A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, October 11, 2016, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch; Alderman Richard A. Dowd led in the Pledge to the
Flag.
The roll call was taken with 13 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Siegel, Alderman
Schoneman were recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also present.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
First | would like to congratulate Alderman Schoneman and his wife on the birth of a new baby. It’s not
that often that an Alderman has baby. It’s a big event.
Tomorrow there is an event at the Elm Street Middle School and it is what we are calling trees for the
Tree Streets. Nick Caggiano, Superintendent of Parks & Recreation and James Vayo of the Economic
Development Department have been meeting to formulate a group of locations where we can plant some
trees in the Tree Streets. Despite the name of the Tree Streets and despite all of the names of the
streets themselves, Pine, Vine, Palm, Ash, etc., there are actually a shortage of trees in the Tree Streets
overall. They have located 30 locations where we are going to be able to plant a tree and that will be
undertaken by the Parks Department over the next few weeks. Tomorrow will be the ceremonial planting
of the first tree which will take place in front of the Elm Street Jr. High at 1:00 p.m. and any of you who
can come would be great.
| wanted to mention the Granite Hammer grant which is going to be voted on for final passage on
tonight's agenda. This has come at the right time; about $250,000 to help the police department in their
efforts to fight the criminal side of the opioid problem. They have done an incredible job in trying to keep
illegal narcotics trafficking off of the streets despite the very increased demand here throughout the State
of New Hampshire and throughout New England. They have made over 500 arrests for dealing this year
already. The grant will help to supplement their efforts and comes right at the right time because their
overtime has been largely depleted as a result of all of the work that they have been doing. As you
know, extra resources have been diverted into the anti-heroin effort. The traffic unit is not fully functional
anymore and those officers have been diverted into narcotics. The grant, which comes from the State of
New Hampshire is really helpful to us and comes at the right time.
| wanted to mention R-16-074 which has to do with a budget transfer from the library to the Economic
Development Department. The reason | thought that people might be puzzled by what this is all about:
the reason for this is Tim Cummings, the Economic Development Director, has met with the Library
Board and the Hunt Memorial Building Board to discuss with them the idea of moving the woman who
works for the Hunt Building from her budget placement under the library to under economic development.
The reality is that she really doesn’t do any work for the library and the Hunt Building, as Alderwoman
Melizzi-Golja can say as she is on that Board, is an economic asset for the city and we thought that it
would make more sense to have the employee at the Hunt Building supervised by Mr. Cummings under
the Economic Development Department as opposed to the library. Jen McCormack was fine with this.
She really doesn’t provide a whole lot of supervision because the employee does not work at the library
and we thought that this would be a positive change in terms of the functioning of the Hunt Building and
the Economic Development Department. There is no real change in spending. Half of this position was
under the library and now, if you approve this will be under the Economic Development Department. |
just wanted to let you know what that was all about.
