At the time of the mayoral primary, I was approached by an older gentleman outside Charlotte School while I was holding a Mike Soucy sign. He approached to encourage me to stand near “the runway” because he wanted maximum visibility for the sign.
I acknowledged the merits of what he said and cited my reasons for the location I chose. To shore up that anti-Donchess connection, I offered to give him the sign I was holding on a wood post while I fetched an ordinary yard sign for myself from my car. He declined my offer, saying he had to be somewhere, but I took advantage of an opportunity to introduce myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent. Suddenly, he had an extra 59 seconds to spare!
He said he was from the Kessler Farm condos, which is a huge community, and Dowd was kicked off the condo association. According to this resident, he was playing hooky way too much, perhaps like the likenesses of former Reps Cote and Gidge. I made a mental note of that to save for a rainy day.
I later received a hot tip that there are squadrons of resentful residents in Kessler Farm and that Dowd is NOT a popular guy there. I’ve been doing lit drops for myself, Mike Soucy, Alderman Comeau, and private citizen Sean Rogers, all rolled into one packet at targeted addresses throughout Ward 2. I won’t bore readers with all the details involved in how much time, attention, and resources are divided up, but a vote is a vote. What I learned from this hot tip was that I should be focusing on the condos as they are a gold mine of Dowd critics.
Kessler Farm, being the big community that it is, has hundreds, if not thousands, of voters. I ran out of literature and had to resupply. It took three separate trips to cover the territory. I first started with the northwesternmost part of the area, as that’s where Dowd lives. My plan was to lit-drop but knock if it was obvious that someone was home. An example of evidence of that would be an open front door with a closed screen door. A barking dog is sure to get its owner’s attention, sometimes making the doorbell unnecessary. One such situation opened the door for some very helpful discussion.
Related: Alderman Dowd Is Out of Touch With His Constituents and the City of Nashua
“Good afternoon,” I said in the light rain as a little dog barked at me through a screen door. I greeted the resident, introducing myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent and handing her a packet. She was quite happy to talk. For her privacy, her identity or address will not be shared, but she was most helpful in telling an oral history of the Kessler “Enron scandal.”
What I heard was that Dowd was the president of the board of directors, the very elected body charged with oversight of the management company and its affairs, as any intelligent person would suppose. When you’re the captain of the ship, YOU are ultimately responsible for what happens. Remember what I said about him playing hookey? This management company was hemorrhaging money, the lost money being the association’s treasury funded by unit owners’ monthly maintenance fees. Think of it like the city losing(spending money) on a new school and arts center and YOUR resulting property tax bill.
Exterior maintenance was being neglected, and it turns out that the contractor for such handyman services was allegedly the spouse or in-law of the property manager! No conflict of interest there, mind you. This resident cited several examples of unit owners taking little exterior odd job matters into their own hands(at their own expense) out of frustration with their maintenance requests being delayed or ignored. There were even some large projects with lousy workmanship that later needed expensive corrective action. This makes one want to ponder.
Dowd’s homepage comment about being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
What I noted above was what I heard on day one of three days of canvassing. Day two was rather uneventful, and I ran out of literature. Once resupplied, I set out on day three to complete the project, saving one particular subset of the Kessler Farm community for last. I saved it for last because a certain sibling and fiscal agent of a certain former elected official that I never voted for lives there. Let’s just say it’s a relative of someone who doesn’t like me broadcasting her voting record if you know what I mean. (wink, wink, nod, nod) Anyway, while completing that part of the area, I ran into another resident who happened to be outside. Having seen her earlier from down the road, I thought I recognized the unit number(which I will not share) where she resided.
I greeted her with a “Hi, are you from unit #__?” When she answered in the affirmative, I smiled and introduced myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent and handed her a packet, which had my business card paper clipped on top. I haven’t felt so much love in a really long time, but this resident was amazingly glad to meet me! Time stood still as I didn’t have to be in any hurry. We must have talked for a good 20 minutes or so. I listened to all kinds of dirt on Dowd’s condo association presidency and learned that there’s still pending litigation against the management company. This resident went door to door with a petition to remove the at-the-time board of directors and collected signatures from almost all of the community. Again, canvassing this large territory is a big task, especially when it involves required in-person contact. And I found it extremely amusing that this “certain relative/fiscal agent of a certain former elected official” did indeed sign the petition to remove Dowd! How sweet was that to hear!
Alderman Dowd is not only bad for Ward 2, but he has absolutely no business being on any sort of committee that handles money, let alone serving in leadership! Think of him as a “fiscal cancer” in city hall. Once he’s gone, he will have more time to play golf with that “certain neighbor,” and Nashua can begin picking up the pieces from the flotsam he helped create. If you or someone you know has ties to Kessler Farm, please boost and share this message. Saving Nashua is an all-hands-on-deck effort.