Special Board of Aldermen 12-07-2021 Page 8
It's not a done deal and | want to praise Patricia Klee - I'm sorry, | don't know everybody's name - for her forward
thinking. This land should be conserved for the City of Nashua. There should not be any alternative to that. It should
be conserved. Thank you for your time.
Chairman Dowd
Anyone else who wants to speak in favor?
Steve Dixon
Steve Dixon. Thank you. Yeah and my wife in the back rows is shrinking right now as talk. I'll put the video on. Two
things - Clark Field. We did this already in the north end. The neighborhood walked Clark Field. But my question is
this, how many people live in $600,000 houses? That's what they're there - each house is going to be $600,000.
How many houses - first thing with all due respect, | don't live in a house — Mayor do you live in a $600,000 house? |
just don't see that the plan that they put it on there is going to work.
And then the second point | will make and then I'm done is the track. | go down Columbia Avenue every night, every
day and see the traffic around the school. They have moved St. Chris and Nashua Catholic have combined. They've
put another grade in Nashua Catholic so now instead of 7 and 8'", now it's 6", 7", and 8'". You really need to take a
look at this. You really need to take us - I'm done. Thank you.
Chairman Dowd
Anyone else that wishes to speak in favor of this legislation?
Carrie Spier
Carrie Spier - 9 Columbia Ave. This year and a half, especially with COVID and some injuries that | had to my leg, |
ended up walking through Greeley Park every single day with my husband. Every single day, sometimes twice a day.
The amount of people that we see in the park every day, and they don't obviously don't come from our neighborhood
all the time, they come from all over the place. We've seen multiple weddings on a single day. The kids are playing.
We've seen people hunting for mushrooms. People tracking birds. Parents teaching their kids how to ride bikes. It's
such a well-used park that it's worth everything to expand it because we've seen times when there was so many
things going on that not enough people had places to set up their areas that they weren't having celebrations for.
That's the main point of this.
The second point that I'd like to make is that during a number of meetings, we've heard people say that by putting in
these houses they'll be paying more tax and therefore everybody else will save a little bit of money on their tax. | think
that's a little naive. We all know taxes don't ever, ever go down. 50 years ago now, taxes have never gone down. It's
a balance between the assessed valuation and the tax rate, but it never goes down in total. So | think that's a bit of a
naive argument.
The third thing that we've heard also mentioned is that by having people move into those houses, it'll free up less
expensive houses for people that are retiring. My next door neighbor and my behind neighbor, both bought those
houses within the last year and they are not from Nashua. They are not from the people that own less expensive
houses. They were people from Massachusetts and from out of town. So that argument is also | don't think it's going
to bear any fruition. People who are buying less expensive houses are not going to move into a $600,000 house and
take on that kind of debt at retirement age. So | think it just behooves us to save Greeley Park and not just save it but
to expand it because it's being overused even now. We've actually seen many Sundays with there’s a jousting team
in there. Where else can you find jousters and who even know they still existed? So | think it's worthwhile saving that
part for the creative use that it has. Thank you.
Chairman Dowd
Anyone else would like to speak in favor of the legislation.
Michelle Swallow
Hello, everyone. I'm Michelle Swallow. I'm from 92 Concord Street. Thank you for having this time for us today.
Really this group has said so much about how valuable the park is, what it means to the city, what could be added by
expanding on it? | guess the question | would ask you is why wouldn't you give us the option to move forward? We're
