spend it on spending and put half of it into the school capital reserve fund. The school kept the reserve fund built up
to $20 million. Then what happened? Then we started spending. The first time it was an insurance shortfall,
instead of making up a priority someplace else they took the money out of the capital reserve fund; they collapsed
the fund and took the $6 million out of it and re-established the fund. Then when the school has a shortfall it was
about $3 million and it came out of the capital reserve fund. That’s not setting priorities. Today the school capital
reserve fund is down to $2 million. If you look at the budgets there is a general fund budget and it went up to about
1.25% so it’s within the 1.3% cost of living for the government index. There is a total appropriation of $290 million;
it's really not $244 million, that’s what was reported by the press. $244 million is really a general fund budget, the
real budget is $289.9 million and that went up by .6%. If you combine the annual municipal budget that’s used in
Concord as the spending cap is at $263 million, it went up 1.26%. It seems pretty good, however, last year the tax
rate went up by 2% and you just announced today that the tax rate is going to go up by 2.5%. Here’s a flash, | ama
senior and seniors live on social security income. Do you know what the social security income was this year?
Goose egg, nada, nothing and that’s where the sense of entitlement comes in. The patrol officers got a contract
increase that gave them 7.5% per employee in fiscal 16, a 3% increase in fiscal 17 and an 8% increase in fiscal
"18. There was a 2.9% in fiscal 15 and an 8.7% in fiscal 14. Percentage increases to the police department was
way above the spending cap limits, it’s inexcusable. There’s always the excuse that you are going to lose the
patrolmen but there are huge amounts of patrolmen that willing to have a job with the police department. They are
all qualified, that’s true but a 7% to 8% increase is not sustainable and it’s unacceptable. The firemen had less
raises but they still are way above the spending cap. Fiscal 18, 3.7% increase in pay; 2.9% in fiscal °19 and 2.9% in
fiscal ’16; all well above the cap. Teacher’s raises, 2.7% in fiscal ’15; 2.8% in fiscal 16, so as you have to cope with
these raises, it’s well beyond the spending cap and you have to reduce services elsewhere and that’s a problem that
has to be taken care of. | think you have done a pretty good job at balancing it but when these contracts come up,
you can’t keep giving 6%, 7% or 8% raises to the police department and 2% and 3% raises to the firemen and 2%
and 3% raises to the teachers. These are entitlements and people like myself has to pay for that. We get nothing
as an increase.
Department 113, Benefits and Department 115, Citywide Pensions
Mr. Teeboom
Let’s take both the pension and the benefits. Benefits are $160,000, and it says pensions are $1,000 and we
obviously know that this is incorrect and that the pensions are about $21 million. This department does not reflect
true budgeting and | don’t know Mr. Griffin, there’s something wrong there.
Mr. Griffin
The $1,000 is for the pension expenses related to retirees that retired several decades ago. As you may know, the
allocation of benefits and pension expenses are within the budgets of the departments. They are summarized on
page 21 which is the account numbers that you just referenced.
Mr. Teeboom
That’s the problem. We are here reviewing line item by line item; we are not reviewing the pension funds on page
21. We are already on page 78, you skipped by 22 rather quick because we never got to page 22 because Mr.
Chairman you never noted page 22. The 52150 account is an account that’s $31,662,000 and it went up by 1.63%
from the previous year which was $21,315.000. | don’t really have any questions on benefits other than that’s a
really large amount. The main thing is if you deal with the departmental pensions then we have to deal with all of
the pensions. If you deal with departmental benefits then you have to deal with all benefits so we know what the
dollar amount is. It says in department 115, Pensions, its $1,000 and it doesn’t do the job. Let’s talk about 52150,
in fiscal ’12 had $614,000 surplus and in fiscal 13 had a $1.2 million surplus, in fiscal ’14 it had a $916,000 surplus
and | don’t quite know what was the surplus in fiscal °15?
Mr. Griffin
| think it was approximately $1 million.
Mr. Teeboom
