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R-17-087

RESOLUTION

SUPPORTING EFFORTS BY THE STATE LEGISLATURE TO REDUCE THE
DOWNSHIFTING OF COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE NEW HAMPSHIRE
RETIREMENT SYSTEM

CITY OF NASHUA

In the Year Two Thousand and Seventeen

WHEREAS, the City of Nashua employs a large number of municipal and schoo! district
employees;

WHEREAS, the City of Nashua has enrolled most of these employees in the the State of
New Hampshire Retirement System;

WHEREAS, the City of Nashua made the decision to enroll these employees in the State
Retirement system based on the promise of savings to the taxpayer due to the State of New
Hampshire’s contributions to the system and the promise of return on the investment of the trust

fund;

WHEREAS, the trust fund has been operated in such a way as to currently contain funds
accounting for less than 60% of the anticipated liabilities of the retirement system, as opposed to
the City’s Board of Public Works Retirement System, which is funded to above 85% of its
anticipated liabilities;

WHEREAS, the State of New Hampshire has recently established a “get well plan” to
restore the trust fund to fully cover the liabilities of the retirement system in a relatively short
period by assessing yearly costs on the City which are approximately three times what is needed
to maintain the plan were it fully or nearly fully funded;

WHEREAS, the downshifted expenses now account for an additional 15 million dollars
in expense to the taxpayers of Nashua over and above what our proportional share was 9 years

ago;

WHEREAS, the Board of Aldermen of the City of Nashua holds that it is fundamentally
unfair, and unnecessarily burdensome to demand that the current residents of Nashua pay
simultaneously the retirement costs of the past, the present, and the future due to the State’s
handling of the trust fund; and

Board of Aldermen Page 7
June 14, 2016

President McCarthy

Mr. Ball, please address your comments to the Board.

Attorney Ball

| just wanted to share those, thank you. Peter did offer to work with the Substandard Living Conditions
Committee and drafted the appropriate language, language that he felt at the time was agreeable with
some Aldermen and some of the inspectional services representatives but the original proposed
ordinance was sent to this Board with no changes. | am here to formally request that you either table this
tonight until the 28", send it back to the sub-committee to defer the work or you deny it outright. | feel
that it is incomplete and | feel that you have a roomful of people here that are willing to work with you
even though the proposal on its face is to set up a fine system against property owners in town. They do
agree with the reasoning behind it but they just want some input and tweak it to get it right. The major
points of Peter's memo are number one, the discretion because it gives the appearance of favoritism.
There is a concern with new inspectors with how you go ahead and set up the inspection intervals,
selective enforcement, whether its complaint based or regular intervals. We feel that with some input this
could be added to the Bill. We are hoping to actually have mandatory warnings and that way everything
is On paper and everything is on the record and is searchable and reviewable and there is nothing
hidden. Of course, the major course is the need for an administrative appeal even just a limited notice
fast track appeal right now would be helpful. The district court process is not the appeal: you are getting
fined, your fine is being increased and you have to go to district court and you are being slightly being
pressured into paying the fine as soon as possible otherwise it could potentially go up. To the best of my
knowledge there have only been a handful of cases last year that ended up in district court. | understand
part of the reason behind the legislation is to prevent or limit the amount of times people end up in district
court but | think the reverse is going to happen, you are going to have people that are forced to pay a
fine in a quick period of time so it doesn’t increase and they will be willing to pay more money just to go
to district court and have their voices heard. They want an opportunity to voice explanations; you have
issues such as tenant sabotage as they have mentioned kicking a hole in the wall, issues such as
contractor delay, natural disasters and things like vacations and sicknesses. This falls into the third
point, the time element of the ten days to comply. Well ten days is fine for some things but probably too
quick for other things like cracked siding and things like that are not really crucial. As the first woman
who spoke tonight mentioned Section 8 and | am pretty sure that Section 8 has a thirty day window so
we are looking for a sliding scale and we think with more input and better definitions we can give a
seriousness approach; health and safety, obviously those are crucial and need to be fixed as soon as
possible and allow the property owners to give explanations and come up with a reasonable solution and
a fourth major point is obviously the fine system. You have this time occurrence versus an event
occurrence so if the fine; every single day it’s a new fine for the same occurrence. | mean we
understand where you are coming from and the need to get these things done but it just seems like with
a little bit more input and of course allowing a little bit more input whether it goes back to the sub-
committee or even if it’s just tabled; there’s a whole roomful of people who want to give input and
obviously many of them know a lot more about different construction issues than | do but it seems like
there could be more thought into the fine process. Of course if you had an appeal you could suspend
the fine during an appeal. There is no process, if you go to district court and you win your case there is
nothing in there about being reimbursed in case you had to pay a fine. Looking at the ordinance itself it
borders on a violation, it’s a constitutional violation of due process. You are obligating people to pay
these fines, there being increased every day possibly and then after the fact they end up in court. The
court system seems to have worked for a long time now, obviously this is an attempt to limit the amount
of times that this ends up in court but as far as you know, you will probably have due process challenges
and in my opinion it’s not likely to survive. The ordinance is very vague and the person responsible for
the violation; it could use some definitions, it’s going to assume it’s the property owner every time and
once again they have been told that the inspectors are reasonable and understandable but it’s just too
open-ended and too ripe for abuse. With some better language the ordinance could be properly drafted

