Nashua's Secret Vote: How City Hall Used a Closed-Door Session to Hide the Failed 14 Mulberry Street Land Deal from the Public
A deep dive into the April 28, 2026 Board of Aldermen non-public session minutes, now unsealed, reveals a troubling pattern of using executive session not to protect the public's interest, but to shield elected officials from public scrutiny.
The Setup
Nashua residents knew their city was pursuing the purchase of 14 Mulberry Street for $730,000, a property Mayor James Donchess and city administrators wanted to convert into a resource center, transitional housing, and warming station for the city's homeless population. Resolution R-26-019 had been publicly introduced, referred to committee, brought before a public hearing (R-26-020) and was on the Board of Aldermen's agenda.
What they didn't know was that on the night of April 28, 2026, twelve aldermen would file into a closed chamber debate the deal's fate for nearly an hour and a half, cast a secret 6-6 vote that killed a proposed amendment, and then vote to seal the minutes, all without a single member of the public present.
Those minutes have now been unsealed. And what they reveal should trouble every Nashua taxpayer who believes in open government.
The Attorney's Permission Slip — And His Telling Slip
Corporation Counsel Steve Bolton was present throughout the non-public session, guiding the Board through the procedural mechanics of the amendment to the Purchase and Sale Agreement. He explained the financial terms. He answered questions about the real estate transfer tax, the deposit structure, the seller's marketing rights, and the sequencing of votes.
But the most important thing Attorney Bolton said that night wasn't legal advice.
It was this:
"You didn't have to do any of this in non-public."
Fancy that. The city's own attorney, the lawyer who moments earlier had guided the Board through the motion to enter non-public session under RSA 91-A:3, II(d), acknowledged, on the record, that none of what was being discussed actually required a closed-door session.
That single statement is a confession. It is the Corporation Counsel admitting that the statutory exemption invoked to clear the public from the room was not legally necessary. And if it wasn't legally necessary, the question every Nashua resident deserves answered is: why were we locked out?
What RSA 91-A:3, II(d) Actually Allows
New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law, RSA 91-A, is built on a presumption of openness. RSA 91-A:1 declares that "openness in the conduct of public business is essential to a democratic society." Non-public sessions are the exception, not the rule, and the exemptions are narrow.
The exemption invoked that night, RSA 91-A:3, II(d), permits a public body to meet privately for the "consideration of the acquisition, sale, or lease of real or personal property which, if discussed in public, would likely benefit a party or parties whose interests are adverse to those of the general community."
The operative word is negotiating position. This exemption exists to prevent a seller from learning what a city will pay, what terms it will accept, or what its walk-away point is. It is a shield for the taxpayer at the bargaining table not a shield for elected officials avoiding an uncomfortable public vote.
By April 28, 2026, the negotiation was effectively over. The Purchase and Sale Agreement had been signed. The purchase price of $730,000 was publicly known. Resolution R-26-019 had been publicly introduced. And critically, the amendment being discussed that night involved a $13,000 flat fee that the seller had already agreed to accept. There was no active negotiation to protect. The seller, Najad Ghanbari, had already signed off on the extension terms before the Board ever convened.
So what negotiation position was left to protect? The RSA 91-A:3, II(d) exemption's entire rationale had already been satisfied or more accurately, had already become moot.
The Deal Was Already Cooked With the Seller
Here's a fact buried in these minutes that deserves far more attention: Director of Administrative Services Tim Cummings presented the amendment to the Board as a finished product. The seller had already agreed to the six-month extension, the $13,000 fee, the additional $10,000 deposit structure, and the environmental review contingency. These terms were set. The Board wasn't negotiating; it was being asked to ratify a deal that city administrators had already worked out with the other side.
This matters enormously to the RSA 91-A:3, II(d) analysis. The exemption protects negotiation. When city officials have already negotiated the deal and are simply asking the Board to vote yes or no on a finished amendment, the public has every right to be in the room. There is no adverse party to benefit from public disclosure at that point; the adverse party already knows every term because they agreed to every term.
What was actually being protected in that closed session wasn't a negotiating strategy. It was the political deliberation of twelve aldermen trying to decide whether to support a deal that was proving increasingly controversial. City leaders set this up to afford the Aldermen the greatest privacy and comfort to avoid the watchful eyes of the public.
The Six Who Voted No — In Secret
When the vote came, it failed 6-6. Under the Board's rules, a tied vote is a failed motion.
