Board of Aldermen 11-26-2019 Page 2
Now, Madam President, over the weekend we have some great activities coming up. On Saturday, of
course, we have the Holiday Stroll, hope everybody can join us there. The City Government usually
parades down the street from City Hall up to the Hunt Building along with the entire community
basically. | encourage everyone to come, not only the Board of Aldermen, but of course all of our
citizens. It is a wonderful time, we have even more activities this year; music, Santa and other things
that families and children can attend. So | am looking very much forward to that.
Also, we do have Plaid Friday on the Friday right after Thanksgiving, before the Holiday Stroll. That is
promoted by Great American Downtown; you can wear plaid downtown, but the goal is to get people to
shop local as opposed to the Black Friday where the internet and the malls do a lot of business. This is
designed to get people to patronize our local businesses, our local entrepreneurs who offer a variety of
goods and services downtown.
And finally, Madam President, Thursday is Thanksgiving, | would like to wish all the members of our
City Government. | want to wish Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and their families; | hope you have a
wonderful holiday and a safe holiday. We do have the game on Wednesday night and so it should be a
wonderful weekend overall. Thank you, Madam President.
RESPONSE TO REMARKS OF THE MAYOR
Alderman Lopez
So | do appreciate that we are making progress on increasing the housing stock that is available. The
term “affordable housing” as | typically understand it is below the median income level, which in Nashua
is like $66,000.00 a year. | personally think that we have a shortage of low income housing which is
less than 80% of median income, so families that are making less than $55,000.00 | think there is not
enough units that they can afford, especially considering that the recommended housing expense is
about 30% of your income. | think by and large many Nashuans are paying way more than 30% of their
income for housing.
| do recognize that we have developers that are willing to help contribute to that and to be supportive of
that and | think it is a huge step forward from last year where City Officials were not willing to call the
housing situation a crisis. | think it very much is a crisis so we need to be welcoming of all strategies
that will help people in Nashua afford housing.
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
Yes just regarding R-19-189, | think that this IT’s work to secure a back-up server is certainly very
critical and | know they came to PEDC and presented their concerns and the efforts that they have
made. So this is certainly a major step forward that will also make all of their other measures effective
in securing our data. So thank you.
President Wilshire
Let the record reflect that Alderman Clemons joined us at 7:36 PM. Ok there being no objection, | am
going to suspend the rules to move out of order and allow the presentations by the Boys & Girls Club
and Alexis Durant. I’d like to welcome the Boys & Girls Club first.
There being no objection, President Wilshire suspended the rules to move out of order and
allow the presentations by the Boys and Girls Club and Alexis Durant.
e Presentation by Boys and Girls Club — Photovoice & UMAP
President Wilshire to recognize Cindy Heath and Lelia Melon
