Board of Aldermen 10-13-2020 Page 57
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you, Madam President. | hate to do this but | would like to come up with another motion and that is
to re-refer this to Committee.
MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN TO RE-REFER O-20-032 TO PERSONNEL/ADMINISTRATIVE
AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
ON THE QUESTION
And the reason and may | speak to that? Thank you Madam President. We did hear in the beginning,
particularly from the Mayor and the loss of revenue with this. And | have always been of the opinion that
parking and parking regulations is not really for a City to really generate revenue. But however it is to keep
order. The reason we do have parking meters is to keep a flush of the traffic so people aren’t taking too
long or using that to all day parking, it’s for the betterment of the merchants so that they get a flush of
people that come in and come out and everything else. But why are we having a problem with all night
parking?
A lot of this comes down to right now of the things that have happened in the City where it was traditionally
a two-family, 2 % story wood framed home was reconverted into four apartments. Now when it was a 2
family home, maybe you know the old days, probably dad was the only one in the house that had the car.
It was a case like in point like with my mother’s situation. She didn’t get her license until a much later date.
But those families have moved on and they don’t live in those types of buildings anymore. Yet what was
the second floor was a whole family it’s now been turned into 2 apartments. You have the original person
that may be on the lease and then you may also have an overnight guest that may come in. And there’s
only so much linear feet in front of a house that people could park at.
So the thing is, wouldn’t it be great if the landlord’s took some of their backyards or whatever it could be
and pave them and to make it better for off-street type of parking? Some have, some have not. And it
seems like something that has gotten away from us a bit. Now if it’s somebody that’s in the service
industry, if this came before the Infrastructure Committee, | think in order to help out people in the service, |
would have been quite content to delay it an hour so that those people could have got out and still got to
their car and perhaps not got a ticket as one of the solutions. And maybe if it goes back to Committee that
could quite easily be done.
But the thing is, if somebody wants to make the choice of not driving home when they are drunk, well you
know, leaving your car out on the street is one of the penalties for not the wise choice of taking your vehicle
out to begin with. I’m glad that they sought out an alternative means of getting home but one of the things
is that they left the car there. I’m sure we are all grateful that they are paying their fine and the ticket for
leaving their vehicle there as to making the choice of driving home. But it’s a small price to pay compared
to a DWI charge.
So therefore this problem is really bigger than what it is led to believe. My committee in Infrastructure have
heard this, we’ve heard a lot of cases very much similar to this and it is why we want to have the parking
study. And | want the other Aldermen in supporting me with this, referring it back to a Committee. Parking
is such a tenet that once we let go of it, the control feature that us as a municipality have it, will never get it
back again. So any type of inroads or changes that we make in it, it will be awful hard if we allowed
overnight parking let’s say in general, you'll never get that back. And that independent study that is
supposed to come out, whatever they come out as part of the solution, we may be talking about
readdressing the landlord type of situations and looking for adequate parking. We may be talking about
permitted stickered areas where you need a pass or something like that, similar to that they do and | see
Director Cummings here.
The thing is the company that is doing this has had experience in cities that are quite similar to Nashua. So
| think anything needs to wait as not an emergency with this. So | hope that you do support me because
