Board of Aldermen 07-13-2021 Page 2
Alderman Tencza
Present.
Alderwoman Lu
Present.
Alderman Jette
Here.
Alderman Schmidt
Present, in the Chamber.
Alderman Laws
| am present, | am on Zoom and | am alone and minimizing my contact with Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Cleaver
| am present via Zoom because of mobility issues, | can hear everyone and my daughter is in the same room.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
| am present in the Chamber.
President Wilshire
| am here.
Susan Lovering City Clerk
You have 11 physically in attendance and you have 4 participating via Zoom.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Also joining us this evening is Mayor Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steve Bolton. Mayor did you
wish to address the Board this evening?
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
Yes Madam President. Thank you very much. | just have a couple of items to discuss. But first | wanted to
discuss the line item veto that | exercised regarding the bottom line of the Fire and Police Departments. As we
have gone into this year and we have discussed this numerous times in the past but this was, of course, an
unusually difficult budget year because we started with a $12 million dollar hole created by the State of New
Hampshire, in other words a big property tax increase imposed from Concord. And that consisted of a $4.5 / $4.4
million dollar increase in pensions, costs unrelated to wages, unrelated to current employees as well as a $7.5
million dollar reduction in School Aid.
So my objective in approaching the budget this year was to try to balance, and | know you all have the same
difficult job, the need for quality services for our citizens with the need to keep our tax rate down as low as possible
