Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 10
more money. $4 million more to the education budget. $4 million more to the pension budget. $4
million more to the benefits budget and misrepresentation of the spending cap. All right. That’s
enough for now. Thank you.
Chairman Dowd
Is there anyone else that would like to speak to the first 59 pages of the budget or the Mayor’s
Office?
Paula Johnson
Good evening. My name is Paula Johnson. | still live here in Nashua. Mayor there was an editorial
back in the Telegraph on May 2" that questioned you. Just how tight is Nashua’s budget? |
happened to read this while | was on vacation. | really was in shock to find out about the $200,000
that you want to give to allow people to become volunteers in this city. We have 15 aldermen to
make decisions for us. Not always in the best interest of the constituents but we elected them and
we pay them $5,000. Now unless the cost has gone up but | still believe its $5,000 a year. We want
to get people more involved. I’m not paying somebody to get involved here. | don’t know what their
background is. | don’t know what they want to do.
Mayor Donchess
Ms. Johnson that’s a misunderstanding. The proposal is not to pay anyone to get involved. It’s that
we don’t pay any volunteers.
Paula Johnson
Then are you telling me the media is lying here is fake on what they reported?
Mayor Donchess
They don’t say we’re paying volunteers. If they said that, that’s completely mistaken.
Paula Johnson
$200,000 for a citizen’s lead pilot program that will allow volunteers to draft plans for city projects and
put them up for a vote. Someone is getting paid for that $200,000.
Mayor Donchess
No wait. The way that that would work but before we get too deeply into it, the Budget Committee did
recommend a change there. The way that would work is first of all it's not an increase in the budget.
Right now we operate a capital improvements budget where we make improvements where we
budget community improvements — swimming pools, sidewalks, various reserve funds where we need
to do building maintenance and things like that. The way that the process has worked — and the
budget last year was around $1.2 million and this its’ a little more. So the budget is not up because of
this.
Paula Johnson
I’m not saying it is.
