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Board of Aldermen Page 2
June 14, 2016

Secondly, | would like to than the Veterans who came and did the Pledge of Allegiance, | think Alderman
McCarthy’s idea of using that as a substitute or a pale substitute for the parade that was rained out was
really nice. | also want to thank Alan St. Louis for doing the National Anthem again.

The first item of business that | would like to discuss is O-16-003 related to the housing code. | think
there are a number of people who have expressed opposition to this over the course of a long period of
time. It’s gone to different committees twice and it’s come to the full Board of Aldermen now for a second
time. There seems to be many concerns but | don’t think they should be as concerned as they are and
that they misinterpret the intent and purpose and particularly the good landlords that we have nothing to
fear from this change and | will go on to describe why | think that is the case. First of all the background,
this started in the fall of 2015 when the T.V. report which | think was entitled “Motel from Hell” was
nationally aired regarding one of the single residence occupancy type places here in Nashua. The
pictures and story was quite shocking and as we began to look at that particular location and some
others in the city we realized that we have some facilities that are not being run in a way and conditions
that are not being kept in a way that they really should for the benefit of the tenants, the city or the
landlords. So in the last term the Board of Aldermen started a Substandard Living Conditions Committee
to look into this situation and see what we could do or recommend changes to try to improve the
conditions which exist at the “Motel from Hell’ and some of the other single residence occupancies like
23 Temple Street. We arranged a meeting at the soup kitchen to hear from tenants what their living
situations were and are. The reason we did it at the soup kitchen and was arrange by Alderman Tom
Lopez, he was not yet on the Board but he works at the soup kitchen and the reason that we arranged it
there because we thought that the tenants at 23 Temple Street and a few other places would be fearful
of retaliation if they were to speak out. So we held this meeting and a bunch of tenants came in and of
course there were representatives of 23 Temple Street there and other places even though most of them
didn’t speak and we heard from tenants about things like feces on the walls of public bathrooms, bed
bugs, clogged drains in public shared bathrooms that lasted for weeks without being corrected. A
woman who had to share a bathroom where she couldn’t turn on the water so she’d have to go down the
hall and there would be a bathroom down there where there were men in the bathroom and it just went
on and on and on. Then, after the hearing, one of the women who came into see us got an eviction
notice for rent she supposedly didn’t pay but it turned out that after an investigation and Alderman Siegel
became involved, showed that actually she had receipts showing that she paid the rent. It was
seemingly a retaliatory eviction. The next thing that happens is the eviction proceeding is filed in
Portsmouth. This is a woman without a car and no money. | think because of all of the attention was
able to ward this off. The Alderman O’Brien attempts to change the law so that a person like the woman
we are speaking about and she is disabled, could, and the retaliation came the same day that her son
died in the facility in the room next to her. So Alderman O’Brien tried to pass it in the State Legislature;
legislation that would require that an eviction such as that be filed at least in the town where she lives
rather than where the owners are located over on the Seacoast and unfortunately that failed. When |
came into office, really on the first day, | asked about this and the code enforcement people said
basically we are the property managers for 23 Temple Street and some other places because what
happens is they don’t do anything, they barely clean the place up and they just wait for us to inspect,
they don’t make corrections and they don’t fix code violations. They wait for us to inspect and when we
inspect and we cite them for two, five or ten violations then they correct them. Then we wait and if we
wait a week it will be a few violations and if we wait two months it will be many violations. They wait until
we inspect again then we site them and then they correct. They don’t even need a property manager
because we do it for them. So as we tried to figure out how we can correct this situation and it’s not like
they can’t afford it. The tenants tell us that they pay $500 per month in rent for 120 units so that’s
$60,000 per month out of one facility and the property taxes on that building are probably too low but
they are around $30,000 per year so it’s not like they can’t afford to be taking care of their properties but
they don’t. So what do we do about this? We have state enabling legislation that enables us to take a
couple of different approaches. One would be the approach that Manchester has taken which is to
require an annual inspection charging $25.00 per unit for every unit in the city. In our case we have
about 16,000 rental units so that would be $400,000 per year and using that money what Manchester

