Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 34
President Wilshire
Mr. Griffin do you want to respond to that.
Mr. Griffin
Non-legally as | indicated a few minutes ago, | was trained to take the Unassigned Fund Balance and
simply divide it by the - what | think is wnat we are trying to do is the General Fund Appropriations. The
other two or three items is for towns. Net School Aid, County, we don’t even approve the county
appropriations it’s added to the taxrate. So from a practical standpoint, | have been following the same
procedure that | was trained on in 2010 and continue until this day. And as for Attorney Bolton I'm not
going to speak for him, but he just mentioned that the rating agencies are very familiar with our approach.
They are familiar with our audit. They are familiar with our ability to save. We've got over $30 million
dollars in the unassigned fund balance which they very much appreciate when they give us the two Triple A
ratings from Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Attorney Bolton?
Attorney Bolton
| leave the calculations to the Finance Department, to John and his capable people here. | can say that
Nashua is somewhat different because the School District is part of the same municipal corporation as the
City. So automatically the $2.8 million dollars in annual budget that includes the School Department in
Nashua so that doesn’t have to be added in separately. The other items are small in comparison and while
| have not done the math, my strong suspicion is they are not big enough to affect the calculation. Further,
when our Ordinances require the Board of Aldermen to do certain things by certain dates or in certain
ways, thatis how can | put that. That's how you want things to be done, how you intend to do them and
the dates by which you intend to do them. But truly one Board of Aldermen cannot pass something that
binds its successors to do or not do things in a certain way.
Essentially you can pass these Ordinances and it directs those in your employ, City Governmentto get
things to you at an appropriate time when you would them, how you would want them. But you cannot
prevent yourselves from voting on wnat you want to do when you want to doit. So to the extend that the
Mayor's letter reached you a few days late, you can determine whether that makes such a difference that
you are going to vote against this Resolution, but you are not compelled to do that. You can exercise your
judgement as to whether the best of interest of the City are served by passing the Resolution or by not.
And that’s what you are elected; but your hands are not really bound because some predecessor Board
said it was the intention to have it done by the second meeting in September.
President Wilshire
Are you all set Alderman Jette?
Alderman Jette
| just would like to follow up. | guess wnat you are saying to us is that we can go ahead and vote on this
without fear of getting into trouble. But you Knowwe are a nation of laws. We are city oflaws. And we
have adopted Ordinances and we ought to abide by them. To have the CFO say that he does it his way
because we’ve done it that way for anumber of years, you know, | guess | would ask him to revisit, you
know read the Ordinance and make sure in the future that he does it according to the Ordinance. This isn’t
a State Law, this our Ordinance and it says we are supposed to include the State Enhanced Education
Amount, and the County TaxAmountin this calculation. And | think in the future you ought to do it the way
the Ordinance says itis. If you think it should be changed, then ask us to change it.
