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Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 12

City Hall because | hadn’t been there and | want to tell everybody what a beautiful graduation we had in
both schools and | applaud that we were able to get our students graduated this year. | went in there, it’s
like the Taj Mahal. We have bullet proof glass and to see the Mayor | had to ring the doorbell, had to ring
the doorbell.

The renovations through the Board of Aldermen, well | hope we don’t have another pandemic, because
there’s no social distancing in there now, which it was before. You spent money after dollars after dollars.
So here’s my proposal, | propose we eliminate the Mayor’s staff, all of them at City Hall because none of
them were there during the COVID pandemic, because | asked your secretary and she told me when |
came in on Friday you weren't there which | didn’t expect, | was hoping maybe | would run into you at
Whole Foods again but the question is, they weren’t there. | made calls, none of the return calls, many
people in the City still talk to me like | was an Alderman and they said nobody calls back. So if nobody can
call back then we don’t need them, we can eliminate your whole department. There’s a big savings right
there. And | am just kind of concerned and | am kind of...

Chairman Dowd
30 seconds.

Ms. Johnson - ... and don’t understand what is considered fair price housing. Because when | was on the
board the last time, Alderman Wilshire | am sure would tell you that when we had spoke to (inaudible) |
asked what was affordable housing and the difference was like $200.00 a month. Somebody please define
what is affordable housing and what is going to be the housing for downtown. I'll come back again for more
questions. Thank you.

Chairman Dowd

Thank you.

Mayor Donchess

Well | would like to respond on City Hall. First of all the pandemic was real. People in City Hall got the
virus, some got very sick. No one died in City Hall but someone in Public Works did and if you listen to the
medical experts, public health experts, part of the reason to prevent congregation of people in a place like
City Hall, it’s not to protect the City Employees necessarily it is to protect the public. We had City
Employees with COVID-19 and had people been flowing through the building, some of those people would
have gotten COVID-19 and might have died. So this was a measure recommended by all public health
experts, medical experts to protect the public and the employees from the virus. And | think it was effective
because we never found a case where a member of the public caught it from one of the contagious, one of
the positive City Employees.

Beyond that, all of the City Employees worked during the pandemic. You are on the School Department:
the teachers worked remotely just because they weren’t — and your schools were closed — and just
because they were closed doesn’t mean that people weren’t working, in fact, many worked harder to try to
connect via on-line and the internet, remotely. So | think we did a good job during the pandemic of
registering cars, collecting revenue and delivering City services despite this disruption caused by a real
public health emergency.

Chairman Dowd

Thank you. Next speaker?

Laura Colquhoun | would like the City to do away with the Economic Development Department. This
Department is responsible for the submission of part of the bond official statement that goes to Standard &

Poors in order for the City to get their Triple AAA rating. The problem here is the Economic Development
Department is basically submitting the same report since 2016 and everybody knows that the City is not the

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 13

same as it was back in 2016. The report still states that Pennichuck was purchased to reduce rates but
does not mention that this has never happened. It did not mention that Pennichuck has just given a 5.78
increase to their bills; did not mention that both the Solid Waste and Waste Water Budgets went up $8
million dollars in 2022. It did not mention that the Nashua taxpayers will be paying out of their taxes $5.7
million for the shortage of the Solid Waste Funds that is not supportive, did not mention that the sewer rates
went up 35%. This report also stated that the City vacancy is 7%. | happened to call the Economic
Development Department in early 2020 and they told me they didn’t keep this information but apparently
they can still put it in the report. The report also states that the PAC bond is $15.5 million, | guess he didn’t
get the Memo that we got another $5 million dollars.

Most importantly this report mentioned nothing about the commercial property and their submitting
abatements. This is not a subject the City likes to bring up; however these abatements of 2018 and 19 and
the City new this information when submitting this report but they made no mention of it. | am therefore
asking the City to eliminate this Department. Thank you.

Chairman Dowd
Thank you.