Board of Aldermen Page 3
June 14, 2016

does is expand their code enforcement department and do more aggressive code inspection, that is one
way we could go or we could have proposed that approach. That would have taken in our case;
$400,000 out of the landlords of the city in order to expand our code capabilities and it would have hit
good landlords and bad. Another alternative is the one we adopted which is the approach used in Keene
which is, and they have had the citation system since 2002, and what we suggested is something much
less onerous than was passed in Manchester which is simply to say that to avoid this system where a
shrewd owner of a large very poorly kept facility can simply wait for us to cite them and then make the
corrections with no penalty whatsoever, we decided to propose something that would hit bad landlords,
not every landlord like the Manchester system, which would give the code enforcement people a little
more leverage which would enable them to issue a fine upon the discovery of a violation. In their
discretion, they can give a warning but they also can give a fine. Everybody who has testified agrees
that our code enforcement people are very reasonable except everybody is afraid | think without reason,
that they will suddenly become unreasonable or that we will hire new people who will suddenly take a
very aggressive approach and | just don’t think that’s realistic. We only have three code enforcement
people so really we don’t have enough. If we adopted the Manchester system we could certainly hire a
lot more or a third alternative is if we didn’t want to go with the way that has been proposed in the
ordinance or the way in Manchester, we could appropriate $300,000 or $400,000 extra dollars and hire
three or four more code enforcement inspectors and do even more frequent inspections at the bad
buildings. We could have someone go over there every few days just to make sure that nothing goes
wrong because they are not checking. In addition to just the conditions for the people in the building,
these facilities, particularly the one at 23 Temple Street, is a huge problem for Nashua, for the downtown,
for our image and for the success of downtown. If you talk with R.J. Finley who owns the building at 30
Temple Street, and they have done a very good job of bringing businesses and employees to the
downtown; they have taken that building from 10% occupancy up to 90% or 95%. The have Triangle
Credit Union, the have tech companies like Persistent Systems from India; they have Acumana and other
businesses that we want downtown. If you talk to them they say that they wanted to do a housing
development with a mixed use right over their garage but why didn’t they, at least according to them,
because of 23 Temple Street, because it is such a dump that they just didn’t want to take the risk of
investing $10 million next door. What they did is upgraded their parking garage and they did no
development. | think that is the kind of impact that we are seeing. At that same building we have 500
police calls per year so although | don’t fault or in any way criticize the good faith of the people that are
opposing this; | think they are not looking at the big picture. Are we really going to be able to do nothing
about any this, are we just going to continue to manage these properties and let out of town people just
take tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars out of them every year without doing nothing to try to
alter the way of doing business? | think we should pass this and if the code inspectors turn out to be so
onerous in their approach to it, we change it but | just don’t think that is going to happen and as the
Administrative Officer of the City, | will tell them do not; use good discretion and use good judgement.
One fear is that if you find that a tenant has kicked in someone’s wall in the hallway and it looks like the
tenant did it then obviously you should not issue a fine because the landlord is not responsible for that. |
think we can make this work and | think we can use it to at least some degree to strengthen our hand
against the very bad people we have who own some of the residences that we have really been focusing
on with this Substandard Living Conditions Committee. That's my pitch on the landlord/tenant Bill and |
know there are many people here who disagree with me but that is my feeling about it.

On another subject, there is one ordinance that you might not have heard too much about, it proposes
transferring management of the parking function from the traffic manager over to the Economic
Development Department. This was proposed by the Community Development Director Sarah Marchant
because the transportation manager is really a bus person and we need to align economic development
with the parking and the parking is really a downtown economic development function and it has to do
with the parking downtown and so we think it makes much more sense that person report to the
economic development director. Keep in mind that the transportation manager reports to the director
who reports to me anyway, they all report to me as the Mayor so they will be working together one way
or the other but it just stream line things a little more easily.

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June 14, 2016

Finally, | would ask that Mr. Parker, who is a very highly qualified nominee for the Conservation
Commission be taken from the table and that he be considered and hopefully approved for that position.
He is involved in landscaping and he has expertise in trees and other vegetation and will be a great input
to the Conservation Commission. You might recall that Mike Gallagher came and testified that he would
be a great help to them and you might also recall that we tabled his nomination to give him an
opportunity to attend the meetings of the Conservation Commission which he has done and he is very
anxious to go forward so | hope you will accept his willingness to volunteer and take him from the table
and approve him for the Conservation Commission. With that, | conclude Mr. President.

