Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2020 Page 7
President Wilshire
Thank you. | think | skipped Eric?
Eric Roberts Yes, thank you, Lui Lui in Nashua, DW Highway thank you for giving us the time to speak.
We’ve spent over $60,000.00 in barriers and increased air filtration, extra labor to have things cleaned
properly. And if this 9:30 curfew goes into effect, you are really saying that we can’t see guests after
8:00 p.m. So that significantly cuts down on the time that we could serve guests. And with over 60
employees and many of them have children at home that have to do remote learning during the day so
the only time they can work is at night. So now you are really cutting into the hours that we can generate
revenue. And with sales already down, and we are trying to do everything we can to stay within the
guidelines, to serve guests safely it’s just, you know, talk about science, the real impact is even greater.
And doing everything that we can do while all the other stores don’t have to follow those types of
guidelines; | just think it is a bad idea to institute this. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Eric. Next | have Seth? Seth are you still there wanting to speak?
Seth Simonian. Yes please.
President Wilshire
OK name and address for the record.
Seth Simonian 25 Old Reynolds Bridge Road in Hollis, New Hampshire. | own the Flight Center in
downtown Nashua. | want to point out that regardless if it is known or not, the City has controlled the
narrative through the whole level of COVID that has painted the hospitality industry to be a negative
driving force around COVID. And we are an industry that has been held to the highest standards above
and beyond the high standards we are already held to. As most have indicated, we have made
significant investments in staffing, in supplies, in cleaning products and barriers and being able to
ensure we can protect our patrons to not only our full most potential, but above the guidelines that are
being set for us. The City of Nashua has gone a step above and placed additional guidelines and
ordinances; whether it is the mask ordinance and asked us as small business owners to enforce which
is fine.
What you are looking to do with the curfew is not only detrimental but also controlling this narrative of
letting out that a curfew is being viewed to potentially put down a rise of COVID amongst restaurants in
Nashua is interesting because the data doesn’t really pinpoint a rise of COVID incidents of the City are
coming from our hospitality industries. Per your guys’ reports, 13% of Known cases came out of
restaurants. We are looking to take away up to 60% of the business that our restaurants are getting
right now by putting this curfew in place. The number of employees that could potentially be out of work
is huge. By you guys even putting out there that there could be a potential curfew, a lot of people
already assume that it is in place and our business, since this announcement, has significantly
decreased after the hours of 8:00. Being a downtown restaurant, we rely on those late night hours to
stay open, to stay profitable, to stay in business.
It is wildly inefficient if you guys are operating on an assumption of data sets that seem to not be true.
Massachusetts rolled a curfew out, 6 to 8 weeks ago, their numbers have not decreased one week since
they’ve rolled out a curfew. So you cannot say that there’s been a positive intake from a curfew being
laid out. And if you are fearful of individuals from Massachusetts coming into our bars because a curfew
exists in their State, we are tracing every individual that walks through our door and we check every ID
that walks through our door. | can tell you the number of individuals coming in from Massachusetts at
the 8:00 hour is not high. It’s not a percentage number that we should even be functioning and worried
about it.
