A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, March 27, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; Deputy City Clerk Judith Boileau recorded.
Prayer was offered by Deputy City Clerk Judith Boileau; Alderman Ken Gidge led in the Pledge
to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 15 members of the Board of Aldermen present.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
First | would like to welcome Dr. Mosley and our friends from the School Board and the School
Department to the meeting and | understand that Susan Porter is going to be sworn in as the most
recent member of the School Board. | would like to congratulate her and | am glad they came here for
the swearing in.
There are a couple of things on the Agenda that | wanted to mention. First the Ambulance Contract is
up for renewal under Communications. The contract, of course, is with AMR, they have been the
ambulance company for quite some time. They have done a very good job. This is for a one year
extension of the contract. The extension has been unanimously recommended by the Committee that
is in charge of supervising and evaluating their performance and they have done a very good job as |
said particularly with respect to the Safe Stations Program where Mr. Stawasz has been a particular
leader and | will mention that a little bit more in just a moment. | hope that you will agree with the
committee and approve the extension of the AMR contract.
Coming up this weekend on Saturday we have the Walk Against Heroin, beginning at 11:00 at Greeley
Park which comes down to City Hall and then goes back to Greeley Park. It’s led by a woman, a
Nashua Citizen, Darleen Pina, who has been leading all these marches and they take place several
time a year. It’s a very inspiring event and a lot of people usually show up, many people and many
families who have been touched very personally by the heroin crisis, by the opioid crisis. If you can
make it, | think it’s worth attending and showing your support for the many people who are working
against opioids and who have been tragically affected by the opioid crisis.
Along those lines | wanted to update you on the current status, we have had unfortunately 5 fatal OD’s
this month, the month of March, which is not a good month. Although for the first three months we are
on par, the same as last year with 8 fatalities. We are doing the right thing with the Safe Stations
Program. We meet every two weeks to evaluate the Program and to try to improve it. The fact-based
approach that we are developing along with AMR in terms of evaluating it has begun and AMR has
been very good in developing statistics and information regarding the people who report and those who
report to safe stations and many different respects. One thing that the analysis is showing and we are
continually trying to refine it, is it seems that the likelihood of a person who reports to Safe Stations, the
likelihood that they will OD after the report, is reduced by 62% as opposed to those who have not
reported to Safe Stations.
Another thing that seems clear, of course as we know, every single death is a tragedy but very few
people, a few but not many, have succumbed to a fatal overdose after reporting to Safe Stations and it
seems very obvious that the chances of succumbing to a fatal overdose are much, much reduced for
those who do report to Safe Stations. And of course this is due to the efforts of many people, including
many organizations, many people — Harbor Homes, the Fire Department, AMR, everybody who is
providing treatment. So it’s a big group, a community effort, so despite the fact that OD’s and some
fatalities continue it is doing a good job.