Paula Johnson — 15 Wesborn Drive. Mayor, when everybody had to wear masks, motor vehicle did not in
August on the 3% floor because | went up there to register my car. So when we talk about what is fair and
equitable, we had and | keep apologizing for this that | didn’t realize about Executive Order 74 andl ama
member of the Board of Ed that’s been fighting to get these kids back in school, to get the masks off these
kids in school to try to get some normalcy back to these kids in school, but Executive Order 74 and | read it
that night at the meeting, nothing in this order shall be construed, and | know we are not wearing masks
anymore, but this is the point to prevent municipalities within the State of New Hampshire from enacting
their own ordinances related to the wearing of masks or face coverings that contained stricter provisions
than those contained within the order. This order shall not apply to the following, shall not, we know what
shall not means. We write it in every piece of Legislation just about “shall”, that word “shall” educate a
student and staff within K through 12. Any person with a medical condition or disability that prevents
wearing masks or over the face or covering.

It talks here about physical activity, but the bottom line is really the killer and also | am trying to find out
from Risk Management, you have all these barriers downtown, all of them. Where’s the handicap parking
under ADA? And that’s really this last paragraph says, any person who declines to wear a mask or face
covering because of a medical or developmental issue or difficulty breathing shall not, shall not be required
to produce documentation which is unlawful, unconstitutional, and so is six feet evident verifying the
condition. So | ask here when | was in City Hall and we had to wear masks, your employees didn’t wear
masks up in motor vehicle. And you are dictating to the citizens of this City and most of us had lost their
jobs and couldn't afford anything, and you are dictating to us about masks when Executive 74, this order
here said that people who couldn’t wear it, couldn’t wear it and you made your businesses become the
nasty ones here. The Police, wrong.

Chairman Dowd
30 seconds.

Ms. Johnson And | am glad | got 30 seconds less because | am going to bite my tongue on this one, thank
you.

Chairman Dowd
Name and address?

Dan Richardson 70 Berkeley Street, Nashua, New Hampshire. First | want to comment that the Mayor
made the assertion that there was a lot of public input on the Master Plan. | would like to challenge that

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 14

assertion. | believe that he would hard pressed to provide any evidence of that at all. | watched several of
those meetings and | know that there were very few participants on line. Moving on to Page 9 it’s
essentially here saying backward that the Mayor put on the screen however it was hardly legible. Fire, over
6 years 27% increase over 6 years. 21% increase for the Police. 18% for school. City Hall 16%. DPW
15%. During that time the past 6 years essentially this Board of Aldermen has essentially been the same,
essentially the same people, there are a few changes. But these are the people that have been approving
these increases all the while people have been losing their jobs, people have been actually not looking for
jobs anymore because they could not find one. These are people that can’t pay their taxes and yet over
the past 6 years, we have been hiding the cost of government. |’d like to tell you that local government is
not an aristocracy. You don’t deserve it. You are public servants. And this Board of Aldermen has been
negligent in controlling the costs of City Government. And also it is the Mayor’s budget, you bear some of
that responsibility.

Now we have a correction in the State Law which reinstitutes Nashua’s spending cap, thank god, we have
some means of controlling this at least limiting the amount since the Board of Aldermen and City Hall does
not seem to have the capability...

Chairman Dowd
30 seconds.

Mr. Richardson ... to limit its spending. Thank you.

Mayor Donchess

Now the reason | say that there was more participation in the Master Plan is, you can get the details and
the numbers from Community Development Director Sarah Marchant. But we have 1,000 people
registered that have put input, it might even be 2,000 but she can give the exact numbers. But that’s why |
am saying that. We did not have that level of participation in the past. People could participate remotely
outside the public meetings.

Chairman Dowd
Next? Name and address?

Gary Hoffman 38 (?) Street, Unit D. A couple of things | just wanted to point out. First of all, | did
participate in the Master Plan and was one of those 1,000 people and | have to say it was more accessible.
| had never actually participated in it before and | think it is something the City should certainly continue. |
also want to stick up a little bit for the employees in City Hall. | registered my car recently by appointment
and | think that it was actually the smoothest that it had ever been. | made an appointment online, | got right
up there and it was actually the quickest it had ever — the process had ever been and | think it might be
something the City should really continue.

