Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 3/27/2018 - P10
Board of Aldermen 03-27-2018 Page 10
be a more accurate valuation of commercial properties. Hopefully the different between residential and
commercial won't be so different, so that when we finish the revaluation it will be more accurate and
fairer to everybody.
Unfortunately reports in the newspapers, the local Nashua Telegraph and the Manchester Union
Leader have featured this idea that residential property values may go up. In the Union Leader they
said 20%. So l’ve had a lot of calls and a lot of concerns expressed to me about our taxes going up
20%. Sol want to take this opportunity to explain that even though the value of properties may go up in
an ideal world, taxes should not change. The property values might go up but we divide the budget by
all of those property values and if all the property values go up, the tax rate, in fact, will in fact go down .
So even though your property value may go up, if your tax rate goes down, in an ideal world, your taxes
shouldn’t change. But the Mayor is anticipating because of this difference between residential and
commercial that | talked about, that the residential properties may experience a higher burden, a higher
share of the budget and the tax burden as a result. But hopefully with this evaluation process that won’t
happen and the Mayor has already proposed a budget which is less than what the spending cap would
allow and he is trying to keep the taxes down.
So at this point in time, we don’t know what the taxes are going to be. We don’t know what the budget
is going to be. We don’t know what the taxes are going to be and we don’t know if they are going to go
up or not. But! wanted to give that explanation. | don’t know if | did a very good job or not. But please
correct me if | didn’t do it Mayor.
The last thing | wanted to explain is we just passed a tax increment financing district in the area around
the Nashua River. And | wanted to explain to people that this is a financing district. We are anticipating
and we have adopted a River Front Master Plan to make a lot of improvements along the River. The
River is an asset that this City has. It’s a gem that we want to take advantage of so the Master Plan is
proposing a lot of improvements along the River. And the question of how we are going to pay for that
comes up. We have implemented this tax increment financing district in the riverfront area where that
area, we are establishing a kind of base tax value or tax assessment value for those properties. As
those properties increase in value, the taxes that we get from that increased value is going to be used
to pay for the improvements in that area. It deserves a lot longer explanation but | just wanted to give
people who may not have seen the Planning & Economic Development Committee presentation that
was made there, they may not understand what that was all about. | just wanted to give them an inkling
as to why we did that and how this is going to enable us to make improvements to the River Front area
and increase the value. After those improvements are paid for, the tax increment financing district can
be terminated and the increased value in that area, the taxes from that, will return to the General Fund
and benefit the City as a whole.
Alderwoman Melizza-Golja
Thank you. Just in comment to add to something about the election, | also heard some of the
comments probably Alderman Jette heard about, how we do this. The other thing | heard from people
was that they felt like there wasn’t good communication with the committee about the election even
happening. Someone said to me “Well it wasn’t in the paper until Tuesday morning” and someone else
commented that maybe we could have put it on Channel 16. | think that we need to also look at how
we communicate these unusual out-of-timeline, expected time-line kinds of elections.
Two things that | just wanted to remind people about — | don’t know if all of you received an e-mail from
NRPC regarding a transportation survey. If you did, | hope you will complete it and | hope you will also
pass it along via Facebook, E-mail, word-of-mouth, however it works best for you, so we can get as
many responses to that survey as possible.
The last thing, again transportation related - Tuesday August 3rd the New Hampshire DOT will be here
regarding the widening of the Everett Turnpike. They will be up in the Auditorium from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
