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Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 18

Mayor Donchess

Well | certainly agree that those responsible should bear the burden but you need to tell the majority in the
Legislature that now because that’s a hard sell apparently and they haven’t been willing to take
responsibility. These pensions are a matter of State Law, you know, we can’t change them. They dictate
all of the details, how much we pay, what the rates are. All the details are determined at the State level.
There are various things they can do to help us but they have chosen not to do that. | agree with Mr.
Teeboom that there’s no need to go to 100% especially for the government, we could explain why. But
even at current levels, they are never going to run out of money. So we are paying hundreds of millions
really into the State that probably aren’t necessary.

Chairman Dowd

We are still in General Government.

Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. Does General Government include the City Clerk’s Office?
Chairman Dowd

Yes.

(Audio feedback)

Ms. Ortolano. OK. | guess | have a question then. | am wondering why were unable to hire a City Clerk that
had experience being a Clerk. This is a big issue for me and it’s not personal but | don’t understand a City
of 90,000 placing somebody in the Clerk’s position that had no experience. And we are paying to certify
this individual in their 60’s so for the next 4 years they can work on certification to become a Clerk and then
retire. It makes no sense at all and it is a huge deficit. | had problems at that office as well. And it just
seems to me we could have recruited somebody and gone out and actually hired and not made this an
appointment of yours, that is just picking from somebody within. It’s not fair to the citizens when we don’t
look for the most experienced people to come in here and do the jobs that need to be done. Thank you.

Mayor Donchess

Well | don’t really agree with that. First of all the City Clerk did a fantastic job during the most difficult
election year there has ever been. And | guess we disagree about the approach which should be taken but
| think it is best to appoint someone that you know, that you know can do the job, that has ability,
intelligence, will work hard and to the extent they don’t know the job will learn it. As an example, we had a
former Deputy City Clerk who had Clerk experience but she ended up leaving or being let go because she
couldn’t do the job. So at least in my judgement, intelligence, willingness to work hard, diligence and a
strong work ethic are the most important things. And the current City Clerk had been around City Hall for a
long, long time and understood well how to run the elections and all the other functions of the City Clerk’s
Office. And, again, | go back to the beginning, there has never been a more difficult election that was held
in 2020 with all of those absentee ballots and all of the State red tape regarding each ballot, keeping track
of each ballot at every stage. And the City Clerk and her staff did an excellent job. So if you are criticizing
what they did in that election, | definitely disagree with you.

Chairman Dowd

I’d like to wrap this up for the next two speakers and then we will move on to another division.

Christina McKinney 6 Southgate Drive. Just a question about the actual numbers. | don’t know is correct. |
don’t whether he is, whether you are. What! do know is | spent some time trying to calculate things and

my recommendation for a budget that is meant to be clear to citizens who are not spending all day working
on the budget would be to include what the actual percentage changes — a column that tells me this is what

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 19

the percentage change is exactly. That way | am not trying to figure out based on what the original budget
was, what the Mayor proposed budget is because frankly what | calculated doesn’t match up with what you
just told us. Sol am willing to guess that | am perhaps wrong. But because of that | am asking that a
column for next year with a percentage change be included, that makes it clear. And if that were the case,
and if my numbers are correct, there are some of these numbers that are so astonishing how much the
increases have been that | am sort of sick, it just makes me ill. So | am hopeful | am wrong, but it would be
clear if you had that percentage right in the book. Thank you.

Chairman Dowd
Thank you.

John Griffin, CFO

Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Dowd
Yes?

Mr. Griffin

Maybe | could respond. John Griffin, Chief Financial Officer. There’s no question a $290 million dollar
budget is complex and difficult to understand. We try to demystify that as best we can. We have tried in
the past, some of you may remember, we put percentage increases on the right hand side. And to the
extent that in any given year there’s collective bargaining agreements or contingency for negotiation, it
tends to make that calculation difficult. | would be more than happy to further discuss. But we found that
putting increases and decreases even on line items where there is a collective bargaining agreement that
might have been not settled over 2 or 3 years very difficult.

So as an example, those unions that have not settled their contracts for Fiscal ’22, those monies are not in
the departments in which they work, they are in contingency with negotiation. That in and of itself makes it
difficult but when | arrived a few years ago, the logic was — which is interesting — we don’t really want to let
the various unions know how much we put aside. The reality is you can figure it out. But we do move the
contingency for negotiation down in contingency and it takes Legislative action by the Board of Aldermen to
move it into the departments in which those employees work. So that alone would tend to skew the
numbers. So what | try to do under the Mayor’s direction is at the Budget Review Committee Meetings and
we will have one next week with the recap is to make sure everyone understands the increases and
decreases.

