Special Board of Aldermen 07-01-2021 Page 4
Laura Colquhoun
Laura Colquhoun at 30 Greenwood Road. | find it funny that the Mayor keeps telling the taxpayers that his
budget is $290 million. However, the Telegraph reported the budget to be $290 million on June 22™ and
$346 million on June 26". That’s on page 28 of the budget. | guess the Nashua Mayor does not like to tell
the whole truth or he just likes to think that the Nashua taxpayers are stupid. There are other expenses
that the taxpayers have to pay but the Mayor just drops them off the budget.
The budget is simple. We take the revenues and we minus the appropriations. That balance has to be
paid by the Nashua taxpayers — both the residential and commercial property owners. Our Mayor has not
told the truth to the Nashua resident taxpayers because they will be hit hard by the fact that the Nashua
Assessing Department is dropping the valuations on commercial properties. So far the valuation on
commercial properties have gone down by $65 million and that number is continuing to climb. This means
the residential properties will have to pick up the difference. This is not something the Mayor can blame the
State on, however, residential property taxes will go up because of this valuation change. The Board of
Aldermen knows this fact and has completely looked away. This Board should have cut more expenses,
however, this Board is following the Mayor’s lead in keep spending, spending, spending. | hope all Nashua
residents remember this the next election and vote all of you out of office. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Is there anyone else wishing to give public comment via Zoom?
Laurie Ortolano
Laurie Ortolano, 41 Berkeley Street. First of all I’d like to correct the attendance that was read into the
record. It was stated that there were 11 in attendance and 2 via Zoom. There are actually 9 in attendance.
Kelly, Clemons, Lu and Laws were not recorded as being on the record. I’m interested in seeing how the
2/3 votes go with regard to passing the increases that the Board proposed on Tuesday in their budget
meeting.
I’m opposed to the additional money being added per Police and Fire. | think they’re funded adequately. |
feel the response time issue from the Fire Department is you know difficult to quantify to a certain extent.
When we put all the barriers up downtown, | didn’t hear anyone from the Fire Department and couldn’t
really get any response on what happened to response times when we cut the road down to a single lane
on each side? We did that without any problem or concerns that we were impacting our fire safety issues.
So | feel like we need to be careful how often we point to those situations and use those to justify positions.
| think we have a lot of positions that ought to be looked at closely and I’m going to go back and tell you.
I’m sure you didn’t your cut your Assessing office but | don’t know why we’re funding 2 commercial
assessors in there because you all know how hot under the collar | am about what’s happened with
abatements and what’s gone in there and what gets done in the commercial area. We pay for it endlessly.
You know | just found out | didn’t realize the Chief we hired is only here for a year on a 12-month contract.
So basically he’s almost a consultant. So you know we’re going to be back in a Chief position. You have a
new assessment level coming up next year.
I’m concerned about the IT Department. I’ve been calling around getting some good information. What are
we doing about third party sourcing for our e-mails and what’s going on in that area? | am not at all
interested in seeing the Administrative Services Director run an IT Department. |’m not at all interested in
seeing that position continue or a Right-to-Know Coordinator, or some of these upper management
positions. They don’t belong in the city budget and they’re not doing what they should do.
Alderman O’Brien
30 seconds.
