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Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 30
Paula Johnson

$80,257.

Director Fauteux

No. | believe that’s probably part of his salary. Part of it is also allocated to Wastewater and part of it
is allocated to Solid Waste.

Mayor Donchess
That position pays $100,000.
Paula Johnson

That position pays $100,000. What did this person do prior to being his title change? He was the
Operations Manager...

Director Fauteux

He’s the Assistant Director.

Paula Johnson

And what was he before or she was before?
Director Fauteux

He was the Operations Manager. It was only a title change. He’s doing the very same thing as he’s
always done.

Paula Johnson

Did he work in any other part of the city prior to this?
Director Fauteux

Yes he was a Solid Waste Foreman prior to that.
Paula Johnson

So as Solid Waste Foreman, he has the same qualifications to be an Operations Manager and to be
Assistant Director of Public Works? All the qualifications are the same?

Director Fauteux

No absolutely not. He applied for the position. There were actually a few applicants and he was by
far the best candidate and he’s doing a very, very good job. He worked in the Parks Department. He
worked in the Street Department overseeing snow operations. He has a tremendous amount of
experience in Public Works.

Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 31
Paula Johnson

Okay so the qualifications for a Solid Waste Foreman and Operations Manager is the same
qualifications coming from Solid Waste over to Public Works?

Director Fauteux

No, no absolutely not. This gentleman — his name is Andy Petrician — had the qualifications to
become Operations Manager and he was promoted as such. This doesn’t mean that any Solid
Waste Foreman would be promoted to Operations Manager. This particular individual had the
leadership skills and the background and experience to be an Operations Manager in Public Works.
Paula Johnson

So why did you change the job title from “Operations Manager’ to “Assistant Director of Public
Works’?

Director Fauteux

Because there was a tremendous amount of confusion by residents wondering what his actual role
was. So we changed the title to better define that role. That’s the only reason we did that.

Paula Johnson

So we did a title change just so the residents wouldn’t be confused.
Director Fauteux

Just to represent what the position does.

Paula Johnson

And he didn’t get a raise at all this year? He didn’t get a salary increase?
Director Fauteux

For FY18?

Paula Johnson

Yes.

Director Fauteux

Like all other positions, yes.

Paula Johnson

| didn’t cross reference it on the pages because it didn’t tell me where to go. There wasn’t a little
footer that said this is Assistant Director of Public Works .80, please see page to get the rest of it.

Mayor Donchess

Ms. Johnson the blue book shows you every position and goes through as to where those dollars are.

Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 32

Paula Johnson

| didn’t get that when | got my budget book. Kim held the budget book for me when | came back from
vacation. | ran and got it and | didn’t know there was like a little addendum book.

Mayor Donchess

The point of the blue book is to make it easier so you can see it all in one place rather than try to
search.

Paula Johnson

| know but it didn’t come in my package. I’m not an alderman anymore. It did not come in my
package. There was somebody else here. At this point | guess my question is what else can | ask
about. There might be more questions. Park and Rec. — that’s where | want to go.

As you know, myself and other people within the city have questioned about why David Deane
Skateboard Park was put by Stellos Stadium and it was on Facebook. The Nashua civic forum | think
it was and people were questioning it and my question was gee where were you people about a year
ago in August when | went to the Board of Aldermen because | was shocked. |’m still asking for
where are the minutes to that meeting. It was a body of people with an alderman on the board that
the former Mayor — | have to make sure | make it clear Mayor because you made it clear to me it
wasn’t you who set up this committee, it was the former Mayor who set up this committee. Now with
this, | have asked for spreadsheets to find out where all the money came from.

Back when | was an alderman, we passed a resolution | believe it was for the money to go into the
trust account. Now I’m trying to follow the money. Construction is $550,000. | guess my question is
who was negotiating with the Renaissance people that they should have been paying because we
sold our land to them that they should be paying for this — removal of the skateboard park versus the
citizens of the city?

