Board of Aldermen 02-23-2021 Page 18
Mayor Donchess
Madam President, | might be able to answer this parking question for you.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Mayor.
Mayor Donchess
Alright. Mr. Cummings never said 30 spaces in the garage. It’s always been 49 or 50 spaces in the garage.
Where this 30 may come from is that in addition to the spaces in the garage we believe that we can add 20 to
30 spaces on the street; Factory Street, High Street. You might have seen that we put up barriers on Factory
Street during the summer to demonstrate that you could park all along the northside of Factory Street and it
would not affect traffic flow in the least, which it did not. But there are other spaces, High Street, School Street,
so 20 to 30 spaces on the street. There are 78 parking spaces in the lot so if there are 49 or 50 spaces on the
current surface lot, if there are 49 or 50 spaces underneath the School Street Housing plus 20 to 30 spaces on
the street, you come up with either 78 or at the least 68 spaces that would be provided in the area, meaning at
maximum a loss of ten but possibly less.
| also have to say that, | mean the Board of Aldermen operates according to a Committee Structure and the
point of the Committee approach is that details and the more complicated and complex the issue is the more
important the Committee structure becomes because you have to go to the Committee Meetings, you have to
follow what’s going on. You have to ask these questions when there are people present to be able to clarify
them, maybe make small changes if that’s required. But this has to be done, you have to do your homework,
you have to show up, you have to go to the meetings and you have to think of these issues and raise them in
the what — year or two years that this has been pending? The Committee Structure is designed to avoid
exactly this, very detailed questions that no one can answer right off the fly like some provision of a very
detailed agreement, what exactly it means. You have to apply yourself and do the homework. As Diane Shan
(?spelling) used to say over and over again, “Aldermen have to do their homework”. And that requires that
you get up to speed before 10 minutes before a vote on a major proposal.
So this should have been raised at the Committee in April, in September, in February, you know? This has
been pending for a long, long, long, long time. And we have gone over and over and over the parking. Finally,
the parking was not added to accommodate the developer, he didn’t ask for this at all. This was done for the
neighbors. This was done for the neighbors. So | think it was a reasonable approach, a reasonable
compromise. The parking is paid for by the property taxes that will be generated by this housing and it will also
generate enough property taxes to help pay for the Performing Arts Center. And the link there is that this
builder said the reason he had even thought of Nashua was because of the Performing Arts Center. The point
is, the Performing Arts Center attracts private investment. These are some of the private dollars that are
coming to Nashua because of the Performing Arts Center; hence the connection. Money from this project has
already been approved to be applied to the Performing Arts Center to help offset the cost. As we get more
private investment that'll happen again. | hope that answers the parking question.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Mayor. Alderman Clemons, did you want to say something?
Alderman Clemons
No | couldn’t have said it better than Mayor Donchess did.
