Board of Aldermen 09-10-2019 Page 22
that they could to equally and also being able to use those resources. We also heard from someone in
public comment the Cottage Street area being a bit further away and parents or even students not feeling
as comfortable walking from there as they would in the lot.
So we did look at the financials, that was in the presentation to Infrastructure. The Downtown Improvement
Committee gets the overflow parking, | think it was about $100,000.00 this year so if all 20 passes were
used 365 days a year, we are talking about maybe $6 grand and | don’t see us doing 100% participation in
this. So | would ask the Board to consider that. | think for students it makes a lot of sense and getting our
students into our downtown and enjoying this service that we already provide through our taxes makes a
whole lot of sense.
Alderman Dowd
| certainly support the students going in the Library and anything we can do to help them. But! also think
that and as | review all of this that it hasn’t been well thought out as to the process. The students having to
get a pass, go up to the Library, get a pass, and if they are unlucky they get a ticket while they are getting
the pass and then bring the pass back in the car, as | understand it now. And then when they are done
they have to do the opposite, it just seems to me, there are other ways to do it. And | think as part of the
study you would have a more efficient and more organized way of doing it for the students. The only thing |
don’t know is the timing of the study; if it was going to be hugely in the future that would be one thing. If it’s
going to be short-term, | think we ought to wait for the results of the study because | think there are several
issues of parking downtown and I’d like to solve it all in one shot and not have to come back and
piecemeal.
Alderman Klee
And | want to echo Alderman Dowd and Alderman O’Brien’s words. The students did a phenomenal job
and | commend anybody who comes and does some kind of presentation and so on. The problem that |
have with this is that | have received a number of phone calls from different groups; groups of elderly
people, groups of people that have functions at the Library, | don’t mean functions that way but do different
things and said, “Well why couldn’t we get free parking”. There are a lot of different groups and a lot of
different entities. While not all students are able body, the majority of them area which means that they can
walk and if they have to walk as Alderman Dowd said from the car, to get the pass, back to their car, then
when they leave, go to their car, bring back the pass and go back to the car. | mean that’s four trips to their
car. We are talking about $2.25 and yes | know what is like to not have money; | know what's it like to not
even have a dime and so on. But! don’t $2.25 or $1.50 if they can get the lesser parking is really going to
necessarily break the bank.
When some of the students, they spoke about getting coffee at Barnes which | think probably do cost more
than $2.25 or stopping on their way to get a cup of coffee. | think our Library is incredible; | think that is has
enough to offer and that is what people would like to come to and use those resources. | also would like to
see the study completed. | think maybe in the end it’s going to say we need to give all free parking. And |
know Alderman Kelly and a few other people have said, “I’d like to just see free parking there”. I’m not so
sure | necessarily would because | do think that cuts into revenue and as a tax payer every penny counts.
But in the long run, whatever the study says, | would abide by it and | think we all should do that. | just don’t
think that this is the time to do it, | think we need to wait. So thank you.
Alderman Laws
So I’ve been conflicted with this one. On the one hand, as the liaison to the Downtown Improvements
Committee, | think that they are truly some of the unsung heroes of Downtown Nashua. These people are
small business owners, they give up their Friday mornings to come in, they meticulously go over the details
of their very limited budget and what they are going to do with it. And | completely understand that and the
last thing that | want to do is contribute to them having less budget to work with.
