Board of Aldermen 03-09-2021 Page 22
Alderwoman Kelly
OK, thank you. And thank you for that Alderman Clemons | thought it would just be a good thing for everyone
to hear what they’ve been up to. | think sometimes that gets fallen by the wayside. | am going to support this.
Obviously | think that our downtown is really becoming quite a draw and | think our Performing Arts Center has
started. If you go downtown, not everybody is downtown every day like | am but you are starting to see that
and | think the work that we did last summer with the expanded dining really just started to make Nashua a
place that people wanted to come and be outside. | am really excited about the Jersey Barriers. So | am
grateful for everybody who is kind of working together to improve sort of everything that is happening in our
downtown. So thanks for bringing this forward.
President Wilshire
Alderman Klee?
Alderman Klee
Thank you, Madam President. Thank you for allowing me to speak again. If | am not mistaken the Downtown
Improvement Committee funds a little bit beyond the Main Street of downtown. | believe that they are also
assisting in the Dog Park Feasibility Study that’s off Mine Falls area right there. And that’s to help the people
who are living downtown as well as the City in general. Whether this goes through, | believe it will, | am
alternate on the (inaudible); Alderman Lopez is the actual person on that. But it’s a good project for the City so
they think outside of directly on Main Street. And | think they do a lot of good for the City and | think we need to
keep them in mind. | see that Alderman Lopez unmuted himself, so he probably wants to add.
President Wilshire
Anyone else? Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
| felt like | should wait to be called on sorry. So | mean for me the biggest thing that the Downtown
Improvement Committee does that makes an impact in terms of improvement is that they do Christmas Lights
every year. And then they also do the storefront decoration for what would be empty, abandoned storefronts so
that downtown has some continuity to it and some character. With respect to what Alderman O’Brien said
earlier, | cannot pat myself on the back for how we’ve done, because I’d sprain my back.
But | do think that we should continue the trend of seeing how things are unfolding down the road and trying to
be proactive and saying, ok look, we need to be adaptable to this and we need to recognize where there is
opportunities and where there are threats. | think this is an opportunity because we do need to make sure that
we are resolving the threat of COVID-19 and that Public Health is getting the support that it needs and even
this upcoming St. Patrick’s Day, this downtown parking and outdoor dining and everything — the reason we are
redefining what downtown looks like in the first place is because there was a threat but there’s also opportunity
to see how we can make downtown more vibrant and more effective. And turning things like a Global Disaster
into an opportunity for people to celebrate safely and enrich and enliven businesses | think is a great policy. |
understand the concept of printing money and using taxpayer money wisely; | have some misgivings about
how they do that at the Federal Level too. But you can’t print money and be misusing tax money. Like either
there is the money there to spend or there isn’t. In this particular case this is making a plan, it is a plan that we
can modify or change prior to our next Budget Season if we need to.
But it is making that plan and that commitment so that when downtown does start to move towards reopening
and when people are going to be having to make some last minute investments in those events, because you
are not going to have the normal planning timeframe for some of these events. We are very much going to
want to be ready to go. This is a way of putting the resources that we have on the table for this year by
