Board of Aldermen 10-13-2020 Page 33
MOTION CARRIED
MOTION BY ALDERWOMAN KELLY FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-20-077 AS AMENDED, BY ROLL
CALL
ON THE QUESTION
President Wilshire
The Motion is for final passage as amended; discussion on that motion?
Alderman Lopez
She can talk first, this is her motion.
Alderwoman Kelly
This is the second time | did this tonight. It was not intentional, thank you. | will keep it short. | just want to
thank everyone for entertaining this piece of Legislation. Most of what | had planned to say was brought
forward by other constituents. As you can see by the people who came to speak at Public Comment and
also the letters that we have received there is definitely support especially in Nashua and also in our
indigenous people in New Hampshire. So | think this is an important piece for us to do. And | just want to
thank everyone for coming forward and sharing their stories. So thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
| just want to clarify some comments that were made earlier and observations in public comment. | feel
slightly maligned just because the commenter himself is usually extremely diligent about detail and he kind
of did not provide some context for the comments he objected to. But when | was saying that we need to
have an opportunity for the public to discuss this and to debate it and weigh in on it that was being taken
into account by the Committee. | had initially — like this is a big step and other members had said we
shouldn’t necessarily move on this without getting any kind of input. | had objected to just changing the
name cosmetically without getting any kind of input and creating that kind of dialogue from the community
in general.
But as we all know, Columbus Day has passed so this Legislation doesn’t impact anything until next year.
And as was stated in the meeting, we can amend or enhance the Legislation further. We change or we
(audio cuts out) names or we make declarations of certain days as a City all the time. This one in particular
| guess is special but | just was advocating in those comments for making sure that we had not only just a
name change but a celebration or some substance behind it where we actually talked about the history of
indigenous peoples in Nashua and maybe took a careful look at how we described the history of our City in
that context. Because there definitely are some merits when it comes to what was going on during
(inaudible) War and King Philips War. We sort of just start up in the middle of the era and go from there.
So | look at this as an opportunity, Alderman Kelly has started the ball rolling and this is the opportunity for
us to recognize that we have something to celebrate. But | think we do have to have that dialogue coming
up over the next year over how we are going to celebrate it and what it actually means.
President Wilshire
Alderman Clemons.
