Special Board of Aldermen 6-13-2022 Page 4
the calculation at the end of the day. This particular spending cap has all the appropriations in it from last year and
this year and then you apply the metric which is the State and Local Government Implicit Price Deflator Multiplier and
then you get a new number.
Alderman Sullivan
| understand how we get it. My bigger question is what are we building that number off of - that multiplier? |
understand what the multiplier is but if we’re taking total appropriations and in prior years we subtracted certain
monies to bring down those total appropriations, and then we built the spending cap off that net number, and now
we're not taking anything out of those total appropriations, and then we’re applying it 2.8% increase off of that. It
really just misses the mark for me.
Then the other question | have is the grant funds. So you’re saying grant funds if we get $100,000 from the State or
the federal government, that’s a grant. We’re counting that as an appropriation because it goes to a specific cause?
Are you counting that as $100,000 or are you counting that as $200,000?
John Griffin, CFO/Treasurer/Tax Collector
Madam President, | would count that as a $100,000.
Alderman Sullivan
Because we are getting it.
John Griffin, CFO/Treasurer/Tax Collector
Right but some of these questions are more the legal interpretation of the spending cap. This isn’t something that the
Comptroller and | would be learning at the Department of Revenue Administration. This is the interpretation of a cap.
It’s not a tax cap. It’s a spending cap and what | like about it is it didn’t subtract anything. As a purist accounting
person where every appropriation that you folks rule on is in the cap.
President Wilshire
Attorney Bolton would like to weigh in.
Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel
| think | can help with some of these questions. Taking the grant question first. The grant is revenue but when we
spend it, it’s an expenditure. There are many things like that throughout the budget. You've got a whole section on
revenues and another larger section on expenditures. So the motor vehicle funds that are collected when people
register their cars downstairs, that’s revenue for the City but then that gets spent. That part of the money that funds
those appropriations on the expenditure are half the budget. Similar with grants, revenue comes in. Part of the
arrangement with the State but more likely the federal government is we get that money because we promised to do
certain things with it. We promised to spend it on the program that we spend it in. When this Board approves the
acceptance of that, they’re approving that agreement and authorizing the expenditure of money for the purpose
therein contained. So that’s an expense. That’s part of what the City Charter refers to as “total expenditures” and
that’s what builds the base.
There’s another reason why grants should not be treated specially, or subtracted, or something and that’s because
the State Statute would allow that in a City Charter. In fact, RSA 49-C:33 | says “a tax cap provision in the City
Charter may provide for specific exclusions for dedicated enterprise or self-supporting funds, or accounts, capital
reserve funds, grants, or revenue from sources other than local taxes, or interest in principal payments on municipal
bonded debt, or capital expenditures which shall be by a super majority vote as determined in the Charter”. So the
Charter could say that you’re going to subtract grants. Our Charter does not say that, meaning grants have to be
included.
Now there is an Ordinance that was passed back in 94, had some amendments over time that attempted to say what
things should be subtracted. | have long been of the opinion that those Ordinances were contrary to the City Charter.
You cannot change a City Charter by Ordinance. Clear you can’t. The Charter talks about total expenditures. It
doesn’t say anything about subtracting out grants, or special revenue, or other things. It could but it doesn’t. Since it
doesn’t, those things have to be included.