Page 9 and 10 was an effort that | put forth trying to isolate on things that could be controlled by the City
but most importantly things that aren’t controlled by the City which is the pension discussion we have. So
that’s why it is a difficult budget to look at, but we try to make sure and all of my colleagues try to make sure
when they are before the Budget Review Committee they answer every and all questions that they can. So
| just wanted to share that with the group. Thank you.

Fred Teeboom | have no difficulty reading the budget, | read it like a book. It has taken me 5 years to learn

to do it. Here’s an additional percentage number for the lady that wanted to know percentages. The
pension fund, (audio feedback) a 6 year average, same years...

Mayor Donchess
Excuse me — the what? There’s an echo, | can’t always hear what you are saying, the what funds?

Mr. Teeboom The 6 year average for the pensions — the increase is 7.9%. It is now 23.5% if you look. We
mentioned a billion dollar mismanagement of the investing, but here’s another way to really look at it. | see

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 20

an Alderman | won’t name, 2015 retired with $65,000.00 in severance and $94,000.00 in annual retirement.
The following year his annual retirement went up to $121,000.00 because there was retroactive pay that
hadn’t been paid yet. And today, this Alderman makes $111,844.00 / $112,000.00 a year. In addition, this
Alderman gets $7,349.00 in checks for his medical subsidy paid directly to the City of Nashua. So the total
retirement cost this year is $119,200.00. Compare that to social security to see how really bad it is. The
average social security recipient for all beneficiaries is $18,170.00 a year. $18,000.00. The average age
65, some of you retire for social security this year 2021, $15,582.00, compare that with the $119,000.00 |
just mentioned. You want to know the maximum social security, the absolute maximum you can make...

Chairman Dowd
30 Seconds.

Mr. Teeboom ... enormous earnings is $27,862 so $46,700 if you retire at age 70. This Alderman was a lot
younger than age 70 making now $119,000.00. That is the problem. You can’t just sit there and say we
cart help it, it’s the other guys. That’s your job to fix it Mr. Mayor, | don’t know how you do it, but if you can
fix the spending cap you can fix this problem. Thank you.

Mayor Donchess

There is a lot of focus on pensions for good reasons, but! wanted to state the converse before we leave
the subject. This issue doesn’t have to do with the employees. | already said that 80% of the money is
going to build the assets which means only 20% of the money we are contributing year by year is
necessary to cover pensions for the current employees 20%. So if we did not have to deal with the State’s
mess, the pension bill would not be $29 million; it would be about $5 or $6 million. But $24 million is going
to build up the assets with Mr. Teeboom and | agree isn’t really necessary but that’s what they want to do.
We don’t have a choice, this is a State Law and until the Legislature changes it and yes this time it was
certainly a party line vote, but 10 years ago or whatever, it has been a problem created by 10 years ago
both parties in the Legislature.

But the fix this time, you know, was clearly party line issue as it was last time. So again this doesn’t have to
do with the current employees, if we could just pay for the current employees, your taxes would go down
over 10%, over 10% of your money every year is going to build up the assets of the State Pension System
based upon first the mismanagement and then the dictates of the State Pension System and the State
Legislature that the assets should be increased above $7 % billion dollars. And I'll repeat it a third time the
problem is not the current employees it is the mismanagement of the State System, the dogmatic approach
taken by the Pension System in the Legislature in requiring that these assets that billions of dollars be
added to the assets even though Mr. Teeboom and a lot of others, Brian McCarthy the late — also the same
thing there’s no need to do this. But, you know, until the majority in the Legislature decides otherwise, this
is the system we are stuck with.

Chairman Dowd

Excuse me, you cannot make comments from the audience. Next we will go Administrative Services
Division, Department 106, Administrative Services; Department 110 Arlington Street Community Center;
Department 111 Human Resources; Department 113 Benefits; Department 120 Telecommunications; 122
Information Technology; 128 Risk Management; 129 City Buildings; 130 Purchasing; 132 Assessing; and
134 GIS.

Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. Let’s start with the Administrative Services position. | am all for
removing that office. I’ve seen a lot of what it has done and it has run costs up very high on this City. | had
the pleasure of spending 7 hours with the Director on Friday gathering information about how business is
done in the City and | have to tell you | was disgusted and underwhelmed. If you all recall this picture that
ran in the newspaper a while ago when | was working on Assessing issues, it is a picture of the Director
and her staff with thousands of property record files out on the photo with the Mayor saying that | was
retaliating against the City by doing my research. And that is was costing us $100,000.00. | then learned in

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 21

a Budget Committee Meeting when Ms. Wilshire showed a great deal of sympathy to the Director because
we had to hire a $50,000.00 contract to get permits addressed because this citizen was taking so much
time of the Assessors.

| learned on Friday that what happened here with the Director, Ms. Kleiner in these boxes, is she ordered
anything that | requested to see by placed in a special office and ordered the assessors to research what |
was looking at without ever knowing what | was looking at. In other words go figure out what she thinks
she’s looking at and report back to me. And that was very difficult for them because they had no idea what
| was looking for, the tune of probably spending well over half a million dollars. That’s absurd that kind of
tracking of a citizen. It’s absolutely absurd. And that is what we call retaliation from a citizen? | call it
retaliation of my government. She was completely unqualified for this position, another special assistant to
the Mayor that got promoted to Department Head of 6 Departments, including becoming an acting chief
essentially. This Department should be eliminated and we should go back to the individual departments we
have. This is wrong. And | will be addressing Assessing, GIS and a couple of others. Thank you.

Mayor Donchess

Well | disagree with the analysis regarding what has happened. First of all, we have attracted one of the
most qualified assessors, Chief Assessor, in the State of New Hampshire and if he’s allowed to do his job
he will do a very good job on behalf of the citizens of Nashua. Secondly, the Administrative Services
Director has made a lot of reforms and saved the taxpayers a lot of money in IT in other areas, in
assessing, there’s many more records on the internet that can be obtained, now many, many more than
could ever in the past. So a lot of changes and reforms have been made; services to the citizens have
been improved and | think most people would agree with that.

Chairman Dowd

Next?

Dan Richardson 70 Berkeley Street. So is 109 part of the discussion, Department 109?
Chairman Dowd

No that is Civic & Community Activities.

Mr. Richardson That was the previous one? You told me | had to wait.

Chairman Dowd

| wasn’t quite sure — go ahead you can ask your question on that one.

Mr. Richardson Alright. So Human Service Agencies OK. So | was looking through here at the number of
Human Service Agencies that are funded by the City. The City gives it a certain amount, it's community
care | guess. And it is a good thing, it is a good thing we do that. We have a lot of needs in the City and it
is good for the City to share of its annual budget. But | am going through here and | am looking that this
year the Girl Scouts of Green & White Mountains were cut out, they were zeroed out. And you know, | do
want to know why they were zeroed, what did they do that was wrong that would cause them to be zeroed
out? And also the Salvation Army got zeroed out. So why would that happen in favor of adding in other
agencies that had not been there before, Caregivers, | don’t know who they are. | have no association with
them, no familiarity. But why were these very good agencies cut out of the City providing a certain amount
of — a certain level of funding to them. Girl Scouts is a very good organization and so is the Salvation Army
and there was a few others in there, but in particular, why pick on the girls?

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 22

Mayor Donchess

Well the process that is used is that there is a Citizens Advisory Council which meets with all these
agencies and makes these recommendations. | mean there is no input by me as the Mayor or from the
Aldermen. The Citizens Advisory Counsel, it has become a group of citizens headed by a guy who is very
dedicated and they all are. They meet with all the agencies or at least they take applications from all the
agencies and they make recommendations to the City based upon what they see as the needs based on
the presentations made by the various agencies. Now those amounts go up and down. Sometimes
somebody gets a lot more than they did before; sometimes they get less. But has not been my habit nor
the habit of the Aldermen to question these recommendations because we are trying to make it non-
political. They way this got started believe it or not, when | was Mayor before we put this system into effect.
And the point is so that is not, you know, who knows the Mayor or who knows the Aldermen or whatever. It
is based upon and certainly reasonable people can disagree as to the best allocation and certainly maybe
you are right, maybe the money should have gone somewhere else than what it did, but this is a group of
citizens, volunteers who are giving their best effort to try to come up with a series of recommendations that
meets the needs of the community and responds to the applications and presentations made by these
various agencies. So it is not political, it is not the Aldermen, it is not the Mayor, it is a group of citizens
who make these recommendations. And we generally just follow them and enact them. | don’t necessarily
agree with everything that they have suggested but | don’t change it because the idea is we want the
citizens to decide and not inject any kind of special influence. | haven’t changed anything for the years that
I’ve been Mayor even though maybe | didn’t agree with some of it. But | don’t know, they are the ones that
listen to the presentations. Anyway so they do their best and we try to follow their recommendations.

