Board of Aldermen 04-12-2022 Page 27
Speaking of moral courage, my mother is against this 100% and she would kill me for my vote as a Nashua citizen that
she is. | hope she's in bed and she's not watching this because | will get a call. It will probably be about 60 minutes
tomorrow yelling at me for my vote, but | am going to support this. Thank you.
Alderman Gouveia
Thank you, Madam President. With all due respect to my colleague in Ward 2, yeah sure you might get more tax but
there's nothing to prove that we're gaining more money from that tax that would be there if the barriers weren't there.
Would people still be coming downtown to eat? Yeah, | think so. | do. | don't feel people are coming just downtown.
They eat in expanded dining. Part is okay but full is better and when you can pay off something in full and it doesn't affect
the taxpayer, | think that's better.
We're in year three now. We've now in year three going to start talking about what fees are going to look like for this
project when really it should have been looked at last year. I'll give a break on the first year because that was real COVID
innovation. | think it was a great idea. In atime where restaurants were in a full capacity, it was absolutely brilliant to
accomplish something like this to make sure it can still happen. We're now in year three and | think we need a fee scale.
| think it's long overdue before | cannot still support this. Thank you.
Alderman Lopez
| want to request a roll call and make a quick comment.
As this goes, | think a lot of the pressure really speaks to how downtown is used. There's this four lanes, bad two lanes,
or four lanes good, two lanes bad mentality. | think | miss quoting Animal Farm but we do have to look at pedestrian use
in downtown as a factor. It was commented multiple times by members of the public like | don't even know why we have
the midpoint crossings. Those can go away. | mean when you have four lanes, you really need the midpoint crossing if
you are the pedestrian and we've had a number of pedestrians that have been injured, or hurt, and we've even had a
couple of car accidents that have been trying to avoid people over the years. | think the midpoint crossings have done a
lot to mitigate. The Fire Department is a little famously said they prefer to not have them there in case they needed to
pass through that section. The Fire Department will also respond in an extremely timely manner on Ash Street, for
example, which is a one way street and does remarkable response times throughout most of the downtown area. So |
think it is important to consider that yes, outdoor dining is the current use that's being looked at but our city's master
planning and our overall plans for how downtown is going to be used does need to adjust for the fact that people in cars
shouldn't be in the same place unless they're in the cars. When you have outdoor dining, the barriers that are keeping the
cars from encroaching on the diners are an obvious and important safety concern when you look at the national trend of
the last couple of years of cars driving through crowds. That's an unfortunate reality and that's why the Traffic Department
insists on those barriers.
But they also reflect how people use Main Street because they are referred to as barriers mostly by people who are
driving through and see the outside of them. They are referred to as extended outdoor dining by people who are inside
the barriers enjoying shows, getting to see each other, listening to music, all that kind of stuff. So | would encourage
people in Nashua on either side of the issue to use the outdoor dining if it is approved tonight period because if it is an
amenity that is going to be there, it's also a different way to experience downtown. It's also a different way to use the
spaces that we have and as the owner of SFK commented in her own comment, they're welcoming. The restaurants want
to have you there. They want to see and they're an opportunity for you to see others too. That's | think ultimately what we
need to decide in terms of downtown whether we’re using it to travel or whether we're using it as a destination. Thank
you.
Alderman Comeau
Yes, thank you, Madam President. It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone in this room that | cannot support this
legislation for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we use the word “compromise” a lot and based on the definition, |
suppose this is a compromise. But | look at the work that the Task Force did, you know, over the course of probably over
20 hours when you add it all up, and then you multiply that by the number of people involved, and that's a lot of man
hours. The end result of that now with this amendment is basically that we picked a paint color. So that's the result of all
that work.
I'm reminded of | joke with my kids. They said they wanted a cat and | said no. So we compromised and cat's name is
Gizmo. You know, there's people that wanted to come up with a plan that involved four lanes of travel. The city wanted
two lanes of travel. So we compromised and got two lanes travel. There were people that wanted no barriers. The city
wanted 100% barriers. So we compromised and got 95% barriers. There was a growing contingent of people that
