New Member Guide

Welcome to Nashua Strong Towns! However you heard about us, it’s great to have you here! The more folks we have pushing the boundaries on pedestrian friendliness in Nashua, the better!

We are a Strong Towns local conversation. Thousands of people across North America are working to make their cities safe, livable, and financially resilient. Are you ready to join the movement?

TL/DR

A lightning fast summary of everything below:

  • Get informed about Strong Towns (see getting started section)
  • Show up for meetings (town meetings and Strong Towns meetings)
  • Join the email list and Facebook page to stay informed
  • Keep us in the loop of any issues you think are important (send to our email list: nashuastrongtowns@lists.nashuastrongtowns.org or to one of our conversation leaders here)

Getting started

If you’re new to Strong Towns, we recommended getting ramped up with how Strong Towns works. Strong Towns encompasses a lot, so it’s important to have at least a rough idea of what it is. We are a group focused on walkability, removing car-centric sprawl, allowing for dense housing, and a lot more.

There are a couple of guides to follow, and depending on how much time you have, you should pick the one that works best for you. All of the guides have roughly the same information, but will include more or less important details depending on how long they are.

Many of the folks in our local conversation have followed all 3 guides, but we recommend watching at least one, even at 2x speed! Not Just Bikes gives a super fast summary on how everything works, and even if it’s the only one you have time to watch, you’ll get a good idea of what Strong Towns is and what we stand for.

Side note – if you are interested in Strong Towns and walkability, we recommend subscribing to the Not Just Bikes YouTube channel, it has many high quality videos on the subject that are worth watching.

The Imagine Nashua master charter plan

The city of Nashua has put out a master charter plan discussing the future of Nashua developments for the next 20 years. Believe it or not, it is exceptional.

We strongly recommend getting oriented with it to understand where city officials would like to take the city of Nashua, as well as to get some inspiration for your own streets. There are lots of images and it is relatively easy to read. You can find the master charter plan here: imagine.nashuanh.gov

If you take a close look, you may notice a number of images from the master plan are on this page!

Getting involved locally

Now that you’re in the loop, it’s time to get started in Nashua! There’s a lot of work to do, but Nashua is a great place with a bright future. With a bit of work, we could definitely have a beautiful, walkable city.

Join the community

First things first, sign up for our email list! The UI does look like it’s from 1980, but rest be assured a lot of great discussion happens there. We keep all our subscribers in the know about Nashua city meetings that are important to show up for, events happening in the area, and a place for Nashua Strong Towns members to chat.

We also have monthly meetings where we have speakers, take time to discuss upcoming city plans, and review some of the important city meetings that are coming up. Meetings generally happen around 6:30 on Tuesday or Thursday and are available in a hybrid format (show up virtually, or in person!).

All past and future events can be found on our events page. We recap all old meetings with meeting notes. You can see all meeting recaps on our blog page filtered by “meeting recap.”

If you ever have any questions or just want to say hello, feel free to reach out to the local Conversation Leader: Darrien Glasser, or post a discussion on our email list. All contact details can be found on our About Us page.

Taking action

We aren’t just a group looking to have fun (although we do have fun, check out some of the public events we’ve been at like the River Fest and the Holiday Stroll) – we also work on making Nashua more walkable and livable.

Nashua city meetings

The number one way to take action is by going to Nashua City important meetings such as: planning board meetings, zoning board meetings, and public works meetings.

If you’ve never been to a city meeting, that’s ok! There are lots of examples of city meetings – all are recorded and have testimonies saved online and can be watched from the comfort of your computer or phone.

For a good example of a public meeting in action, you can watch a meeting where members from Nashua Strong Towns and other YIMBY groups showed up to testify in favor of medium density housing here (direct link to testimonies) as well as provide support from the audience. We did a blog post on one of the first sets of meetings we organized around if you prefer text format.

For a list of all of the planning board meeting recordings, you can see here. We recommend watching small portions of a few meetings, and perhaps even showing up to them just to see what they are like in real life. If they are for an important issue, there will be other members of Nashua Strong Towns there, feel free to say hello!

Additional resources for town meetings

For important meetings we’ll do our best to prep members for what to expect, and things that are important to consider. Of course we will do our best to inform our members when important meetings are happening as well.

