Board of Aldermen — 6/13/17 Page 11
With that being said, my first inclination was to not support the budget on principal and say I’m going to stick
with the people that are losing their jobs and vote no. At the last Budget Committee meeting however, it
became apparent to me that — and | had known this but the dire situation that the city is in facing a lawsuit on
this potential budget, facing the fact that should that prevail we could be in for hundreds of layoffs. Perhaps a
school that would close, fire department would have layoffs, maybe we’d have to close a fire department,
police department, same thing. | really have to weigh my vote. I’m going to vote for the budget but | don’t want
those individuals who are losing their position in Nashua to think for one minute that | didn’t fight for you. |
fought for you. | fought for your jobs and they mean something, you mean something to the city, and your work
means something to the city. It’s a mistake. It’s a mistake that the School Board is letting you go. With that
said, | will be supporting the budget and I’m doing it because doing that is the lesser of two evils. Thank you.
Alderman Lopez
| just want to thank Alderman Clemons for his comments and his conviction as well as Alderman Siegel for the
same. | think this budget is not meant to be easy. There’s particular items that must not have been easy for
people to have to consider. | think it’s unfortunate that the Board of Education went the direction that it did with
the extra money and | appreciate the effort on the Mayor’s part to try to save those jobs.
Alderman Schoneman
| appreciate the comments that are made and whatever happens with those custodians | would want them to
know that | understand that it’s not easy to lose a job for anybody at any time. Itis a tough economy and we'll
certainly give them that consideration and know that they served well while they were here.
| will not be supporting the budget. | approve of the amendments and | voted for the amendments. | think that
trying to find the city wide communications money at some stage in the future is wise. | think that’s a wise
expenditure. | think swapping the $200,000 out of the participatory budgeting into police overtime is probably a
good choice too. I’m not going to support it though even though those are good decision because there are
other things that play here that | think | simply can’t support. One is | believe the overall spending is too high.
My personal opinion. | think taxpayers at least the ones I’ve heard from believe that the spending is too high.
Secondly a vote in favor of this budget is really a vote in favor of how we got here. | do not approve of how we
got here. How we got to a budget that’s higher that can pass with 8 votes now 10 with this by | think
manipulating the spending cap via the sewer fund | think was wrong. | did not vote for that measure. | cannot
vote for this because of how we got here. | think the spending is somewhat too high. Not all too high but how
we got here is wrong and | can’t support that. Thank you.
Alderman Moriarty
Regarding the layoffs, |’d like to say they have my sympathies. Me and 500 BAE Systems who have been laid
off in the past 7 years from Southern NH understand what you'll be facing.
Regarding the budget — so if we go back to this fall, what | remember hearing is that it was like a $1 million or
$2 million gap to close. Somehow that $1 million or $2 million gap to close turned into a $9 million spending
spree. There’s a lot of fat in this budget. In particular, you might remember so when Mayor Lozeau was
putting together the budget, each year | would sort of wonder how the heck did she manage to close that
budget when everything was going up faster than the capital (inaudible). What she managed to do is benefits
— health care in particular — were going down. So for the good 2, 3, 4 years in a row the benefits — health
insurance were either down or steady. But what we have this year is for the first time since | remember, we
have a $3.7 million increase in that same line which is a 15 percent increase which hasn’t happened in a while.
So the pensions of course that the $2.2 million that we’ve read about that says it out of our control. 1’ll grant
that. There’s a line item in there for salaries — a $2.2 million increase contingency for salary increases that
have not yet occurred. Some people might be unaware of the mechanics of how that is. There’s a
contingency negotiation line that is usually a couple hundred thousand dollars that is used if there’s a union
