Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 15
Mayor Donchess
The answer is yes. | mean our delegation, five members which are on the Board of Aldermen advanced
various Bills to try to change the pension situation in various ways. All were unsuccessful largely on party
line votes. Going back, | should have made it clear that as a result of these actions taken at the local level
to cut costs, | mentioned despite the $11.8 million dollars imposed by the State, the taxes — if this budget is
adopted — we don’t project will go up 5 %%, it will be more — somewhere in the 3’s probably. More than
we'd like, again, if the State would leave us alone it would actually go down. But we think we can deliver
something in the 3’s despite the hosing we are taking from the State of New Hampshire.
Chairman Dowd
OK.
Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. | just want to address the Economic Development position in budget
You know, | have a lot of concerns about this position. It seems to me City Hall is run by three individuals;
Economic Development, Community Development, and Administrator / Director of Administrative Services.
That’s our trifecta, that’s our brain trust and honestly | think it's missing a good bit of the brain side. Itis a
disappointment to me across the board and it’s because these are appointed positions largely by the
Mayor. And | am underwhelmed by these appointments because we seem to pick people who don’t have
qualifications and we promote them into positions that they are really overdone on. And the one thing |
would say with the Economic Development position is my interface with this individual is they are very non-
responsive to public issues. And as Ms. Colquhoun said, they produce reports that are just made up
information that go out to Standard & Poors typed in, 7 years old telling us we don’t do numbers to get
vacancy rates. | have been after vacancy rates for well over a year because it is a legitimate concern for
what is going to happen to the tax rate when we run the new assessment next year.
What happened in 2020 to these commercial properties is relevant because the model run by Vision is
being based on 2020 and 2021 sales on commercial properties — 2 years. And | am not certain that it is
weighted and if it isn’t then you have to look at what the distribution is going to be and the weight that
residential properties are going to carry if there’s a shift off of the commercial properties because of what
happened in the pandemic. And | haven't been able to get anyone to answer that or speak to the vacancy
numbers. | have been told you would, | have been told there would be a discussion and there was no
discussion. And when | see the Economic Development Director producing reports that are largely false
and when you send a Right-to-Know to him you get snubbed, treated rudely, doesn’t e-mail it, sends it
through snail mail and mails it back to you so you’ve got a 10 day waiting period. He’s the only individual |
ever knew to do that. | am not overly supportive of that and | am really tired of seeing positions promoted
with people who are not qualified. | am underwhelmed by your picks Mr. Mayor. And you can bet your
bibby | am not stoked about your picking Commissioners.
Fred Teeboom — 24 Cheyenne. All the figures Mayor | have checked, double checked, (inaudible) the
spread sheets and | will send you my spread sheets and I'll send Mr. Griffin my spread sheets. | would like
to say to the Aldermen spending is going in the wrong direction. The Mayor did an interesting thing, he did
a six year average. Well | did a six year average also the traditional way, taking the budgets of six years
and compare with the budgets now, not taking out any amounts for pensions. The Police over six years
have an average of 4.4% a year. So now it’s 6.6% this year. Fire, had an average of 4.6% over six years,
because now we are 9.1%. And the School Department had an average of 3.1% over six years, 2016 2022
same years as you used Mr. Mayor. And the School was up 3.1% to 3.5%. It’s going in the wrong direction.
Now everybody keeps talking about pension funds. Let’s have a look at the pension funds. It’s true that
the State mismanaged over a billion dollars, they mismanaged by a billion dollars a few years ago. They
are trying to make that up. They also tried to get 100% vestings, this is madness. If the Federal
Government did 100% vested, they would owe over $130 trillion dollars. Nobody does 100% vesting,
especially the government, it makes no sense. Why this (inaudible) system is beyond me. Nashua
delegates the 30 representatives you can make a change, you made a change in the spending cap and
went back to the State and said the State did something wrong, they have got to correct it. It can be done,
you can’t keep making excuses and say, taxpayers we tried, go pay the bill. There’s another reason but
