Board of Aldermen 2-25-2020 Page 14
Or whether it was just the experience of having a father or an uncle or a brother or a neighbor even
arrested. That can be a traumatic and a defining moment in someone’s life. And | think when PAL was
started, there was great foresight in their minds that there needed to be a way to inspire positive interaction
and help Police be identified as neighbors and coaches and mentors and not just, you know, enforcers of
the law who come in you know the night and break into the house and make a whole ruckus and whatever.
Police can be very scary if you don’t have the context. And | think PAL does a very good job of building
that context. | think it makes better Police Officers to be engaged in the community and they need a
mechanism for that too. It’s not quite as easy, just walk into a neighborhood full of strangers and just
dribble a basketball and start shooting it with them. But PAL provides that opportunity for our Police. It
allows for community policing where, you know, officers can talk to kids about what is going on at home,
what kind of things are they seeing on the street, what scares them.
That’s a very good, and very healthy relationship to have and PAL does it for us essentially for free. We do
award them CDBG money, grudgingly as we do everybody else, because there isn’t enough of that to go
around. So every project that they propose isn’t just given, it is very, very carefully vetted and publicly run
through the gristmill | guess. There is a Police Officer who is posted there, but he’s not a babysitter, he’s
not there to serve them. He is there to be a Police Officer, that site operates as an actual sub-station. And
it benefits the Police Department to have these positive relationships with youth and in the community and
with families both ways. So | think, while it is a very valid point that the City staff that are involved in doing
building inspecting are likely going to be paid through a different revenue stream, | think PAL is one of
those agencies that really does a lot for the community and we get more than our money’s worth. And |
would encourage people to look at safe holding the money people invest in their taxes, but also safe
holding the money that people invest in their local charities, because in a lot of cases we are saving tax
money by having these charities operating for us. So it’s not quite as cut and dry as, “we are only in charge
of this pot”, because we have a whole community to represent. And | think PAL is a huge part of that.
Alderman Dowd
Well first of all | agree with what Alderman Lopez just said but since liasisoin to the Police Department | see
if these kids are on the street versus being involved with PAL, | can tell you that when they are on the street
getting in trouble, it’s a huge expense, compared to what we are paying here. So it’s well worth the
expense.
Alderman Laws
Everyone kind of just said the same things | was going to say. But! just wanted to clarify | was only being
half-serious earlier. | feel like it is definitely worth investigating.
Alderman O’Brien
| appreciate your Irish humor.
Alderman Laws
| also just wanted to make one last point that Building on Hope is an organization that may, in the future,
want to do projects in Nashua again. And we want to send them the right message that this minimal
investment on behalf of the tax payers will produce an amazing return on that investment for years to come.
And we welcome this kind of private investment into our community. So thank you Madam President.
President Wilshire
Well said Alderman Laws.