RESPONSE TO REMARKS OF THE MAYOR - None

RECOGNITION PERIOD

Recognition of Emergency Preparedness StormReady Rating

President McCarthy acknowledged representatives from the Gray, Maine National Weather Service
Office who were in attendance to present Nashua with an award for receiving an Emergency

Preparedness StormReady Accreditation.

READING MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS AND PUBLIC HEARING

There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the minutes of the Board of Aldermen
meetings of May 23, May 24, and May 31, 2016, accepted, placed on file and the readings
Suspended.

COMMUNICATIONS

There being no objection, President McCarthy declared that all communications be read by title
only.

From: John Griffin, Chief Financial Officer
Re: Uncompleted Projects Status Report

There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the communication accepted and placed
on file

From: Mayor Jim Donchess
Re: Contract Award with Sanborn, Head & Associates for Gas Collection and Control Services

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT
TO SANBORN, HEAD & ASSOCIATES, INC. IN THE AMOUNT OF $45,000

A Viva Voce Roll Call was taken, which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman Wilshire, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Dowd, 13
Alderman Caron, Alderman Siegel, Alderman Schoneman,
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja, Alderman McGuinness, Alderman LeBrun,
Alderman Moriarty, Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Lopez,
Alderman McCarthy
Nay: 0

MOTION CARRIED

Board of Aldermen Page 5
June 14, 2016

From: Roger L. Houston, Planning Director and CIC Secretary

Re: Amendment to FY2017 Capital Improvement Program to Include the Rail Trail Lighting
Program, Prioritized as a Short-Term “A-1” Project; and the Southwest Park Rectangular
Fields, Prioritized as a long-Term Priority “B-3”

There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the communication accepted and placed
on file

There being no objection, President McCarthy suspended the rules to allow for the introduction
of communications received after the agenda was prepared

From: Alderman Ken Siegel
Re: Response to Request for Continuance from Attorney Peter J. Nicosia
(Proposed Nashua Ordinance O-16-003, Chapter 74) - Alderman Meeting June 14

There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the communication accepted and placed
on file

From: Peter J. Nicosia, Esquire
Re: Memorandum in Opposition to Proposed Nashua Ordinance O-16-003, Chapter 74
(Board of Aldermen Meeting June 14, 2016)

There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the communication accepted and placed
on file

From: Bob Keating
Re: In Support of O-16-003 Administrative Enforcement Ordinance

There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the communication accepted and placed
on file

From: Unsigned Email from Doodlebugs5@comcast.net
Re: June 15, 2016 Aldermen Meeting; Proposed Nashua Ordinance O-16-003, Chapter 74

There being no objection, President McCarthy declared that communication accepted and placed
on file

PERIOD FOR PUBLIC COMMENT RELATIVE TO ITEMS EXPECTED TO BE ACTED UPON THIS
EVENING

Ms. Mariellen MacKay, 9 Webster Street

| am here in support of O-16-003. | am here also as a commission member of the Nashua Housing
Authority and | am going to be brief because | am also a member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment and
we are meeting upstairs. This ordinance and | did speak with my fellow commission members on the
Housing Authority. It is in line and keeping with how the Nashua Housing Authority runs its Section 8
operations. As probably the largest landlord in this city, this addresses a need that the Housing Authority
supports. A landlord, for instance, does not abate a violation within a reasonable amount of time then
our executive director is in agreement that a civil penalty should be imposed but before warnings and not
before ample time and not without absolute recourse. | understand that there is concern around an
appeals process but an appeals process exists today and that is going to court, there is not Appeals
Board. | guess when the Mayor referenced what Manchester does to gain so much money Nashua
would have to do the same thing in order to be able to support an Appeals Board. | think that while

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government overreach is never a good thing, this seems to be a very positive and proactive step which
would help to make people more proactive rather than reactive as our Mayor indicated when he stated
that the one hotel only fixed their violations when the city went out and identified them. As a homeowner
| identify what’s wrong with my home and | fix it before somebody comes in and tells me something is
wrong. | know, | just put 44 windows in my house and resided it because | knew there was an issue.
Again, while the appeals process seems to be an issue there is no Appeals Board so going to court
seems to be the logical way to handle this. Again, the Nashua Housing Authority supports this and
maybe delving into that appeal process even deeper. | defer to the Mayor and Alderman Siegel on this
and Alderman LeBrun. | apologize for my brief comments and now | am going to exit because | have six
more cases upstairs.

