Finance Committee Page 4
December 21, 2016
20 years to 2067. The lease assigns the Airport Authority the right to manage the airport on behalf of itself and
for the purpose of furthering aviation. There were fees that were set forth in the 1975 lease that specified how
much a tie down would cost, how much per square foot for hangar space and in the 2003 revision which took it
to 2047, that specific paragraph was eliminated and the authority to set fees and terms for all of the sub-leases
was granted to the Nashua Airport Authority. All of the buildings at the airport are privately funded, the land is
leased. Anyone who wants to buy a building or build a new building who wants financing is going to have to
produce a guarantee that they will be able to stay on that land for a period of time and granting the extension
for 20 years will help that. If we were to extend the lease for an additional 99 years from today to 2115 as a
date that would just sort of be convention and that would eliminate the need for us to come back periodically
and it would also grant assurance to investors coming in that they know they can feel comfortable either
financing something or putting up their own money to build at the airport.
Alderman Clemons
Do you know of a specific instance where a person was denied a loan because our current lease expires in
2047?
Alderman Schoneman
This issue came to the forefront now because of an occurrence exactly like that.
Alderman McCarthy
We continuously re-up the lease, we have does it at least a dozen times and | suggested to Alderman
Schoneman that it might make sense to just take care of it so a new fresh set of faces can do it the next time it
is necessary.
Alderman Siegel
We talked about maybe extending it by 99 years but this is 20 years, there’s no down side to that. We want
the Airport Authority to manage to the airport and we do want people to have confidence that their capital
improvements are not going to be yanked out from underneath them. Is there any reason why you wouldn’t
make it a 99 year extension?
Alderman Schoneman
| don’t see any down size and | checked with legal to make sure there was no issue with this. We talked about
99 years but the legal department said that the 99 years isn’t even specified in this case since there is no tax
associated with the transfer of ownership and that’s the only case where 99 years would apply. We can extend
it to whatever we want but just for clarity’s sake | am not suggesting a 99 year extension, I’m just suggesting
making it 99 years from now which would be 12/31/2115.
MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO AMEND BY AUTHORIZING AN EXTENSION TO DECEMBER 31,
2115, OF THE MASTER LEASE WITH THE NASHUA AIRPORT AUTHORITY AND IN THE LAST
SENTENCE TO STRIKE THE TEXT THAT IS THERE TO READ “UNTIL DECEMBER 31, 2115.”
ON THE QUESTION
Alderman O’Brien
| am not against this but are we cutting any future types of problems, financial issues with the city that could
happen and is it better to reflect this in the short-term. | just want to be cautious.