RESOLUTION R-17-087

WHEREAS, the downshifted expenses represent a burden on the constrained budget of
the City which will require the City to reduce existing services in order to keep the budget at its
maximum allowable annual increase.

NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Board of Aldermen of the City of
Nashua that said board hereby endorses any and all efforts by the State Legislature to reduce the
burden placed on the taxpayers of Nashua by the downshifting of the costs of the retirement
system, including but not limited to:

1 - Restoring all or part of the State of New Hampshire’s portion of support to the
contributions to the fund.

2 — Extending the “get well” period to reach full funding of the trust fund to cover the
liabilities of the plan.

3 — Reducing the funding percentage target for liabilities from 100%.

4 — Increasing the anticipated rate of return on the fund.

RESOLUTION:

PURPOSE:

SPONSOR(S):

COMMITTEE

ASSIGNMENT:

FISCAL NOTE:

LEGISLATIVE YEAR 2017
R-17-087

Supporting efforts by the state legislature to reduce the
downshifting of costs associated with the New Hampshire
Retirement System

Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy

None.

ANALYSIS

This legislation indicates the support of the City of Nashua for any and all effort by the state

legislature to reduce the downshifting of costs associated with the New Hampshire Retirement

System.

Approved as to form:

Office of Corporation Counsel

By: Dy 2 (har he
Date: Apannveutoe. [q ad i"

A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, January 10, 2017, at 7:00 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.

President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia Piecuch; Alderman David Schoneman led in the Pledge to the Flag.

The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Tom Lopez was
recorded absent.

Alderwoman Mary Ann Melizzi-Golja arrived after the roll call at 7:32 p.m.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.

