Board of Aldermen — 02/13/18 Page 8
on this, but an RSA and NRO are law which gives the authority to the Infrastructure Committee to make a
decision on this particular item.
The other thing that Alderman Jette is talking about is an E911 guide. It’s what “guide” means. It’s a
suggestion. In the perfect world, it probably would be better if we had all the street numbers properly laid out.
But let’s look at the other neighborhoods within the city. This is not the only thing. | think as aldermen, those
of us who have been around our particular wards, know that this isn’t the only one that’s out there.
Then you have concerns for the fire department. | think we hire some pretty smart people, particularly when
we look and say we have Saturn and Satin Streets. Coburn Ave and Coburn Street, Russell Ave and Russell
Street, Lovewell and Lovell, and my favorite: Williams Court, which is not near Williams Street at all. All these
streets are different. All these streets are different. We have a professional department that is able to get to
the particular addresses.
To the defense of the committee’s decision, we did something that is very rare in politics. We made Mrs. Allard
happy, and we were able to make Mr. Philbrick happy by coming to this agreement and giving the number 25A.
Will the fire department be able to distinguish that address? | think they should. For those of you who know
New Searles Road, it’s not congested. It’s laid out as single family homes. It should be fairly simple. Is it
perfect? I’m not saying that itis. An ideal world, other parts of the city should be numbers in sequential but
that is not necessarily the case and put the onerous in this one particular incident | think would create a
hardship to a lady by no fault of her own, who purchased the property and was given and assumed that was
the proper street number.
Therefore, in speaking to the motion, | think the Infrastructure Committee has done their due diligence, has
vetted. There was a disdaining vote, but this is the majority of the committee and therefore | made the
recommendation not to refer it back to the committee and to put it before Board to vote appropriately on this
matter, which you do have by the RSAs and NROs the complete authority to do so. Thank you.
Alderman Lopez
| also plan to oppose returning it to committee because we had this discussion, for me, twice. We discussed it
in the previous Infrastructure Committee too. A guide is a guide. Somebody in the United States has decided
that the best way to do numbering is to use whole numbers only. | don’t know if they know Nashua Fire
Department, and | don’t Know that we need to conclude that our firefighters can’t notice a letter A when they
are looking for an emergency. | have found them to be professional. | have worked with them probably way
above average in emergency response calls and plenty of 25, 21A, 22A, 22A,C1. They know where things are
in this city. They know their regions and their districts. Ultimately these are two houses on a road. It’s not an
urban metropolis. | don’t think the fire department is going to be completely taxed by this. | do think the
hardship would fall on the developer and the woman living there. They are the most relevant to the problem in
my opinion because it is their road and their buildings. They are the ones that are going to live next to each
other. Well, the developer is going to put somebody in there to live. Ms. Allard that is her home. She has
been writing 27 on all of her mail. She has been receiving all of her mail from her friends at 27. That’s part of
her identity and her experience. I’m still writing 2017 on all my dates. | can’t even imagine what it is going to
be like trying to remember every single time to change your address. | can’t imagine what kind of mayhem will
be involved. It is impression that there will be a cost to her to change her address on legal documents, and
there’s definitely a difficulty in getting her ID changed, credit cards, mailings. All that kind of stuff. It’s an
unnecessary hassle in my mind. | think we can do right by neighbors, in this case, the people how are more
immediately involved. The numbering committee is doing their job too. They are making the perfect
recommendation but if we were going to follow every perfect recommendation we would all be using the matrix
system. | think there’s a little bit of wiggle room.
To speak to the much larger project ahead of us of renumbering the whole city, | would take her advice and
resign because | don’t want to deal with every single person coming in and saying this is my favorite number. |
do think Ms. Allard deserves to have her number, and there isn’t enough of a compelling safety issue or
argument in my mind to hold this any longer or send it back to committee because for us this is just two weeks
