Board of Aldermen 01-25-2022 Page 18
with it in the family and they were all tested. The big concern was one of my daughters has a 3 year old and a 1 year old
that were exposed. That really concerned the heck out of me because they’re susceptible and for them to get sick, and
go in the hospital, and god knows what can happen. That scared the heck out of me.
I’ve always said that if we’re not going support our Board of Health, why do we have them. They’re making
recommendations to extend. | wish we could extend it for only two weeks and see what happens, but they’re asking for a
month. | would hope at that point in time the trend is coming down. The reason New York is coming off the mandate is
because they’re trend is down. They have turned the corner. We haven't.
The other thing is recently I’ve had the opportunity to talk to several physicians — most of them at Dartmouth Hitchcock.
They all say please keep the masks for now. When we’re at a point where we see the numbers coming down, then we
can terminate it. | wish we didn’t call ita mandate. There are no police going around trying to arrest people for not
wearing a mask. The people that are talking against masks, they’re not going to wear them anyway. That’s up to them.
They won't wear them. The people that are currently wearing masks even with or without a mandate are going to keep
wearing masks. So it’s just more of the Board of Aldermen’s supporting the Board of Health and making a stand that says
we're concerned about COVID. We’re concerned about our hospitals being loaded and overworked. So | will be
supporting this.
Alderman Gouveia
Thank you Madam President. It’s been very clear to me. Ward 1 has spoken loud and clear against the proposed
ordinance for various reasons whether it be over a call, text, or in person, at the grocery store I’ve talked about this. |
think the big thing that | was hearing from a lot of the constituents was there’s no enforcement. What is the point of an
ordinance without enforcement? It sounds almost useless to me. As it’s been said, people who want to wear mask are
going to wear one with or without this mandate. People who do want to wear one are going to wear it with or without this
mandate. For those reasons, | will be against the ordinance tonight. Thank you.
Alderman Thibeault
Thank you Madam President. | just want to first off say are we really masking 2 year olds? | hope we’re not masking 2
year olds. So I’m going to vote for this extension on mask mandate. | don’t like masks and to be honest and pardon my
language, they suck. | hate them. | hate coaching basketball in them. | hate coaching baseball in them. They’re awful
but my vote is not out there to control people’s health or their political agenda. It’s a compassionate vote based on the
advice of the Board of Health that has doctors that we trust. When | see a medical professional even though | don’t agree
with them and | don’t because they call me obese, but | have to trust that what they’re telling me is accurate and they’re
trying to help me. Like Alderman Dowd said, what do we have them for if we’re not going to take their advice?
We've heard a couple of Aldermen say about their Ward. Well my Ward, I’m getting 99 percent to my personal e-mail -—
maybe 95 percent — saying that they actually want the mask extension. We support the people of Nashua but there’s
90,000 people in Nashua. There’s not 300 people on Facebook, or 50 e-mails coming to us, there’s 90,000. How many
80 year olds are on Facebook and how many of them do we have in the city? They’re not voting. They’re not voting
anywhere. We've got to protect them as well. They’re people. There’s probably a lot of 17 year olds that aren't on the
Scoop or these other Facebook pages taking informal polls. We have to protect everyone and we have to be here for
everyone not just people voting on these polls. | thank you to Ward 8. Their e-mails have been extremely respectful even
if the few that have said that they do not want an extension have been extremely respectful and | thank that. Some of the
ones coming from to us generally have not been as nice.
If we do not extend this mask mandate, it doesn’t impact the schools. That’s a completely different unit. The Board of
Education has to follow that. So we won't be changing that. City Hall’s not going to be changing. A lot of businesses will
keep their employees masked up. If they have to be masked for 8 hours a day, | don’t know why going to Shaw’s for an
hour and a half is such a deal for us to put on a mask. | really don’t. Again, I’m not having anybody tell me politically how
to vote. I’m voting my conscious based on what my Ward wants, and what | believe they want, and what | believe the
Board of Health is telling us. Again I’m not going to debate the science of it because you can go down and pretty much
find anything on the internet that you want. The numbers did go down in schools this week a little bit and I’m hoping that
that means there’s going to be a change soon that we see these going down and we can actually get rid of the masks
hopefully. Hopefully at the end of the four weeks. | also agree with Alderman Dowd about | wish we could address this in
the next meeting as well if numbers go down. Maybe we could get rid of it in two weeks. I’m going to be for it. So thank
you very much.
