Special Bd. of Aldermen — 5/2/17 Page 16
Alderman Clemons
| think Alderman Deane said it best earlier. It’s a nice narrative as far as maintaining the building and making
sure we have capital expenditures to do that because that’s exactly the problem with the roads. That’s why we
had to bond fixing our roads. As somebody who has served on the board previously and previous to this two
years and four years before that, knowing that Alderman Deane is probably a conservative and me being a
liberal was very surprised when he supported the road paving bond. His support of that led to my support of
that. The reason being is because he is right. You have to maintain our roadways. But here is where |
disagree with Alderman Moriarty. | don’t’ see it as one versus the other. | see it as a holistic approach to our
city. Cities are expensive to operate. They have lots of different competing interests within them, and they
have a diversity of people that want a diversity of things. It is incumbent upon the city council, in this case the
Board of Aldermen, to make sure that we listen to what those needs are and balance them out. We have to do
a number of different things. One of them is taking care of our roads. The other one is taking care of our arts
community. | don’t see them as competing interests. | certainly would support this project. | think it is
worthwhile. | think if it funds itself year after year then more could we really ask for?
I'd like to also respond to what Alderman Lopez said in regards to what the community can contribute. Part of
the plan is a $4 million endowment to be raised by the private sector by the community so the operational costs
are such that the city doesn’t have to contribute on an annual basis to the operating cost. | think there is going
to be an awful lot of community involvement. | think the city is getting a bargain at $15.5 million. | will tell you,
Director Cummings, if no one else will, but I’m sure they will, | certainly will support legislation to bond so we
can have this discussion. If that’s something you would like to do, please tell corporation counsel and he can
put my name on it as a sponsor. Thank you.
Alderman Dowd
| think we should have the next step. | think during the budget process we’re going through right now that we
ought to have an update of the bonding and look at the bonding plan going forward and see where we are at.
Alderman Siegel
| want to address Alderman Moriarty’s claim that somehow if we had just reduced the amount of paving to $5
million we could have had this for free. | would agree with my colleague but then we would both be wrong.
The problem is the number was arrived at because that’s what it takes to get our streets up to a point where
they are not fading below a certain critical level which is incredibly costly to repair. Yes, | suppose we could
spend less. For that matter, let’s make up any arbitrary number and fill in some other desirable item. But at
that point, the streets decay and we’re looking at hundreds of millions of dollars down the road. That's why we
made the decision collectively to do this.
This is a very separate issue. | would urge Director Cummings to come forward with a plan that addresses the
mechanics. You have to explain how this actually works in our budget given the way our budget works in
Nashua. Then we can debate this.
Alderman Schoneman
I'd like to get back to some of the projections because if we’re going to be talking about this further | think the
projections are going to be key. Page 36, the pro forma operating budget. I’m wondering how this volume
compares to the volume that we presently have in Nashua with the Symphony and with the various theatres.
Is this taking all of those folks and grouping them to a new location or does this represent an expansion, and
what percentage of expansion beyond what’s already happening.