Mr. Don Dobens, 210 Pine Street, #11

| have a couple of questions on the substandard property Bill. In the beginning | was under the
impression that this was started and letters were sent to property owners, am | correct on that?

President McCarthy

This is public comment.
Mr. Dobbins

Well, | am just trying to find out the information that | didn’t have.

President McCarthy

| cannot answer questions at this time.
Mr. Dobbins

Well, | understand it was sent out to a couple of people and to the best of my knowledge nobody that’s
here in this room now and like that...then the property owners of Nashua ended up having an attorney
come in and talking. | thought there was consensus that the property owners, whether it’s residential,
multi-family, mixed use commercial and multi-family or straight commercial or industrial; they are all
under the same rule unless | am mistaken. | was under the impression that we were going to have some
input and it seems like what ended up happening is the minutes of the meeting where the attorney had
his input was taken into consideration and then the Board or Commission made a decision not to include
the property owners in the process so we could have any input. | think it’s interesting because the Mayor
just had something in the newspaper where he wanted input on the budget but not on this topic. |
personally think because of that ideally this should be pushed back and at least allow the property
owners in Nashua to have an input on this process. It just seems like it is a situation of exclusionism
which really bothers me to tell you the truth because that means all of the people in Nashua; if they want
to come up and get included in a project they are going to be rejected. Thank you.

Attorney Courtney Ball, Nicosia & Associates, P.C.

| am here filling in for Attorney Peter Nicosia who was unable to attend tonight’s meeting. He obviously,
as you noted, made attempts to have the meeting tabled until the 28'" of June but that request was
denied. | am here to represent the Association of Nashua Property owners opposed to O-16-003. | have
copies of the memo that Attorney Nicosia drafted but | assume everyone has a copy. Addressing the
audience, Attorney Ball asked if anyone wanted a copy of the memo to follow along.

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President McCarthy

Mr. Ball, please address your comments to the Board.

Attorney Ball

| just wanted to share those, thank you. Peter did offer to work with the Substandard Living Conditions
Committee and drafted the appropriate language, language that he felt at the time was agreeable with
some Aldermen and some of the inspectional services representatives but the original proposed
ordinance was sent to this Board with no changes. | am here to formally request that you either table this
tonight until the 28", send it back to the sub-committee to defer the work or you deny it outright. | feel
that it is incomplete and | feel that you have a roomful of people here that are willing to work with you
even though the proposal on its face is to set up a fine system against property owners in town. They do
agree with the reasoning behind it but they just want some input and tweak it to get it right. The major
points of Peter's memo are number one, the discretion because it gives the appearance of favoritism.
There is a concern with new inspectors with how you go ahead and set up the inspection intervals,
selective enforcement, whether its complaint based or regular intervals. We feel that with some input this
could be added to the Bill. We are hoping to actually have mandatory warnings and that way everything
is On paper and everything is on the record and is searchable and reviewable and there is nothing
hidden. Of course, the major course is the need for an administrative appeal even just a limited notice
fast track appeal right now would be helpful. The district court process is not the appeal: you are getting
fined, your fine is being increased and you have to go to district court and you are being slightly being
pressured into paying the fine as soon as possible otherwise it could potentially go up. To the best of my
knowledge there have only been a handful of cases last year that ended up in district court. | understand
part of the reason behind the legislation is to prevent or limit the amount of times people end up in district
court but | think the reverse is going to happen, you are going to have people that are forced to pay a
fine in a quick period of time so it doesn’t increase and they will be willing to pay more money just to go
to district court and have their voices heard. They want an opportunity to voice explanations; you have
issues such as tenant sabotage as they have mentioned kicking a hole in the wall, issues such as
contractor delay, natural disasters and things like vacations and sicknesses. This falls into the third
point, the time element of the ten days to comply. Well ten days is fine for some things but probably too
quick for other things like cracked siding and things like that are not really crucial. As the first woman
who spoke tonight mentioned Section 8 and | am pretty sure that Section 8 has a thirty day window so
we are looking for a sliding scale and we think with more input and better definitions we can give a
seriousness approach; health and safety, obviously those are crucial and need to be fixed as soon as
possible and allow the property owners to give explanations and come up with a reasonable solution and
a fourth major point is obviously the fine system. You have this time occurrence versus an event
occurrence so if the fine; every single day it’s a new fine for the same occurrence. | mean we
understand where you are coming from and the need to get these things done but it just seems like with
a little bit more input and of course allowing a little bit more input whether it goes back to the sub-
committee or even if it’s just tabled; there’s a whole roomful of people who want to give input and
obviously many of them know a lot more about different construction issues than | do but it seems like
there could be more thought into the fine process. Of course if you had an appeal you could suspend
the fine during an appeal. There is no process, if you go to district court and you win your case there is
nothing in there about being reimbursed in case you had to pay a fine. Looking at the ordinance itself it
borders on a violation, it’s a constitutional violation of due process. You are obligating people to pay
these fines, there being increased every day possibly and then after the fact they end up in court. The
court system seems to have worked for a long time now, obviously this is an attempt to limit the amount
of times that this ends up in court but as far as you know, you will probably have due process challenges
and in my opinion it’s not likely to survive. The ordinance is very vague and the person responsible for
the violation; it could use some definitions, it’s going to assume it’s the property owner every time and
once again they have been told that the inspectors are reasonable and understandable but it’s just too
open-ended and too ripe for abuse. With some better language the ordinance could be properly drafted

