Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2020 Page 24
There is a point where politicians have to take leadership and they have to start separating out what their
responsibilities are in terms of obligations to people’s lives. | don’t want to ruin somebody’s life by having
them lose their job. But! don’t want to ruin somebody’s life by enabling a scenario where they lose their
life. A lot of the places that are most vulnerable and are suffering the highest casualties from COVID-19
aren't getting them by their own activity. People from long term facilities aren’t going out and partying like
crazy, it is the staff and the people who are delivering things and the people who interact with that
themselves that are doing it.
So I'd love to believe the public saying, well why don’t you give us a chance why don’t you start working
with us, at this point we understand what is going on, we should stop. That is not what I’ve seen, that’s not
the trend that’s been happening. We have been talking about this micro issue particularly since
Thanksgiving and the numbers have not gone down. There’s been plenty of visibility all of the restaurants
have been involved in this conversation that are here tonight and we haven’t seen a reduction of
transmission. I’m sure the Board of Health would have liked to be off the hook for that and I’m sure the
hospitals that are treating people right now in their ICU’s and the staff that are also working right now would
love to have less people to treat so that they could go on making money on actually lucrative things like
elective surgeries and that kind of thing.
This is a pandemic which is affecting all areas of business, all areas of the community and we can’t expect
only one sector of it to shoulder the burden. And while that’s true of the restaurant industry it’s also true to
the health industry as well. We can’t expect doctors to treat people who are intentionally taking more risk
than is necessary and we can’t facilitate that behavior either.
Unidentified Speakers Talk about your script. Yeah what’s up with the script?
Tom Lopez
Well the script does say that Public Comment is over to start with, but we were all given scripts where
different assignments are made for who is going to make motions and who is not. So as the Liaison for the
Board of Health, | am the one who made the motion for bringing this up for discussion.
Unidentified Speaker Are you going to work tomorrow?
President Wilshire
Alderman Clemons?
Alderman Clemons
Thank you President Wilshire, | appreciate it and | want to thank everybody that came tonight to speak. It’s
a rare occasion when 115 people, actually at one point | think we were at 125 people come to address the
Board of Aldermen. That’s a very rare and unique occasion and I’ve witnessed it maybe — on my 10 years
or so that I’ve been on the Board and off, I’ve witnessed it maybe 3 or 4 times. So | want to thank
everybody for coming and speaking this evening. | think what we have here is a problem that really is a
Federal problem that hopefully they are getting close to some kind of an agreement in Congress but it is,
from what | can tell, extremely short on its, on the wants and needs for people and | don’t think that it is
going to deliver the same kind of results that we had this past spring, which was we had extra
unemployment benefits, we had the $1,200.00 cash benefit, we had moratoriums on evictions.
When we closed down and the State shut down at the beginning in April, there was protections in place to
help people who were struggling and to help people who were hurt by the shutdowns. And even then, we
saw a lot of our friends in the restaurant business close right here in Nashua, throughout the State,
throughout the Country, because they couldn't survive being shut down without knowing when the next
paycheck was coming. And | understand what has been said this evening, | understand the hardworking
people who are here, who are trying to make a living. We need, in my opinion, | am going to support them
