A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, February 14, 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 Mark S. Cookson led in the Pledge
to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Clemons was recorded
absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
First | wanted to mention the storms we’ve been having in February. We've had several, most recently on
Sunday when it snowed over a foot. Our Department of Public Works has been doing a great job working very
hard and long hours cleaning up the snow over and over again. Director Lisa Fauteux and her staff have
devoted many hours making sure that the cleanup is effective as possible. | just want to thank them for all of
their hard work. We do have possibly a small storm tomorrow, maybe an inch. Director Fauteux tells me she
doesn’t think it will be too bad. Hopefully that will go just as well.
On the agenda, first is R-17-089, which is coming in for a first reading. This has to do with the repurposing of
Broad Street Parkway earmarked funds that were assigned to this project by congress. In 2010 when the
route of the Broad Street Parkway was changed, the result was the city and the state acquired parcels of
property for the old route that were no longer necessary for the new route, which now comes right down Pine
Street Extension. Sometime in 2015, the federal DOT began to assert that the expenditures made to acquire
those parcels that were not necessary were not eligible expenses and could not be reimbursed through
earmarked funds. The result could have been that some of the earmarked funds would never have been used
for the project and would have gone unused by the city. In 2016, we approached our congressional delegation
and began to talk with federal DOT and particularly state DOT about the issue. Through discussions of a
whole lot of people on the city staff, the state DOT, and federal DOT, we worked out an arrangement whereby
the funds that were earmarked would be repurposed from the Broad Street Parkway to several paving projects.
We know that we need paving anyway. The projects that are designated are Somerset Parkway, the link to
Somerset Parkway, Amherst Street from Charron Avenue to Somerset, Kinsley Street, the entire length, and
Broad Street from Amherst Street to the oval, the roundabout by the high school. Those will be paid for now
out of the earmarked funds and we will use up all of the earmarked funds that were designated towards the
City of Nashua back when the earmark was done. Our city staff worked very hard on this. The state DOT
commissioner, Victoria Sheehan, who happens to be a resident of Nashua in Ward 5, and |’m sure this had
nothing to do with the way she handled it, but she was extremely helpful and cooperative in guiding us through
the negotiations with her department and with federal DOT. When you consider this, | think you will have
confidence that we are going to be able to use all the money that was assigned to us by congress.
The other one | wanted to mention was the veteran’s tax credit, the voluntary veteran’s tax credit which is on
the agenda for adoption by the city. O-17-25. This would follow up on the act passed by the legislature to
expand the credits to include all veterans, which currently it does not. | have sponsored along with some of the
other aldermen. My only suggestion is that, given the analysis by the assessors that this could result in a
revenue loss of $670,000, possibly more, that we make it effective April 1, 2018, rather than 2017, mainly
because of the $2 million hit we’re going to take on the pension fund which result in higher taxes. We are
going to have difficulty absorbing another tax impact in addition to that. So my suggestion would be we
recognize our veterans but given the difficulties we have this year that we make it effective April 1, 2018.
We have a ward meeting coming up, Ward 8, Thursday night at Bicentennial at 7:00 p.m. On the 24" of
February at Harbor Homes there’s a pancake breakfast to benefit Safe Stations. That’s at 7:00 a.m. Harbor
