Board of Aldermen 10-08-2019 Page 6
NEW BUSINESS — RESOLUTIONS
R-19-181
Endorsers: Alderman Thomas Lopez
Alderman Ben Clemons
Alderman June M. Caron
Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.
Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright
RENAMING “PARK SOCIAL AT LABINE” AS “PARK SOCIAL”
Given its first reading; assigned to the INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE by President Wilshire
NEW BUSINESS — ORDINANCES - None
PERIOD FOR GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT
Stacie Laughton Stacie Laughton, 80 Elm Street, Unit 1, Nashua, New Hampshire. | just wanted to extend
a thank you for the members of the Board who reached out who either weren’t able to attend my
housewarming party or those who were. It was a nice time. As some people may know, some people may
not, my family and | went through a yearlong struggle, we left Main Street place that we were living and
went into a period of partial homelessness. It was quite difficult and now we’ve acquired a place on Elm
Street in Nashua that is very nice; it is more than what we could have ever dreamed of. | just want to thank
those who were able to share that time with us.
| just wanted to come again tonight speaking about something that I’ve spoke about in the past. It is about
vaping products. Again, as | said last time, I’m not talking about combustible cigarettes, | am talking
specifically about vaping devices. Right now, as we watch the news and we see things going on, we are
finding that you know since October 1* there’s been a total of 1,080 lung injury cases associated with E-
Cigarettes or Vaping Products have been reported to the CDC from 48 States and 1 Territory. 18 deaths
have been confirmed from 15 States and there has been a death now getting closer to our area;
Massachusetts has seen a death and they have seen numerous lung injuries due to vaping. New
Hampshire has seen its very first case of a lung injury within, | think it was today or yesterday | heard about
it. Now it is getting closer and this is more than just, | think it is more than just a concern that we were
raising back in April. It is now damaging lungs and is now causing people to die. It is spreading, it is in 48
States, it is in Massachusetts, it is in New Hampshire now.
People are getting affected by lung injuries because of vaping. It is time that not just the State takes action
but the City takes action. With the recent State Budget that was passed, | noticed that the smoking age
went up by 1 year to 19. But that still doesn’t do enough. | believe the vaping devices need to be banned
outright in the City of Nashua and they need to be banned outright in the State of New Hampshire.
Whether it be like they did in Mass for a temporary amount of time to figure out any safety concerns or how
to regulate them better, or ban them outright. They are harming people, you know, we could turn on
WMUR tomorrow and someone right here in Nashua or one of our own students in our schools could be
affected by a death because of these vaping devices and that would be, at that point, well you know, it’s
already sad to see 1 or 2 but when you are seeing all these cases across the country, this is getting to be
enough and this needs to stop. And it’s not a joke anymore, you know, we need to take these products off
our shelves in the City and everywhere. That’s all | have to say tonight. Thank you.
Laurie Ortolano Laurie Ortolano, 41 Berkeley Street. | wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about data
management and you know, we all know I’ve put in a lot of Right To Know Requests and the City has made
some pretty big claims and had a lot of words to state about these requests and what they are doing to the
City. But | believe a lot of this is the result of the way we maintain out data and how we are maintaining our
records. We are simply not doing it progressively at all. You know down in Assessing we have a vault that
is full of property files. They are the equivalent of books on a shelf and there are 29,000 of them and
growing. It doesn’t make any sense to me that we are not looking at ways to scan these files.
