Finance Committee - 4/17/2019 Page 12
There are terms in this agreement that | don’t like, you know to be clear. And | found disappointing and
frustrating, but | understand why they are there and | respect the rationale and the reasons. At one point early
on, | believe Alderwoman Gathright had asked a very specific question relative to “is there going to be a fiscal
agent fee”? At that time | had indicated “no” because that’s what | understood to be the case; actually right
after that | learned that it was the intention of City Arts Nashua to charge us a 2% fee or actually a little bit
more than that. Corrected it originally started at 4% and obviously that was a little disheartening to hear; |
corrected the message with Alderwoman Gathright as soon as | learned about it and then worked really hard to
try to position ourselves to be in the best position possible. So what you have is 2% and capped at $40,000.00
and | think that’s reasonable; we verified that with our professional fund raising consultant, | even got off the
phone with her not an hour ago to reaffirm this; that she recommends it. She typically sees something in the
order of 5% in these types of contracts and she thinks that City Arts Nashua is providing value and we should
be willing to work with them and they’ve done a great job thus far. So with that being said Mr. Mayor, | am
asking you to endorse this contract.
Alderman Klee
| was at a few of the meetings where we talked and discussed this and it did start at 4% and there were a
number of experts there that told us it could go as high as 10%. We knew that that would not happen; at least
we prayed it would not happen with City Arts. But the benefit of having them so close and so on, | think this
2% is a good plan. They will help promote the project and so on which is also a benefit of it and | think we
would work really well with them and | would echo the recommendation of approval of this.
Alderman Caron
Thank you. So when | first saw the Memo it said value was 0 and then when | was reading the contract it said
up to $40,000.00. So as I’ve said before my concern is we are spending all this money and anticipating getting
a lot of money. And now an agency that has come forward to act as our fiscal agency, which is all part of the
Performing Arts Center is going to get $40,000.00 and | am still waiting to hear how much money do we have
going towards the Performing Arts Center. That’s my concern. And | know obviously you can’t be doing all of
this and you know it’s nice to have this. But | am just wondering why we don’t have a fund set up within the
City like we do a lot of projects and there wouldn’t be any cost because staff has to do all of this work? | just
get a little nervous about this and | know that the Mayor and | have talked about it. | want this to happen; |
want it to go right, | just have all these fears If you can alieve another one that’s fine.
Mayor Donchess
In this case, this is not City money that would be spent this is contributions from individuals that go into a
501(c)3 which is the City Arts Nashua and they hold the funds for the benefit of this project. So this is a 2% out
of private funds that are contributed. | think | would add that part of what we said is we would keep the private
funds that are raised out of the City’s hands, that this wouldn’t become a City project in that respect. So in
order to do that, we have to use a 501(c)3 and this is the consequence of it. But the City money spent on this
project would not be subject to this 2%. This is only money that is contributed in the form of a charitable
contribution.
Alderman Caron
Which we don’t know.
Mayor Donchess
Well | Know we can say that no City money would be spent in this fashion because the City money is not
subject to this.