As for the tax increase, | understand it is a steep increase but we — and | agree people should be upset and
angry about it — but | think we are picking the wrong people to be angry about. | think we should be angry
at the State. They are the ones that are choosing to fully fund the pension system at 100% when almost
every expert out there says 80% is fine. If they did that, we would be — the last time we checked the State
Pension System was close to 70% funded — they did their investments a little bit better, you know, probably
it would be even more than that. They are choosing to downshift this cost onto the Nashua taxpayers and
every other municipality in the State. So | guess my question Mayor Donchess is the City of Nashua joining
with other municipalities in this State to kind of bring this issue forward to the State Legislature so they don’t
keep doing things like this.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 15

Mayor Donchess

The answer is yes. | mean our delegation, five members which are on the Board of Aldermen advanced
various Bills to try to change the pension situation in various ways. All were unsuccessful largely on party
line votes. Going back, | should have made it clear that as a result of these actions taken at the local level
to cut costs, | mentioned despite the $11.8 million dollars imposed by the State, the taxes — if this budget is
adopted — we don’t project will go up 5 %%, it will be more — somewhere in the 3’s probably. More than
we'd like, again, if the State would leave us alone it would actually go down. But we think we can deliver
something in the 3’s despite the hosing we are taking from the State of New Hampshire.

Chairman Dowd
OK.

Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. | just want to address the Economic Development position in budget
You know, | have a lot of concerns about this position. It seems to me City Hall is run by three individuals;
Economic Development, Community Development, and Administrator / Director of Administrative Services.
That’s our trifecta, that’s our brain trust and honestly | think it's missing a good bit of the brain side. Itis a
disappointment to me across the board and it’s because these are appointed positions largely by the
Mayor. And | am underwhelmed by these appointments because we seem to pick people who don’t have
qualifications and we promote them into positions that they are really overdone on. And the one thing |
would say with the Economic Development position is my interface with this individual is they are very non-
responsive to public issues. And as Ms. Colquhoun said, they produce reports that are just made up
information that go out to Standard & Poors typed in, 7 years old telling us we don’t do numbers to get
vacancy rates. | have been after vacancy rates for well over a year because it is a legitimate concern for
what is going to happen to the tax rate when we run the new assessment next year.

What happened in 2020 to these commercial properties is relevant because the model run by Vision is
being based on 2020 and 2021 sales on commercial properties — 2 years. And | am not certain that it is
weighted and if it isn’t then you have to look at what the distribution is going to be and the weight that
residential properties are going to carry if there’s a shift off of the commercial properties because of what
happened in the pandemic. And | haven't been able to get anyone to answer that or speak to the vacancy
numbers. | have been told you would, | have been told there would be a discussion and there was no
discussion. And when | see the Economic Development Director producing reports that are largely false
and when you send a Right-to-Know to him you get snubbed, treated rudely, doesn’t e-mail it, sends it
through snail mail and mails it back to you so you’ve got a 10 day waiting period. He’s the only individual |
ever knew to do that. | am not overly supportive of that and | am really tired of seeing positions promoted
with people who are not qualified. | am underwhelmed by your picks Mr. Mayor. And you can bet your
bibby | am not stoked about your picking Commissioners.

