Board of Aldermen 05-11-2021 Page 35
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. | also want to welcome back Alderman Cleaver, it is good to see your face. | wanted to share, a
couple of weeks ago, actually it was Arbor Day. Dante | believe his last name is Castellano, he’s a student in
town and he organized a tree planting which | helped him with; | planted five trees. He gathered volunteers to
plant over 100 trees for just residents who bought the trees from him so we are replenishing the tree stock in
Nashua and | thought that was a really great public service that he did.
| also wanted to mention that, | think at the last meeting, or maybe two meetings before, | expressed concern
about — concern and I’ve asked for information on how high levels of our overtime is going to affect our future
retirement costs in the City. | did speak with the Mayor personally but | haven’t heard back from you. | think
that you had indicated that you needed to look into it. | wonder if we have any information on that now.
Because | continue to be, you know, I’d like for it to be looked at and at least responded to. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Mayor, did you want to respond to that?
Mayor Donchess
We are talking mostly about the Departments that have a lot of overtime, those being Fire and Police. The
answer is that when people work overtime, even on the pandemic, even when they receive ... that they do in
those situations it contributes. So the answer is yes it does impact pensions but that’s just part of the need for
the overtime.
Alderwoman Lu
When | first brought this up my point, Mayor Donchess, was that it seems to be that some of these tasks we
don’t need highly skilled fire fighters to be doing that. And so wouldn’t that be a way that we could protect or
less in the future cost of the retirement expenses?
Mayor Donchess
Well it might affect it slightly but | am not sure that it is easy to find a group of competent people to supervise
some of these clinics. Most of this overtime occurs at both the testing clinics where people are tested for
COVID-19 and more recently the vaccination clinics. You know, when you go to the clinic you know there
needs to be people who direct where a lot of people coming in at the same time need to do and where they
should wait. Could other people do it? | suppose so but | think people with some level of training and
knowledge and experience, it would need to be someone like that. And | am just not sure we have an alternate
group of people that would really serve the same function.
President Wilshire
You're all set Alderman Lu? Anyone else? Alderman Dowd.
Alderman Dowd
| was expecting OB to jump in but the firemen that were at the vaccination centers, first of all, all of their
overtime including the pension costs were covered by Federal dollars. And also, the firemen are all EMT
trained so they are out in the parking lot and if somebody has an issue within the first 15 minutes that they
make them stay after their shot, they can immediately handle that and a nurse or a doctor to come. So they
are not just directing traffic, they are there for a reason.
The other thing is a member of the public called me a liar for saying the Police overtime was covered by
Federal dollars. There are four major categories of Police overtime that were covered by Federal dollars