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and have the support of the residents of the city. There is certainly a potential with the fines and the
increases that it could go over the statutory limits of RSA 31:393 which is a $1,000 limit for per offense
and that hasn’t been addressed in the ordinance. Once again, if there was an event based violation that
you could set up based on the seriousness of the event. That’s basically some of the points of the
memorandum itself. It could use a definition section on exterior standards versus building code
violations; it’s very ambiguous in a lot of instances. Ultimately, we understand that you are trying to cut
down on litigation and trying to cut down on the district court process but what you are doing essentially
is you are front loading the judge, jury and executioner so to speak with the inspectional people. At that
time the people are there to explain and to talk to people and probably get a break. If they are not around
at the time then they are not going to have an opportunity to explain anything. If there is appeals
process then now you have a back loaded process where people will always have an opportunity to
speak their minds and you are going to find a situation where people are going to be stuck paying fines
and they are going to demand to get to court even if it costs them more money, it’s just human nature,
they are going to want somebody to hear their story. Finally, there is a potential that this backfires and it
really causes rents to sky rocket. You may even see a new category in rents; first month, last month,
security deposit and all of a sudden there may be a new category, administrative fine deposit. You get
your money back at the end of the year if you don’t cause administrative fines at the property. | want to
thank you for listening to me and once again, | think that if you listen to the people in the city and get a
little bit more input then you are working in the right direction but it’s just not quite there yet. Once again |
request that you deny it, send it back to sub-committee or table it for another two weeks and just allow
more input to come in. Thank you very much.

Mr. Greg Lombard, 106 W. Parish Road

| own one building in this city and | don’t have much to add to what’s been already said other than to
point out that this type of an ordinance; | am just a small landlord and this is the kind of thing where you
say you are telling me to trust you code enforcement staff and that they will always be well intentioned
and | believe that they are. By the way, | support cleaning up the bad properties because that’s good for
all of us. It’s hard to look at something like this and not feel some anxiety when | know that | might be
facing some of the fines in here, particularly with the ten day notice; that’s not enough time to fix a lot of
problems, particularly the more expensive ones. These might put my kid’s college funds at risk, my
investments. Although | do trust the good intentions of everyone here, | think there really is a lot of
benefit talking with the landlord’s here because they are the ones that are going to know best.

