Board of Aldermen 05-11-2021 Page 33
Alderman Schmidt
Thanks very much.
City Clerk Lovering
You’re welcome.
President Wilshire
Thank you.
PERIOD FOR GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT
Laurie Ortolano Laurie Ortolano, 41 Berkeley Street. Quickly going through, | am not in favor of the dog park. |
just think the money spent right now is not the thing to do. The Mayor spoke briefly about the secretive
process of how these Commissioners are selected. | think we have our own secretive process going on down
here where we have a Charter Change being proposed for the School, make-up of the elected members
moving it toward a 15 member board with at-large seats. | really don’t think that works and my idea of a
transparent and open government. | know it doesn’t violate an open meeting because it was handled by an
Alderman making the change for the School Board, but | don’t like that process at all.
Your amendment for this Police thing is very confusing. Attorney Bolton wrote it up that the Board of Aldermen
must hold an initial vote to determine if the amendment is necessary. And then it says, if it is determined
necessary the Board of Aldermen must order a notice be given for the public hearing. Well we started off this
discussion with the Chairwoman saying that June 17, 2021 would be the hearing at Nashua North. It is as if
you already determined it was necessary. And | am not certain if this vote tonight is why you determined it was
necessary, but | found it totally lacking in understanding why you are doing this, why it came about and why
need it. And | don’t know when it goes to Committee, | can’t tell if the Committee Meeting, Personnel Affairs is
going to happen before the hearing or after the hearing and will it come back from Committee to the Board
such that the Board will discuss it? | don’t like the idea of a public hearing without being able to hear why you
think it is necessary across the board. And if Alderman Lu hadn’t opened the discussion up the way she had,
by asking about the survey, | don’t think there would have been any discussion at all.
| think for something so significant there should be a lot more talk going on and a lot more solid reasoning
behind why we think this will improve our Police Force. One other thing, your IT Office | think is in disarray.
You’ve got some big problems in there with Cyber Security, there’s hacking going on of emails; emails are lost,
appointments are lost, citizens are being arrested when they go to City Hall for not having an appointment that
they might in fact have because your email server is being hacked. You had on the table to establish an IT
Study Committee; it has been tabled in Committee for months and months. You really should pull that
Resolution 20-021 off the table, figure out what you need to do and get somebody in there highly qualified to
deal with your IT issues. Serious problem and you've got a serious lack of clerical staffing in your Legal Office
to provide assistance to those four attorneys and deal with Right-to-Knows. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Anyone else wishing to give public comment? OK seeing no one, Remarks by Members of the Board of
Aldermen. No one?
REMARKS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN
Alderman Lopez
Nope, you’re not getting off that easy, | was just unmuting.
