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Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 5

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

But | don't - it's not coming up. See.

Donna Graham, Legislative Affairs Manager

That's because they’re not zooming in on you that’s why.
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
Oh, okay.

Donna Graham, Legislative Affairs Manager

But you are for me. So you're all set.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

So I'm all set. So could you let folks know that.
Donna Graham, Legislative Affairs Manager
I'm sure was it Jim that’s out back?

Alderman Klee

Mike | think, right?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

So hopefully it will come up on the screen in a second here. What I'm pulling up on my computer screen is a web
page that we developed that's off of the city's website.

Donna Graham, Legislative Affairs Manager
Do you have it?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

| have it up.
Donna Graham, Legislative Affairs Manager

| just switched to Zoom to screen so I'm still on left so I'm not sure why it's not coming up on yours. Hold on let me
just switch out and then I'll go back on.

President Wilshire
One thing we could use the money for is better technology. Seems a little too obvious though.

Donna Graham, Legislative Affairs Manager

Tim could you push the plug in and maybe the plug came loose on the side.
Alderman Klee
Maybe we need to get rid of Zoom. That's interfering.

Alderman Lopez

If you open up the visual aid,

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 6

Alderwoman Kelly

| don't know. Does a tree fall in the woods?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

So I'm going to try to go in via Zoom and see if maybe | can do this via the website.

Alderman Schmidt

But what is the website?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

If you go to: City of Nashua, Economic Development, ARPA program.

Alderman Schmidt

So it's nashuanh.gov.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Will they let me share screen?

Donna Graham, Legislative Affairs Manager

Yes. Let me just switch over to Zoom to all screens and...

Jeff Poehnert

You're all set.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Okay. So alright. There we go. So, look at this — there’s many ways to get to where we need to go. So here's a new
web page that we just put up that basically the first couple paragraphs is a regurgitation of the memo that was sent out
to you. Then here's the providing comments section which, you Know, somewhat said promoting with you because |
know you all have wonderful email lists. It would be wonderful if you put it out to your various people so that they
could participate. Here it is here. So basically, it's very high level, very easy. Some various contact information. Are
you a resident in Nashua? Are you a business owner in Nashua? What aspects of the city's ARPA framework do you
like? What are the aspects that you think could be approved? You know very high level but it would be good to be
able to get that type of information. We can then synthesize it and be able to report back to you what we're hearing
from the community and | think it would be a good tool.

One of the things we're looking to do is we'll take this presentation and we will upload it and put it on this page as well.
So if folks miss this evening's presentation, you'll be able to ideally go to this web page and be able to witness this
conversation, and be able to participate remotely as well as there's a regurgitation of the timeline for the community
outreach, and then some documents. As you can see, | already have this PowerPoint presentation up on this
webpage so if folks wanted to and Donna | have already sent it to you. It's in your inbox so you have it for your
minutes. We have this, you know, available to the public if they wanted to witness it. So those concludes my, you
know, more formal comments or remarks and really just hoping to have a conversation.

President Wilshire

Your timeline is kind of tight. That's my only observation. Do you expect to get all this feedback and have it put
together by mid-October?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

| do but we already have the date set. You know its Zoom meetings with one or two in person meetings in the month
of September. Really just wanted to get the conversation going. We know that there's a resolution that will be filed

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 7

where you're looking to accept the money on the 14" which would be the first reading. | suspect it will have a second
reading and committee discussion. | wanted to be able to provide some sort of data at the subcommittee level, which
was one of the reasons why | want to really get it in the month of September because | could, you know, | could
foresee the conversation continuing on in October.

President Wilshire

Thank you. Alderwoman Kelly.

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you. | have a couple of questions but | thank you for your presentation. | think it's important to kind of set the
framework for this. | perk up a little bit about the affordable housing. |, too, hear from everybody that affordable
housing, especially in our city is critical and | know that it aligned with a lot of the long-term planning and discussions
that we’ve been having and also aligns with some of the HUD discussions that we have in Human Affairs. So | think
that's an interesting opportunity to make a big impact like you were saying.

| do have a couple of questions but they might be a little too technical. | Know we talked about.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

That's why | have Cheryl.

Alderwoman Kelly

It might be a Sarah question, but | Know we talked about helping the Soup Kitchen with the shelter. Is that this money
or was that a separate bucket?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

That could be separate and so this is not project specific. So this is not by any means saying we've pre-identified
projects by any stretch.

