Special Board of Aldermen 07-01-2021 Page 27
reassessment update is going to be a pretty difficult pill to swallow and | wouldn't be surprised if you don’t
see ...
Alderman O’Brien
30 seconds.
Ms. Ortolano... the need higher. So | think the tax impact assessment was too superficial and | think that
the increase to this budget was unacceptable. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Anyone else from the public wishing to give public comment? Seeing no one. Remarks by Members of the
Board.
REMARKS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN
Alderman Dowd
| want to thank the Budget Committee for all their nights out and their hard work on the budget. It is, of
course, a tough year, but | have been dealing with the budgets in the City for 40 years. | don’t remember
one when we came in and said, “man this is a great year for the budget”. | know there are ups and downs
but they are never above that line it says, “hey we got a great budget”. | think that we have done a very
good job protecting our Police and Fire Departments and in doing so, protecting the citizens and the tax
payers of the City of Nashua where these services are critical. Other services aren't critical. | have full
respect for everybody that works for the City and support them wholeheartedly and | applaud them for
coming in at the numbers they came in at. But Police and Fire are extremely important. And it’s not like
these two groups were asking for all kinds of new things. No. They were trying to keep things pretty much
as they’ve had them in providing a great job to the City of Nashua.
As far as salaries, firemen — how many people do you know that run into burning buildings? How many
people do you know that go under the concrete of a caved in building to try and save people? You know?
That fire down in Massachusetts, 100 and some odd degrees out there and the firemen are running into the
building and coming out with heat exhaustion and ending up in the hospital. Firemen do a great job; Police
do a great job. And we can’t shortchange them. And nobody likes to pay taxes, | think that goes without
saying. And this year if we had any cooperation from the State of New Hampshire, we wouldn’t have had
an increase. We may have even had a decrease even with the additions we made. So that’s what needs to
be fixed and | still want to see those people that run the State Pension Plan come down and talk to us.
Alderman Klee
Thank you Madam President. And | want to echo the words that Alderman Dowd said. | really would like to
get the people from the Pension Plan, the retirement group here to try to explain to us and the taxpayers
here of Nashua why these numbers keep going up and so on. And I'd like to also thank the Budget
Committee, you did a thankless job. Truly it is and | wasn’t able to attend all of them for various health
reasons, but | have watched them all. And | don’t want to you fought amongst yourselves but you
discussed amongst yourselves...
Alderman Lopez
Robust.
