Board of Aldermen 12-23-2019 Page 15
But for people who asked the question, what is my share if | own a $300,000.00 house what is my share of
this going to be? It is going to be less than $200.00. | hope that answers their questions and allays their
fears. But | support this.
Alderman Lopez
| just want to speak to Elm Street; the neighborhoods around it have outgrown it. There is a lot of
encroachment on people who are living there versus the teachers that are working there. | frequently field
the questions you know from landlords in the area, is there more parking available, can we work with on-
street parking? | mean nowhere, we can’t just produce surface area. So it is getting very crowded in that
area, it is a traffic problem. One of the most common issues that we hear are people coming in and out of
that street around school hours, either a danger to the kids that are crossing the street and walking to and
from their homes or they are full of kids and their parents picking them up. Then there is the whole
unsolvable issue for some reason kids are just drawn like magnets across Main Street to that Burger King.
So | think it was sooner or later going to have to just, from a neighborhood perspective be addressed.
Looking at the building structure and the building design, every year when we have the Veteran’s Day
Parade or the Memorial Day Parade, | have lunch with the veterans right after — and by the way, all of you
are invited to that. But every year they walk in and they’re like “OH | went to school here, it hasn’t changed
a bit”. That’s very nostalgic but like they went to school there awhile ago. So | think that building really has
outlived its usefulness. It definitely has done a great amount of service to Nashua but we need to start
thinking about how we can best have our students move forward with more modern education realities.
One of those realities is security; we need to update and upgrade the way we approach security in a way
that we can train for practical management in an emergency situation without terrifying kids and we have to
teach them what to do in an emergency. That is part of what is going into this building as well.
We have to address new realities with more and more kids presenting behavioral exceptions and different
learning needs. We need to acknowledge that and we need to start making sure that our kids that are
growing up here in Nashua have the same opportunities to succeed in education with the supports that they
need. | think the planning that has been done laboriously under Alderman Dowd’s leadership has been
very extensive, it has been public knowledge, it has been engaging. | do agree with Alderman Jette that a
lot of very good questions were asked at the Public Comment, but | think at the end of the day, as
Aldermen we were elected to address this issue so | support it as well.
Alderman Klee
Yes thank you. | Know there was a comment that our homework hadn’t been done. | am on, like Alderman
Jette and Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja, yourself, President Wilshire and Alderman Dowd on this Committee
and there’s been a lot of homework that has been done. Actually this is the result of all the homework that
is sitting on the web site that any person can get to. This has been talked about since | became Alderman
2 years ago. It is a need; | think that everyone did their homework, asked the appropriate questions in the
Committees. We went through all of the contracts, who would be the best person for architect; who would
be the best person for contractor. We listened to their ideas. We listened to whether or not it was good to
keep Elm Street.
| also want to address the fact that this is not a junior high, it is a Middle School and as such we had three
Middle Schools. This project will equalize the Middle Schools across the City; one in the North, one in mid-
section and one in the South. My hope is that yes it will eliminate some of the bussing and our kids won’t
get home at 5:30 at night, that they will be home at a decent hour rather than being bused from Elm Street.
The other issues that were talked about was the tax rate.
| appreciate Alderman Jette’s expectation or at least a stab at it. | thank you very much for it. | know that
Mr. Fredette had said that it was something that was very difficult to calculate but that at least gives us
some concrete information. The truth is that there never a good time to spend money. | think as far as
anybody is concerned they would always want their taxes to go down and never to spend money.