REMARKS BY THE MAYOR

Mayor Donchess

The first item | wanted to address is the two documents that | left on your desks regarding the Safe Stations
Program. | wanted to provide you with an update on that. The first is the report done by AMR regarding the
status as of January 9" but it’s really the evening of the 8" because this was presented early on the 9". It
shows that as of the night of the 8"" 75 people had reported to the Safe Stations Program and in the interim two
days 5 more have come in. Through the end of 2016, 48 had reported so you can see that in the first ten days
or so of 2017, the numbers have really gone up, over 30 people have reported just so far in January. On one
day, | think it was January 2", 8 people reported to various fire stations. You can see from the numbers that
the ages vary very widely, there are more males than females. The vast majority of the people are from
Nashua but some are from elsewhere. Everybody involved is doing an extremely good job with this. The
firefighters have become very engaged in it and are really helping out. Assistant Chief Rhodes the other night
was describing what he called “compassion fatigue” and what he was describing was that the reaction of some
firefighters to the many months that they were and have been administering Narcan to people who are in an
OD status. This started in the spring of 2015, so it’s going on two years now. Assistant Chief Rhodes has
described for people showing up repeatedly at apartments/houses where there is someone who has died or
someone who is unconscious, sometimes they have to revive them and sometimes the person’s reaction to
being revived is not favorable and they can become hostile and he thought that some firefighters were
experiencing what he calls “compassion fatigue” but that this situation has been aided by the Safe Stations
Program because now people come to the fire stations, mostly to Amherst Street, East Hollis Street and to
some degree Lake Street. At least for the firefighters there and of course everybody in the department hears
about this, they encounter people who are involved with substance misuse as individuals and often they are
accompanied by family members or friends and they are really needing and seeking help. Mike O’Brien and |
went to visit Amherst Street a couple of weeks ago and the firefighters there are very happy to be involved in
the program and they feel that they are not just dealing with the OD situation with Narcan but are involved on
the other side. Harbor Homes has been extremely good. Our project has been modeled after Manchester but
| think in reality we have a better program because Harbor Homes is so effective in within a couple of days or
less finding the appropriate treatment course for an individual. The people who report do not have to wait at a
shelter for a week or two weeks, they might be there for a night or two but in fact, Harbor Homes is doing an
extremely good job in trying to develop the treatment plan for each of these individuals and as you can see
there have been routed to various places, some to intensive out-patient, some to in-patient, medical detox and
things like that. AMR was very instrumental in helping us decide exactly how to approach this and they keep
very accurate statistics. One interesting thing is that at least as of Monday, nobody who had reported to the
Safe Stations Program had actually OD’d. There was no person who reported to Safe Stations Program, later
OD’d and was saved by Narcan by the firefighters. You will see that there are some people; | think 10 who
have reported more than once or reported twice. Experts in the field say that is typical of a drug as powerful as
heroin. | went to Oakland, CA to visit my daughter and | went to get a haircut and the guy said that he used to
be heroin addict and he had taken two years to get clean. Now clean for ten years he owns his own small
business but he said his older brother is still addicted to heroin all of these years later. | wanted to show you
what Harbor Homes has prepared with respect to the budget or the cost of the program. Keep in mind that

Board of Aldermen Page 2
January 10, 2017

when we discussed this, no one really knew how vast or how many people would show up or what this would
take. Any numbers that Harbor Homes was providing were nothing more than estimates. No one anticipated,
for example, that 8 people would show up in one day in Nashua to the Safe Stations Program. They estimate,
based on the experience that they have had that the cost of running this over a period of one year is $331,000.
In terms of revenue they have a BDAS funding, that’s the Bureau of Drug & Alcohol Services and they think
that will cover about $200,000 so they are $131,000 short. They are not asking us for all of that money. At the
beginning when Peter Kelleher and | were discussing the assistance that they might need, he suggested that it
would be helpful if the city would contribute towards transportation cost and the number he gave me was
$20,000 but | think in the end it’s probably more than that. | did propose a resolution to transfer them $20,000
for the current fiscal year but that’s not a firm request and he and | will work out something and come forward
with something more specific. There is definitely going to be fundraising towards this $131,000; we think we
can raise some money privately through maybe pancake breakfasts and other ways. He says that when
people hear about the program they are beginning to provide at least smaller contributions on an unsolicited
basis. There are a number of ways that gap to reach the $131,000 can be closed. At the Finance Committee
we also took up a proposal from the fire department to provide security at the two stations where civilian
employees are there to interact with the public, East Hollis Street and Lake Street. Alderman Cookson
pointed out that | did not mention this when | first discussed this and the reality was that | wasn’t really thinking
about that as an operational cost. When they did their security review as they visited Manchester, our fire
department, they found that there is much more security up there. This is a step that we should probably have
anyway but it’s somewhat Safe Stations related because it probably wouldn’t have come up if we weren't doing
this. The proposal is to soend about $40,000 to provide security with a phone system and the like at the two
fire stations so civilian employees can see people coming in and people can’t just come unimpeded into those
two fire stations. The committee asked some questions and we may get more detail or that cost may be
whittled down by some degree but that is a collateral cost. | know that many of you have expressed interest in
this so | wanted to make sure that you were up-to-date on what is going on.

