Board of Aldermen 09-10-2019 Page 28
Alderman O’Brien
Madam President, may | remove the motion please?
President Wilshire
| need a chance to speak.
Alderman O’Brien
Oh ok excuse me then. Then | concede my motion.
President Wilshire
So | equally feel that the students have presented a great project here. It was a great presentation, they
were really passionate about it but on the other hand so were the people from the Downtown Improvement
Committee passionate about the work they’ve been doing all this time downtown. What | would like to see
is this study that the students and the downtown people work together on so that it is beneficial to
everyone. Like Alderman Clemons says, if we give it one group, why don’t we just make it all free parking
for everybody. We are singling out one group and yes you are passionate about and yes the downtown
committee is passionate about it. But | don’t understand why the two can’t go through the study together
and hopefully come out with an outcome that works for everyone. So | will not be supporting it this evening
and | hope that the downtown study comes through and says, “Hey we can do this for this population” or
maybe the Library comes up with something, some controlled parking that you have to put your Library
Card in to get access to the parking lot.
Alderman Gidge
| want the money for the parking, | want people in the Library. If you really mean this, you come back to us
and bring back a picture of several hundred people standing in front of the Library and that may change the
minds of a lot of people here. More people downtown will soend more money. That may make up for it. So
that’s how | feel, | will vote for it.
Alderman Lopez
| feel like it is fundamentally unfair to keep telling the students that they need to do more work when they
did the work and they brought the presentation. The Downtown Improvement Committee did not review
their presentation, they didn’t even see the Ordinance, they don’t have minutes posted which is something
that | brought up in the last meeting and they still don’t have minutes posted. | think the students have
done their part here. | think the Downtown Improvement Committee is not universally in charge of parking
policy in Nashua, | think that’s our role. We can’t keep acting as though we are not doing something
actively here to prevent students from this coming forward. Because they have designed a plan that’s
workable and can work; we may talk about the rules of the road but we are literally the ones who set most
of the rules of the road.
| think if we are going to be honest, we need to be at least respectful of the students and the work that
they’ve put in and really give it the credibility it deserves. Because they did study the problem, | followed up
myself by looking at the parking spaces and | do not believe that everyone else has looked quite as closely
have. | think we are just responding to some comments that were made by two citizens on a Downtown
Improvement Committee.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez | don’t think anyone here has been disrespectful to any students.