Beth Scaer 111 East Hobart Street. Last year, Mayor, | called into your virtual budget hearing and you said
that you cut everything to the bone and then | asked about the Arlington Street Community Center which
was closed at the time and you said it was absolutely necessary. Well it is still closed, it is going to be
closed for 18 months according to your budget and the Director is getting paid in your budget $84,000.00,
$84,152.00 and what is she doing? She’s providing virtual programming, the internet is flush with virtual
programming for kids, we don’t need to pay anyone to provide that. She’s making some kits, that’s nice but
that’s a lot of money $84,000.00. The Emergency Management Director who | assume must have really
been straight out this year gets $95,000.00; the Chief Public Health Nurse $95,000.00; the Waste Water
Project Engineer $85,000.00; Plant Operations Supervisor $83,000.00; Fire Training Officer $90,000.00;
Fire Mechanic $78,000.00 and she’s working from home making virtual programs for kids. Meanwhile she
is serving Crown Hill, those kids need programming. Their parents were at home with them because you
know school wasn’t in session because you know everyone was virtual. The Boys & Girls Club was taking
these kids in. The Arlington Street Community Center could have taken them in but it is still closed. This is
a huge waste of money, It shouldn’t have been in the budget last year, it shouldn’t be in the budget this
year.

| filed a Right-to-Know request to get all the details and | am still waiting for that, you Know, her emails, her
reports, because it is hard to know even what she has been doing. And Mayor | would ask you to find out
what she’s been doing and how she earned this salary. | don’t think it was deserved. Thank you.

Mayor Donchess

Well certainly we agree that the Crown Hill neighborhood, a traditional neighborhood in Nashua is a
neighborhood that has a number of families in economic distress and needs support. And we opened the
Arlington Street Community Center to help them. Now the salary is not $84,00000 the salary is actually
$58,000.00 but like the schools, most of the service has been from online. But those services are still
helpful for the children involved. Just as a testament to some of what has been accomplished, the Director
of the Arlington Street Community Center has been working with a lot of the families at the housing at
Marshall Street and East Hollis which is affordable housing. And they were so appreciative of all of the
effort and help that the Center and the Director had given to their tenants that they donated a basketball
court to the City paid for it completely by them in back of the Arlington Street Community Center. The idea
that nothing is happening because it is online during the pandemic | don’t think is correct.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 23

Paula Johnson again. | am still here in Nashua. | want to go back to the General Government because |
thought you said that you couldn’t do that before because | have a question on that. And my question is
Great American Downtown, that used to be $40,000.00 now it’s $50,000.00. What exactly is Great
American Downtown doing with that $50,000.00?

Mayor Donchess

Well they are supporting our efforts to create activity and expand the tax base downtown. Now please keep
in mind that the downtown is a profit center so-called for the City. The City is 31 square miles, one quarter
of that, one quarter mile so less than 1% is the central business district, Main Street and the Mill Yard area.
That area of the City generates $6 million dollars in tax revenue. That’s far more than the services that are
generated downtown. Now wait, there’s virtually no students, a few students but not very many, no
garbage collection it’s all commercial so there’s plowing, police and fire. So if we through creating new
activity downtown can bring more people down there, can make people enjoy it more, can increase the
strength of those small businesses and grow the property tax base, maybe the $6 million will become $8 or
$10 or $12 and we can pay for schools in your neighborhood or police or fire or whatever it is using the
money that is generated there. So keep in mind that area generates a lot of money that helps pay for
services through every neighborhood.

Ms. Johnson That sounds good for paying schools in my neighborhood. | live in Ward 5 but my kids went to
school in Ward 4 so which one was my neighborhood, where | lived or where my kids went to school? So |
mean six and one half a dozen of the other but anyway, let that be.

Chairman Dowd
Your time was up, you asked a single question, you got an answer.
Ms. Johnson OK I'll get back in line. That’s OK.

Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. Onward to the Assessing Budget. Mr. Mayor, | think you really
misrepresented the improvements that have gone in Assessing. It has been an enormously painful
process. And you don’t understand what citizens are trying to get at with information when you look at the
improvements that were made by the Director. Property record cards that were ordinarily available to the
public in November did not become available until the end of January. | had to send emails into a chief to
request probably over 200 property record cards for him to email them to me because | had no access to
help with abatements. It was absurd and frustrating. And any email to the Director to say when are these
property record cards coming on line, we are 3 months late, there was no answer. Nobody could figure it
out. The software update which was supposed to take a few months took 16 months and we had a lot of
trouble with the software. There were a lot of errors and things that didn’t work well. We instituted a new
policy in there where records aren’t open despite our Charter saying that we can come to City Hall and
inspect records that are readily available. The Director put a 5 day Right-to-Know standing on open
records so you couldn’t go in and look at a property record file anymore and | believe that remains. | think
that’s actually illegal and that may be something | go to Court on. It’s ridiculous, you took it away. So when
you say there’s tremendous improvements down there, | think it has been hair pulling. Have you looked at
the new computer systems that are up down there, the two at the cubicles? The software is so complex that
| don’t think that any citizen is going to ever figure out how to print a property record card. I’m going to
have to spend 5 or 6 hours figuring out the menus myself; it’s not simple, no instructions at the counter.
Have you looked at how the office space is set up for citizens? You took 45 square feet of countertop that
the public could come in and use and reduced it to about 6. Where does the public put their papers, their
notebooks, their drawings, their information they want to share with an assessor, you took it all away. You
took away the research space so people like me could never go back in. You didn’t leave a computer in an
open area where a citizen like me could research away from the cubicles, you reduced the computers from
3 to 2. | am not happy with what you did in there and | don’t think you made it better or easier or simpler for
property owners.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 24
Chairman Dowd

30 seconds.

Ms. Ortolano | think it was a disaster and next I’ll come back on IT.

Laura Colquhoun 30 Greenwood Drive. | am speaking against the Assessing Budget. The Assessing
Department is currently hiring a commercial appraiser for $150,000.00 to do commercial appraisals. The
sad part is the Mayor and the other city officials are trying to hide this expense from the public by putting
this expense against an asset account. In 2011, there was an account that residents could see to see how
much money was being returned on abatements, however the City no longer shows that item. Both the
Mayor and the Assessing Department knew that they needed a commercial appraiser before the budget
was finished, however, they chose not to include it in the budget. Just like the City is not telling the
residents that the City has already returned over $3.3 million dollars to commercial property owners and
that does not include interest. It also has brought down the commercial property assessments by over $65
million dollars. Nashua residents must realize that what the commercial properties do not pay in property
taxes, the residential property taxes must pick up the tab. The City needs to be upfront with the residents
and therefore the additional $150,000.00 should be charged to Assessing. If the City wants to change the
budget to simply eliminate maybe the $150 that’s going to Downtown Improvements and the $50,000.00
going to Great American Downtown, that would keep the budget flat. Thank you.

Beth Scaer 111 East Hobart Street. So again the Director of Arlington Street Community Center was out
for 18 months and you are correct Mayor the salary is $58,488.00 plus her benefits to come to about over
$80,000.00 and she is going to be out from 18 months. All the other City employees were called back to
their positions, she wasn’t. | don’t understand. This is like a school teacher not teaching her kids. | mean
these school teachers work insane hours teaching virtual classes and later in person combined with virtual
and here she’s at the Center putting together kits and putting on videos. When you say you cut the budget
to the bone, this is just one example and | am sure, | am guessing if people comb through this they could
find a lot of other ones but this is just really ridiculous. | don’t understand, you know, you said you hired
your friends and then you were telling Mr. Richardson that you didn’t want to have your influence over the
donations to the Human Services organizations. Well | think your influence, your friends, shouldn’t be
involved in any of these decisions. These should be made based on what is good for the City and | don’t
think this is good for the kids of Crown Hill to have the center closed for 18 months. It was created for a
reason and it’s not fulfilling that reason. Thank you.

