Board of Aldermen 05-14-2019 Page 12
Mike Apfelberg Good evening Mike Apfelberg, 7 Edson Street. | was going to speak initially about the
tobacco legislation and then | decided I’d like to speak a little bit about Mrs. Kleiner and her
appointment. | think you’ve heard enough about the tobacco legislation over the last how many
hearings now to know | am in favor of this legislation and I’m in favor of it in the original form that
includes possession and purchase and consumption of tobacco products. My beliefs are based in the
science of the mind and the science of addiction and even though we don’t have legislation State-Wide
yet, | think this is an opportunity for us to send a strong message to the State that the time has come
for us to protect our youth now and into the future. Enough said on that.
So regarding the appointment of Kim Kleiner to the Administrative Services position, just a personal
perspective. I’ve had the opportunity over the past couple of years to work directly with Ms. Kleiner in
a couple of different areas both as a constituent and also as an organization which occasionally has
needs from the City to navigate various types of services and departments. What I’ve found is as a
constituent Kim, I’m just going to call her Kim, is a person who does in fact respond to your e-mails at
10:00 on Saturday night and | think that’s not because she’s here in the office or perhaps she has the
ability to do that from home, but she’s absolutely one of the most responsive people particularly in City
Government who I’ve ever come across. She goes out of her way to provide detailed answers and if
she doesn’t know the answer, and | think in terms of managing a large division with a large number of
divisions underneath her, one of her great strengths is if she doesn’t know the answer, she will tell you
that and she will go get you the answer. So | have a lot of faith in her as a constituent.
As an organization, we’ve had the opportunity to have a number of projects that we’ve put through the
City and what I’ve found with working with Kim is that she is a person who works well across
constituencies ; she is a person who collaborates by nature. So she’s going to bring in people into the
room who have various disciplines and various opinions and various points of view and try to work
towards a common solution. | think that is extraordinarily important in a role like this which is
managing a large number of departments. | can appreciate what Mr. Teeboom said about, yes she
might not have experience in all of those various disciplines, but let’s be honest, nobody ever is going
to have experience, real deep experience in more than one or two disciplines. What you need in a
leader is somebody who can bring people together to get work done. So | have every faith in Ms.
Kleiner and hope that you do appoint her. As a constituent and both as an organization | appreciate
that, thank you.
Janet Valuk Good evening, my name is Janet Valuk | live at 41 Roy Street here in Nashua, Ward 6.
First of all I’d like to support the nomination of Kim Kleiner for the new position. Enough said of that
one. Most of you realize and I’ve talked with you before, spoken with you before, that my life has pretty
much been dedicated to protecting the health of our young people. | started out in Connecticut where |
grew up and it has been carried here into Nashua. I’ve worked in prevention for 48 years. | am going
to talk about a few statistics that we acquired from an academic survey given at the high schools, just
to give you an idea of what some of the issues are. 61.5% of the youth who reported current use get
their vaping devices from someone legal other than a parent. 35.9% of youth who reported current
use buy their devices from someone legal, I’m sorry, buy their devices themselves at a vape store ora
convenient store. I'll just preface this by saying all of the participants in this survey were under the age
of 18. And lastly almost 38% of youth reported vaping devices are very easy to obtain.
Now | know this isn’t an ordinance specific to vaping and | realize that vaping is a major problem with
youth right now. But the statistics show that 33% of youth who are vaping now, within one year will go
on to use traditional cigarettes. So that’s a concern of tobacco use. Some of the other information we
have 480,000 deaths annually from tobacco related diseases. If the current smoking rates continue,
5.6 million Americans who are currently younger than 18 will die prematurely from a smoking related
disease. Now this does not only effect an individual’s health, but it also has economic costs as well.
As experts estimate that the annual societal costs attributed to smoking in the United States were
between $289 and $332 billion dollars. This includes $132 to $175 billion for direct medical care costs
of adults and $151 billion for lost productivity due to premature deaths. Lost productivity due to
