and gentlemen is when we looked at that piece and we adopted it and we said that is what
we want our community to be and | think that we have lived up to it and | think we have done a great job.
Now, we also see the idea of economics and | think that is a very valid point. | think we do need to look
at economics. | think we look at how welcoming our community has been over the past three or four
years as Mayor Donchess has stated saying that our immigration population has increased over those
three to four years to negate any persons who have left the city. Our population is stagnant right now. |
think we are a Welcoming City and | think we continue to be a Welcoming City and | think we have the
services, the personnel, the staff and the schools but what was not necessarily said which | think is an
economic driver are the grants that are potentially available to our schools, our adult learning center and
our police. Nothing was discussed, we have zero information on what grants might be available to the
organizations within our community to help with our immigration population. | am personally of the
mindset, and while Alderman Siegel may be fine with taking this and having a discussion this evening
about it, | think this warrants going back to committee. | think it warrants having a discussion about all of
the different aspects of the legislation and what it does mean because that hasn’t been shared with the
committee or the Board of Aldermen. Again, | have learned a significant amount about this piece of
legislation, additional information from you; the public this evening so thank you for that, | truly appreciate
it. | will not support this legislation in its current form and | would urge the members of this Board to send
it back to committee so that we can have a thoughtful discussion about the entire merits of this piece of
legislation.
Alderman LeBrun
There was a member of that committee that stated the commitment that we would be making and | was
that member. We debated this for well over an hour and in the end we decided that the original
legislation was not the way to go and we amended it to state that Nashua would proclaim itself a
Welcoming City by Mayoral proclamation only and that’s what came to this Board and that’s what we
seem to be not understanding and not taking up this evening.
Alderman Lopez
With respect to Alderman Cookson, | feel like we are not really living up to the last part of the resolution
that you mentioned earlier. We are not being responsive to the community right now and we are not
looking at the process that we are employing in any way to make sure that it’s responsive. We have a
huge community turn-out saying do something tonight, pass the Mayor's original version, even in my
case, pass a version which is the original version but very clearly delineates what we are actually
agreeing to and a version that was also vetted by our own corporation counsel. Yet we are still saying
what more, what else could there possibly be? Have we thought about every grant opportunity for every
organization that could be on this list? No, we haven't and I’m not sure that is actually our responsibility.
| think our responsibility is to be receptive to the community that’s saying we support this and we want
this. | think it’s a little bit transparent to turn to the audience and say you have taught me so much
tonight when they are trying to tell you something different. They are trying to tell you that they want you
to pass this tonight and they don’t want you to stall it or wait any longer. It was proposed by Alderman
