Special Board of Aldermen 07-01-2021 Page 11
Nashua did not have that built into the Charter. Grants are not built into the Charter, just those two items
that we have talked about, the principal and interest and so on. It seems to go on deaf ears. | tried to get
them to change it to say, if it’s not in a Charter it can be added or can be just automatically exempted and
so on. And | got, No you’ve got to let your voters decide on that and we fought back and forth. The bottom
line is this passed. And it passed with these, as far as | am concerned, these intended consequences, not
unintended consequences. | feel very strongly that they were intended consequences. And | keep making
a joke about my Ward 3 $1 million dollar grant. When | first got elected, we put in for this grant for Locke
Street to change this to make it safer, to make it better walking. We got the grant for $1 million dollars.
That was back in 2017. The monies are just going to come through, hopefully this fall. Now we are looking
at 4 years to get this money and so on.
And | would hate to have to go to my Ward and say all this work that we did, we can’t accept that $1 million
dollars. | would rather put it in as an appropriation and as a revenue so that it literally is a balanced
budget. We cannot spend more than we get, but we can accept it. If | remember correctly at the public
hearing for the budget there was ex-Alderman who stood up and was quite upset that he felt that we did
not fund two organizations — one | believe was the Girl Scouts and another was Salvation Army | think it
was and he was quite irate. He did not seem to understand that they didn’t put in for those monies. But
when you look at all the lists that we work at for the Human Resources Committee, the HUD grant and so
on, we would not be able to give those out if we don’t put those here ahead of time. And | would hate to
have to say to all of those companies such as The Front Door Agency and so on, we can’t help you, we
can’t fund you. Or the HOME Loan Program, goodness, or the renter’s loan program. | would hate to say,
we can’t do that this year because we didn’t have the foresight to think of this.
And where this is being zero and is not affecting the taxpayers, | don’t think we will get pushback from the
taxpayers. | keep referring to these things as “paper chasers”. And | make a joke but | am very serious
about it. If Ward 3 loses out $1 million dollars, | am not going to be happy and | am going to have a lot of
unhappy campers over our $1 million dollars. So | would like to see this go through as it was
recommended. But | do appreciate everything that Alderman Jette had brought up, those were really good
points as to does it mean that we can’t — | think it just helps clarify the situation. So thank you very much.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
| think Alderman Klee is being a little bit kind about saying she'll be unhappy. If a mother is pushing a baby
stroller down the street and gets hit by a car because we didn’t fix that, people would be very unhappy. So
these aren't just appropriations that are done on a whim, the CDBG money and the Review & Comment
money for example support things like the expansion of the Nashua Soup Kitchen’s Homeless Shelter
because our City Welfare doesn’t have the capacity to put up all of the homeless people in Nashua into
motels; we don’t even have the motel capacity for that. Those are things we rely on non-profit
organizations to do in partnership with the City. And the City as a municipality is able to apply for those
grants and all taxpayers benefit from that.
A project | am concerned about is the Rail Trail Extension which the bike path along West Hollis is very
popular for people using it recreationally. It is also essential for kids traveling to and from school and
traveling on the afternoons when there’s a tremendous amount of traffic along West Hollis. It lets them
move up and down the Rail Trail safely. It lets elderly people who are living in outer neighborhoods travel
downtown to get to the hospital, to get to the pharmacy, to do things they need to do. So the extension on
the other side to the East Hollis side, it’s a big deal. And these are projects that Community Development
Program has done based on need, based on a considerable amount of work that the State doesn’t care
about, didn’t take into account. The State governs this way and at best it can be said to be incompetent.
They are not getting high marks as the State of New Hampshire for governing any of these municipalities.
We are, we are the ones who are working with our constituents and with our non-profit organizations to
