Board of Aldermen 02-08-2022 Page 16
into the air. We can report loud vehicles as a breach of the city’s noise ordinance but those are difficult to investigate.
Typically repeat offenders or obvious issues can be examined. That’s a reasonable approach for the expectation for the
police to have but when it comes to the masking ordinance, people are coming in and out and the individual whose
committed the offense is changing regularly then we can’t expect the police to be fining or citing every single person who
is violating the mask mandate. | think we intentionally left it as an ordinance that was not specifically defined as a fine or
had a process for warnings because it’s an ordinance written for people who respect the law and respect the City of
Nashua. People who don’t, won't. There are some battles that we can fight and there are some battles that we will be
more successful on by relying on people’s good ethics and good behavior.
| did also want to ask Alderman Thibeault. He said that there were weekly meetings but with the Board of Health to
consult with regarding healthcare advice. Since the Board of Health meets monthly, did you mean the Department of
Health?
Alderman Thibeault
What | was told by the coach that she meets with our personal one once a week. Now | don’t know if it’s a personal
meeting. She calls Director Bagley. I’m not exactly sure but it’s obviously being told...
Alderman Lopez
The Board of Health as an entity is the three appointed doctors that...
Alderman Thibeault
Probably means just Director Bagley if | had a guess.
Alderman Lopez
Okay then that’s the department. | just wanted to make sure because the doctors are very careful about not meeting
collectively unless it’s a formal meeting and capacity. They won't even talk to each other over e-mail.
Finally with regards to snow plowing and clearing streets, The State of New Hampshire doesn’t require any private
citizens or entities to clear sidewalks which is a problem particularly in Ward 4 where there’s a lot of sidewalks and a lot of
individuals who have trouble navigating sidewalks and may have difficulty clearing their snow. So | host a contest called
“Golden Shovel”. | believe Alderman Klee has a variant of it as well where people in Ward 4 are encouraged to take
pictures of themselves shoveling the sidewalk in front of their street and to also clear out any fire hydrants that may be
nearby. Each picture that they take of themselves doing this one per storm gets counted towards a score at the end of
the snow season and then the public votes on who receives a bounty for it. So it’s called “A Golden Shovel Competition”.
It’s a quarter of my aldermanic stipend. It encourages people to interact with each other, to encourage each other to
clear, and snow plow, and be civically minded. It’s not a good solution but it’s not the worst solution. So | wanted to put it
out there and anybody in Ward 4 who is interested in participating in the Golden Shovel, you can contact me or you can
check out the group Ward for 4 which is community based for people in Ward 4. Thank you.
Alderman Moran
| guess Ill say something to extend the meeting as long as possible. | just wanted to make a general comment essentially
regarding my distinguished colleague from Ward 8. There’s always going to be provocateurs on Facebook. They don’t
generally represent the majority of the people in Nashua or anywhere else. Quite frankly in my profession as a therapist, |
see a lot of very insecure people make very provocative statements when they don’t get their way. We can’t allow
ourselves to be dragged down into that. That’s why | try to avoid it.
Alderman Klee
Thank you Madam Chair. First I'd like to say I’m quite excited that the Personnel Committee will be interviewing Mr.
Sullivan. He’s been my go-to person since Sarah left when | have many questions on zoning, and planning, and so on.
He’s given me quite the education and | truly appreciate that. So | look forward to him taking on that role.
I'd also like to make comment about the e-mails that we’ve gotten from the mask mandate. While we've gotten a lot,
we've also gotten a lot from a single person who has forwarded many e-mails, which makes it a little bit more difficult to —
especially if they don’t have the addresses and so on. | think individuals should be sending their own e-mails rather than
seeing that same person’s name coming up that’s been forwarding e-mails. It gives more validity to it and so on.
