Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 7/1/2021 - P10
Special Board of Aldermen 07-01-2021 Page 10
Alderman Jette
| guess, if | may, | was looking at the — this might be appropriate to bring this up now. | looked at the total
appropriations which are found on page 18 which is the amount that we talked about earlier was the
General Fund appropriation. But the total appropriations which | think, | understand the current spending
cap, the court had said it is not enforceable and this new law is going to make it enforceable once again.
Right now we are not, as | understand it, we are not under that. But if we were under it, it limits the total
appropriations to, as you pointed out, what the total appropriations were in Fiscal Year ’21 and we can only
increase that by the 3 year average, gross domestic product implicit price deflater for State and Local
Government which | had trouble trying to figure out what this is current. CFO Griffin says he thinks it is
around 2% or maybe slightly less than 2% but around 2%.
When | looked at the law, the law allows us, as you pointed out, one of you pointed out, the law allows by
10 votes to exempt principal and interest on bonds and capital investments which this year we budgeted
$18,152,055.00. If we subtract that, if we voted to subtract that principal and interest and capital
expenditures of $18 million plus, that would lower the total appropriations in the budget to — before this
change that we are talking about right now — that would lower the total appropriations to less than what it
was last year. So it would be, you know, if we adopted the Mayor’s Budget it would be .7700’s of a per
cent, you know, less than 1% less than last year’s budget. And if we adopted the amendments suggested
by the Budget Review Committee it would be about a half a per cent less. In either case, it would certainly
be less than the 2% that we would be allowed if the spending cap were currently in effect. So | bring that
up now because | am wondering whether you would recommend that we consider whether it is necessary
to make a motion to see whether 10 people vote to exempt the principal and interest and capital
expenditures as provided in the Charter from that spending cap.
Attorney Bolton
You can only do that once a year. So if you wanted to take that full total | guess you are giving yourself as
much flexibility as possible. But if you don’t want to exempt the full total, you are narrowing your options.
You can’t go back and change it later. So there’s no need to do it if this motion that is currently pending
were to pass. If you do do that, exempt the full amount of capital expenditures and service on bonded debt,
you still have not created enough space for the amount of grant money that is anticipated. So | would not
recommend doing that. | would keep all of your options open and if you run into difficulties, you can decide
whether that’s an appropriate action to take. But the pending motion doesn’t change the amount of taxes
people will pay. | think any time you can solve a problem without increasing the amount of money that you
have to have people pay, you are probably best off. We are talking about just the ability to spend money
that we can obtain from other sources, other than our taxpayers. So | would think you would want to take
full advantage of those opportunities. That’s the import of the proposed amendment.
Alderman Jette
Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Alderman Klee?
Alderman Klee
Thank you Madam President. One of the statements | kind of want to make, the thing | hear up in Concord
is be careful of unintended consequences. When this was proposed and it went through my Committee,
Municipal & County Government, we talked about the unintended consequences of something as a grant.
And we got feedback, well no, we put it into the Bill, you can exempt grants and you can exempt this. And
when | tried to explain to them the reason why | felt strongly that this Bill was going after Nashua was