A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, April 12, 2022, at 7:30 p.m. in the aldermanic chamber
and via Zoom teleconference which meeting link can be found on the agenda and on the City’s website calendar.
President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan Lovering recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan Lovering; Alderman Derek Thibeault led in the Pledge to the Flag.
Let’s start the meeting by taking a roll call attendance. If you are participating via Zoom, please state your presence, reason
for not attending the meeting in person, and whether there is anyone in the room with you during this meeting, which is
required under the Right-To-Know Law.
The roll call was taken with 15 members of the Board of Aldermen present: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Sullivan,
Alderman Klee, Alderman Moran, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Jette, Alderman Clemons, Alderwoman Kelly, Alderman
Comeau, Alderman Dowd, Alderman Gouveia, Alderman Cathey, Alderman Thibeault, Alderwoman Timmons, Alderman
Wilshire.
Mayor James W. Donchess, Corporation Counsel Steve Bolton, were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
Thank you Madam President. First | wanted to mention a couple of the items that are on the agenda tonight for action.
The teachers’ contract comes up pretty quickly. | wanted to say and thank the Budget Committee for their unanimous
endorsement of this proposed contract. It accomplishes a number of things for the city given that education is offering an
excellent education for every child is vital to us. For that, we need excellent teachers which we have but to attract and
retain teachers, we need to have competitive pay. Right now, the teachers are in terms of average pay Nashua is 77* of
about 150 districts in New Hampshire. This will provide the teachers with a raise and help to equalize starting salaries,
salaries for those at the end of their career, and more than anything else, more than even the two ends, the middle level
teachers because Nashua is losing teachers who are trained, seasoned here in Nashua to districts close by that pay a
higher for those trained teachers. So | hope you will follow the recommendation of the Budget Committee and endorse
this very important step forward in terms of education here in Nashua.
One thing that is important is the city sought a change in the HMO plan, which is offered city employees. As you know,
we've gotten that agreement from a number of other employee groups. The teachers agreed to that plan and as a result
of that, the projection of our healthcare experts is that we will save $2.3 million in healthcare costs per year starting in year
two of the contract, which begins next July 1. We are in an environment of rising healthcare costs but this agreement
means that for a period of about three years, we will lower or constant city contributions for teacher healthcare. Before |
conclude on that, | want to thank the teachers for the extraordinary efforts that they have put in over the last two years
during very difficult conditions. I’m glad we’re back to normal now and hope we can make sure that the kids do not suffer
any lasting, long term deficits as a result of the disruption.
Another item on the agenda which has received considerable discussion over the long period of time is the outdoor dining
— the extended outdoor dining. First, we have to congratulate and thank all of the people that served on the Task Force
consisting of the Infrastructure Committee, the Planning Committee, as well as our citizen members. The number of
meetings, the length of those meetings — 11 o’clock at night, 1 o’clock in the morning. In my experience is really
extraordinary and it shows how dedicated everyone regardless of their opinion on this issue how dedicated people are to
trying to improve and support downtown Nashua. It is vital to the city and | think all of the effort put in by everyone
certainly is a recognition of that.
At the beginning, we proposed a compromise from the configuration of the outdoor dining that occurred in the last two
years. The proposal scaled back the outdoor dining in order to improve traffic flow and reduce to about 40 sum the net
loss in parking spaces out of 3,500. The Task Force looked over these recommendations very carefully — block by block
and even finer than that and adopted some changes/amendments which are before you and, of course, worked very hard
in doing that. One change that did come forward is that in addition to the city, building owners have to agree to have the
outdoor dining in front of the property. | think everyone involved agrees that bringing more people downtown is something
that we need to — is an important objective. Outdoor dining clearly does that. Three to four thousand people a day was
the count last year. It brings a lot more life to downtown. Many people commented on that. If we think about the
economic aspect — 3,000 or 4,000 people over a number of months is many, many hundreds of thousands of visitors. If
you think that every person spent $10, that’s millions of extra revenue coming into our downtown. Some people have
pointed out that we should come forward with a proposal to charge restaurants a reasonable fee for this and I’m sure we
