Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 19
Mr. Cummings
No.
Ms. Ortolano Alright, thank you for my three minutes.
Karen Bill Good evening, Karen Bell, 95 Parnell Place, can everybody hear me way in the back? OK, Nashua,
| am a Nashua native also and thank you for all of your comments, former Alderman Soucy, very well thought
out. | can’t agree more. The residents of Nashua in the original resolution were lead to believe that there was
$4 million dollars waiting in the wings for this project, OK? That there were people known to the City
Management that would be donating, that was not and is not the case. When | asked last year in a private
setting about the private donation money raised, the answer was, “I don’t know’. That’s not an acceptable
answer in any professional arena. If the Mayor asked Treasurer Fredette how much money is outstanding in
unpaid property taxes, do you think the answer “I don’t know” would be acceptable. | don’t, it would not be
acceptable in any financial situation.
The $250,000.00 from Bank of America is contingent, it is not a given, it doesn’t come without strings, it is
contingent on raising the $2.5 million. Again, the target is just going to keep moving, we don’t have the money
yet, that’s ok we will present a resolution to move the target for however long. | don’t know if there is a date in
that resolution. Then we won’t hit so we will move it again. | ran a non-profit in this town | know how hard it is to
raise money. | know about quiet phases, | know that people can cancel, but you know, in the January 26" letter
to editor Chuck Hafemann made some really great points. | have it if anybody wants to read it. Fundraising
didn’t commence until almost a year and a half after it had passed. An official was quoted in the article saying,
“| was naive and didn’t realize we couldn’t start the fundraising”. You know when you get a job you have to
produce what you say you are going to produce in a certain amount of time. You don’t get to say, Oh I’m sorry
that | didn’t know that | didn’t know how to do this job and | can’t meet any of the deadlines’.
Joan Stylianos did a story in the Union Leader and a friend of hers asked, “Oh how much of the private funds
have been raised and she said, “well you know, we don’t know”. Some taxpayers feel duped because no
renovation or construction could start until the $4 million in private funds was raised. She was having a
conversation with Joseph, | don’t know how to say his last name. The minister of music at First Church and
performed as a guest conductor at Symphony NH who said, “Nashua bought the building too quickly and
without the proper legwork”. He said, “they don’t have a pit, it's not a good location, you have Elm Street that
has an orchestra pit and could do a lot of renovations instead of buying a place that needs beyond what some
place like Elm Street could use.” | think we bought the building way too fast, | think people said, $4 million?
They thought that there were people lined up, there are not that we bought it without doing our due diligence
and we will be doing everyone a disserve if we continue to say yes, we are just going to keep moving this
target, because I’m a tax payer and my taxes have gone up 27% in the last ten years. So you know, if I’m
going to be footing the bill, no, | am not your biggest investor, | don’t want to be.
Fred Teeboom 24 Cheyenne Drive. Now | attended nearly all the PAC Committee meetings, | read every one
of the proposals and | am pretty familiar with this project at this point. | do look forward to buying a season
ticket, | think they have a good proponent in the form of Tim Cummings, you have a very active team, the PAC
team. But! am concerned about the financial viability of this project. First of all, we’ve spent a long time talking
about the $2.5 million dollar, what they call the Capital Campaign but no discussion about that $4.2 million
dollars that’s supposed to be raised with these tax credits. So in 2019, we got zip. What if we get zip in 2020?
So | did an analysis and I'd like to make this analysis part of the public record. | have enough copies, | am not
going to into details because there are a lot of details on this sheet, that’s not the purpose. But | do want people
to have a copy and | want it to be on public record as part of the minutes.
The two things that | want to bring out are the following. The original budget for this PAC was $15.5 bond and
a $4 million dollar private funding. That’s $19.5 million dollars. You just heard the number, $23.7 million. Now
if you look at this sheet, the actual construction cost of the PAC is $15.2 million dollars. The original estimate
was $11.5 million, I’m not going to go into how that happened, there’s a lot of deception on $11.5 million. The
fact is that is way over budget.