Alderman Siegel

This is unusual | understand. As an alderman I’m not supposed to come up here.
Paula Johnson

It’s a question and | appreciate your answer.

Alderman Siegel

Thank you very much Mrs. Johnson. So! am Ken Siegel, Alderman of Ward 9. The reason that the
money did not come from Renaissance is because - we don’t know that it hasn’t yet but the BIDA has
authority over that project and probably Alderman McCarthy could address this also. The BIDA has
the authority and not the Board of Aldermen. Perhaps I'll see seed to Alderman McCarthy who is the
representative to the BIDA and he can clarify.

Alderman McCarthy

The BIDA negotiated a fairly complex agreement with Renaissance Development on that project
which includes at some point there needs to be an assessment done of the property and then at that
point we will exchange whatever with Renaissance needs to be exchanged. The intent was that the

Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 33

skateboard park expenses would be “borne by the project”. That maybe done by discounting the way
that the property is sold or whatever. | don’t think we’ve trued that up yet. When I’ve gone and
looked at the transfer that was done out of contingency, it was with the necessity of moving the
skateboard park before the second phase of the project takes place. So! don’t think we’ve seen the
final chapter on how that’s getting paid for.

Paula Johnson

Well | can tell you how it’s being paid for. $270,000 was transferred in to pay for it. We have
revenue from cell towers and income interest but the taxpayers are paying for this. Make no mistake,
we're paying for this. Until you get a negotiated contract that says they're going to pay for that, we
are paying for this. It’s the best skateboard park that our money can buy.

Chairman Dowd
Any other questions for Public Works?
Paula Johnson

No. I’m just looking at this whole mess here. You want to get community involvement but when
things aren’t in the newspaper and people can’t go to every meeting, how do you get the community
to be involved? When there’s no minutes of a meeting to be able to read how a decision came
through, that flies in the face of reason here. I’ve asked for these minutes since last year and you all
know that I’ve asked for these minutes of this meeting. | can’t understand if a committee meets, how
are there no minutes? Was it anon-meeting? It shouldn’t have been a non-meeting. It can’t go into
nonpublic. It is about it Alderman. It is about the budget. It’s $270,000. Thank you.

Fred Teeboom

Since Alderman McCarthy got up here and since Alderman Siegel got up here, |’d like to get into just
a little bit about that skate park. Now it’s a beautiful skate park. The contractor is paid $550,000. Of
the $550,000, the city is investing $90,000 in material. On top of that, the city is investing an
unknown amount of labor. I’m not against the skateboard park. | think having it $550,000 for a
skateboard park you might consider it a little extravagant. It’s really 3 skateboard parks. Its 3 parks.
Three skate surfaces. But coming to that $270,000 transfer, that irks me. Now at the time the
transfer took place, contingency fund to that expendable trust fund — there was a short amount of
money in that expendable trust fund. If somebody had to worry about we’ve got to move the
skateboard park. Well you don’t move a skateboard park. Once you put it down, somebody goes
bye bye swimming pools. You don’t sell in ground concrete things. You destroy them.

So Renaissance had to destroy that skateboard park in that area of Bridge Street. At that point in
time Alderman McCarthy, there was $150,000 in the David Deane Trust Fund. BIDA —| don’t know
why BIDA didn’t say Renaissance you pay for this or you pay us for the fact that you’re destroying our
skate park. But to say we needed the money to do something else, it was $150,000 available to do
whatever you had to do to site or do whatever you had to do to build a new skate park at that point in
time. | don’t understand that at all. The fact that $270,000 — either should be reimbursed to the
taxpayers — | don’t know exactly how that process would work. What should have happened if BIDA
who represents the City of Nashua — BIDA does not represent Renaissance project Alderman Siegel.
BIDA represents the City of Nashua. | know. | helped establish the resolution. | voted for the
resolution and the set up back in 2008/2009 thereabouts. They should have protected the taxpayers
— us the taxpayers. They should have said Renaissance you want to build that project and you’re
going to destroy our skateboard park, we’re going to have to build a new one. Don’t necessarily have
to pay $550,000. Nobody yet knew it at that point in time | think unless Alderman McCarthy could tell

Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 34
us different that it was going to cost $550,000. Certainly we should have asked the Renaissance
project to reimburse the City of Nashua for the destruction of the skateboard park on Bridge Street. If
that was measured to be $270,000 that’s what you needed on top of the $150,000 you already had,
fine. Let it be $270,000. If somebody wants to make an assessment of what that skateboard park
was assessed for at that time, it’s a much smaller skateboard park than they’re building now then
somebody would have said there’s an assessment. BIDA does not protect the taxpayers of Nashua.
| don’t exactly know who they protect. They’re here to protect the developers. | don’t know. Paula
has a very valid point. Thank you.

161 STREET DEPARTMENT

177 PARKS AND RECREATION

140 PINEWOOD CEMETERY

142 WOODLAWN CEMETERY

144 EDGEWOOD & SUBURBAN CEMETERIES

179 PUBLIC LIBRARY

153 BUILDING INSPECTION

155 CODE ENFORCEMENT

170 HYDROELECTRIC OPERATIONS

181 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

182 PLANNING & ZONING

184 URBAN PROGRAMS

186 TRANSPORTATION

191 SCHOOL DEPARTMENT

Unidentified Female Speaker

| just have one question. With the two pending lawsuits, what is the worst case scenario — what
would the difference be for the School District if that suit went against the city? What would the dollar
amount be that we would have to cut from the budget? Any ballpark guess?

Mayor Donchess

| don’t really have a guess on that if you’re asking me. | don’t think that the case will be successful
and beyond that. | can’t speculate what would happen.

Unidentified Female Speaker

Okay. You know what you’ve changed in the budget. | just thought maybe you had an idea so we
could think ahead in case that scenario came about.

Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 35

Fred Teeboom

Earlier on | made the statement, some could say accusation, that the 20 percent less attendance in
the school today than in the year 2000. When NASDQ did a study in 2008, it was something like 15
percent less and (inaudible) have so many in the school department. Outside of the comfort of their
own little School Board meeting, Superintendent — not you Mr. Mayor, somebody in the school
department tell us why aren’t they closing at least one school?

George Farrington

George Farrington, 24 Lutheran Drive. President of the Board of Education. Capacity is not a simple
issue. | think one of the things that gets ignored in all of this is back in the reference days that Mr.
Teeboom uses that we had a number of portables. | wasn’t planning on having to speak this evening
on this so | don’t have the exact details on that. We have eliminated a number of those portables and
so that has diminished the capacity we have in the schools. Another concern that the Board has had
over the last several years is getting our class sizes down particularly in the elementary levels. As
Mr. Teeboom | think is familiar, we also have class size issues as pertains to the contract in class
overages and things like that. Even beyond that, the Board | think generally speaking is interested in
keeping our class sizes down.

One of the issues that pushes us to that — | don’t know how far you want to get into this conversation
it could take all evening — because of the diversity of students that we have particularly in the
elementary school coming into our first grade with a variety of background and experiences and we
have first graders coming into our classes who are reading, and we have first graders coming into our
classes that don’t know their alphabet, the colors, their letters. That puts a real burden on our
teachers to try and teach and bring along and challenge such a diverse group of students. Hence Dr.
Brown was able to find a way given our capacity, the fact that we did have a little bit of room and be
able to take a little bit larger class size in some of our other elementary grades to be able to go to full
day kindergarten at all of our schools to try and give these students a more equal footing as they
enter first grade and address that problem that | spoke of earlier.

Is there a time in the future where we may decide to do something differently — reconfigure our
schools, close a school? | can’t say the Board hasn’t discussed that. We're in the transition period.
As everyone knows, we’ve been in a transition period this year and we'll be starting another one in
July. | think those are kind of the conversations that will come as we progress and look at
kindergarten and the effectiveness of it and how we want to move forward.

