Board of Aldermen — 9/26/17 Page 13
Alderman Cookson
And | appreciate Alderman Wilshire going into that brief explanation because my recollection was this was the
Review and Comment Commission that has gone through a name change and now is the Citizens Advisory
Commission for Community Grants. What Alderman Wilshire just said is we lost that community aspect to this per
se because what it used to be was 30 members of the community coming together, reviewing grants, distributing
the workload. Now we are going to ask 7 individuals to move forward, and I’m assuming you would probably have
the same number of applicants or maybe even more depending on how popular this is, but the workload would
now be amongst 7 individuals versus 37 per se.
Alderman Wilshire
| think the 7-member commission is in standing with what we typically do in this city. | think when you had five
commissioners they were broken up into five groups, not all looking at the same applications or not looking at the
applications as a whole. | feel the commissioners that we had were spending probably half their time recruiting
volunteers because it was a process every year to get the number of requisite volunteers on this commission.
They were kind of working in silos. You take these five, I'll take this five, you take that five. Nobody was looking at
the overall picture. | think that is a disservice to the process.
Alderman Deane
Meanwhile back at the amendment, from listening to what my colleagues have to say, if Alderman Moriarty doesn’t
want to make the amendment, | think just under B,1: “Composition. The Citizens Advisory Commission for
Community Grants shall consist of seven members.” The rest of it can be removed
MOTION BY ALDERMAN DEANE TO FURTHER AMEND BY CHANGING PARAGRAPH B(1) TO READ:
“COMPOSITION. THE CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMISSION FOR COMMUNITY GRANTS SHALL CONSIST
OF SEVEN MEMBERS.”
Alderman Wilshire
You would look to get rid of the four members appointed by the Mayor, the two members by the Board president?
Alderman Deane
No, that would remain. That shows the composition of seven. Then down in D, that should be removed as well,
Just A, B and C and get rid of D altogether along with the sentence after the comma.
AMENDED MOTION BY ALDERMAN DEANE TO FURTHER AMEND BY CHANGING PARAGRAPH B(1) TO
READ: “COMPOSITION. THE CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMISSION FOR COMMUNITY GRANTS SHALL
CONSIST OF SEVEN MEMBERS.” AND DELETING PARAGRAPH B(1)(d) IN ITS ENTIRETY
MOTION CARRIED
Alderman Lopez
| think it is important to have a low income person, as uncomfortable as it may be to label them as such. Low
income people do represent a cross section of Nashua. There are elderly people, there are minorities. | think we
can represent a lot of people. But it is particularly important in my opinion for someone of low income to represent
that interest in what Review and Comment does.
Alderman Deane
| am quite confident that both the Mayor and the Board President can appoint a low income person without stating
it.
