Board of Aldermen Page 8
March 8, 2016
if don’t take this money then someone else will. That’s like walking down the street and seeing a wallet on
the street and saying you know what, if | don’t take the money out of that wallet someone else will.
Everybody wants to complain about government waste but what they are really saying effectively is
everyone is wasting but we get to do what we want. To me waste is when you are taking money to perform
a service or try to do a project which takes city resources that are scarce to begin with and redirect them
into an area which is not one of the highest priorities. If this were to take no resources; let’s assume that
nobody interacts with this grant at all, that would mean that nobody is providing any input to guide the city
so how does this help Nashua or the regional plan? Or, when this finally gets done, we will stick it on the
shelf and not react to it at all because that’s the only way it would take no resources so if it would take no
input and provide no viable output then it’s not really useful unless we believe that we have an excess of
capacity in our health department to address at best is not in our top ten of things that we need to worry
about. There are plenty of things that we do need to worry about and if this were directed towards that, for
example, any of the latest viruses that we are seeing spreading worldwide, okay but that’s not what this is
about. | can’t see that anything has changed other than hey, you know what; we didn’t have the
opportunity to come into the Chamber fully prepared to vote on this so let’s get a free pass. The legislation
hasn’t changed and the reasons to vote against it haven’t changed. Everyone wants forgiveness for being
unprepared. | hope this is a lesson to everyone who wants to sponsor legislation to at least read the
legislation and understand what you are voting on or what you are sponsoring so when it comes time to
discuss it if need be, you understand what it was that you put your name to.
Alderman Clemons
There are three things that have changed. At the prior meeting, Mayor Donchess, who is the primary
sponsor of this legislation, was not present and neither were two of the co-sponsors, Alderman-at-Large
Lori Wilshire and Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja. | attempted to make a motion to table so that when they were
present and they could explain perhaps why this was important they would be here and at least have the
opportunity to vote on it. It’s consideration that was not given to them and it’s a shame that we treat our
colleagues like that when we see an opportunity that maybe we can count numbers, count our hands.
Alderman Siegel
Point of order, Mr. President, that’s describing a motive to what | was doing and | resent that because that’s
not it.
Alderman Clemons
| think the appropriate thing to do is to allow for the entire Board of Aldermen to vote on this particularly
when the sponsors of the legislation were not present to defend it.
Alderman Schoneman
| just wanted to point out that some of the sponsors of the legislation were here. Furthermore, those that
did vote on it; did not know either so it’s not just that two or three of the sponsors weren’t here but the
sponsors who were here and everyone else who voted on it didn’t have an answer. | think that says that
it's simply superfluous and it was viewed as free money and we simply cannot go down that road anymore.
Alderman Wilshire
| resent the fact that this is superfluous. The Public Health Department would not have applied for this
grant if they felt it was superfluous. You got the information, you know what the outcomes are and you
know what they are looking at the grant for and | think tabling it would have been the respectful thing to do
so | am hoping this bill gets support this evening. | think they went to all of the trouble to get this grant and
