Board of Aldermen Page 22
September 27, 2016
are in now is that | made a motion to replace the originally proposed legislation while we were discussing
that originally proposed legislation. | don’t see any reason to send the whole resolution back to the
committee when we have already discussed it in committee and everybody who was able to go there went
and presented their arguments. Out of that meeting we had two outcomes. One was the committee
recommended an amendment which could be introduced and voted on here after my motion is dealt with
and the Mayor did respond directly to the comments of the committee and offered a substitute version
which very explicitly states what we are getting into. Again, that was vetted by corporation counsel so |
feel like the steps we should be taking here are voting on my motion and then making a motion on the
original version and if that needs to be amended then fine. There are three options right now and we
could literally go through all three of them.
President McCarthy
Alderman Wilshire, can you please take the chair for a minute?
Recorder's Note: Vice President Wilshire was seated in place of President McCarthy
Alderman McCarthy
| think | see what is going to happen so I'll make a prediction and then I'll ask us not to let that come true.
From where | sit, | have the advantage of being about 6” higher than everyone else so | can see what is
going to happen. It looks to me like if this goes to a vote that amendment will probably pass by an 8 to 7
majority and the resulting legislation will also pass by an 8 to 7 majority, 7 members of the Board will be
extremely unhappy that that happened and 8 members of the Board will be mildly satisfied with the short-
term result. Frankly, | don’t think that’s a good result for us or for the community, 15 to 0 would be better
no matter what comes out of this. Let’s think about it for a minute, | think everyone around this
horseshoe agrees with the concept that we are a Welcoming City and that immigrants are very welcome
here in Nashua. | think that most of the things that we are asked to do by the list that Mayor Donchess’
amendment would add are things that we agree to do or that we are already doing. | read the list at the
committee meeting a couple of weeks ago. Everything that was in there with the exception of maybe
attending a yearly conference had to do with looking at how to be inclusionary in our processes and
those are things that are already being done by the city and by the One Greater Nashua. | would rather
see us take the time to come up with something that will make everybody happy. If there are issues that
have to do with the organization itself that we should be aware of then | would like to hear those. | think
that Alderman Siegel is right that those things should be done in committee and not here so let’s think
about what the long-term affect is of how we are going to do this. My personal opinion is if the
amendment gets around to me and | have to vote on it, | will probably vote yes. If the amended
legislation comes around to me then | will probably vote yes because of all the things that I’ve heard and
my belief that this is not a partisan piece of legislation and that it is something that helps us. | want to
warn you that | don’t think that’s the best thing for us to do necessarily in terms of coming up with a piece
of legislation that serves the people who are out there as best we can because | don’t think it will serve
them but that it will simply help to divide this Board over that point and we will fight this out for months
instead of trying to do something that | think we all agree we should do in the first place.
Recorder's Note: Alderman McCarthy returned to his set as President and Alderman Wilshire returned to
her seat as Vice President.
President McCarthy
The motion is to re-refer to committee.