Ms. Cecile Marquis, P.O. Box 3854

Mr. Whitney had written an article in the paper and he was going to be late so he asked if | could pass it
out to all of you. Also, | do understand, Mayor, that your concern with the hotels and the rooming house
and all that and | don’t take that away from you. | know that you do care about the city and the Aldermen
do too. The problem | have with this is that when you are looking at rooming houses and that is a
different; if this ordinance came through it’s supposed to be going against rooming houses is what we
were told. The next thing you know we find out that it’s about regular landlord’s; two-family landlord’s to
100-unit landlord’s and single-family homes too because if their siding is bad on a single-family home this
ordinance says that you have to fix it and if you are poor and you don’t have the money to fix it or you
can't paint it, some of these people don’t have anyone to do this work. | am concerned about that. The
other concern | have is as embarrassing as it was, it happened. We have to move forward and say this
isn’t good and work as a city including the landlord’s — which is the rooming houses. All | am saying is to
the Aldermen and to the Mayor is that this to me is only one sided and it’s not against the tenant. This is
against the whole thing of what is going on here and who is going to hurt the tenant. Some landlord’s
may say forget it, I’m not going to deal with this and sell their building to an out of town landlord and it’s
already happening. Everybody that | here is that the legislators are saying the best thing for Nashua is to
have owner occupied properties but owner occupied properties; especially if they are elderly or low
income, they are going to have issues with fixing things around the building and if you are giving them

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only ten days to get things done and they don’t have the money then they are going to have fine after
fine. Our grant programs that we have had over the years do take care of some of the necessary, you
know if somebody needs a roof and they don’t need the money or other things. All | am saying to you as
a Board is to have more than ten days. It takes five to seven days to get a permit if we are supposed to
do everything the right way which like water tanks you have to a permit on now. Even code enforcement
for Section 8 gives thirty days to fix things. I’m not saying all issues should be thirty days but to be
reasonable it should be in the writing to give some landlord’s thirty days to fix small items because if you
add $50.00 for every item, it adds up. | understand the Board wanting to make Nashua great again or on
People Magazine but the reality is that we just came out of a really bad recession and tenants cannot
afford extra rent. I’ve had Aldermen come to me and say people can’t afford the rents that they are
paying now which $600 - $800 per month. These kinds of fees will increase because the owners can’t
do it between the taxes, the water bill, sewer bill and insurance and mortgages. | mean some of you
maybe own your house and you don’t have a mortgage but there are mortgages out there for these
people to cover and | am not saying that we should give a handout to landlord’s but they are also
taxpayers in this city. They deserve some rights and | think it would be better to table this Bill and go
back to the committee and let’s work on it together. None of us landlord’s; we are all against this not
because we are bad landlord’s but we are wanting to have it in writing. We need warnings and a longer
time table to fix things; ten days is not acceptable. Even if you call a plumber right now, they are three
weeks out to even come and look at something. All | am saying is that you are basically giving fees to us
that we; | mean we are going to have fines because we can’t get plumbers or electricians there. If it’s in
the books and it says you have ten days and you can’t do it, what do you do, you are going to get a fine.
All | am saying is we need to have a more reasonable time period; thirty days is not unreasonable. It
doesn’t have to be a Board that says this landlord and this code enforcement person is not evenly
workable, even if they had one person, one Alderman and one code enforcement person working
together to say let’s give them a little more time, that’s all we are asking for. We want the respect and we
deserve the respect. These people pay their taxes and take care of their buildings for some of them for
thirty or forty years. All | am saying is if you are going to vote on something send it back and ask it to be
talked to in a discussion with the landlord’s too. None of us are bad landlords and most of the rents are
under $1,000. If we are having fees and everything else they are not going to be able to afford it, they
are going to raise the rents. The city wants better housing for these tenants but we have to work
together, this isn’t a one check all answer to this situation. The rooming house is a whole different
ballgame. That’s a whole thing with health and the Fire Marshall. That’s not code really because they
don’t deal with code. All | am saying is talk between each other and give us more time and let us talk,
and have a warning period in writing. We are asking for four things that are not unreasonable and | am
asking you to really consider our needs right now. Not just the needs of the tenants because the tenants
do deserve a clean place to live and I’m not taking that away from them. Most of the landlord’s | know;
89% to 95% are really good landlord’s. You might have a 5% margin. Maybe you have taken ten
landlords to court and you are inflicting all of these fines against good landlords because you feel that it’s
necessary, necessary against whom, us or the bad landlords that are going to be bad landlords
anyways? If you do these fines | think what you are going to find is these landlords are going to see their
buildings and you are going to have new Massachusetts landlords or wherever they are coming from;
Portsmouth that don’t have the same effort in keeping their buildings good. Most of these landlords live
here or they live in Hudson or Merrimack. They are not from out of state, they are local and they care
about their properties just like all of you Aldermen care about your properties. All they are asking for is to
be respected and considered in this ordinance. Please send it back and let’s work together. Thank you.

