NASHUA – Nearly 100 people lined up online Monday night to share with the Board of Aldermen their feelings on the proposed ordinance that would enact a 9:30 p.m. curfew for restaurants and bars.

In the end, aldermen voted 13-2 on alderman-at-large Shoshanna Kelly’s motion to refer the matter to tonight’s regular board meeting without a recommendation.

The matter is the last item on the agenda for tonight’s meeting, which begins at 7:30.

“I see nothing to show that a curfew would stop this virus … this is a knee jerk reaction …,” Aaron Penkacik said Monday.

“Restaurants are in crisis now. This is a very dangerous time for them. If we go to a curfew, layoffs will definitely happen,” said Mike Saunders, president of the New Hampshire Hospitality Association.

“If this happens I’m not going to be able to pay my bills. I hope we can find other options,” said a tearful Heather Haddad, one of about 10 employees of Boston Billiard Club who addressed the board.

The ordinance, sponsored by Ward 6 Alderman Tom Lopez, is in response to the city’s “recent increase in (COVID-19) cases,” which, it claims, “warrants further intervention to moderate case growth.”

The legislation approves the regulation the city Board of Health recently adopted, by a unanimous vote, prohibiting indoor activities after 9:30 p.m. “at any establishment where masks cannot be worn the entire time on site … .”

Critics of the so-called curfew argue that it unfairly targets restaurants, bars and other establishments geared toward late evening and nighttime customers.

Among them is well-known downtown restaurateur Michael Buckley, who sent an email to the board and also spoke Monday.

“We’ve already been impacted greatly” by the virus, he said, referring to the restaurant industry. “If you close bars (early) in Nashua, people will go to other places.”

Once the public comment session closed, Lopez, the aldermanic liaison to the Board of Health, initially made a motion to refer the ordinance to the board at tonight’s meeting, then replaced it with a motion to discuss.

He said he “is disappointed in what I’ve heard tonight” from the vast majority of the speakers, just about all of whom, with the exception of two Board of Health members, urged the board to vote down the ordinance.

A stipulation included in the description of the ordinance directs the city clerk to designate the ordinance “as a COVID-19 emergency measure,” instead of codifying it under “Nashua Revised Ordinances.”

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.