Alderwoman Kelly

Okay. So that's outside of the scope. Can | ask one more follow up?
President Wilshire

Yeah, sure.

Alderwoman Kelly

The Mayor was talking about the school program and | was just interested in what that entailed. | guess | assumed
that if we were told we had to do universal that we were getting paid for that or the COVID funds that we were getting
was going to cover that. Do you know more about that? Through you to the Mayor.

Mayor Donchess

Thank you. Well we can get Dan Donovan from the School Department to answer it in detail but they apparently
believe that they cannot replace that revenue loss with money that they're receiving. Now we do get a benefit here
because they are returning to the city assuming that we make this revenue replacement $2.5 million of surplus, which
is part of the money that you've already seen or we've talked about. If we replace their revenue loss with a part of this
federal money, then the amount that will flow to surplus is $2.5 million. If we didn't, it would only be $1.3 million. So
we think in view of the escrows and the tax relief that we are providing with the surplus, that it's worth directing the
$1.2 into helping them to help them help us so too, so to speak.

One thing that | didn't mention was that one project that because Tim mentioned $1.7 million. We've wanted to do the
backup for the servers and we had that in the works, and then COVID came, and then the money got used for
something else. We really should do a $500,000 backup system. We have the room at the School Department but
this would be to prevent, you know, the extortion that we've seen so that if someone ever did hack the system and sort

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 8

of shut it down, we would be able to repopulate the software with the data that we have on file. So | think we should
do that. To me, that is such a necessity that we should, you know, set that set that $500,000 aside before we even
think about whether other smaller projects that we get from the directors would be worth doing.

President Wilshire

All set?

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you.
Alderman Dowd

Yes, the first thing you had the first bullet was $13 million towards, | believe, offsetting cost for the budget year. The
only issue | have with that and maybe a John Griffin question is this is one-time funding. If you spend say $13 million
to offset the budget to reduce the budget costs, how do you make that difference up in year two? You start with a $13
million hole in revenue and that's a huge issue and always been a huge issue. When we tried to apply too much
money to reduce the tax rate in one year, it could very seriously impact the tax rate in the succeeding year. So it's a
balance and that's something that John Griffin can explain in detail.

Mayor Donchess

Well just yes definitely that's correct. | mean if — and that’s a big if, if we adopted that approach, you would make this
revenue replacement over a period of four or five years because we have until 2026 to spend the money. So you
would even things out over a period of three, four, or five years rather than, you know, falling into the trap that you just
mentioned.

Alderman Dowd
You know there’s more to clarify that for the general public that we can’t just take $13 million and apply it to next

year's tax rate and, you know, have this really artificially low tax rate for one year and then bingo the next year you get
hammered.

Mayor Donchess

And we cannot actually use it for tax relief but what we can use it for is revenue replacement. So to the extent that we
see and can document loss of revenue along with a certain 4.1 percent increase per year that we could replace, |
mean you could find revenue that we had lost to use up the money over a period of years but we couldn't just say
we're going to use this to cut the taxes. We would need to, you know, direct it into a sort of a tactical revenue
replacement approach.

President Wilshire

All set Alderman Dowd?

Alderman Dowd

All set.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

If | may Madam President?
President Wilshire
Director Cummings.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

The thought would be also to massage it in as the Mayor was saying over time because we know that there's the

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 9

revaluation going on and so looking at taking that, you know, $13 million or thereabouts and spreading it over three or
four years would, you know, the goal would be to, as | said, stabilize the tax rate so we could, you know, project what
we're thinking and not see a fluctuation or a spike.

Alderman O’Brien

Thank you Madam President. As we look at this money that it definitely has a need but are we going to first pay off
our debts? And what | mean by the debts when the pandemic was here Nashua Fire Rescue provided EMTs to assist
in the inoculations and in the situation in the School Department to help out certain people in the community.
QuickBooks or, you know, computers were bought and different things to come out. Are those debts going to be paid
first and then look at what's left in that and then come up with the plan on that particular money?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

So if | may, Madam President. I'm not really sure when you say “debts”. I'm under the impression we've paid
everything.

Alderman O’Brien

Okay. | just see, you know, one of the Fire Chiefs here and | think that's what they showed. Maybe or maybe not but
| Know the Nashua Fire Rescue did provide EMTs at the time and that was part of the, you know, going out of the
budget. | don't know how much was actually paid into that account but just to make sure that we're free and clear of
that.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Yeah. | think | think we would be. | think | suspected the...
Alderman O’Brien

Okay and that was my only concern that...

