Board of Aldermen — 5/09/17 Page 16
Now to get on the subject that I’m here for. I’ve been trying to stay away from these meetings. | try not to
watch this very much because | don’t like my low blood pressure become a high blood pressure. Vhen | was
away on vacation, | happened to be able to read the Telegraph editorial, which | want to say they did a great
job for a change. They weren’t such fake news, so you're getting a compliment like Alderman Clemons is.
How tight is Nashua’s budget? | almost fell over here. You know, we want to take $200,000 and allow citizen
volunteers to essentially spend their own $200,000. How tight is our budget? We've talked about overriding
the spending cap. We've talked about $15.5 million for a downtown theatre for a group of people. What is
government’s responsibility? Does anybody know what government’s responsibility is? It’s not for a theatre.
That’s private. Government’s responsibility is police, fire, maybe schools. |’m beginning to think Charter
Schools are the better deal. Police, fire, maybe schools, BPW. Not even landfills because we can ship it out.
We don't even have to have people come and collect our trash, but we pay for that.
And, by the way, | want to thank everybody for my 15 percent increase in my wastewater. For people on fixed
incomes, my bill went from $62, $78, to $90 a quarter. When social security doesn’t even give you an increase
this year, how do people who are on fixed income, not $90,000 from the city pension, I’m talking the average
citizen, the 55 plus community and maybe younger people with disabilities, are you trying to push us out of
here? I’m 63. Are you trying to push us out for the Millenniums and the Snowflakes to come in here? This is
really a disgrace. | was looking at houses in the Ledge Street area. They say the schools in that area are
below average online, so what does that tell you?
$15,500,000 for a restaurant and retail store. Since when is government in that business? Government is not
supposed to be in that business. Then when you build it, they might come because everybody is saying even
on Facebook, you have Manchester to the north and you have Lowell and Boston to the south. Now you don’t
have enough parking downtown. Now you are going to have to renovate that. People don’t go downtown
anyway because you have to put money in the meters. We all talked about that for a long time. Money in the
meters. Why would people go downtown? Alec’s was the anchor store downtown, and that’s the building you
want to buy. What is that, about two or three million dollars proposition? Does that include the $15.5 million or
is that over and above?
| asked Mr. Griffin yesterday, and what a lovely person he is. He got me all the information which | will discuss
more this at time goes on, like maybe tomorrow at the meeting and also at the public hearing, but he gave me
all the bonds that are outstanding. We're about right now about $64 million worth of bonding. That’s without
the interest of current bonds and what is going to be bonded. We have $1.6 million for the fire station; $37.5
million for street repairs. That’s going to be at $7.5 million, give or take, every year. We don’t even know what
the Burke Street property is going to be, but that was | think a $4.2 million proposition. That toxic waste
building over there that when you walked in there, you could smell the mold, see the mold. | had a friend of
mine who used to work there and explained everything in that building. We're going to retrofit that building and
clean it. What’s that going to be: 20, 30, 40 million dollars? Cha-Ching, another bond.
How much do you think the citizens of this city can take with all this spending? | have to prioritize my bills.
Why aren’t you prioritizing what needs to be done in this city? A theatre is not top priority. You complained
that the roads weren’t all good so you’re bonding roads. What else? How much more are we going to spend?
Think about it. The next time you go out and you go to Hannaford’s or Market Basket, look at some of the
people who are working, bagging. Look at some of the elderly and look at what they have in their carts and
look at what some other people with government assistance has in their carts. We worked for it. We can’t
retire. There’s no such thing as retirement anymore in this country because government is out of control with
spending. I’m asking now to stop this spending once and for all. We don’t need a theater downtown, and we
don’t need the train. And that’s another bond. Thank you.
REMARKS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN
Alderman Lopez
| was running a little bit of an informal contest called the “golden shovel” over the winter. It was a way to figure
out if we could encourage neighbors and businesses to do a little bit of shoveling so our streets were a little