If you would like extra practice for speaking at town meetings, Strong Towns (the national group) has a free, weekly Toastmasters event. At the Toastmasters event you’ll get the opportunity to talk with others who have spoken at town meetings before, do mock speaking events and much more. If you are preparing for a town meeting, you can even ask ahead of time to give your speech to the folks in the Toastmasters meeting for critique.

If you see an issue you think we missed, feel free to send an email on our email list, or directly to your local Conversation Leader, all contact info can be found on our about us page.

For if you can’t make late meetings

It’s understandable if you’re not able to make local Strong Towns Meetings or Nashua city meetings. They are rather late and at odd days of the week. Unfortunately there’s no way around this with how the town currently works, however we could still use your help!

Showing e/mail support for public meetings

For direct help on issues, we do need emails and letters a-plenty.

If there is an issue that is going to the planning board, or another city meeting – sending an email or a real, physical bit of mail showing your support for or against an issue is very important. We’ll do our best to provide pointers when sending these emails – the same as for folks who show up to meetings.

Where the email is sent will depend on the issue and where it is being discussed. We will make sure to clarify where the proper place to email is for each issue.

  • For planning board issues, the email is: pb@nashuanh.gov
  • For zoning board of adjustment issues, the email is: zb@nashuanh.gov
  • For public works issues, the email is: dpwrequest@nashuanh.gov

Keeping your eyes open for new and important public meetings

We do our best to scour the latest public meetings that are happening, but we can’t get them all! The town discusses a LOT of issues every week, some that may be important that we missed?

All public meetings in the town for all of the town can be found here: www.nashuanh.gov/Calendar.aspx

Many Aldermen also send out summarized lists of the latest meetings that are happening. The two that send some of the best and most comprehensive lists are ward 8’s Derek Thibeault and ward 3’s Patricia Klee.

If you’d like to get added to their weekly summarized list, send them an email asking to do so! All of their contact email addresses can be found on the Nashua Board of Aldermen page here: www.nashuanh.gov/514/Board-of-Aldermen

If you see a meeting you think is important or that we may have missed, feel free to email our email lists or our conversation leader directly – nashuastrongtowns@darrienglasser.com

Community issues

We have a list of community issues on our issues page sourced from Nashua Strong Towns members like you! We’re looking to go through each issue one by one. We send emails to the planning board on a semi-regular basis for each issue on the list and include templates for the current issue.

Have an issue you’d like to add yourself? There’s a Google Form included on the issues page where you can submit information about your issue. We’ll add it to the list shortly after!

Helping with public events

We do our best to do community outreach in public events. Getting the word out to local residents to grow our local conversation and increase the number of folks who are interested in making Nashua more walkable, livable, and fiscally responsible.

Generally our Conversation Leader – Darrien Glasser shows up at these events, but we could always use more folks helping out here!

Things that would be helpful for these public events:

  • We could use more folks manning the tables
  • We could use more folks providing supplies for the events (food, crafts, signs, etc.)
  • We could use more folks spreading the word that we will be at these events
  • Even just contributing towards our admission fee
  • And so much more!

Each event is a little bit different, and requires different help. We’ll keep everyone in the loop when new public events are happening and the help we could use.

Don’t forget to tell your friends!

The more folks we add to the local conversation, the faster we’ll be able to make Nashua more walkable. If you have any friends you think would be interested in Nashua Strong Towns, make sure to send them our way, or have them come to one of our meetings. Or heck, even just show them the Not Just Bikes YouTube channel, we’ve found that’s pretty effective.

Even the smallest bit of advocacy helps our cause!

Whatever else you can think of!

At Nashua Strong Towns, we’re not omnipotent. We want community input for everything. Whether it’s our strategy, this guide, what you think we should be doing, or even how we run our local conversation.

Don’t be afraid to reach out and tell us what you think! Feel free to either post on our email list, or send our conversation leader an email. There are plenty of folks who email them regularly, so don’t be afraid to do so yourself if you have an idea. Whatever it is, we’d love to hear it!

All contact info and other info about subscribing to our email list can be found on our about page.

We’re glad to have your support!

All the best,
Darrien Glasser
– Your first local Nashua Strong Towns Conversation Leader