Mr. Bob Dione, 447 Main Dunstable Road

| am not going to repeat except for three key items. Mayor, | am happy to hear that you are going to go
after the bad landlords with all your gusto because that’s what is really needed. You need to make sure
that the tenants have a safe and healthy environment. How do you do that? | think there is a lot of merit
to what Peter, our spokesperson, the attorney, had brought up. It was taken in at the sub-committee
meeting and | believe it was presented to city council and then the ordinance came back virtually the

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same so there was no real recognition of anything within that. I’m not saying that no one reviewed it, |
am sure it was but nothing came about from that. There was one change. Peter’s letter said that there
was no change but there was one change. There were some things that used to be scratched out and
now they are no longer scratched out but essentially it’s the same because all it says is “the city “may”
give notice so it “may” or “may not.” We all know that life safety and health codes are very critical and we
all respect those, the people that are here anyway. We also want the bad landlords to be taken care of
in terms of getting them to correct their situations. When | look back to my original notes from when | first
spoke with this Board and the sub-committee back in February and | made some notes that | suggested
that we have an input and a working session or multiple working sessions to be able to talk about our
concerns. Have three landlords, three tenants, three of the administrative people, legal advice because
we certainly do need that and one independent Alderman who will make sure that things are going in the
right direction and keep on moving. We are not going to get every point that we want but | am not
speaking for everyone and maybe the administrators won't get everything that they want. We are going
to be educated if we do get together, it’s a simple thing. In business we get together to solve problems.
We asked for this a couple of times and the sub-committee did ask us to join them in this area. We had
our spokesperson go up to talk because we knew it would be a professional presentation that would be
effective than just rambling on. Part of his presentation was to say let’s get these work sessions going
and let’s talk about it. That did not take place and |’m very disappointed in that. | hope we can get
something resolved and get a work session going so that we can come to a better conclusion. | think
there is a lot of merit to the law and the legal input and there are some concerns from the landlords and |
don’t want to repeat that because we have said it over and over again. Hopefully we will work together,
thank you.

Mr. Robert Tourigny, Executive Director, NeighborWorks, Southern New Hampshire

NeighborWorks is a landlord and property owner here in Nashua. We own 19 Temple Street which is
just down the block from the property that the Mayor was discussing this evening. We have another 38
apartments here in Nashua and over 400 units in Southern New Hampshire. We own and develop
affordable housing, we provide consumer education to families to make good, wise decisions about their
housing options and that doesn’t include just homeowner options but also in rental housing. We provide
landlord trainings and seminars to help people become good landlord because they might want to buy a
two-family or a three-family and live in one unit and rent out the other. You have established a
Substandard Living Conditions Committee so | don’t need to tell you about the dire affordable rental
housing situation here but | would like to explain why | think the enforcement of the ordinance you are
considering tonight is important in impacting those conditions. Each year the New Hampshire Housing
Authority surveys the owners of some 15,000 rental units across the State of New Hampshire including
over 2,200 apartments here in Nashua. In doing so they are able to calculate the median rent and the
vacancy rate for each region. Nashua continues to maintain its place near the top of the highest rent list,
only slightly behind Portsmouth. What is most concerning from the survey is the steadily declining
vacancy rate that we see in our portfolios. Vacancy rates are down by 50% in the last six or seven years
and | think that’s probably attributable to the economy and the situation that was mentioned earlier. As a
landiord we love high occupancy and low vacancy rates but when vacancy falls below 2% in a
community which is what it is here, it essentially becomes a market where an owner can rent out literally
any unit in any condition because the demand is so strong. We are in what | would call the equivalent of
a historically high sellers’ market if you were to compare it to the home ownership or for sale arena. So
what does all of this data mean, it means that it puts an extra burden on local jurisdictions like yourselves
to crack down on code enforcement because of what | said earlier, you can literally rent any unit in any
condition to someone because the demand is so high. When sitting your seat you need to look at the
carrots and the sticks that you need to keep property owners in compliance. With the demand for rentals
are at an all-time high you need to be able to hold property owners accountable and more than just a
minor slap of the wrist. When the cost of fines and fees are considered to be just another cost of doing
business because business is good then it can create the substandard living conditions situation that you
are working to address. | think that the enforcement ordinance you are considering tonight is a step

