Board of Aldermen Page 23
September 27, 2016
Alderman Clemons
With respect to your clairvoyance in how the vote is going to turn out, | think that it would be a colossal
waste of time to send this back to committee and the reason that | say that is because your 8 to 7
clairvoyance isn’t going to change because the fact of the matter is that what the people in the audience
want and what the organizations who represent, who by the way, when is the last time you have seen St.
Joseph’s Hospital, the Chamber of Commerce, One Greater Nashua, the Adult Learning Center, the
United Way, the library, the Cultural Connections Committee, churches and other organizations get
together behind a single piece of legislation and come before us and say please pass this and we are
going to vote 8 to 7 no? That’s ridiculous and you are wasting their time if you send it back to committee
because we are not going to agree 100% on the Welcoming America Initiative so we should either vote it
up or vote it down tonight.
Alderman Siegel
My remarks probably won’t get any applause. | honestly would love to go through this but again, | feel
very strongly that this is not the place for it. | don’t want to see this go back to committee but | actually
think the Alderman McCarthy is pretty insightful; however this passes it should be pretty much
unanimous. It won't be if we try to jack this. To waste time at the full Board instead of doing that before
committee where we can have an interactive discussion is crazy. | think we should just vote on sending
it to committee and | would recommend that we do send it to committee. And, this idea by the way, that
somehow this represents everybody and everybody’s opinion, again, has everybody done the same
amount of research? | can guarantee not. I’m sorry, | think it's wonderful that people have come out and
| wish that they would come out for frankly more substantive things like the budget or the pension gap
that we have. Come out for that; that would be helpful. Other than that, this should go back to
committee if you really want to have a substantive discussion because there is no time urgency. The
time window has passed for the Welcoming America Initiative week and that was said in committee.
That’s why the compromise came about to begin with, there didn’t seem to be any benefit, it didn’t
matter. The week had passed and the city wasn’t going to commit any resources so what was the point?
It made a lot of sense. Alderman Caron initially suggested the compromise and it sounded good to me
but again, we have a different motion before us but it should go back to committee.
Alderman LeBrun
Why do we feel so intensely that for whatever reason that we have to come under the umbrella of an
organization when we can simply resolve this by the Mayor putting out a proclamation which would
proclaim Nashua as a Welcoming City? Why did we need an organization to tell us how to do that?
Alderman Dowd
Normally if additional information could come forward and be more enlightening, | would more than
willing to send it back to committee. | happen to have attended the committee meeting but | wasn’t a
voting member but | was listening. Quite frankly, from the discussion that happened that evening with
the voting members of that committee, | don’t see the result changing so it’s going to come back to the
full Board again. | would prefer that we take some type of action tonight and | agree that it should be 15
to 0 with the Welcoming Initiative but | don’t see where anybody in other cities has been negatively
impacted by doing this. I’ve heard no mention of anything that was adversarial to Manchester or any
other city that has adopted it. If it is up to me | would say let’s vote on the amended legislation and if it
doesn’t pass then we vote on the legislation that came from the committee which | assume would pass
but maybe not. | think we ought to at least vet those this evening.