Paula Johnson Nashua, New Hampshire. Risk Management. I’ve got a concern and this has to do with the
downtown with the eating out, the dining out on Main Street. | have a problem with that. | have a problem is
that you have eliminated again, | am going to talk about it, you eliminated the handicapped parking. | have
gone back and forth with Legal and Risk Management said — | had a chance to walk Main Street this
afternoon. There is currently 1 handicapped space in front of Persian Rug Gallery and 1 almost directly
across the street in front of St. Patrick Catholic Church. The only other space posted was in front of San
Frisco Kitchen which there was more on the other side because I’ve got a handicapped plate so | know
where | would park on Main Street when | would go down to Wingates and other places. Concord block
which is currently blocked by Jersey Barriers. There very well may have been more spaces located near
ongoing construction, PAC, | believe there was down there, the Performing Arts Center, isn’t that the same
building that was a non-binding referendum on the ballot and somehow we the people are going to pay for
this? Although | was unable to access this area during my walk, last year | remember there being concern
regarding transition and accessibility from the sidewalk to the extended dining area which was rectified with
the use of portable ramps allowing for a smooth transition to the street. Again, handicap, | know in parking
lots it is 1 per 25, 2 per 50 because when | was an Alderman that $250.00 fine if you park in a handicapped
spot and you don’t have the placard or you don’t have a plate, | did that to help the people who have a
disability because some people are just lazy and they would just park there. | attached last year’s
downtown dining revision which | don’t care about. | am unaware of the amount of the spots that needed to
be provided versus what is available for the on-street parking. Given the current expansion for outdoor
dining and ongoing construction, | have reached to my ADA contact with the State to obtain some

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 25

clarification on numbers specific requirements given our current circumstances. Once | have the
information |’ll update you and this was June 15".

Chairman Dowd
30 seconds.

Ms. Johnson | complained about it before and | think all of you as Aldermen should really take a look at
making sure that your constituents who have a walking disability are able to be able to park downtown and
visit downtown. If you want to build it then you have to give the parking for the people who are disabled.
Thank you.

Mayor Donchess

Well we will check that. Now my understanding is we have the same number of handicap spaces as we did
before, but we will check that if it’s not correct. You are right we should have enough.

Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. | want to address a reduction in the Assessing Budget. | believe all of
the commercial activities and business should be subcontracted out. We continue to have some really big
issues in our commercial side and you know that there is an assessor over there that under performs
consistently. And I’ve grown really tired of it. We are in abatement season, we have abatements, we are
going to hit the deem deny date on June 30" and this assessor once again has not delivered a single
abatement to the table. | had two property owners email me this week that told me he was on vacation. It is
absurd. Why are commercial assessors not able to handle the mom and pop businesses and get us
through them in 4 months? We do not have the horsepower on the commercial side to handle this aspect
of our City business. And we are probably paying $300,000.00 or $400,000.00 grand into that. | really think
you should look at subcontracting out the commercial side and getting people who really know what they
are doing with that part of the business.

Secondly, that Assessing Office should have had a lot of furloughed workers during COVID. They could
not do inspections, they were not doing permits and they were not doing their work. And we kept them on
with full salaries despite that. That was not fair to the taxpayers. It’s not like Public Works that had to go
out there and do the job. Assessing did not and they did not do the job. And we paid full boat for that. If |
have time — IT. You really need to restore your IT Director. | am very concerned that you fired the IT
Director and you are leaving the position blank. The City is too large and has too much stuff going on in the
digital world to not have a director. You are doing all these digital upgrades. You know, you have a big
email problem. And | just filed a law suit yesterday pro se, over emails. | would way prefer not to do that. |
would love to have a discussion with the City about what’s going on with emails, but | can’t. The only way
you can do it is through a lawsuit. | asked for 2 months of emails, January and February, for Assess help. |
didn’t really get January’s. | asked in March, it took 25 days for you to recognize the Right-to-Know and
then you failed to deliver January’s records. What are you doing with the emails? Why are they all
missing?

Chairman Dowd

30 seconds.

Ms. Ortolano Those are official documents for the furtherance of City business. And in there were my
emails with the abatement applications that | had done for senior citizens that | came to City Hall on the
22™ on the 17" — the 22™ to get stamped and ended up 28 days later arrested. You didn’t get my email on
the 17", you didn’t get my email on the 20", they weren’t in there and apparently you didn’t get my phone
call. What is going on with our data.

Chairman Dowd

Time has expired.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 26

Ms. Ortolano Thank you.
Chairman Dowd
Last question on this Division?

Dan Richardson 70 Berkeley Street, Nashua, New Hampshire. | am not sure where it occurs in this book so
you might help me with it. What | am looking for is the financial payments that were estimating for lawsuits
this coming year, Fiscal ’22. We have to provide for that so if you’d be kind enough to tell me where in the
Budget Book, under what Department that I’d find that number.

