Board of Aldermen Page 15
March 8, 2016
R-16-008
Endorsers: Mayor Jim Donchess
Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy
Alderwoman Mary Ann Melizzi-Golja
ADDING FOUR ADDITIONAL PARCELS TO THE “SPIT BROOK ROAD ECONOMIC
REVITALIZATION ZONE”
Given its second reading;
MOTION BY ALDERWOMAN MELIZZI-GOLJA FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-16-008
ON THE QUESTION
Alderman Moriarty
| just want to note that it was not a unanimous vote to recommend final passage.
Alderman Siegel
| read the minutes from that meeting and | felt like | left economic earth at one point. | was happy that a
majority voted for that. | can’t understand why we would vote against something like that. | think if it were
up to me | would make all of Nashua have a lower BPT and BET; it’s the biggest job killer that New
Hampshire has so congratulations; we should do everything in our power to get 300 manufacturing jobs
into Nashua. It would be insane to vote against this.
Alderman Moriarty
With that introduction I’ll comment on a couple of things. Keeping taxes low in order to make New
Hampshire competitive with the nation; there’s nobody on this Board that can hold that mantle other than
me as far as a champion of keeping spending under control and taxes low and trying not to run the seniors
out of the city. I’ve been talking about reducing the BPT and BET for years. | absolutely 100% agree. |
like the idea of the term “revitalization,” the economic revitalization zone, something like a blighted area.
The issue that | have has to do with corporate welfare, the type of thing that citizens across the nation have
lost faith in Congress because of special favors and the tax codes that gives breaks to favored interests.
It's a non-uniform application of the law. The reason why we can’t balance our budget is because you have
subsidies of this organization and subsidiaries of that and this congressional district subsidizes that. What
happens is the general population gets stuck footing the bill. If we want to reduce the BET and the BPT all
across New Hampshire uniformly | am all for it and I’ve been saying that forever. The problem is when you
give special favors and in this particular case the ordinance is requesting that we add four properties to this
economic revitalization zone in south Nashua. The four properties are BAE Systems. If we give a tax
break to BAE then that’s not revitalizing anything, it's one of the most mature companies in the State of
New Hampshire, it's been here for fifty years, its healthy, it's not going anywhere and it is here to stay.
This bill does not revitalize anything. You say you want to revitalize Spit Brook Road? Spit Brook Road
does not need revitalization, it's doing just fine thank you. This particular property area is the most
expensive real estate in all of New Hampshire; it’s the complete opposite of revitalization. Regarding giving
the special favor, the tax break to BAE in order for them to create jobs is also not true. They have already
paid for these jobs. They eliminated 70 — 74 high paying senior people last September. Giving them a tax
break isn’t going to encourage them to hire more people, it’s already in the plan and we are rewarding an
organization for axing 74 loyal people who had been working for the company for 10, 15, or 20 years.
There is a legitimate reason to vote against this. | wasn’t going to mention all of that because | think we
are stuck on roll call with this and | didn’t want to put my colleagues on the spot by making them back me.
It's corporate welfare for an organization that has not treated their employees well recently. They kept it
under the minimum; if you lay off 75 people you have to give a press release so they only laid off 73 people
and didn’t have to make the press release. Just to show good faith | am going to abstain from this one.