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

To use GOFFR funds maybe to help massage that.
Alderman O’Brien

Right. Okay and that would be fine. | just want to make sure that that money or that responsibility has been cleared,
you know, such as public health, anything that they needed to purchase or anything else like that, that we are really
looking at something else right here. Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Alderman Lopez

So I'm interested in the use of special revenue funds. | know the housing fund that Alderman Kelly had mentioned is
definitely a particular interest of mine. Members of the faith community have actually reached out informally and
wanted to know what we're doing with that with how it's structured because they would be interested in contributing to
it too. So there's an opportunity to have a force multiplier where we take this grant money and we use it to create a
more sustaining fun that helps us create low income housing. | see a lot of added value. | definitely appreciate the
possibility of dropping the tax rate for political purposes because it makes us look good for one year but as Alderman
Dowd pointed out, it's not necessarily sustainable. So | would be concerned about just doing it for the sake of doing it.
| wouldn't mind some research being done into the possibility of maybe creating an income based relief program so
that people who are being hit hardest by the sticker shock who might have the least amount of money to pay for it are
getting the benefit of these resources and whatever financial strategies we can apply as opposed to, you know,
someone who just happens to have a very valuable piece of property, has the ability to apply for a complicated grant
that we might put out - maybe a team of lawyers to do such - I'd really rather see this money be used to mitigate the
economic impact that we're seeing from COVID-19 and how that is likely to make people less able to respond to
revaluation issues and property tax issues further down the road.

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 10

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Yes thank you. | want to just reiterate that the number one issue that I've heard about over the last couple years is
affordable housing. | can say without having a survey or having any quantified type data behind me to support it that
anecdotally, it's the number one issue that | hear about when I'm talking to various employers, when they're talking
about expanding. The first thing they say is can my employees afford to live here? You know talking to an employee
or just, you know, someone on the street that the thing that they say is, I'm worried that my kids won't be able to buy a
house here and raise their family in the community that they grew up in. | can tell you time and time again, it is by far
the number one issue that the city needs to be aware of and | think with this type of opportunity, you could make the
best type of impact. We could develop some metrics and some goals if we chose to go in this direction so we could
judge our success based on using these funds. New units supply into the marketplace. Maybe assistance for rental
for individuals who, you know, have received catastrophic loss of income. Future deed restrictions so you can buy
homeownership and be able to buy units. There are various strategies that we could undertake to achieve what is
“affordable housing” which is a very broad definition. But it's one that | think is worth a substantial conversation.

Alderman Dowd

Yeah just two things. One -—1| do agree that at least some of the money ought to go for affordable housing. It is a
critical element here in the City.

The other thing | just want to clarify for the viewing public is that if you could explain Director Cummings that the
School Department has separate funds...

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
Correct.
Alderman Dowd

...that can be used for things regarding education. So that’s why you’re not seeing education in the spending of this
money because they have a pretty significant amount and they have their own set of rules as to how they can spend
it.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Yes that is an excellent point and one we should absolutely emphasize which is everything we’re speaking to this
evening does not talk about the educational funding. That is completely separate and aside from this.

Alderwoman Kelly

Yeah thank you. | just wanted to add to the conversation around affordable housing and how it’s changed with
COVID-19 as well. Its funny when we talk about affordable housing you don't even really think about what affordable
is like it still comes in pretty high. One of the things that we’ve seen and we've talked about it at different committee
levels is that a lot of people are coming here from Boston because it’s affordable for them and that’s squeezing our
market that already has very little to almost no housing open at all. That factor happened with COVID — people
wanting to move out of the cities and then you have on top of that, people who are out of work and were under these
moratoriums. We have nothing. We really have almost no vacancies for ability for people to get into the housing that
they need.

Alderman Klee

Thank you. Director Cummings when we talk about affordable housing and so on —| Know you said it’s a very broad
term. We know that there is very little land to build on here in the city but we also know that there are buildings that
could be converted and so on. When you're talking about affordable housing using it towards this would the mindset
be that we would give incentives to builders and so on? Can the money be used in that respect because the city
obviously cannot build this housing? While this is not anything that’s even possible but say something like the
Pheasant Lane Mall decided yes we will consider getting rid of that and maybe using some of that land for something.
Would we be able to give incentives to or even incentives to those people who already have low income housing but
need to fix it up So it’s in better shape?