As far as tonight’s agenda, there are a number of appointments on the agenda. One that we discussed the
last time is the Board of Building and Fire Code of Appeals. Those people say “new appointment” because it’s
a new Board but they are currently on one of the existing Boards that we are merging, those being Dan
Bergeron, Scott Cote and Kevin Slattery. | think all of the other appointments are all good people and | think
will do a good job for the city. Finally, | thought | would mention the ordinance that authorizes a left turn from
Charron Avenue to Amherst Street. We enabled that left turn as part of the project out there and that went into
effect some time in December and people seem really happy with it. | think Alderman McGuinness will bear
that out. Then we discovered that left turn was actually prohibited by ordinance but legal says this is not an
unusual situation. There have been other sort of “holdover” ordinances that contradicts something that we
have done in a traffic fashion so this is basically just to clean things up and make sure that the ordinance
supports the traffic movements which are taking place.

| would only add that there is community meeting that | wanted to go to this evening and | was hoping that if
anyone had any questions for me or thoughts that they could be mentioned now so | can leave and attend the
other meeting which only takes place once per quarter.

RESPONSE TO REMARKS OF THE MAYOR

Alderman Moriarty

| am curious about the staff that are traveling to Mysore, India for a month. | remember when that resolution
came up for discussion, which | voted against, we were assured that it wasn’t going to cost us, the city,
anything for them to travel there. Is the staff that are going there for a month going to receive their normal
salary?

Mayor Donchess

| think it is three weeks and the one person that is going is Sarah Marchant, Director of Community
Development. The trip is being paid for by the Rotary Club, this is not a city sponsored tour but she, Ms.

Board of Aldermen Page 3
January 10, 2017

Marchant, applied to the Rotary Club to become one of the people who are travelling there and there are three
others who are not city people who are going. She will, yes, be paid her salary during that period of time.

Alderman Moriarty

So while she is there will she be able to fulfill her normal duties at City Hall?

Mayor Donchess

Not as well as she does when she is here. She will be in contact with us and she’s developed some goals and
objectives that she can hopefully accomplish while she is there but obviously at a distance of 10,000 miles she
won't be doing the same level of supervision as she does when she is here.

Alderman Siegel

I’d like to echo the concerns of my colleague, Alderman Moriarty and | think he said enough. | voted against it
for a good reason and it appears it was even a better reason.

Thank you, Mayor, very much for the report on the Safe Stations Program. | would point out that the
hometown breakdown indicates that in fact Nashua residents are not the overwhelming participants in this.
There are 40 Nashua residents out of 75 listed here; 80 total. That's on the order of 55% or so. Admittedly it’s
a large percent but | was sort of surprised at how many participants are outside of Nashua, it doesn’t surprise
me that we have some because that would be natural but we’ve got 10 people coming from Manchester which
is substantial and they have their own program. We have people coming from Haverhill, MA and Woburn, MA.
Again, | appreciate that people want to find help in any way possible but help also costs some money so
hopefully we can get some help for that because we don’t want to see people just tossed out on the street but
on the other hand we are paying for this.

