Board of Aldermen 09-24-2019 Page 26
O-19-058
Endorser: Alderman Richard A. Dowd
Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright
Alderman Tom Lopez
Alderman Ken Gidge
AUTHORIZING STOP SIGNS ON DINSMORE STREET AT ITS INTERSECTION WITH
DOUGLAS STREET
Given its first reading; assigned to the COMMITTEE ON INFRASTRUCTURE by President Wilshire
PERIOD FOR GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT
Stacie Laughton Stacie Laughton, 80 Elm Street, Nashua, New Hampshire, Ward 4. | come before
you tonight raising an issue we talked about earlier this year. That was, we were talking about raising
the minimum smoking age to 21. And as we have been seeing lately in the news, people are actually
starting to die from these devices and the nicotine and the vaping products. | am not specifically talking
about cigarettes; I’m talking about the vaping devices. We've seen a lot of deaths, we have seen a lot
of additives being added to them and they are not a safe product to have in our stores for anybody to
consume at any age. We saw today in Massachusetts, the Governor of Massachusetts put a 4 month
ban on vaping devices and the City of Boston in itself as a City is taking action.
That’s why | am here tonight. As a City, we can still bring this issue back up, we can either raise the
minimum age, we could potentially ban the sale of vaping devices throughout the City and set an
example for the State. Hopefully we can get Governor Sununu to do something similar if he’s allowed
or something needs to be done. These products are very dangerous and | think they are even more
dangerous the combustible cigarette which is dangerous in itself, yet the complications and death that
could occur from regular combustible cigarettes will take longer, but we’ve only seen vaping devices out
for a short few years now and they are causing heart failure, all kinds of other deaths, other types of
problem. | am a medical cannabis patient and | am even questioning if the dispensary should be
carrying the cannabis type of vaping products at this time until, | mean, we can determine fully if vaping
is 100% safe. So even as someone who would be interested in using a cannabis vape product, | don’t
even think it is safe for my own consumption.
Also, on a separate note, when | was here last and speaking about that, | had mentioned that | had
been eligible to serve in public office. That was confirmed recently by the City’s Legal Department. |
had filed to run as a selectman in the City; however my petitions were not verified due to a certain
complication. However, my Committee that | spoke about last time, my exploratory committee has
shifted gears. We are now the Committee to Elect and | am running as a write-in candidate for Ward 4
Selectman. With that | will end my comments for tonight. Thank you all. And | would also like to
welcome the new City Clerk, Susan Lovering.
Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. Just wanted to address a couple of things. The new Assessing
Manual and procedures was released at the Board of Assessor’s meeting on the 29" of August. That
was of pretty big interest to me and a few other people based on a lot of the concerns that we had and
what we were looking for. | was excited, the newspaper was there, they covered an article, they asked
for comments and you know Ms. Kleiner had said that the concerns of the public were addressed. Any
concerns brought forth citing the manual addresses many of the concerns brought forth by Ortolano
and others. They are all addressing concerns that the public brought to us so it’s not like they haven't
had any input because they have. We listened to those concerns and we constructed the procedures.
These are policies on updating a property record card, how you look at grade and condition, what
constitutes fair and poor and that’s very important that we get all our assessors looking at properties the
same way.
