Board of Aldermen 08-13-2019 Page 17
Alderman Klee
Thank you. I’ve done quite a bit of work on this particular thing and | went back and forth; do | vote for it,
don’t | vote for it? It is worthwhile; isn’t it worthwhile? | made calls to the DRA and | spoke to them. My
last call that | made was on Monday and | spoke to Gary and in that conversation | asked him a number of
questions. One of the questions | did ask him was “I know you cannot compel us but will you”. And his
exact words were “We have been strongly recommending that Nashua must do a Full Measure & list”. |
was struck by the word “must”. | made him repeat it over and over again and he did. My feeling is you are
right, they cannot compel us to do this Full Measure & List but do | think that through other means that they
will do different things? Yes Ido. And then | think that the power will be taken away from this body and
this City and | don’t want to see that. | don’t want to see the State come in and tell us what we have to do. |
want to do that right thing and | believe that based on the claims, | believe we owe the property owners our
best effort to do the most that we can do. And | think this is one of the most things that we can do. Do |
believe that it will be 15%, 10%, 30%, 50%? | don’t have a clue. | don’t have a crystal ball. | get as many
people telling me they will not let them in their houses and unlike what some people have said it’s not just
because they didn’t pull a permit.
We have some people that are frightened to let a stranger into their home. | spoke to one woman and told
her that | would be there when they came; we would make the appointment and | would be there with her. |
am not offering that to every resident in Nashua because | do not have enough time for that. But yes | think
family members can be there, | think we can make sure that they will be safe and that there will be ID’s and
they have the right; the 4" Amendment does give them the right to say “no”. No one can come into
someone’s property. When | talked to the DRA, the DRA told me that yes you can look into the back of
someone’s property as long as you do it from the street. You can look at the outside of their home. You can
do drones to fly over; there are a lot of different things we can do. And | also agree that people who have
illegally pulled a permit will not let us in their homes; that’s just the way the game is played. | also think
there are some good people that are not going to let us in their home.
| spoke to one very concerned citizen who said that she just doesn’t like strangers. It affects the whole feel
of her home so she doesn’t let strangers in her home; this is a very good person, a very honest person. So
| do not want anybody out there to feel that for whatever reason they say “no” we are going to think that
they are trying to hide something. But | still believe, having said all that, we need to do this Full Measure &
List and when | heard the strong recommendation that we must do a Full Measure & List | felt that was a
very — and he said they had been recommending it for quite a while. He said Manchester does it just about
every 5 years and Concord, like Nashua, has waited decades and he thinks that they should do it also. So
we all have our own vote, but | will be voting for a Full Measure & List and passing the $1.3 million dollars.
Thank you.
Alderman Lopez
I’d like to each Alderman Klee’s comments with regards to the intent of letting people in and out of your
home. | know that about a month ago | asked to have my air conditioner looked at because it wasn’t
working and the guy showed up right when my cat threw up so | was not, | was like “you’ve got to give me
some time”. So the timing could be completely benign, and yet poor for somebody. So | don’t want to cast
anything on people who might not feel comfortable letting someone in their home. | also know that
particularly in Ward 4 there are like 15 million people like pretending that they are utility companies and
they are not. They are just trying to get money or enter into some kind of deal. So | don’t know that the
neighborhoods that | represent will be particularly receptive to a Full Measure & List but | do know that
some of them will. | know that I’ve had feedback from some people saying that, to my surprise that they
were ok with their property value being raised; they were ok with their property reassessment. To me, |
would have expected everybody to automatically want the lowest possible value for their home so they pay
the least taxes. But some people are willing to pay their taxes because they feel like it is part of their
community responsibility. Some people take pride in their home and the additions that they do and may
want to show that the value is increasing.