Fred Teeboom — 24 Cheyenne. All the figures Mayor | have checked, double checked, (inaudible) the
spread sheets and | will send you my spread sheets and I'll send Mr. Griffin my spread sheets. | would like
to say to the Aldermen spending is going in the wrong direction. The Mayor did an interesting thing, he did
a six year average. Well | did a six year average also the traditional way, taking the budgets of six years
and compare with the budgets now, not taking out any amounts for pensions. The Police over six years
have an average of 4.4% a year. So now it’s 6.6% this year. Fire, had an average of 4.6% over six years,
because now we are 9.1%. And the School Department had an average of 3.1% over six years, 2016 2022
same years as you used Mr. Mayor. And the School was up 3.1% to 3.5%. It’s going in the wrong direction.
Now everybody keeps talking about pension funds. Let’s have a look at the pension funds. It’s true that
the State mismanaged over a billion dollars, they mismanaged by a billion dollars a few years ago. They
are trying to make that up. They also tried to get 100% vestings, this is madness. If the Federal
Government did 100% vested, they would owe over $130 trillion dollars. Nobody does 100% vesting,
especially the government, it makes no sense. Why this (inaudible) system is beyond me. Nashua
delegates the 30 representatives you can make a change, you made a change in the spending cap and
went back to the State and said the State did something wrong, they have got to correct it. It can be done,
you can’t keep making excuses and say, taxpayers we tried, go pay the bill. There’s another reason but

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 16

(audio feedback). | won’t mention the name as you asked, Mr. Chairman. There’s an Alderman, as an
example, just an example, this particular Alderman retired in the year 2015.

Chairman Dowd
30 seconds.

Mr. Teeboom — |’ll come back if | can’t finish this. He got a severance of $65,000.00 and annual retirement
of $94,000.00. His final salary was $93,000.00 his annual pay the first year he retired was lower than his
annual salary, $94,000.00 an guess what? The following year 2016 he got $121,000.00.

Chairman Dowd
Time has expired.

Mr. Teeboom I'll be back.

Mayor Donchess

Let me just say | agree with you definitely that the pensions don’t need to go to 100% that things have been
mismanaged and | think our analysis of the pension situation is similar or the same. But our delegation did
work hard to change those things. There is whole another facet to this we haven't gotten into. The State
agreed always to pay 35% of our cost and they broke that promise a few years ago that’s who they got us
into this whole system. There were Bills to restore part of the 35%, Bills to push off the deadline by which
100% had to be reached. Bills to address the so-called assumed rate of return. All those Bills were
defeated but our delegation supported all of them and we’ve got 27 members out of 400 but that’s it. Those
were party line votes actually. They did their best but there was a solid majority in the Legislature that just
said “absolutely not we are not going to help the cities and towns — period”. And discipline was enforced
and the cities and towns lost out.

Chairman Dowd
Next? Name and address?

Christina McKinney 6 Southgate Drive. My overarching question really is this, what exactly does we are all
in this together mean to our City employees? And my comments are to follow, all of this in together kind of
implies | think that we are sort of sharing the suffering. But to the best of my knowledge there’s not a single
City employee that lost any money over the last 2 years. There was no salary reduction, people weren't let
go. None of those things happened to anyone in the City. So exactly what was the shared suffering? And if
we are now looking at what is now no longer a State Funded Pension what percentage of the people who
have been for decades paying for City Employee’s pensions, what percentage of those people have
pensions themselves? So we are continuing to ask City residents to make sacrifices beyond what they
have for their own coverage, be it health care or pensions and | again ask where is the shared suffering?
Where is this we are in this together? It would seem reasonable to me at this juncture given that we are
now responsible for those pensions, that City employees to cover their pensions, it’s not my pension, their
own pensions that they take salary cuts over the next decade in order to cover their long-term benefits.
This should not be left up to citizens who don’t have those pensions, it should be covered by the people
who are going to benefit and that is certainly not most of the citizens in our City.

| spoke with John Griffin on March 25" had a wonderful conversation, quite a lengthy one and it is my
understanding ...

Chairman Dowd

30 seconds.

Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 17

Ms. McKinney ... that in September you look at surplus relief. And that you have an opportunity to make
changes. | hope you will and | hope you will consider what | just said.

Chairman Dowd
Thank you.

Daniel Richardson 70 Berkeley Street, Nashua, New Hampshire. Getting back to Page 9 which shows the
exorbitant increases over the past 6 years. It is a slap in the face to the citizens of Nashua. I’ve known that
for a long time, but | am glad that you put that in the budget book so that everybody who wants to can look
at Page 9 of the budget book, it’s on line too, to see what has been happening to wages and costs of the
different departments in the city. It is outrageous. Given that, | would still like to know, just the same, about
Human Service Agencies. In here it shows the funding from last year for a number of Human Service
Agencies in Nashua.