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towards improving the situation and you just need to start somewhere. Will all property owners like it,
definitely not but it shouldn’t affect property owners who are doing their best to provide a safe, decent
and sanitary unit for their tenants. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

Mr. Nick Peck, 99 Taylor Street

We have been here many times talking about this problem and the Mayor had his opening statements
that basically there are two properties in Nashua that you are having trouble with. We have departments
within Nashua, the building department, fire department and the Board of Health. You are sitting in front
of us right now and telling us that these managers of the building department, Board of Health and the
fire department are having problems with two properties in Nashua. You want to enact a Bill that’s going
to affect everybody in Nashua, every property owner in Nashua. | think it’s pretty unreasonable that the
City of Nashua can’t handle two property owners. If you are having trouble with 23 Temple Street and
you can't solve the problem then maybe there should be new people hired that can solve the problem.
Above and beyond that if you are having trouble with 23 Temple Street why don’t you buy it and solve
the problem? We are standing here and we have been fighting this for months and we are going against
deaf ears with some of the Aldermen in here and | just don’t understand why you are not listening to us.
Thank you.

Mr. Fred Teeboom, 24 Cheyenne Drive

First of all, | would like to address O-16-11 which is tabled in committee, the reduced taxation for charter
public school facilities. | ask that you take it off of the table and pass it. | gave you all an analysis that
shows that there are over 500 kids that go to charter schools from Nashua and save the taxpayers over
$4.4 million. If you don’t believe that number you can take a look at my analysis. The cost as |
understand was not part of the ordinance but the item are about $80,000 and that’s steep and a loss of
taxation. It’s an enormous gain for the taxpayers and | hope you pass it.

The next thing that | would like to address is O-16-003 and | am not a landlord, | have no skin in this
game. But, then | was not a panhandler either and | spoke against the panhandler ordinance. | have
been called by landlords because of my experience with the NRO’s (the Nashua Revised Ordinances)
and as a former Aldermen-at-Large and asked me for some input. R-15-182 is what started all of this,
appointed a committee to investigate living conditions in the Country Barn Hotel and 23 Temple Street
and other larger rental properties that are unnamed to determine whether the housing or health codes
are being violated or whether new housing and our health code provisions should be enacted to protect
the living conditions for Nashua residences. | have seen no report of this sub-committee, the
investigative sub-committee, it is customary to see an investigative report and there have been none
produced. No specific conditions have ever been identified by this committee or by anyone on any
named property in Nashua, it’s all been general discussion other than the Country Barn Hotel and 23
Temple Street and that came through a television program. O-16-003 basically is sold on the basis of
efficiency of enforcing code and that’s basically it. If you list all of the staff discussion with McKinney and
all of the rest of them; it’s a more efficient process and it has nothing to do with the purposes which this
Substandard Living Conditions Committee was established. Let’s take a look, there are specific items in
the ordinance, let’s forget the generalities, there’s a table called Table 4.1 which basically is the fine
structure. Paragraph 170-2 is the reference and that is a license required for food services, what does
that have to do with living conditions? Another paragraph is 175 which is a catch-all, it relatively defers
to state law and it deals with, in summation, sanitary food code. What’s that got to do with living
conditions in housing for which this committee was established? Another one is 190-146, site plan
procedures generally, this talks about site plan reviews. | thought we had the Planning Board that did
site plan reviews, what is that doing in this ordinance? Another one is 156, Article IV, fire prevention
code. Surprisingly if you look through that you find that there is a Board of Fire Prevention Code of
Appeals so there’s actually already a Board to appeal to if there are violations of fire prevention. What's
that doing in the sub-set of living conditions ordinance that itself has no appeal, there is already an