Mayor Donchess

As you pointed our 40 out of the 75 are from Nashua. We modeled this after Manchester and they don’t turn
anyone away. | believe their statistics for 2016 were that they had about 800 reports of which 339 were from
Manchester. Some Nashua people have gone up there and reported to their program. It’s impossible, | mean
somebody shows up and the say | am from Hollis or Dracut you don’t say sorry we don’t help you. | can check
this for sure but | think this might reflect their point of origin, in other words, a lot of the people who report in
here don’t have a stable living situation so they may have come from Dracut but been in Nashua for a week or
two weeks in a homeless or semi-homeless situation. | believe that the way they are reporting that is that if
they don’t have an apartment in Nashua even though they are here | think it’s reported as wherever they came
from. There might be more people that are associated with Nashua than the 40 but | can check that out. The
bottom line is that no one involved thinks we can turn people away...| Know that you are not suggesting we do
that but | am just explaining it.

Alderman Siegel
| want to make that clear, | am not suggesting that we turn people away.

Mayor Donchess

| get that you are not. In discussing it, it would be great if it could only be Nashua residents in a certain way
but when we open it up to anybody can show up we know people from other places are going to show up as
well.

Alderman O’Brien

Mr. Mayor, | have to compliment you on this program. This seems very successful. To help this successful
program more | don’t want to turn anyone away for lack of any medical coverage. Is it time to look at whether

Board of Aldermen Page 4
January 10, 2017

this is part of the health network that we could maybe access some of those funds to help contribute to this
program? Should we set up a committee to look into that?

Mayor Donchess

We could. The city’s fire fighters are taking people in but | think if you talk to either the chief or the assistant
chief you will find that no call has ever been delayed as a result of the Safe Stations report. The average pick-
up time is 11 minutes and 15 seconds. They have never had a situation where they have had to wait to go out
on a Nashua call because of this. | think we can say that as of this moment the city has not spent any extra
money on this. Certainly | think we should contribute to the transportation costs as | originally suggested in an
amount to be determined but Harbor Homes does have grant money, they do have the Bureau of Drug &
Alcohol Services money and they are looking for more. | think we can help raise some money and maybe
contribute some but if you would like to have a committee to kind of look into where additional funds could be
obtained that would certainly be very helpful.

RECOGNITION PERIOD — None

READING MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING

MOTION BY ALDERMAN WILSHIRE THAT THE MINUTES OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN MEETING
OF DECEMBER 27, 2016, BE ACCEPTED, PLACED ON FILE, AND THE READING SUSPENDED
MOTION CARRIED

COMMUNICATIONS - None

PERIOD FOR PUBLIC COMMENT RELATIVE TO ITEMS EXPECTED TO BE ACTED UPON THIS EVENING

President McCarthy

Before | call on speakers | would like to point out that there is an expectation that an additional resolution, R-
17-085, “Supporting a Bill in the State Legislature to Reduce the Cost of Registering Aircraft in New
Hampshire” will also be acted upon this evening so if anyone wishes to comment on that they may.

MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT AND PLACE ON FILE THE SAFE STATIONS REPORT
PROVIDED BY MAYOR DONCHESS
MOTION CARRIED

Mr. Mike Rosenblum, Chairman, Nashua Airport Authority

| would like to speak in favor of the resolution of extending the master lease with the Nashua Airport Authority.
The extension of the lease would give the Authority more flexibility to negotiate long-term leases with any
potential new businesses and existing businesses on the airport grounds. In addition, the other resolution
regarding the HB-124 in the state legislature, the Authority has not discussed in detail the details of the actual
bill; however, we are very sensitive to the fact that the Authority receives about 10% of our operating budget
from state funds in addition to matching funds from the state for capital improvement projects. The Authority
would like to be able to preserve those funds coming down to the local Authority and anyway that the
resolution would restrict that we would be able to consider that in either endorsing or not at this point in time.
Overall we are in favor of adjusting the fees so that we are more competitive with the states surrounding us,
primarily Massachusetts, and this bill will start to help us in that direction.

President McCarthy

| would just point out from an informational perspective that | think things are changing on that bill as we go
through this process and as | understand it the current draft simply reduces the millage rate on aircrafts less

Board of Aldermen Page 5
January 10, 2017

than 10 years old and does not touch the other portions of the registration fee. Is that correct, Alderman
LeBrun?

