Special Board of Aldermen 09-28-2020 Page 27
they found that our Mayor would build a garage for them on the Nashua taxpayer’s dime. This clearly
shows that the Mayor and the City Officials don’t care what Nashua taxpayers actually want. $31 million
dollars for a PAC and $2,500,000.00 for a garage is not what we want. | oppose both projects. Thank you.
Chairman Dowd
Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak in opposition. | don’t see any one on the list that
has their hand up electronically. Is there anyone that would like to speak in opposition? Seeing and
hearing no one.
Bob Keating _| did, | rose my hand sorry Mr. — Alderman Dowd. | had my hand up, I’m not sure why it didn’t
appear.
Chairman Dowd
Because your picture ....
Bob Keating I’ve got raised hand up, so I’m not sure.
Chairman Dowd
We can’t see you. Go ahead, state your name and address for the record.
Bob Keating Alright, thank you. The name is Bob Keating and | am a member of Granite State Organizing
Project. And in a way | am actually speaking in support but the Aldermen should have received a petition
that was signed by 28 residents of Bronstein and we are very specifically linking the Bronstein project with
the School Street Project which is outlined in the petition. And specifically that we are not speaking of the
Performance Arts Funding and | certainly agree with what Alderman Cleaver said about separating out the
two functions. The $2.5 million dollars was not in any original proposal. It only came at a time when
abutters said, “Geez, we are concerned about the loss of the parking spaces’.
So we believe that the $2.5 million dollars would be better spent not to assist the private development but
in a variety of other ways including within affordable housing. It doesn’t make sense to be spending money
for people who can afford market rate housing when we have many people who cannot afford market rate
housing. If a development is built on the School Street Flats, it should be built so that families from
Bronstein could live there, which means there should be apartments at 3, 4 and 5 bedrooms in
development and the building should be done in terms of timing that it should be built first so that Bronstein
families could move directly from their homes. They could stay in their neighborhoods. There will be a
speaker, Faustin Chartley, who is a resident who went door to door to get signatures about this proposal
and | think he will speak eloquently about well what | think all of the Aldermen and | think anybody could
imagine what it’s like needing to move when it is not your choice. And for many people in Bronstein, that
has been a factor of life many times for them.
We think this is a wonderful opportunity for the City since they own the property to work with Nashua
Housing & Redevelopment Authority in a way that will make the easiest transition as possible for the
residents of Bronstein. We just think overall the City has spoken many, many times over many, many
years about the need for affordable housing and here’s an opportunity for us to do something. It’s ironic we
are speaking about parking because for Bronstein as many of you are aware, under the new proposed 216
unit one, there will be 100 less parking spaces there then would have normally been allocated and that was
a variance. And here we have the difference here that there was sufficient political voices to get an
influence to make some changes. But we just think that $2.5 million dollars is not a good idea and at least
from what | understand here and there actually is upfront costs because the property is going to be sold for
$900,000.00 and that’s the revenue that is going to be used initially to pay for the bond or the interest on
the bond. So we just think this is an opportunity for the Boards to get together with the residents and try to
