Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2020 Page 41
think this is the meeting that we should have all the Aldermen give their views on the Legislation so that
tomorrow night, we are not having to go through another 2 hours of discussion.
President Wilshire
That was the original intent, this evening, Alderman Dowd.
Alderman Dowd
If it’s OK, I’d like to give my opinion.
President Wilshire
You're up.
Alderman Dowd
Alright. | am going to start by saying that | am opposed to passing this Legislation. And | will say that |
always support or most always support the Public Health Department. And when we discussed the mask
ordinance, | made the comment that if we didn’t support the Public Health, why do we have them. In this
instance though the Board of Aldermen has to take a bigger role. The reason being that we are talking
about individuals suffering loss of income, loss of home, not being able to feed their kids and also we put
rules in place at the beginning of the pandemic that these establishments are actually abiding by and to a
great degree. And | have not seen, you know, | worked in logistics for four years, | have not seen enough
data pushing it to a curfew as opposed to enforcing the rules we already have in place. And | can tell you if
we pass this Ordinance, who is going to enforce it.
| can tell you that the Police Department on the second and third shift are short-handed. They can’t be out
going into every restaurant to see if they are open and serving liquor or not. And | think we have already
heard from the Board of Health that they don’t have people, they are working hard all day doing testing and
all the other types of things for the pandemic. | think we are punishing too many businesses and individuals
that have already suffered enough. They have followed all of the guidelines that we have given them up to
date as far as outside dining, masks, putting up separating barriers. But now to shut them down completely
is something even more severe. And somebody would have to tell me what is the difference between 9:00
at night and 9:30 at night. None. If they are doing the same guidelines all day long, a couple more hours at
night is not going to make a difference. | think this was a concern that people were coming up from
Massachusetts and I’ve heard from a number of the establishments that’s not the case.
Another thing is if we close these people down at 9:30 besides losing their jobs and their homes and
everything else, the people from Nashua that want to be out after 9:30 are going to go to Manchester. And
we have already heard that their outbreak is even bigger and you are more likely to have people coming
back from Manchester with COVID than if they went in our establishments that are playing by the rules. So
for all those reasons and many more, | do not support this curfew. There may be some additional steps we
can take without closing these establishments, but as far as an out and out curfew | think that’s too far, too
much at this time.
President Wilshire
Further discussion? Alderman Jette?
Alderman Jette
Thank you, Madam President. | would encourage my fellow Aldermen to think about the fact that we have a
Public Health Department, we have a Board of Health. The Board of Health has three doctors on it. The
Department of Health has — the medical director is an infectious disease specialist.
