Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 16
Unidentified Speaker
8,000 or 9,000.
Mr. lannacone And what was the vote count? It’s a simple majority right? What Barbara Pressly said is very
important here. The people want an arts center, we want a performing center. But they voted because they
were told also in all these discussions that this was going to be done with private money. That’s a very
important distinction here. And how we’ve been giving all these great assurances by these professionals,
believe me we’ve doing professionals for a number of years, raising money for churches, raising money for
other things. It is not that easy and they have given us these assurances or guarantees as we’ve heard these
words, boy this is going to be an easy one to do.
| think the people need to and | think Barbara Pressly is correct here, need to know what they asked the City to
do and where we are now. | have been watching all along waiting and asking questions, when is this going to
happen, when is this going to happen and we had nothing planned ahead of time. We are shooting from the
hip again and that has now caused us a problem. | think that is the problem that people have with government
at this point is that you throw something out, they’ve given us a direction and it is tough to do, it’s not easy, you
don’t have an easy job. But it would be so much easier with communication if we said this is what our intent is
going to be, if that is the route we are going to go down. These tax credits, | agree the tax credits, that’s not
private contributions sorry, that’s not at all private contributions.
| think if nothing else we need to go to the people and say here’s what has happened, | mean look at how
many people we have here tonight, it’s not very many people and coming a week after a holiday week, we
need to go to the people and say this is the direction we are going to goin. In simple plain English, explain
what the tax credits are, what they are all about, and the private contributions and what we need to do. And
then if you get that occurrence of the people like Barbara Pressly speaking, then we are on solid ground. It’s
not going to be 3, or 4 years from now or 5 years from now we are still trying to build this arts center that is
downtown. From my understanding, | don’t think this complex can hold the full orchestra, is that correct Tim?
Mr. Cummings
Yes that’s correct.
Mr. lannacone In this facility, it would be nice if we had a nice facility to do that, we can’t do that. Tough
decision, Barbara Pressly said some great comments, people need to know, if you want the center, but we
should know exactly who has the liability and who is going to have the liability. And | will tell you for example
for the Symphony New Hampshire we are trying to raise money to keep things going, it is very, very tough,
believe me. Thank you.
Mr. Cummings
| just have a quick question, it sounded like there was a group being represented in the comments there. |
would like to Know which group it was?
(inaudible dialogue)
Debora McLaughlin 19 Salmon Brook Drive, Nashua, New Hampshire. In hearing all of this tonight, | am
thinking to myself, you know, | am your demographic who would attend these things and pay this ticket price
and enjoy these festivities and looking over the last 10 years | have probably gone to 100 different venues. |
travel across the country having gone to even 12 last year, however | did vote no because my main concern
was one, not being aware if we really were going to be able to support this and sustainable funds without
