Board of Aldermen 04-13-2021 Page 25
It is exciting. | mean | always figure that my Ward will be right there to help clean up and so on but to have
someone come in from Ward 1 and Ward 4 was just quite impressive. It speaks volumes for our City.
Public Works was incredible. They donated the blue bags for us to pick things up with and some very nice work
gloves as well. Director Fauteux stepped up, Park & Rec were right there. They were picking up the blue bags
as we were filling them, they came at the end of the day to Foster Square and got the bags. We filled over 30
bags, mostly just Lock Street, a little bit of Lowell, a little bit of Canal and so on. We are going to do this again. |
am hoping for October 25"" and | will put out information. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from the residents.
They were really happy to see us out there and doing this. | was proud to do it and we had a beautiful day on
Saturday. So | suggest others who want to do this, just get a group together and start picking up trash. One
person said that | thought was quite funny, she was singing Butts & Poo | think was the song that she was
singing because that’s what she kept picking up. But then she did tell me there were more butts on the ground
than there were poo. So I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good thing but we were picking up cigarette butts too.
It’s a lot of back work picking up cigarette butts, but we were successful. Thank you so much.
President Wilshire
Alderwoman Kelly.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you Madam President. | have a few things to make some comments on. First | would like to thank
everyone for passing the Affordable Housing Fund. We are looking forward to the continued work on that. As a
Downtown business owner, | have had the pleasure of watching Downtown come alive with our barriers; they
look fantastic. | know that was request from the community last year and so it really looks great. Positive Street
Art and Beyond Borders | believe, | have met both of them and they’ve done a great job. And the only other
piece that | had was | wanted to thank everyone who was in attendance this evening and gave public comment. |
thought we did a great job of being civil and having just some straight forward conversation whether we agree or
not. | know that hasn’t always been happening on other City meetings and | would like to implore everyone to
come and share their ideas. That makes us stronger but let’s do it civilly. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
So in reference to Alderman Schmidt's comments, | did announce at our last Aldermen Meeting, | had asked the
Board of Health to start reviewing the masking Ordinance so they could figure out exactly how it would be
appropriate to take it down. In light of today’s announcement in New Hampshire that the Johnson & Johnson
Vaccination is being suspended, there are a lot of complications when it comes to when we are ready to safely
remove the mask. As most people have probably begun reading, | have a number of constituents and
associates who have actually managed to catch COVID after being inoculated. It is not 100% protection. The
more exposure you have, the more likely you are to challenge your immune response and contract it. What the
vaccine does do is it allows you to have a lighter and less intensive COVID infection. It can prevent
hospitalization in most cases but you can still definitely transport it. So these are things we need to be cautious
of, they are basically what explains the surge.
It is also worth reminding to people that we don’t have any vaccinations for children at all. The testing has to be
completed for them before we are sure that it is safe to do it. And there’s a whole ICG index now on COVID-
related conditions. | know that’s not what people want to hear; but COVID doesn’t necessarily go away without
leaving scarring and marks. There is increasing awareness in the Public Health Field of neurological issues
including more acute emotional experiences, you can develop mood disorders that you might not have been
susceptible to before and brain fog and cognitive issues. So this is still a very new illness.
