Board of Aldermen - Organizational Mtg. - 1/10/16 Page 3
Alderman Deane
Thank you.
President McCarthy
In the time that | have been on the Board I’ve learned a lot about public speaking. When | was first on the
Board | learned that you should always go to events prepared to speak whether you are on the agenda or not
and that you should always open with a joke. Today | learned that you should bring two jokes in case the
Master of Ceremonies takes your first one. That was my second one.
| want to thank the Board for making me the President for the next two years. | think we are going to have an
interesting time. The other thing | learned is to be brief and that was made easier to adhere to by the fact that
Governor Hassan, Senator Ayotte and the Mayor have touched on virtually all of the things that I'll speak
about. Since we don't have a Pats game and there is no informational press conference afterwards |’ll
channel Coach Belichek and say that we’ve done some things really well but there are other things we could
do better. In the past two years, as the Mayor mentioned, we’ve seen the acquisition of Pennichuck which
was a great step forward for our city. We've seen the renovation of our downtown infrastructure which has
helped us to build a thriving downtown and most recently the opening of the Broad Street Parkway which
provides really phenomenal access to our downtown area and to our Millyard. What we need to do is to figure
out how to develop those areas now that we have access. We need to work on the zoning in the downtown to
promote housing and business. We need to work on economic development in both the Millyard and the
Technology Park at Exit 1 to get good jobs here and to attract the people that we need to live in the downtown
and in our suburban areas. We also need to face a host of other problems. We need to deal with our
infrastructure issues; we need to prepare for commuter rail on the assumption that we are going to get it at
some point. We need to look at our traffic in the downtown and I’m going to call on our various committees to
look at those issues and to come up with solutions to them over the next couple of years. | think, most
importantly, as has been mentioned earlier today, we need to deal with some of the problems that we get just
by virtue of being a small city. The problems of mental illness, homelessness and substance abuse are
problems that will plague us and my concern is | don’t have any idea how to solve them so | am going to call
upon some of our members to work on those problems. | know that on our Human Affairs Committee we have
substantial expertise in those areas including two new members who are very interested in solving those
problems. | look forward to working on those and finding solutions that will help Nashua to move forward. |
look forward to working with the Board and | look forward to working with the new administration. Thank you
all very much.
REMARKS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN - None
ADJOURNMENT
ALDERMAN WILSHIRE MOVED FOR ADJOURNMENT OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING OF THE
BOARD OF ALDERMEN OF JANUARY 10, 2016
MOTION CARRIED
The meeting was declared adjourned by President McCarthy.
Attest: Patricia Piecuch, City Clerk
