The Nashua Finance Committee met on August 6, 2026, to consider a series of purchase and contract approvals, hear public comment, and enter non-public session. The audit for the city was postponed as the auditors were not ready. All motions presented were approved by voice vote, with occasional opposition noted on one item.
All set. Let me check. Okay. Sorry. But I'm not going to do that. All right. Well, we will not have the audit. They it turned out they weren't ready, so we're not going to get the audit tonight, but that'll be in soon. But with that, do we have public comment regarding any of the items on tonight's agenda? Please state your name and your town or city of residence. Laurie Orlando Nashua. Mine is on number one, two, three, let's see, on the audit. Auditing services, the number two on a $340,000 must be going to say a contract. But for 26, 27, probably. All right. So now we are on to communications. The first being from Amy Gerard purchasing manager. Aldman Sullivan. Yes, I'd like to make a motion to accept place on file and approve the purchase of 27 no ink poll pads used to check in voters on election day with LHS associates in the amount not to exceed $63,000. The funding will be through Department 107 City Clerk Fund, General Fund 71 Equipment. So I'm here tonight to purchase the remainder of our poll pads last year. I came before the finance committee for 28 poll pads, which was approximately half of the 55, little over half of the 55 that the vendor recommended. We did wards one, eight, and nine for the uh last local election in November, and they worked out pretty well. And now I'm looking to purchase the additional 27 to get all the wards with the poll pads. And for this past election, so we had uh eight in each location. Some wards, smaller wards might have nine, some might have seven, depending. I'll distribute them as as we see fit, but the vendor recommended the 55 for the city. Uh the invoice for that, the quote that I got would be uh $56,800. Uh there is a $325 annual maintenance fee on all the poll pads. The current poll pads for this previous year I believe were $300. They increased the rates at $325. So if this is authorized each year, there will be $325 on each poll pad totaling $17,875 as an annual cost. Um for the maintenance and in different things. Uh it's $300 per election for programming, and that's per election. It's not per poll pad. So each election the the cost to program for the city is $300. Uh the vendor will be doing on the quote at list one two-hour training. I believe last year that's what it listed. They did two trainings for us with the amount that we're purchasing. Uh they're pretty flexible with the city. So if we want additional trainings, uh, they're usually pretty receptive to that. Uh they had a representative on site in November of 25 when we rolled out the poll pads that stayed in the city for any questions, helping uh the different the the three wards. I believe they will have another representative for the upcoming election. Being so close to the primary, if this is approved, they would the remaining wards will be using these in November. So it won't be for September. There's just not enough time to order them, get them delivered, and get everyone trained. So my um thinking is that I'm going to keep the same three wards that were using the poll pads prior, uh using them again instead of taking them away, then giving them back next election. So the same three wards will use them, which is wards one, eight, and nine. Um beyond that, uh the only thing too for IT is initially I need I needed a Wi-Fi, a secure Wi-Fi here that they could connect to, so they set that up. Um that's pretty much the only involvement that IT has anything else actually relating to the poll pads and any maintenance is through the vendor.