Board of Aldermen 10-13-2020 Page 3
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
| am present, | am in this room alone, and | am practicing social distancing and | can hear everyone.
President Wilshire
| am here, | am alone and | can hear everyone and | am social distancing.
Susan Lovering, City Clerk
You have 15 in attendance.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Also in attendance is Mayor James Donchess and Corporation Counsel, Steven Bolton.
Mayor, do you wish to address the Board this evening?
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
Yes, Madam President. There are a few items that | wish to speak to you about tonight. First, on our
Agenda is a very important recognition of the people who have organized and conducted the very beautiful
kayak parade; the lighted kayak parade on two different occasions as well as other kayak events. Bev
Monagle, Trish Mullen and others. | remember one Friday or Saturday night | was at home and | saw on
Facebook a photo of what they had accomplished that first time and the beauty of it and the spontaneity
and just the commitment that it took. It just was something that | greatly admired and since then they have
built on this. This is what we are trying to accomplish with respect to our improvements along the river.
This is a great asset that people can enjoy and our lighted kayakers are showing us the way. So later on
we have a recognition for them, Madam President, which | know we will read at that time. But | wanted to
thank them.
One major item on the Agenda tonight, Madam President, is R-20-071 which is the bonding authority to
complete the Performing Arts Center and provide the parking necessary to move forward on the School
Street Housing. As we’ve discussed already, the Committee and the City have raised the $4 million dollars
that we need to satisfy the commitment on the bonding. That constitutes the New Market Tax Credits as
well as the private funds raised. Now the New Market Tax Credits is a deal that we have to close later on,
but there seems to be no doubt that we can do that and get that money. Of course, without it we would
never proceed, because the $4 million dollars wouldn’t be satisfied.
The Performing Arts Center will help us build a stronger economy, build a stronger tax base. It’s a project
as a result of a stronger economy, stronger tax base that will benefit everyone in every neighborhood of the
City. It will support our small businesses and bolster them. And it will attract private investment into the
downtown. We have already seen that occur because the School Street housing, a proposed 150 units, is
the first time a private investor has been willing to build from the ground up apartments in downtown without
a conversion; Conversion has special, very lucrative tax incentives -from the ground up, in 120 years. So
we have disinvestment in terms of apartments downtown, at least ground up apartments for 120 years.
These smaller units that will be part of the project, studios and one bedrooms and desperately needed in
our market. You will be hearing soon that that the rents for one bedroom apartments in the last ten years
have climbed 40% as compared with 20%, well 20% is still a lot but half that rate for apartments in general.
So we are in critical shortage regarding one bedroom apartments, apartments needed by very small
families, by single individuals who would like to live downtown.