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 11
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

To answer your questions, technically yes you can provide incentives with this type of money to incentivize or
encourage new supply or redevelopment of existing housing stock. That is absolutely one of the uses and strategies
that should be looked at. | would discourage you from offering a subsidy unless it was absolutely necessary and it
was proven. You could use the money to make loans — generous, flexible financial terms would be maybe one way.
Again to replenish the money so you're not out of the $10 million in this example or whatever that number is 5, 10
years from now. Or you could if it is of value to you to incentivize a project to try to give an infusion of capital into a
project. If you did that, | would look for you to in return get some deed restrictions. A certain percentage of the unit
should be set aside for a certain period of time. | would suggest in perpetuity and you'd look at indexing the median
area income at, again I’m talking out loud here — but 80 percent of area median income. Or maybe you look at
targeting those funds at certain areas to encourage affordable housing to be developed in certain places of the city.
There’s many different strategies we could undertake to achieve creation of more affordable housing within Nashua.

President Wilshire

Follow up?

Alderman Klee

Yes please. Thank you. Thank you for the clarification Director Cummings. Much what Alderwoman Kelly had
mentioned about the housing funding. That was one of the intent was to use it for loans. You know whether it be
large loans at low interest and flexible type of things that would help and encourage people. | agree. That’s what |
would rather see than to see subsidies. | have anxiety sometimes about deed restrictions because too many of those
ties the hands of growth of city and so on. I’m not against them when it comes to low income type of housing. Thank
you so much for that.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Yeah absolutely Alderman Klee. | would suggest with deed restrictions what it does is it helps starve off gentrification.

Alderman Klee

Yes and that’s what | would like to see. | think Alderman Lopez has brought issue up and | would fear that that could
happen in some of the areas like French Hill as well and downtown. So thank you.

Alderman Dowd

Yes | just want to ask Director Cummings. Does the timing on this work out so we can align what we end up spending
this money on with the new city master plan? | think there should be an aligned otherwise one of the two things is not
correct.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Yes you could at least to the initial stages of the master plan. The money will all need to be committed by | want to
say by the end of the calendar year of 2024. So we could absolutely use the master plan as one of the guiding litmus
tests for when selecting projects and using the master plan as, again, one of the lenses for trying to use the funds for
affordable housing. To make sure it adheres to the wishes of the community.

Alderman Dowd

| think there’s a lot of work going into the master plan and we should try to align as best as possible.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Director Marchant is here and she could probably speak to it better than | could.

Sarah Marchant, Community Development Director

Good evening. Thank you. So the timeline for the approval of the master plan is actually we hope to be before you
with legislation submitted today and to be before you maybe October 12" for final approval. So we do have a public

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 12

hearing scheduled with the Planning Board for the 23" and will be at PEDC hopefully on the 20" | believe. So that
timeline would line up very nicely with this. The next steps for that can certainly dovetail with everything that Director
Cummings and Chief of Staff Lindner had discussed.

Alderwoman Kelly

| have a question before you move.
President Wilshire

Alderwoman Kelly.

Alderwoman Kelly

| actually wanted to ask about the owner occupied programs if we wanted to support that could the money be used for
that and how are they doing?

Sarah Marchant, Community Development Director

The how are we doing?

Alderwoman Kelly

Yeah like do we have lots of people interested this year?
Sarah Marchant, Community Development Director

We have an incredible amount of people interested and we have an incredible need. But what | will say is as
suggested here before you tonight, funds from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund could absolutely be used towards
those kinds of projects which is rehab of owner occupied housing or rehab of rental housing which then comes with
exchange for a deed restriction or some very low interest loans to do that work. So the money that was appropriated
this year is already almost spent. It was only about $70,000 and we have a long list of applicants that we will go
through that dollars very, very quickly. It’s a wonderful program and the Affordable Housing dollars could certainly be
programmed that way.

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you.
Alderman Tencza

So |, too, like the idea of affordable housing trust fund. | do worry just with a timeline | think it’s a very complicated
program so it would have to be spelled out before — | think it would have to be spelled out before probably we approve
the funds and put down exactly what we want to do. | would have concerns about that.

| would also hope that part of that we can look at maybe some energy efficiency programs for existing homeowners
whether its low income or not or workforce housing or not. | think a lot of other communities and States have much
better programs that we do here in New Hampshire but maybe we could make a big impact in our city in helping with
our electric system primarily by upgrading our — or having programs so that we can allow people to access some
programs to upgrade whatever they need in their home. We know a lot of our homes in Nashua here are older and
we could certainly help out homeowners that way as well.

