Board of Aldermen 02-22-2022 Page 42
|, too, would like to congratulate Chief Rhodes on his retirement. He is also one of my constituents and | have called on
him many times as | do with so many other of our leaders in the city, so he will be missed.
I'm not going to talk about the mask mandate. | think we beat that horse dead and buried.
But | do want to address something. One of the people that spoke as she left, she pointed to me and said tax credit $250.
I'm not really sure what she was talking about other than the fact that in the State House I'm on Municipal and County.
Today there were a number of bills that came in front of my committee and the executive to increase exemptions, and
credits, and so on. I'd kind of like to just address that a little bit. Originally, they were voted to pass and then we did
reconsideration and we (inaudible) them, which is the same thing here what we - so they basically recommend to kill
those Bills. The reason for doing that is that the State refers to it as “lost taxes”. Those are taxes that go from one group
of people. They don't pay them and they get spread amongst another group of people who don''t follow into these
qualified groups of elderly, disabled, deaf, blind or veterans. The State has $57,711,862 2020 of what they call “loss
taxes”. Nashua has $4,844,546 in what we call “loss taxes”, meaning that that shift that tax burden has been shifted to
the groups that don't fall within these categories. That's quite a bit and if you look through the entire State, Nashua is
number one in what is called “loss taxes”, meaning that we shift the burden from one group. It doesn't affect our pot of
gold as | would call it. It's not affecting the budget for Nashua. It's affecting the taxpayers.
| think the comment that was thrown out $250 may have been in reference to the veteran’s tax credit. We give $500.
$750 is the max at this point that can be given. If Nashua was to increase theirs, we have 2,729 veterans that are getting
the tax credit. That would be an additional $682,250, which would bring us right up to $5.5 million in what is called “lost
taxes”. Before we would just take that up and into consideration. We need to know what these numbers are and so on. |
don't know if that's what the citizen was referencing but | thought | would address it seeing that it's fresh and new from my
committee today. And having said that, I’m done.
Alderman Sullivan
Thank you, Madam President. A few comments. First off, | would like to thank the great residents of Ward 9 they came
out on Saturday morning — 9 am to 11 am to talk and be heard by the developer who bought Camp Doucette. They’re
going to put 94 condominiums up there. And all those folks came out on a Saturday in February, listened, asked
questions, and brought up their concerns. So | just want to say, you know, | say this all the time. As citizens, we have a
duty to stay informed of what's going on in our city. So a shout out to the Ward Yers that came out to talk about that.
Second regarding the situation that happened a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, we cannot unring the bell.
Everything had happened is in the public record. | think it's fair to say now to also put in the public record that the police
did conduct their investigation and found that there was no wrongdoing. | Know that that has been said many times
around the horseshoe. | just wanted to echo it one last time that | just think that that's fair. As a new Alderman, | will keep
my head on a swivel and make sure that, you know, we kind of maybe pump the brakes next time.
On masks - | was happy the way it went tonight. | think it's time that we start to turn the page. | said that a month ago. |
still believe it today. If | walk into a business be it Market Basket or wherever and they asked me to put a mask on, I'll do it
because | respect the rights of a private business to do what they want.
| think that as far as the tribalism that we've had over the last almost two years now and since yesterday was Presidents
Day, I'll echo the words of Abe Lincoln — “A house divided against itself cannot stand” and | fear that this pandemic has
done many things. | just hope that we start healing, and we start moving forward, and that we don't go backwards, and
we don't have peaks, and valleys, and whatnot. | hope that we can move forward and | hope tonight as a Board we wrote
that chapter.
Finally some congratulations. First of all, Chief Rhodes thank you for your service. Second of all, Deputy Chief Buxton, a
Ward 9 resident, | look forward to working with him as Nashua's new Fire Chief. Also in the realm of high school athletics
here in the city, Nashua’s own Tom Cassidy was named Cross Country Coach of the Year by the State of New
Hampshire. He's a Bishop Guertin cross country coach. He's coached at Elm Street. He's coached for Nashua PAL.
Now he's at BG and his great assistant Mike Dunham has helped him along the way in his career. So congratulations to
Tom Cassidy. And then also same school, congratulations to the BG girls basketball team. They won the State title on
Sunday.
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you, Madam President. Keep the comments brief because it is a late hour. Kind of comically we put one thing to
