Finance Committee - 10/18/2017 Page 12
Mr. Mansfield
It is not a contract. It’s just basically saying that the City of Nashua understands that this is what we are doing.
Manchester Airport understands what they are doing as their part, and the City of Manchester is doing their
part.
Alderman Siegel
Do you have a cost breakdown for all of this stuff so it all fits into the $300,000?
Mr. Mansfield
| have a budgetary quote because we can’t really get a quote on the system until we are ready to put it out to
bid in any way until we have the funding. | have spoken with the grant office up in Concord as soon as, |
believe, last Wednesday. | was told that the letter is going to be in the mail. That's why | am trying to move
this forward because this is also going to have to go through the approval of the City of Manchester as well as
the Manchester Airport Authority. I’m confident we are going to be getting this.
Alderman Cookson
I’m looking for, and | don’t know if you can offer legal advice, Mayor Donchess.
Mayor Donchess
| cannot. | cannot offer legal advice just to make it absolutely clear.
Alderman Cookson
In private industry, | wrote a Memorandum of Understanding. | called it a Memorandum of Understanding
specifically so that it wouldn’t’ be confused with a contract. And yet, our legal counsel, indicated that this was
contractually binding even though it is called a Memorandum of Understanding. First off, | would be very
concerned based on my experience, and my experience along, that even though we are calling it a
Memorandum of Understanding, this is contractually binding and it would be perceived and observed as a
contract.
Mayor Donchess
This is not a legal opinion, but | think it is a contract. We could get further detail from legal, if you’d like. Under
Paragraph 5, Scope, it does say: “Either party may cancel its affiliation at any time within 30 days written
notice.” The words “cancel its affiliation” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but there does seem to be an
out under that provision.
Alderman Siegel
I’, not particularly comfortable with this just because it seems very loose. We really don’t know what we’re
buying.
Mr. Mansfield
It’s not a contract to buy anything. It’s just an agreement. There’s nothing in here about what we are buying.
| was just explaining what we’re looking to do with this. What would end up happening is we would have either
a bid or go to an ITT 54 contract out of Massachusetts, have a list of items that would come again before the
Finance Committee of what is going to be purchased for this. This isn’t an agreement with a vendor. This is
an agreement with communities basically we’re shaking hands and saying when this comes to fruition, we’re all
going to come up here and be in this room and this is what we’re going to do.