Mayor Donchess

Legal Department.
Mr. Richardson That would be under the Legal Department. That would be on Page what?
Chairman Dowd

Mr. Griffin? That actually was in the previous section, the Legal Department. | am not sure they are found
there anyway.

Mr. Richardson Page 63 someone said?

Chairman Dowd

Corporation Counsel is going to answer the question.

Mr. Richardson I'd be interested in the amount; hopefully it shows that.
Steve Bolton Corporation Counsel

Steve Bolton, | am the Corporation Counsel for the City, essentially City Attorney and | am seeing a person
in the Legal Department. | am not sure | fully understand the question. Most of the lawsuits we handle with
the lawyers who are on staff so there’s no, in most cases, there’s no outside legal fees that we are paying
to deal with the situation when the City gets sued. Now in what | hope is the very unlikely event that there’s
a judgement against the City, it would depend on the circumstances what the alleged wrong doing is on the
part of the City where the judgement would be paid. So for example, if a paving contractor who we hire to
do the 25 or so miles of paving of streets each year, if one of those contractors were to say that, OK the
contract called for payment of $100.00 per mile for certain quantities and there was a dispute over whether
that contract provided 10 miles of paving or 15 miles of paving, when that dispute got resolved the payment
would come out of the paving account so somewhere in the Public Works’ Budget or in an Special Bond
Proceeds Account where the money for the paving program was held.

Other types of judgements against the City would come out of other accounts. So a tax abatement appeal
that results in a refund of taxes paid to a taxpayer would come out of what is called the overlay and that’s
money in addition to the budget that is added in to the amount to be raised in taxes for the express
purposes of paying the expenses of dealing with tax abatement appeals and any refunds that are ordered
or agreed to in a settlement. As | say, different types of litigation judgements can be funded from different
sources depending on what the nature of the case is.

Mr. Richardson OK | think | understand what you are saying. You are saying for whatever Department that
it is associated with that money would be coming out of that Department for payment of judgement from a
lawsuit?

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 27

Attorney Bolton

There are all sorts of situations but to be overly simplified, yes it would be the Department involved.

Mr. Richardson Is there anywhere in this book where it shows the summation of the proceeds for law suits?

Attorney Bolton

When you say “proceeds” you mean where we have sued someone and got money from them?

Mr. Richardson No, where the City has had to pay.

Attorney Bolton

Yeah | would not refer to that as a proceed. So! am not sure | understand. | don’t believe there’s any one
place you find that.

Mr. Richardson Mr. Griffin?
Mr. Griffin

John Griffin, CFO. There is not one place in a budget book. There are obviously contracts, bonded,
indebtedness, Risk Management.

Mr. Richardson Do we make any preparation in a budget for any suits? Is that something that can be
foreseen and then budgeted?

Attorney Bolton

The overlay account is a good example of that. The whole function of the overlay account is to pay for
refunds and expenses of litigation concerning tax abatement appeals. So in the case of the overlay we take
a look at the pending abatement in any given year, what the trend has been for the prior years, how many
remain pending, what the volume of those are, the total volume. So for example, a few years ago we had
several years backed up on Public Service of NH’s abatement appeal. And the total exposure there was
just over $3 million dollars, not the difference in the assessment what they were claiming they were owed
by refunds. We had some concern about that and we were trying to provide for that in overlay if it turned
out that we had to pay more, there’s a State statute about how that gets added into the budget and has to
be appropriated in order to satisfy judgements. Happily in the case of the Public Service Company’s appeal
we were 100% victorious and ended up refunding a total of $0.00. That doesn’t always happen, we are
happy and satisfied when that does happen.

Mr. Richardson OK thank for answering the question.
Chairman Dowd

Yeah | wanted to wrap this area up because it’s 9:00. | want to move on, we have got a lot of divisions left.
If you have short questions?

Gloria (unknown spelling of last name) Not a short question just a comment; 3 Roedean Drive, Nashua,
New Hampshire. | would like to state that we should keep the Director of the Arlington Street Community
Center. The fact that it has been closed is inaccurate. We just, a couple weeks, opened Arlington Street
Community Center on the Memorial Day Weekend with the Director there. We have 150,000 boxes of food
that we distribute from the Arlington Street Community Center as well as a lot of other programs. So to say
that the Director is useless or we don’t need it, that’s simply not true. Anything you want to talk about or
know about the Arlington Street Community Center, you can get that information from the Director as well