Special Board of Aldermen 12-07-2021 Page 25
Laurie Ortolano
Yeah, | just think that, you know, that might be something we should have budgeted in the regular budget. That's just my,
you know, my feeling on them.
Chairman Dowd
So, the items are in CERF and some of the items especially larger items in CERF we have recently gone out and bonded
with a low bonding rate. Also, all of these cost items are in the legislation.
Laurie Ortolano
Okay, well I'm not going to talk again because they'll stay in the | favorite column. I'm not changing my mind.
Chairman Dowd
Okay, any other testimony in favor?
TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION - None
TESTIMONY IN FAVOR - None
TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION - None
Chairman Dowd
Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing on R-21-189.
R-21-193
AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF
TWENTY ONE MILLION DOLLARS ($21,000,000) TO FUND ARCHITECTURAL, ENGINEERING, SURVEYING,
CONSTRUCTION AND OTHER RELATED WORK FOR THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF A RIVERWALK
ADJACENT TO THE NASHUA RIVER NEAR MAIN STREET
Chairman Dowd
Okay. Yes Director Cummings would you like to come up?
Tim Cummings, Economic Development Director
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development. | put a quick
slide deck together to help organize my thinking this evening. I'm just going to quickly share my screen so it can come
up in front of everyone.
So again, I'm here before you this evening looking for authorization for $21 million for the implementation of the
downtown riverfront plan. Before | begin my comments, | think two points | want to make right off the bat because |
heard some earlier testimony. First and foremost, this project has been discussed here at the Board of Aldermen. In
fact, it was discussed with the Infrastructure Committee this fall and it has come up regularly over the last few years.
And then secondly, the monies used for this project are coming from the TIF District and you can only use these
monies within the district. So therefore, | just want to be clear that outside of the TIF District no one would be
supporting or paying for the cost of this project. This was a strategy that was implemented by the city very early on
when we endeavored to take on this type of revitalization project. I'll get into a little bit more of that as we continue
here.
So the genesis for the project. So if everyone recalls, we actually undertook a development plan. We did some
significant outreach throughout 2016 and then we adopted this plan in 2017. This was really an effort undertaken by
Director Marchant and she led a robust public engagement initiative. We had a lot of community outreach and it really
set the priorities that the folks who wanted to see the downtown river used differently outlined their priorities, outlined