The six aldermen who voted yes on the amendment, who wanted to approve the six-month extension were:
Alderman Klee
Alderwoman Smith
Alderman O'Brien
Alderman Dowd
Alderman Lopez
President Wilshire
The six aldermen who voted no, killing the amendment in secret, were:
Alderman Thibeault
Alderman Gregg
Alderman Sullivan
Alderman Sennott
Alderman Johnson
Alderman Morgan
Note who is absent from both lists: Alderman Clemons, who attended the regular meeting via Zoom but was not present for the non-public discussion. (City has an ordinance that Zoom members cannot participate in non-public sessions) Alderman Clemons had actually made the original motion to enter non-public session, meaning he was present for the vote to close the doors but apparently not for the substantive debate and final vote inside them.
Alderman Klee, after the amendment failed, raised the fairness issue directly, noting it would not be right to bring the matter to a public vote without Clemons having participated in the full non-public deliberation. That is a reasonable concern. But it raises a harder question: if the fairness of Clemons's participation mattered enough to prevent a public re-vote, why didn't it matter enough to conduct the entire deliberation in public where he, and every Nashua resident, could have participated fully?
The Sealing of Minutes for a Dead Deal
After the 6-6 vote killed the amendment, Alderman Klee moved that the Board keep the non-public minutes confidential. The motion passed 8-4, with Aldermen Sullivan, Sennott, Johnson, and Lopez voting against sealing.
RSA 91-A:3, III is the statutory provision governing the sealing of non-public minutes. It requires that minutes be released within 72 hours unless the public body votes that "divulgence of the information likely would render the proposed action ineffective."
But here is the legal problem and it is a serious one: there was no proposed action left to protect. The amendment had just failed. The Purchase and Sale Agreement was two days from expiration. The deal was dead. Where was Attorney Bolton’s advice to shut-down this unlawful action?
You cannot seal minutes to protect a proposed action that no longer exists. The four aldermen who voted against sealing, Sullivan, Sennott, Johnson, and Lopez, were right. They were also, notably, four of the six who had voted against the amendment itself. They understood that once the vote failed, the statutory basis for sealing had evaporated.
The eight who voted to seal anyway, including aldermen who had supported the amendment and had every political reason to keep their fingerprints off its failure, cast a sealing vote that had no legal leg to stand on the moment it was made. These minutes should have been public within 72 hours of April 28, 2026. They were not.
What Was Actually Being Hidden
Read the transcript of the non-public deliberation and you will find almost nothing that resembles protection of a negotiating position. What you will find is:
Alderman Johnson questioned why a home inspection was never done and challenging the wisdom of the purchase altogether.
Alderman Thibeault openly admitted he was "torn" and "starting to wonder if this is even a good idea at all."
Alderman Sullivan declared that 14 Mulberry Street was "the wrong answer to the right question" and that he would not support the amendment.
Alderman Morgan suggested the city should issue an RFP to nonprofits rather than purchasing the building, and ultimately declined to support the amendment.
Alderman Gregg expressed concern about adding a new facility to an already "fractured system" of homeless services and concluded she could not support the purchase.
Alderman Sennott pushed back on the "all or nothing" framing and stated plainly that he did not believe the property "accomplishes any of those goals" of serving the homeless population responsibly.
These are policy arguments. They are the kind of deliberative speech that the people of Nashua have an absolute right to hear from their elected representatives, in public, on the record, before the vote. Instead, they were spoken in a sealed room and hidden behind a confidentiality vote for weeks.
New Hampshire's Constitution, Part I, Article 8, could not be clearer: "Government, therefore, should be open, accessible, accountable and responsive." The April 28 non-public session was none of these things and Attorney Bolton's own words confirm it didn't have to be.
The Bottom Line
The City of Nashua used a real estate acquisition exemption, designed to protect taxpayers at the negotiating table, to instead protect elected officials from public accountability at the voting booth. The seller had already agreed to the amendment's terms. The negotiation was over. The RSA 91-A:3, II(d) exemption had no legitimate work left to do.
What remained was a political deliberation about public policy, public money, and the future of homeless services in New Hampshire's second-largest city. That deliberation belonged to the public.
The six aldermen who voted no in that sealed room, Thibeault, Gregg, Sullivan, Sennott, Johnson, and Morgan, may well have voted correctly on the merits. But every Nashua voter deserved to see them do it.
Attorney Bolton told them they didn't have to do any of it in non-public while guiding them into non-public. They did it anyway. And then eight of them voted to keep it secret. This Board needs to think carefully about following their fearless leader.
That is not how open government works. That is not what RSA 91-A demands. And that is not what Part I, Article 8 of the New Hampshire Constitution permits.
The minutes are unsealed now. The public can judge for itself.
Analysis based on the unsealed minutes of the Nashua Board of Aldermen non-public session, April 28, 2026, pertaining to Resolution R-26-019 and the First Amendment to the Purchase and Sale Agreement for 14 Mulberry Street.