Board of Aldermen 5-21-2020 Page 51
President Wilshire
Alderman Klee.
Alderman Klee
Thank you, Madam President. | have to agree with what Alderman Dowd had said. The problem that |
have with this, and unlike the Holiday Parking, which is only certain streets, it’s not every single side street,
not Main Street when it comes to Holiday Parking, the parking garage and so on. But the problem that |
have with this loss of parking revenue is that when | look at that Fiscal Note and | see that low end is
$108,000.00 and the high end, pre-COVID was $204,000.00. This would be on the backs of the taxpayers,
they would have to pay this money because it is a pay me now, pay me later situation. And the bottom line
is that these fees are being paid not necessarily by the taxpayers but by people who come here. Maybe
people come here from Amherst, maybe people come here from Massachusetts. They are the ones paying
these fees. We are asking the taxpayers to make up this amount of money. There is already a lot that they
are going to have to do. | can’t see putting this on to the backs of our Nashua taxpayers, number one.
Number two is that | agree that people will stay a little bit longer in the parking spaces than they might
have. | also disagree with that people are going to Amherst Street and they are not going into — any Friday
night, Saturday night, there are waiting lists to get into Fratello’s and to get into Martha’s and to get into the
Surf and all of our wonderful, incredible restaurants downtown. | also know that even parking sometimes is
difficult to find because these restaurants are so crowded. | think that we’ve at least made one step
forward by doing what we are doing what we are doing on Main Street and doing the 15-minute parking. |
don’t think we should sell the entire farm. We can’t afford to lose anywhere from $108,000.00 to
$104,000.00 and | don’t think it is going to hurt the businesses. The businesses will only be, probably most
of the time, up to 50% capacity, even when they are allowed to go back indoors it is not going to be full.
This is going to go on for a long time and | don’t see the need to do something like this. While | think it is a
nice and kind gesture, the taxpayers are going to pay for this and | won’t go for that. Thank you so much.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
My objection isn’t that residents might use the parking spaces because | am kind of like cheering them on
and | know they are going to be hurt income wise and so they could probably use that boost. But it does
seem like this has merit that needs to be vetted a little bit more carefully. | can think of some areas like
maybe the High Street Lot where it primarily just serves a clinic, like maybe waiving the fees there. | also
think that West Hollis doesn’t have a lot of the advantages that Main Street has in terms of on-street
parking and that type of thing, having the availability to put tables out and everything. And then additionally
| was almost going to ask Director Cummings if he was still here for an update on the parking study. | kind
of would like to see this go Infrastructure Committee so we can look at it like as in pieces and say where
would this work effectively and where wouldn’t it? Because | think there’s merit here and | agree with what
Alderman Klee said that like you can’t necessarily give away the whole farm. But think it could be useful
in some areas in the same way that adding 15-minute parking downtown was useful. There may be areas
where it is effective. So | wouldn’t want to shoot the idea down, | would want to see it more go to the
Infrastructure Committee.
Alderman Clemons
President Wilshire?
