Special Bd. of Aldermen — 10/26/15 Page 6
| think it is important to know that, and for the public to Know, that was heard and that is what is being put out
there. It will be privately operated with accountability to a Board. The City will not be involved in the day-to-
day operation or programming or set designs and lighting and all those technical aspects that we don’t have
expertise in.
Mr. Cummings
Just one final comment, | wanted to make sure | put it out there to the Board of Aldermen to the general public,
that if people want to get involved and you want to volunteer or in some way contribute your time, resources,
we would very much welcome that. We will have the Facebook page available if you want to reach out to us or
otherwise you can contact me and | would be happy to align you with the appropriate entity depending on what
your interest level would be.
We would very much love to see volunteers get engaged with this project. We would welcome that, thank you
Mr. President.
President McCarthy
| would just like to comment, it is sort of unfortunate that the project has had to be a little quiet; the fund raising
effort had some initial feasibility work that had to be done. Again the next phase of it is identifying some major
donors. There is the temptation to just run out and do these things and | think it was utterly important that we,
as Director Cummings said, step back and do it right. | want to thank Director Cummings first of all for all the
work that he has put into it and also the members of the Steering Committee. | hope that | don’t forget
anybody, Mrs. Hall, Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja, Alderwoman Klee, Alderwoman Wilshire, Alderwoman Kelly
and Alderwoman Schmidt have been in there with the meetings. Also, Mrs. Carlson and | see Mr. Lannan and
| think | saw Marylou Blaisdell back there somewhere, all of whom who have been heavily involved in the
Steering Committee work so far.
The Operations Committee, as Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja said, gave Mr. Cummings more than enough input to
work up the RFP and | think we have finally come to a fairly good structure for that. We are going to next take
on the architect and construction manager selection and | think the fund raising committee has gone far ahead,
and from what we see, this is actually a serious project. There is real commitment of money to make this
succeed. There is a structure to make this succeed and | think it is going to result in something that will be a
fantastic addition to our downtown. So thank you all who were involved and please, everybody keep it up.
Alderwoman Kelly
Sorry | know you were wrapping up. | just had a question about the combined $6.5 million, I’m not sure |
understand how that works. But you bring up a good point, so the capital campaign says $2.5 million, what is
that combination?
Mr. Cummings
So if | may Mr. President. The sources are essentially 3 or 4 depending on how you look at it and how you
want to account for it. You have private individual contributions, you have foundations, you have tax credits.
So the $2.5 is looking to be generated through a combination of CDFA State of NH tax credits and
contributions from private individuals or corporations. Separate from that is another source, which is a New
Market Tax Credit which is private funding and that is very similar to the CDFA type model except it is a federal
level type program.