Fred Teeboom

| like a sane answer Mr. Farrington. | think you do a good job as a Board President. The first thing,
this conversation that we takes place in 2008. We paid over | think over $100,000 for the study.

George Farrington

That predates my — |’m just finishing my fourth year back on the Board.

Fred Teeboom

| was just telling you. Well you weren't here. You were here in 2008. You were Board President

before 2008. The other comment, there’s a law and physics. There’s a law of gases. It says gas will
take the entire area expense to all available space.

Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 36

George Farrington

I’ve experienced that this evening. Thank you.
Chairman Dowd

Anything else on the school department?
Scott Takewith

Good evening my name is Scott Takewith. | live at 26 New Dunstable Road in Nashua. So this was
the first time that | heard that there was a probably a decrease of possibly 20 percent students in the
school districts since the year 2000. So as a taxpayer at face value, you would think wow let’s cut 20
percent teachers or let’ cut 20 percent of our buildings. | think that’s only one piece of the puzzle. So
as a Board of Aldermen makes some pretty tough choices, | want to also ask. Since 2000 has our
number of English language learners increased or decreased and to what percentage? Since 2000
has the number of refugees increased or decreased in Nashua? Has the number of students on free
and reduced lunch increased or decreased? Has the students needing special education service
increased or decreased? Has the number of students needing mental health services increased or
decreased? How about the number of students that are involved in the court system has that
increased or decreased? The number of students that are currently living in foster care and needing
extra support has that increased or decreased? So | think you have to take all of this data in
consideration when deciding what a school district needs to be successful. The face of the
classroom has changed drastically since 2000 and | think we need to make sure that we have the
support so that we can educate everybody. Thank you.

Paula Johnson

Of course only a teacher would know all those figures. So if the percentage of students have
dropped 20 percent since 2000 and you now are taking 10 % teachers and now moving them — we’ve
got half a teacher so why don’t we round it up to maybe 11 teachers or round it down to 10 because
we only have half of a person. We're putting them into kindergarten. So what is the percentage of
more children with these 10 teachers now in a classroom? How many more kids are going to be ina
classroom? Can anybody answer me, Mr. Farrington?

The question is if youre moving 10 or 11 teachers out of the classrooms and you're putting them into
kindergarten, how many students are going to be in those classrooms because those teachers are no
longer needed and/or you — Superintendent Brown why don’t you answer?

Chairman Dowd

Mrs. Johnson could you please direct your question to the Mayor and he can call somebody up.

Paula Johnson

Okay. Mayor what is the percentage? If you’re eliminating 11 teachers because supposedly you
don’t need them, now we’re putting them in kindergarten positions.

Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 37

Mayor Donchess

Mr. Farrington or Dr. Brown do you want to answer? One thing we should make clear about the
kindergarten, right now there is full day kindergarten in 5 of the 12 elementary schools. So this would
equalize the education offered in all the schools.

Paula Johnson

There’s no such thing as equalization. One person can be always be smarter or less smarter than
the other person. Life is not equal.

Mayor Donchess

Well still we have some elementary schools with full day kindergarten now and others without. | don’t
know if you call that unequal or not but that’s the fact.

Paula Johnson

But you know Mayor we have some people who get nice raises in public sector, and we have people
who don’t get in private, and we have people on social security and disabilities who got zero raise this
year which isn’t equal and fair. There’s no such thing as fairness in this world.

Mayor Donchess

| think the question is by assigning 10 % teachers into full day kindergarten how will that affect class
sizes for other students.