Chairman Dowd

That’s not part of this Division.

Mr. Richardson It’s not. | will save it.
Chairman Dowd

Thank you.

Paula Johnson 15 Westborn Drive. | have just got to bring something up here. Listening to this whole thing
about insurance and pensions. Alderman Wilshire can attend basically with me when we have meetings
with then back then Mayor Streeter and probably Attorney Bolton back then, when we were talking about
the rising costs of healthcare, this was back when | was on the Board, | got on the Board on 2002 when |
stepped down from the Board of Education to become an Aldermen. So we are talking about the same
things we talked about in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, about the rising cost of health care. And at this point in
time, 2021, we are still talking about the rising cost of healthcare, because we the public always paid for
employee’s healthcare and they always had better healthcare than we the taxpayers do. They are just now
getting the high deductibles which my husband and | had for years and years and years prior to.

And also, what we talked about back then was not just the healthcare, when | stepped down from the Board
at the end of 2005 when | chose not to run again, | came into the Chamber and | don’t know, Ms. Lovering
might remember but you probably can find the minutes buried somewhere, | came in and talked about that
the baby boomers, like | am, although | don’t like to admit it sometimes but | am a baby boomer. When the
pensions had to be paid that local state and federal were not going to have enough money to pay out baby
boomers because the money was mismanaged and not funded correctly. Isn’t this what we are hearing
right now about mismanagement from the State or whatever. Whoever mismanaged it, why don’t these
people ever be held accountable and we the people, remember it’s always we the people, we the taxpayers
whatever level because we pay taxes to the federal government they bring it back here and then we still
pay more taxes locally but we pay taxes. We the people, literally, get screwed in this City on these taxes.
So it wasn’t funded properly and it wasn’t always a Republican held House between now and when this
management, because | remember Mayor | had that conversation with you that in 2005 / 2006 it was 2
prominent Representatives that asked me to run for the State House...

Chairman Dowd
30 seconds.
Ms. Johnson ... and | was at the State House as a Democrat on that side of the aisle. And so it wasn’t

always and that’s when the Democrats held the House. So it wasn’t always just the Republicans, so what
has the Democrats done to correct this when they held the House. Thank you.

To:

From:

Re:

C. Motion:

Discussion:

City of Nashua, Public Works Division

Board of Public Works Meeting Date: February 24, 2022

David L. Boucher, Superintendent
Wastewater Department

Bid Award for Primary and Secondary Digester Coating Project

To approve the award of the Primary and Secondary Digester Coating project to
John W. Egan Company, Inc. from West Newton, MA in the amount of $339,500.
Funding will be through Department: 169 Wastewater; Fund: Wastewater;
Activity: Digester/Gas Tank Coating.

The digester complex consist of a primary digester, secondary digester, gas tank
and energy recovery building, constructed in 1999. Recent upgrades have been
made to the gas tank and energy recovery building. The primary and secondary
digester have the original coating and outer coatings need to be upgraded. The
primary digester has an outer foam coating that needs to be reapplied at certain
location where the existing foam has degraded. That will be followed by a new
exterior coating. The secondary digester has corrosion showing which will be
removed prior to recoating the entire structure. New coatings will also be applied
to the center stairwell between the structures and the bridges from the stairwell to
each structure.

Quotes for this project were obtained from several vendors who specialize in
industrial coatings. The following bids were received:

Company Base Bid Bid Alt A,B,C Total Bid
John. W. Eagan Co. | $301,900 $37,600 $339,500
R.J. Forbes $299,130 $47,910 $347,040
Soep Painting Corp | $605,000 $29,950 $634,950

The award will be given to combined base bid plus bid alternates since the low
bid quote came in significantly less than the estimated and budgeted cost.

Egan Company is the lowest qualified bidder. They have done satisfactory work
previously at the NWTF as a subcontractor on the primary tank upgrades. Several
other references were checked and found that their work to be satisfactory too.

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