A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, November 27, 2018, a 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch; Alderman-at-Large David C. Tencza led in the
Pledge to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 13 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Schmidt was recorded
absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
| just wanted to mention a couple of items tonight, first on our agenda is the proposed expansion of the
elderly exception. This is an outgrowth of the State ordered revaluation that was recently done. As we know
the average home went up 23% but the range results across the residential sector among all the
homeowners was very wide. Some went up only a little bit, some went up significantly more than 23% and
what that created was a situation in which some of elderly residents, some of our senior citizens, have seen
their taxes increase significantly because the amount of value above the exemption has expanded
considerably.
The way that the exemption works is right now if someone is 65 years of age and makes $50,000.00 or less,
the first $155,000.00 of value for their home is exempted from taxes. In the age range of 75 to 79,
$180,000.00 is exempted from taxes; and for anyone 80 years or older $225,000.00 is exempted from taxes.
Now of course our objective in creating this elderly exemption is to make it possible for senior citizens who
have lived in our community, have worked here, and spent their lives here, to stay here and stay in their
homes without being forced out because of any property tax burden that they have to bear
In a high property tax State such as New Hampshire though this creates a dilemma in every community
because for every dollar of tax relief which you give to the senior citizens, the rest of the tax payers have to
bear the burden. So I’ve put on your desk an analysis a number of the larger communities in the State of
NH and you will see that currently Nashua has the largest elderly exemption of any city in New Hampshire.
Compared to Manchester, Nashua is in the column third from the right, compared to Manchester, instead of
the $155,000.00 for the 65 year old senior, they give $109,000.00.
However, because of the revaluation we are proposing to expand the elderly exemption, raise it by about the
same amount as the average home went up in the revaluation or about 25%. We are proposing to do this in
a two-step approach; we would raise it this year, for this tax year which means people wouldn’t have to pay
their full tax bill or we would give a refund and then we would raise it again next year. So the two raises
together would equal 25%. So for someone in the 65 year old age range, 65 to 75 the exemption would go
from the $155,000.00 that we have now to $175,000.00 to $192,000.00 next year. For persons 75 to 79 it
would go from $180,000.00 to $203,000.00 to $224,000.00 and for someone 80 years of age it would go
from $225,000.00 to $254,000.00 to $280,000.00. So if a person is 80 years old and makes less than
$50,000.00 if their home is assessed $280,000.00 or less, they would not pay any taxes at all.
Currently the tax relief that we provide our seniors costs about $3 million dollars loss in revenue; this
proposed expansion would move that to about $3.7 million. Now the Budget Committee has recommended
this and | hope you will follow the recommendation of the Budget Committee. | was asked a couple of
questions that | think | should answer now because they could come up again.
First of all, why not do the entire raise this year? Well the problem is that the tax rate has been set, the
budget has passed and this was not in effect so the taxes that we are collecting this year are not the budget
and the tax rate that was established this year do not account for this.
