A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, November 14, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia Piecuch; Alderman David Schoneman led in the Pledge to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 10 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Aldermen Cookson, Siegel, Melizzi-
Golja, and McGuinness were recorded absent.
His Honor, Mayor Jim Donchess, and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
First, I'd like to welcome Alderman Elect David Tencza to the Board of Aldermen. | know he’s going to be
sworn in soon and will take David Deane’s seat. It’s nice to have a full complement. | welcome him to the
Board.
Next, | wanted to mention something that’s going on Friday at 9:00 a.m., which is a ceremony commemorating
the one-year anniversary of the city’s Safe Station’s program. As you will recall, we opened our fire stations to
be available 24/7 for anyone who wants to seek help with any kind of an addiction. We have joined with
another of partners in the community, including AMR, the Partnership for Successful Living or Harbor Homes,
Revive Recovery and others to make this program effective. As a result of a very large team effort, | think that
over the course of the last 18 months we have considerably strengthened the city’s response with respect to
the opioid crisis. But still we can do more, and | think we can improve our response. | was thinking about
telling you more tonight, but | think what is really required is for us to bring forward a presentation to the Board
of Aldermen, which would include all these partners, and you can hear, in detail, what’s going on, where we
started and where we’ve come. OD’s, according to the AMR statistics, overdoses are down 24 percent from a
year ago, but unfortunately, fatalities still are occurring. | do believe there are additional things we can do to
strengthen the city’s response, and | look forward to organizing a presentation where we can elaborate more
fully on everything that’s happened so far and everything that we may be able to do in the future.
On Friday, we are having a ceremony at all of the fire stations at 9:00 a.m. There is a ceremony at each
station. The main one will be at E. Hollis Street. You're all invited to come to any of them, either the main one
or the other stations. The point is to thank all of the participants, all of the firefighters and others, the
management of NFR who have been very involved in making this program a success.
Next, | wanted to mention that Alderman Dowd and | attended the ribbon cutting for the soccer fields at
Charlotte Avenue. The fields look great. How they did this, it’s almost a miracle. They made a dust patch into
some very lush fields. Those now are ready for use. That was a really great day and |’m glad that those are
now going to help expand recreational opportunities for our young people.
| wanted to mention an award that the city won — the community, not just the city government. It’s the Creative
Communities award given by the State Council for the Arts, which is awarded every few years. This is given by
the State Council for the Arts and by the Governor, as a result of all of the arts organizations that are active in
Nashua, and as a result of all of the opportunities in the arts that are available. This is a very significant award
of which we all should be proud. Again, this is a huge team effort involving the entire community. Tom is on
the board of Positive Street Art, but there are many other organizations that are contributing.
Next, we inaugurated and dedicated the veteran’s mural over at Quincy Street, done by Positive Street Art, on
Saturday. | know a number of you attended; it was a really nice ceremony. The mural really expresses, in a
very moving fashion, the depth that the community and the country owes to our veterans, but also is a beautiful
addition to the Quincy Street neighborhood. | want to thank Positive Street Art for putting all of that together.