Superintendent Brown

Thank you your Honor. My name is Connie Brown. |’m the interim Superintendent of Schools for the
Nashua School Department. We are capping the kindergarten enrollments at 18. We are also
providing para support 1 per 2 kindergarten classrooms. We’re going to balance the classrooms.
We have some uneven enrollments in some of the schools right now and we are going to use 10
classroom teachers to initiate the all-day kindergarten for all the students here in Nashua. To that
Mayor’s point, we have 5 schools currently that offer all-day kindergarten. We will expand that to all
12.

Paula Johnson

So you have some school’s classrooms that are unbalanced. So that means that you’re going to
bring them up to the 25 kid level or whatever it per contract?

Superintendent Brown

I’m not sure where you got the 25. Are you referring to the collective bargaining agreement or the
State guidelines that we use?

Paula Johnson

It would have to be the collective bargaining because any kids over that amount we pay overage, am
| correct?

Board of Aldermen Page 4
June 28, 2016

Alderman Deane

When the trash trucks were purchased we had a federal subsidy and that subsidy is now going to go away. |
believe that is what he is referring to.

Mayor Donchess

Of the total purchase price of about $3.9 million the city shares a little shy of $300,000 and we are receiving
about 85% of federal funds because they are CNG buses otherwise that number would be 80%. Plus there
are federal funds through the State of New Hampshire that are contributing about 7.5% so we, Nashua, for this
purchase price is providing about 7.5% of the funds necessary. As far as continuing operations, the bus
system has been operating since 1984 or 1985 and there has always been and | think always will be, federal
support for this system. We receive a significant amount of federal funds to operate the system every year and
that has always been the case. | think it comes from the highway fund which a portion of which is used to fund
alternate means of transportation. | don’t think the fear that all of this money is going to go away is realistic.

Alderman Schoneman

When we started in the 80’s were they diesel buses or CNG buses?
Mayor Donchess

They were diesel.

Alderman Schoneman

My specific question is anything going to go away regarding CNG? So there is no danger of CNG funding
drying up for us?

Mayor Donchess

Well this is a purchase and we will own these buses. When it comes time to replace them | am sure we will
use whatever incentives there are but right now it is our choice whether to buy diesel or CNG. If we were to go
diesel we would still get federal support but there is an incentive to go CNG because the level of federal
support is higher. It’s about $150,000 more to go for the CNG buses. Replacement of these busses could be
in 7 or 8 years from now and | think there will still be federal money and if there’s not a decision would have to
be made at that time.

Alderman Schoneman
Do we have any sense of what the cost difference between a diesel bus and a CNG bus is?

Mayor Donchess

It’s more, the CNG bus is more.

Alderman Siegel

We are getting a highly leveraged piece of capital equipment so | don’t see that the going away is much of an
issue. Mayor Donchess, isn’t it the case that the CNG is generated by our landfill?

Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 38

Superintendent Brown

We do have overage language in a collective bargaining agreement. | don’t believe that has been
exercised for quite a while not since I’ve been here in the last 9 months. | can’t speak to when it was
used before. We are trying to keep our class sizes as Mr. Farrington said at reasonable levels and
we’re hoping to keep all of them below 25 to the extent that we can.

Paula Johnson

What do you define reasonable levels?

Superintendent Brown

| believe the State gives us guidelines for what they recommend for students in kindergarten, grades
1 to 3, 5 to 8, and then so on.

Paula Johnson

But we’re talking just elementary right now because these are elementary school teachers that we’re
taking 10 of them or 11.

Superintendent Brown

Right. We are going to redeploy 10 elementary teachers to even out some of the current class size
disparities and implement all-day kindergarten for all of the students in Nashua. We have planned for
800 incoming kindergarten students.

Paula Johnson

Okay so how many teachers are we going to need altogether for kindergarten is it 10?
Superintendent Brown

We're going to need altogether 42 kindergarten teachers.

Paula Johnson

But I’m saying new teachers.

Superintendent Brown

| believe the question you asked was how many kindergarten teachers are there are going to be 42.
Paula Johnson

Okay how many new kindergarten teachers do we need?

Superintendent Brown

We're going to go from 32 to 42.