Board of Aldermen 6-23-2020 Page 34
| think we need to get this contract approved to maintain morale and also to keep these guys coming back
to maintain the high level of professionalism you need to attract the right people year after year, as
replacements and new people. So | am strongly in favor of the contract, strongly in favor of the Union and
the negotiations were reasonable, fair and let’s just get it done.
Alderman Lopez
So | think | am struggling with this a little bit more than some of the other Aldermen who have spoken
because while | understand what the Fire Department’s value is to community, it is potentially you have two
close to superheroes in the world and it is usually freighters and police. And making sure that the
firefighters are treated fairly and making sure that they are one of the municipal services that we offer at a
high level of quality, | think it’s essential. | mean we’ve been seeing like a 3,000% increase in fireworks that
are being purchased and launched from urban areas. That is concerning to me because those can come
down and start fires obviously. We have had a record heat wave, we had a fire in Jaffrey, we provide fire
services to our City very effectively and are called upon as a regional leader as well.
So | understand the role that the firefighters have what | haven’t heard a lot about is, at least during this
motion, the impact that it is going to have on the taxpayers. | was not on the Board during an economic
downturn, but | was working at a homeless shelter at the time and | saw what happened when people lose
their homes. | saw what happened when they weren’t able to make ends meet. | am very concerned about
the impact that COVID-19 has had on multiple industries and across multiple sectors. | am not of the
opinion that we are done with it yet. | think we are still very much likely to see another outbreak in New
Hampshire. | say “another” with the understanding that we didn’t have one last time; we closed down and
prevented one from even happening.
There’s so much that is not understood about this that | don’t think this is fair to compare this to any other
year. | think | heard several people say, every year is going to be a tough year. Well this year was already
going to be tough year, because we had the health insurance issue. That was a big problem. And last
year we narrowly managed to dodge the bullet in some ways by getting more support from the State. But |
don’t know that if we get ourselves into financial trouble here, we can really count on the date because |
would imagine it is going to be in the same situation itself. So | am really concerned about what we are
doing with the tax rate and | am really concerned about how this is going to impact taxpayers. | don’t have
an easy answer and | can’t really come up with a specific recommendation for any other Aldermen right
now, because | am still listening. Because despite my understanding of how important it is for taxpayers to
be able to balance their budgets and to be able to stay in the City, that the fire department protects so
carefully. You don’t really have a place to stay if the fire department is slow to a call or not able to respond
to something.
This is obviously a very difficult situation. | don’t think it’s quite as simple for me as — are firefighters good or
are taxpayers good? | think we have to navigate very carefully here.
Alderman Clemons
Thank you, Madam President. So this evening, we earlier we passed a motion to put the money back into
the Fire Department Budget and then we moved the appropriate amount of money out of there into
contingency, in other words for this Budget if it passes the money is there. So we’ve done Step 1. And it
wasn’t going to be very easy. | remember throughout this conversation it’s always been a matter of where
are we going to find the money? Where are we going to find the money? And there was a couple of
alternatives that | had suggested earlier where we could have bonded something in place of, or done some
money shifting around and things like that. It ended up being a lot simpler and part of the reason it was a lot
simpler was because we were able to save some money in the healthcare line.
A good portion of the reason why we were able to save on the healthcare line is because of the Fire
Department and its employees. There was a sheet that we accepted | think at the last meeting, where it
showed that the Fire Department’s employees do the Lion’s Share of the high deductible plan that the City