Alderman LeBrun
That is correct.
Mr. Weston Lu, Brookline, NH

| have a hangar at the airport and | am the Treasurer of the Boire Field Condo 2 Flying Association. | would
like to speak in favor of both the extension of the airport lease and the house bill regarding the registration
fees. My association hopes to be at the airport for a very long time and extending the airport’s lease will allow
us to have a more productive negotiation when our lease comes up in a few years. As far as the aircraft
registration fee, | hope that you have heard how uncompetitive New Hampshire is in that regard. | have been
working on some spreadsheets on behalf of Alderman Schoneman and the Nashua Airport Authority and the
business jet owners that we would like to base in Nashua and Keene and Portsmouth; if | soend $40 million on
an airplane in New Hampshire it costs me $300,000 to register it the first year and in Massachusetts it’s
$350.00. This bill will soeak to the registration fee and obviously giving up that revenue is a hard thing to do,
we will need to replace it but as business owners you all know that there are fixed costs or variable costs that
you consider and perhaps as a separate bill they will address things like fuel flowage fees and taxes that might
replace that revenue. The bill today will address the registration fees and it will help make New Hampshire
much more competitive than Massachusetts where nobody wants to base their airplanes except the accounts.

Mr. Farrell Woods, Nashua Airport Authority

| am also the owner of a condo at the Nashua Airport so | am speaking of R-16-084, to extend the master
lease for 99 years. | think it will maintain values of the properties at the airport. It will give us stability and it will
give the Nashua Airport Authority the ability to negotiate lease extensions with our tenants and basically
preserve that tract of land as an airport for quite some time. | think this is a very positive piece of legislation.
With regard to R-17-085, | do look forward to reducing the registration fees for aircraft based in New
Hampshire. We would like to attract some of those newer aircraft from places like Bedford which have a lot of
very nice airplanes. | think a bill like this would be step towards doing that. | hope this could be followed up by
some additional legislation to look to make the whole package revenue neutral. | think that is something that
the Nashua Airport Authority could support.

PETITIONS — None

NOMINATIONS, APPOINTMENTS AND ELECTIONS

Appointments by the Mayor

The following Appointments by the Mayor were read into the record:

Nashua Arts Commission

Rachel Rendina (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
31 Daniel Webster Highway, #624

Nashua, NH 03060

Board of Building and Fire Codes Appeals

Daniel Bergeron (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020

2/ Webster Street
Nashua, NH 03064

Board of Aldermen Page 6
January 10, 2017

Scott Cote (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
39 Tenby Drive
Nashua, NH 03062

Kevin Slattery (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
4 Berkeley Street
Nashua, NH 03064

Board of Registrars

Gwendolyn Mikailov (New Appointment) Term to Expire: December 31, 2018
11 Appletree Green
Nashua, NH 03062

Citizens Advisory Commission for Community Grants

Michael Apfelberg (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
7 Edson Street
Nashua, NH 03064

Environment and Energy Committee

Gary Lambert (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
32 Columbia Avenue
Nashua, NH 03064

Michael Seidel (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
19 Jeremy Place
Nashua, NH 03064

Sylvie Stewart (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
44 Spring Cove Road
Nashua, NH 03062

Daniel M. Weeks (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
7 Shattuck Street

Nashua, NH 03064

Ethics Review Committee

Sindiso Mnisi Weeks (New Appointment) Term to Expire: January 31, 2020
7 Shattuck Street

Nashua, NH 03064

MOTION BY ALDERMAN CLEMONS TO ACCEPT THE APPOINTMENTS BY THE MAYOR AS READ
AND REFER THEM TO THE PERSONNEL/ADMINISTRATIVE AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

ON THE QUESTION
Alderman Clemons
With regard to the Building & Fire Code Appeals, I’ve decided to move the names into the committee.

Although those gentlemen have been interviewed by us previously, this is simply the replacement committee
that we voted on. If any of the members of the Board of Aldermen have questions for these appointees |