Board of Aldermen Page 2
April 26, 2016
Administrative Affairs Committee is meeting on Monday so he will be there. He will also be in Nashua on
Friday of this week and if anyone from the Board of Aldermen would like to meet him at that time it can
certainly be arranged. | am going to talk to him a little more about what is going on in Nashua but there will be
time for anyone who wants to get together with him. | believe you will confirm his appointment in the end.
Secondly, the legislature, the Senates Transportation Committee heard the 10 year transportation plan today.
Many people from Nashua showed up and | thought did a very good job at testifying in favor of restoring this $4
million back into the transportation plan that was removed in the House. The five member committee listened
and was interested in the testimony. I’m not sure how it will come out but | think Nashua was well represented
by Senator Lasky. | was there as were a lot of other people from Nashua, Tracy Hatch and other people. |
heard that Alderman Mike O’Brien and Alderman Ken Siegel were there to testify in favor of the venue Bill and
that they did a really good job and they make a really good team so we are keeping our fingers crossed on
that.
The next item is that there is a routine resolution that is not on the agenda which is a resolution which would
repurpose some funds that had been escrowed last year for the purpose of playground equipment at the
Legacy Playground at Labine Park from playground equipment to construction costs. This is a technical
change because of the way the various other funds that have been allocated to the Legacy Playground project
at Labine have been allocated, some CDBG and some other public works money. This is simply going from a
like to like escrow to an unlike to like escrow. If you feel comfortable with this it’s the same amount of money,
it's already been escrowed once. It would help if this were approved tonight on a second reading because
then the contracts could be awarded more quickly. On the agenda also is for a first reading of R-16-029 and |
thought | would explain why | proposed this. You will recall that the Clocktower project is generating for the city
$500,000 of unexpected revenue. When the Clocktower project was done the city got a federal grant; two very
large federal grants and the money was channeled through the city and as a result the city was given a debt
position even though no city money went into that project, behind all of the private debt that Clocktower
borrowed in order to do the project. In order to get our permission to refinance their private debt they have
agreed to pay us $500,000 and this step was approved by this Board previously. Now | am proposing that we
use this $500,000 of unexpected revenue for the purposes of further enhancing the river walk and the river
front. The reason | am proposing this to you is that this is derived from a project that is a river front project,
one that has generated somewhere between $10 million and $20 million of property taxes over the course of
its existence. It seems to me that it makes sense to devote this unexpected revenue to river walk
enhancements so that we can encourage further development like this. We see that on the north side of the
river, across from Clocktower we have the Cotton Mill Square Project which has done extremely well. Now we
have the Brady Sullivan Project which is underway and is on Franklin Street and is expected to open possibly
in the fall of this year although that may be optimistic. That will add many more residents so we will have close
to a thousand people living near the river. There are some river walk projects, for example, we see the candle
lit walkway around the Peddler’s Daughter. The city has been seeking to do similar projects like that on the
other corners near the Main Street Bridge and this proposal suggests that we put the $500,000 towards
advancing those river walk and candle projects. The kind of thing that we could stimulate if you think about it is
that for example, we are looking at the millyard and the areas around it to try to bring about residential
development but there are other areas in the downtown like east of Main Street where residential development
could occur. There are some large parcels near Spruce and East Pearl where there are older but unused
industrial buildings. If we could enhance the river walk that goes from the end of Spruce Street down the river
on the south side to the library and then potentially around the former Telegraph building, we could create a
very attractive and exciting amenity for not only the development of that area but for people that might live
there. They could simply walk out of their front door and walk down the river walk all the way to Main Street
along the river. If we reinvest money that we derive from some of these projects in the very valuable asset that
we have which is the Nashua River, | think over the long term we can stimulate more development and more
tax revenue which would help not only our downtown but out tax base. Obviously this is going to be referred to
committee but | wanted to give you my rationale for that.
Finally we have on the agenda the pension legislation that’s been talked about quite a bit. My perspective is
that we should use money that was saved for a period of years for the purposes of offsetting the impact of
