Board of Aldermen — 9/12/17 Page 49
Alderman Wilshire
| am disappointed tonight that the arts thing didn’t pass, but | do appreciate the efforts of my colleague,
Alderman Clemons, in getting it to the voters. Hopefully we have success there. | want to thank you,
Alderman Clemons, for doing that.
Alderman Schoneman
| forgot to make one announcement. This Saturday at the airport is the Wings and Wheels event. It was
postponed from a previous, a rain date. That’s this Saturday if folks want to come out and see trucks and
touch a truck and touch a plane too. It’s this Saturday at the Nashua Airport. | think it is at 10 o’clock.
President McCarthy
| have to say with regard to the remarks about the Daniel Webster College election, | just don’t see any way we
could have done the due diligence that’s required in the three to four weeks there is until the auction. We don’t
have and won't have a Phase | Environmental Assessment as to whether there’s any hazardous materials on
the property we’d have to remove. Based on the age of the college, | would bet that there are. We don’t have
the architectural information about what’s snow loads, any or all of the buildings were built to, and while they
are currently in use, many of our school buildings and the building on Burke Street are in use that do not
handle the correct snow loads which is why we would have had to tear down the Burke Street building. In
three weeks we’re not going to have that information, and we certainly not going to have it without hiring
professional to generate some of it. To me, it’s a case of if the auction were next summer, maybe we could go
think about it. On the day of the auction, we have to commit to buying the property. That’s four weeks away. |
just can’t see how we could get that done. Nothing has shown me something we would do there that we can’t
do better somewhere else. Additionally, the college paid $680,000 in taxes last year. If we buy it, that revenue
goes away. That’s the equivalent of having another $8 million in debt when one looks at the bottom line of the
budget. | just can’t see a path that would get us there. This is not debate, Alderman Cookson, but go ahead.
Alderman Cookson
Thank you. | wanted to thank you for your comments, Alderman McCarthy.
President McCarthy
You're welcome.
Alderman Cookson
| shared the proposed resolution on August 28". | have heard zero from you with regard to the idea since
then. | took your suggestion, Alderman McCarthy, that evening to present a request to corporation counsel to
write a bond resolution so we could have a public hearing, so we could look into it, but | appreciate your
comments this evening. It would have been helpful prior to tonight.
President McCarthy
Alderman Cookson, | do not have to help someone advance an idea | do not believe in. | gave you all the
advice as the President of the Board that you needed in telling you that there had to be the bond resolution.
By telling you that, | never said | would support it.
Alderman Cookson
| never asked you to support it.
