A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, February 28, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; Deputy City Clerk Judith Boileau recorded.
Prayer was offered by Deputy City Clerk Judith Boileau; Alderman-at-Large Daniel T. Moriarty led in the
Pledge to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 13 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Clemons, Alderwoman
Melizzi-Golja were recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
First | wanted to discuss the road paving initiatives which are on the agenda tonight. The first being the
resolution, R-17-089, which has been recommended for final passage. This repurposes some of the Broad
Street Parkway federal money for street paving here in Nashua. | think we’ve discussed this before, but now it
is on for a final vote. It will pave Kinsley Street, portions of Amherst Street, Somerset Parkway, and portions of
Broad Street. We can accomplish quite a bit by accepting the repurposing of those funds. The other road
street paving initiative that’s on the agenda is on for a first reading, R-17-092. We are proposing here that we
follow through on the recommendation of the Board of Public Works and our consultant to initiate a program of
paving $7.5 million a year for a number of years. We are proposing here five years. The funds to pay this debt
would come from the paving special revenue account. When we get to committee, we can show how that
would work in detail. But both are important in terms of upgrading the condition of Nashua streets, something
that | Know we all have heard about for quite some time.
| wanted to mention the Safe Station pancake breakfast, which was held Friday. It was well attended. It
raised, with sponsorships, over $20,000 and was a great time. Harbor Homes did a good job putting it on. It
will be a big help towards continuing a safe station program. Around 190 people have reported to a Nashua
safe station through this week.
| wanted to mention and direct your attention to an article which | thought was interesting written by the Town
Administrator of the Town of Auburn concerning the downshifting of state costs onto municipalities, of course
including Nashua. He details a lot of what’s occurred over the past 20 years or so. It was going on even
before that, but he only goes back that far. It includes what we refer to as state education assistance, the
adequacy grant. As he points out, this is actually property tax money put onto the property taxpayers and then
merely collected by the state and distributed back to the local communities. It’s really local communities that
are raising the money. He mentions the elimination of revenue sharing funds that used to be devoted to
municipalities. That was taken away in 2010. He references the withdrawal of state support for pensions which
is costing municipalities $80 million a year. He references the reduced municipal portion of the revenue
received from the meals and rooms tax. That was supposed to be 40 percent. That is no longer the case.
That has impacted local communities by $58 million since 2010. He references the fact that public wastewater
grants for sewer treatment plans and the like have been reduced by $10 million a year. He references that the
state has ceased funding its share for disaster assistance for natural disasters. He mentions that school
construction aid has been curtailed. He mentions that many costs have been pushed onto counties. Now
counties are paid for out of our property taxes. The budget for Hillsborough County comes from the property
taxes of all of the municipalities in Hillsborough County. Nashua pays about % of the county budget | hope
you will take a look at this. We all know that this has been going on, but | thought it was interesting that he has
documented it all in one place the history of all of this. It is hard to calculate exactly how much each year this
is costing Nashua, but it has a very considerable impact on the local tax rate.
Next, Mr. President, | want to mention the lights. You might see that the lights are LED here.