I'd also be curious to know we talked about how we can use this money to affect businesses particularly small
businesses. I'd be curious as to what - Mr. Cummings you may be already hearing from these small businesses but
I'd be curious to see what their need is and how we can support them because | think they support our community a
lot and going forward are important so.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Absolutely. Those are some great comments if | could President Wilshire. So green energy, sustainable energy
efficiency are all eligible uses. We can absolutely look at building a program along those lines. That is definitely

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 13

something we could look at whether it’s for every resident or for low income. We could maybe target it to maybe
some disadvantaged populations that might not be able to afford it otherwise. There’s definitely a pathway forward for
that. So we can definitely look into that in closer detail.

Relative to small business assistance, so the city over the last year and half to two years has put out onto the street |
would say $1.5 million in various types of loans at very low interest rates with flexible terms deferring payments still.
Even as of now, they’ve had deferred payments for over a year now. We've been doing rounds of requests. In the
first round we got 50 applications. Second round we got 25 applications. Third round we got 5 — 10 applications. So
we’re not seeing as much interest. | think the most recent round we did | think we go three applications and that’s
because | think that the money is readily available in the marketplace through other institutions though | would note
we don’t know what’s coming up in the future. We don’t have a crystal ball. The fall is coming. Could we see some
business maybe needing some sort of assistance over the next year? Maybe but it’s just not right now I’m seeing a
dire need.

Alderwoman Lu

| just don’t understand how some of these things would qualify for revenue replacement. Could you just address how
say well housing would qualify for (inaudible).

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
So if | may Madam President.

President Wilshire

Certainly.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

So there are — | don’t know what it is — eight eligible categories, six eligible categories for it. So depending on the use,
you'd fall into that category. One of them is revenue replacement. Affordable housing is actually called out as an
eligible use specifically but | believe it technically falls into the economic negative impact category. I'll double check
that. It addresses negative economic impacts and if you were to look at slide 9 that we provided, it says eligible uses
assistance to households included but not limited to food assistance, rent, mortgage, utility assistance, counseling,
legal aid to prevent eviction homelessness. So under the category of addressing negative economic impacts would
be the eligible use for the category.

Alderwoman Lu

| think | misunderstood. | thought it was just the city, the government itself that had lost revenue and that’s not the
case, correct?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
I’m sorry I’m not sure I’m following.

Alderwoman Lu

That’s all right. Follow up?

President Wilshire

Sure.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

So yes if a municipality loses revenue, they can use it to replace but also if an individual loss revenue in some way,
you can use these funds in those means as well.

Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 14
Alderwoman Lu
Yes that’s what | didn’t understand.

Just one other question. If somebody wanted to view this information on the city website now is it up there because |
don’t see it in Economic Development?

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

So I'll walk you through it if hopefully Jeff can get on my screen here. I’m going to share screen Jeff if | may.

Jeff Poehnert

You're good for it.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Thanks Jeff. | apologize President Wilshire for...

President Wilshire

You're good.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Under projects and then you'll see it under ARPA.

Alderwoman Lu

So if you click on projects, you don’t see it but.

Tim Cummings Economic Development Director

Yeah so hopefully everybody can see it on my screen. My screen is up and if you — my computer is frozen. So my
computer is frozen but if you go to City of Nashua and go to the link that’s right up there on the site but basically it’s
under Economic Development under projects. Under projects, there’s a dedicated ARPA page and this comes up.
Alderwoman Lu

Thank you. Just one other question. Actually a comment. | thought that the problem that we’ve experienced from the
pandemic has been childcare. The lack and need for affordable childcare. So | just wanted to bring that up. Thank
you.

President Wilshire

Anyone else?

Alderman Lopez

It’s a pretty solid point Alderman Lu just made is that a lot of people trying to return to work or repair their economic
income stream are suffering from access to childcare. So that’s definitely something we should be looking at either in
maybe offering some assistance for people who might be backed up on their childcare payments or in identifying
organizations that provide childcare that might have been crippled by lack of in person fundraising.

President Wilshire
Seeing none, thank you very much for the presentation this evening. | appreciate it and we look forward to what

comes out of this because there are a lot of good ideas and | think affordable housing to me is a win/win but I’m just
one. Thank you very much.