Board of Aldermen 11-13-2018 Page 19
And then families coming in, | was shocked at how many people came in during the pouring rain. So
we all should be happy about that and again, to Brian’s family, we are awfully sorry, our family is.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
| too am thankful for everything that Mike and Ken said but | want to say thank you Patricia. We did
have some conversations a little bit at the polls, but thank you for your concern. And to Brian’s family,
you have our deepest sympathy. And to all the aldermen that are sitting here that have been with him a
lot longer than | have been, but | too want to say he was a mentor to all of us, even the newbies,
because whenever you asked him something, he gave you so much history and he would give you both
sides of the coin. That's what | appreciated about Brian, so he truly will be missed.
Alderman Dowd
I’d like to thank Trish and all her people. | had an opportunity to visit three of the Wards in the pouring
rain and all of them were handling huge crowds and did a fantastic job. I’ve never seen so many
people at Ward 2, | wanted to ask some of them where were you in the last election. But | think we had
over 50% of the registered voters. So that’s great, but where were the other 50%. | hope that some
day we can see 75% and | figure that’s about as high as we will ever get. But for everybody that got out
to vote, thank you for voting in the pouring rain. | think that it ran as smoothly as possible, except for
one ward maybe. So thank you Trish.
Alderman Klee
Thank you, Madam President. | want to start off by giving my condolences to Brian’s family and to all of
you who served so long with him. Brian McCarthy’s name is truly, truly synonymous with the City of
Nashua and | keep saying to people over and over again, his fingerprints are all over. I’m sorry. | just
keep thinking over and over again, we’ll never hear him hit that gavel again, but as hard as it is for us,
his family is going to suffer over the next couple of months, the holidays coming. | really wish them well
and | know people like Alderman Dowd and Alderman O’Brien and Alderman Wilshire and so on, all of
you who have known the family for so long will be there to help support them. They are lucky to have
you as we were to have him.
As far as the election is concerned, | want to thank all of those people that came out in the rain and for
someone who stood there for 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. with just a couple of breaks, yes it was wet and it
was amazing to see how many people did bring young children. | kept making jokes teach them young,
maybe we will get to the 75% based on the number of young people that we saw coming. I’d like to
thank Trisha Piecuch for all that the City Clerk did and everybody that was there. | left that gym just a
little bit before 1:00 a.m. It was a very long day and everybody did everything they could with the
machine that kept breaking down, you kept coming in and took the wings off or some sort just to help
get through. There were a lot of people that were complaining that they didn’t think their vote was going
to count. | kept reassuring them with our City Clerk and everybody there, their vote would count, their
vote did count. | told them if they had issues they could contact your office in the morning. | hope you
didn’t have too many complaints.
As far as the elderly tax exemption and so on | feel strongly that the City will do the right thing by it. And
the Veteran’s Tax Credit, | believe we are already at the max as far as that is concerned and that falls
under the State to set that maximum. So | believe that our City does everything that it can for the
elderly, the disabled, the blind and the veterans. But we also have to remember that every time we do
all these wonderful things for these groups, there is another group that has to take on that burden. And
I’ve gotten calls from that group and they are understanding but they still feel that we have the opposite
effect, that they are scaring away for our young. But | still believe that we will do the right thing here in
the City.
