Thanks to everyone who was able to make it to our fourth Nashua Strong Towns general meeting. As always, it was great to have everyone there.
Action items
Discussed during the meeting there were two action items that we strongly recommend Nashua Strong Towns members take part in, meet with the mayor, and taking part to stop New Hampshire’s HB 110.
Meet with the mayor
Discussed in a previous post mayor Jim Donchess is meeting with all of his wards, week by week until the month of March! All meeting places are held in a central location in each ward, so rest be assured, the location for your meeting is probably not so far from where you live!
It is important folks from Nashua Strong Towns go and ask questions on the record about walkability, sustainability, and pedestrian safety. Not only does it show public officials there is a want for more walkable, dense living in Nashua, but it also shows the public who also watches and participates in these these meetings that desire for a walkable, livable Nashua is not a fringe concept.
If we can get at least one person from each ward to go and ask about walkability, then we’ve made quite the splash!
Some of the meetings have already passed, and others have been rescheduled. For more details on the specific days each meeting is happening, check here and click on the nashuanh.gov link.
Stopping HB 110
House Bill 110 – aptly named: prohibiting the use of state funds for new passenger rail projects would be a disaster for Nashua.
It is critical we move away from car dependence, and a solid rail network between New Hampshire and Massachusetts is a great way to start. Alternative modes of transportation ensure we have alternatives to highway expansion, which only locks us into more car dependence.
Rail in Nashua is currently being evaluated, and based on our last meeting with city planners it is quite likely going to not only be good for Nashua residents, but also profitable. HB 110 stops the idea of rail in its tracks. Bad for Nashuans, bad for the government, and bad for the environment.
To voice opposition to HB 110, you have two options:
- Show up in person in Concord this Friday at 11:45AM at the Legislative Office Building and voice opposition to the bill
- Send an email to HousePublicWorksandHighways@leg.state.nh.us voicing your opposition to the bill
It is essential we show New Hampshire lawmakers that we want rail in New Hampshire. It is enormously popular and stopping progress goes against the will of the people.
If you’re on Facebook, we also recommend joining the Citizens for NH Capitol Corridor Regional Rail group. As always, we’ll do our best to make sure members are able to get info from these groups, but if you’re looking for a primary source, lots of good discussion happens here!
Other recap notes
Building a safe bike network
One of our members discussed how their family had previously worked to help put together a map of the safe bike commuter network in Nashua, of which there is actually quite a decent bit!
We are going to work with them further to see if we can get the old map, and continue to modernize it.
By getting this map in place, we will know key areas that need improvement that we can show to the town as areas of high importance to improve.
There was discussion on the Hanger Heritage trail as well, where we discussed some of the gaps and how they could be addressed.
Tiny Nashua strolls – the farmer’s market
Last year, Nashua Downtown worked to shut down Main Street to allow a farmer’s market on Sundays for a couple of hours. There was much discussion on how this was strongly beneficial to Nashua, and how it was actually widely quite popular.
Good news, it looks like it just may be coming back again this year! There is a vendor interest form for 2023. We’ll be leaving our fingers crossed (and perhaps reaching out to Nashua Downtown) to see if we can get any more details on this.
Moving to the library
We’ve had a lot of our previous meetings at the Maker Space. A few folks discussed whether or not we should consider giving the library a shot for our next meeting.
Given a large number of the folks who come to our meetings are in ward 3, this would be convenient for them. Likewise, the Nashua Public Library is an area that is common to a lot of folks. It may be easier to convince folks to come by to the public library for following meetings.
We say – why the heck not? If there is a room available, let’s give it a shot.
Tentatively discussed was that our next meeting would be on the last Tuesday of February. We will keep everyone in the loop as to the final details of the meeting date when we have it.
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