Board of Aldermen Page 9
March 8, 2016
they were awarded the grant. It may not be the top three priorities but it is something that they will continue
to work on. | urge you to support this.
Alderman Siegel
Well, I'll tell you that we set a very bad precedent by constantly having the Michael Jackson Zombie
legislation maneuver. I’m sorry that in the previous term that Alderman Soucy came up with that because it
looks like this is going to be the new world order where we just resurrect legislation willy-nilly. I’d like to at
least for my colleagues sake, at least have an agreement, this happened this time but | would like hopefully
that this is not we are going to be doing business in the future. Obviously we can if we decide but the
same people that were so against this when that came up in the November 10" meeting of last term seem
to have been okay with it now so that’s a little bit of a problem. The second thing is that | don’t agree with
my colleague, respectfully, Alderman Wilshire, that this was something that we necessarily have to agree
with because a lot of work was put into the grant. | won’t argue that work was put into the grant but there is
a sum cost for things and just because there is a sum cost doesn’t make the decision something that we
do, that’s why we vote on things. There are things that we turn down as Aldermen that there is work that’s
done and we okay. We see it but we decide we are not going to go with it, we may decide otherwise on
this. Work is always put in, anything that comes before this Board work is put in. Let me read the
sentence here “Purpose of Grant Initiative, to develop a climate and health adaptation plan for the Greater
Nashua Public Health Region and implement an evidence based (as opposed to nonsense based, |
suppose) intervention to address a top priority health impact burden related to weather climate vulnerability
aimed at improving public health at the population level.” Where does that fit into the priorities of this city,
assuming you can even parse that sentence? This is the objection that | have. It doesn’t matter that the
money is available; at some point | think it behooves us as public servants to say okay, | understand the
money is out there but that doesn’t necessarily always mean that we grab it. That’s what | argued before
and that’s what | argue now. It wasn’t about vote counting, | didn’t count votes, | didn’t lobby anybody;
everybody voted independently on their own. | would have made the exact same statement had all 15
members of the Board been here.
Alderman O’Brien
In looking at this | hear my colleague, Alderman Siegel, but if | could bring a little something, I’ve been a
State Representative for approximately ten years and as many times issues come up to the House and I’ve
seen people within our Chamber say that a certain person couldn't be there that night and that particular
bill gets moved off the table. The main important thing is our job and the reason it’s done that something
that is brought up in legislation before us can be properly vetted. If the person that is here with the most
amount of information, | wasn’t 100% sure of this myself but the person who was here that probably could
have supplied me with that information wasn’t. Out of respect we should have moved to table but this
Board chose not to table and that to me, more than any other point that was brought up, is the most
dangerous. We should have the respect as Board, if a member is not here and cannot discuss the issue
before us; what was the rush? Why couldn’t we have tabled it and then we could have vetted it? | hope
that we now have the proper information to make a wise decision on this bill. You can say the merits of
climate change, | don’t Know, maybe the world is getting hotter or maybe it’s getting colder but evidently
somebody felt it was important to get a grant. Coming from my previous employment, to write a grant is a
lot of work so somebody really felt that this had merit and spent a lot of man hours on it and has brought it
to us and we should take the time and properly vet this and make the right decision.
Alderman Moriarty
| just wanted to bring down this discussion for a minute with regard to Mason’s Rules. Regarding Alderman
Siegel’s point of order, it wasn’t a point of order it was a personal privilege. Just for anyone who is new,
when you call a point of order what you are saying is that you recognize that a procedural rule has been
violated. Alderman Clemons, by offending Alderman Siegel, was not a violation of a procedure but an
