Special Board of Aldermen 12-07-2021 Page 3
plot of land in question is parcel 57-3 15 Bartlett Ave. This 13 acre parcel of old growth forest is effectively a
peninsula that juts into Greeley Park surrounded on two sides by Greeley and on a third by the city on property parcel
65-216. You the aldermen of Nashua, have a unique and singular opportunity. Never before has this plot of land
come up for sale and no matter which way your decision goes, it will never be up for sale again. You will go down in
history. The 15 of you Aldermen Caron, Cleaver, Clemons, Dowd, Harriott-Gathright, Lu, Jette, Kelly, Klee, Laws,
Lopez, O’Brien, Schmidt, Tencza, and Wilshire, you will go down in history as the ones who decided the future of
Greeley Park.
125 years from now will be the year 2146. It's unfathomable to think about what life in 2146 will be like. Just like the
aldermen 1896 trying to comprehend life in 2021. But in the year 2146 during the 250" anniversary of Greeley Park,
how will the aldermen and citizens of Nashua remember you? Will they look down on you with contempt and disdain
for allowing a condo development to be built in the midst of Greeley Park? Or will they look down on you with
admiration and pride for having had the forethought and long term strategic thinking to keep Greeley Park as it is for
generations to come to save this rare urban forest and for having done your part to help combat climate change?
What do you want your legacy to be?
There's a petition on change.org to stop the development and have the city purchased the land and officially add the
forest to Greeley Park. As a 5 pm that yesterday, there were nearly 3,000 signatures on it. Of those 1,248 where 44%
were Nashua residents with 70% of those 872 signatures outside of Ward 3. On top of these were 1,138 signatures
across the US and 448 across the globe from 42 different countries. Now you might not care what people from
Germany and England think about this, but people from 42 different countries...
Alderman O’Brien
Thirty second.
Paul Metzger
...care right about the decision that you're about to make. You know what the right thing to do is. You know what the
highest and best use of this land is. | hope that you have the courage to do what is right.
Chairman Dowd
Anyone else who would like to speak in favor of this legislation?
Penny Ferreira
Good evening. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is Penny Ferreira and | live at 3 Birchwood with
my husband John Ferreira. I've been a resident of Nashua for almost 21 years now.
With all due respect, | Know it may seem like you can't affect the purchase and sales but Greeley Park belongs to the
citizens, the taxpayers in the city. Through my research of trying to determine what | was going to say, it came to my
attention that the builder has to follow the zoning and the land use that the people have every right to determine and
also through their voice how the land will be developed as the people see fit.
Also, this has been so quickly done. | only found out about it three weeks ago and | wonder the change.org petition
was wonderful and | thank Paul for doing that, but how many of the other people in your individual wards don't even
know that this is happening, and how many of those people actually go to Greeley Park on a regular basis and use it
for all different types of programs. | respect - my mother's a realtor, my husband's a builder. | respect the fact that the
family has the right to do whatever land that they inherit but also as a taxpayer, | have a right to say how any land is
developed in this town and especially over where Greeley Park is where it abuts in three places with 43 houses
slotted to go in. Any work that is done there, any development is going to greatly change the aesthetics and the
function of how the citizens can use that park. Also, | want to refer to the Master Plan that just got approved two
months ago. It is loaded with verbiage about that the recommendations and the conservation preservation element is
to identify most of the scenic areas in Nashua, determine if the existing land meets the regulatory structures sufficient
to protect the scenic attributes in the face of development. It's the job of the aldermen to protect that. | can't tell you
what to do but | can ask you to listen to the voice of the people that you represent. If you read this in detail, the job is
to protect such scenic areas through acquisition and conservation easements.
Now we can ask the builder to put in a bigger easement but when you walk down behind the swing sets in Greeley
Park, you're going to see the houses. Trees are going to come down. You're going to have a traffic issue.
