Board of Aldermen Page 10
April 26, 2016
that the spending cap limit is 1.3% but give the police department 2.5% and the schools 2.0% we can pretty
quickly see and everyone else 1.3% that the fiscal 17 spending cannot be contained within the original fiscal
"16 appropriation plus the cap. It needs this in order to make those numbers work and to then try to reduce
that is going to be extremely difficult. | was against it before and I’m still against it now. | think that it
essentially allows more spending for a purpose that | don’t feel is necessary in order to accomplish the goal of
saving taxpayer money and still meet this pension fund obligation.
Alderman Dowd
| agree with everything that Alderman Siegel said. As Chair of budget and having looked at the numbers that
are coming in from the various units, we are going to have a problem but as Alderman Siegel said, if we
approve this legislation we don’t have to spend $2.3 million to increase our spending but it will certainly give us
a little cushion because we are going to have a very difficult time meeting our budget this year to the point of
I’m not sure how | can even see that passing. | haven’t got the budget from the Mayor yet and | know he has a
significant challenge in trying to meet numbers. | have been involved in the Board of Education budget and
they are struggling mightily, they just can’t come up with anything else to cut. If we get to that point in meeting
that arbitrary spending number we are going to have to take money away from the schools and that could
result in a number of things that | don’t think people with children in school are going to appreciate. | for one
also don’t want to take substantial monies from the police department or the fire department because that puts
us at risk. | appreciate people being concerned about the spending cap and | agree that we need to have
controls over the amount of spending every year but | think that we also need to use common sense. If the
arbitrary number that they came up with some number of years ago puts the city in an untenable position, |
think that we need to do whatever we can to try and solve the problem. People have said that they have taken
pledges not to override the cap. This isn’t an override of the spending cap; this is taking money that was
earmarked for a specific purpose and allocating it for that. The problem we have with the regular budget was
passed down to us from the state. The state, in the pension fund agreed years ago to pay 35% and all of a
sudden they said 0%. We are not the only city in New Hampshire that’s got a problem because the state
passes that down to us. We have to a) solve that problem and b) we need to make sure that things like that
don’t happen again coming from Concord. | am going to support this.
Alderman Schoneman
| want to address some of Alderman Dowd’s comments. It is most definitely a spending cap override for fiscal
"16. There’s not the room in the fiscal 16 appropriation limit based on fiscal 15 numbers to accommodate an
additional $2.2 million under the fiscal ’16 cap. It’s not a fiscal ’17 override but it is a fiscal ’16 spending cap
override. Regarding spending, it’s true that if this fund were established it would not need to be spent on day
one, it could be spent over the course of three years and in that sense, by appropriating it we are not spending
that money. As Alderman Dowd also eluded to, the school department and perhaps others are counting on the
$2.2 million increase in the fiscal ’16 appropriation number to give them the room they want to spend in fiscal
"17 so while the $2.23 million has moved over and won’t immediately be spent, this does create the room
within the fiscal 16 appropriation number to spend more in fiscal ’17 and that will effect taxpayers because
that’s spending an additional $2.23 million.
Alderman Clemons
As a taxpayer | have a couple of different perspectives on this legislation. They all have to do with the fact that
in the past the city at some point set aside this money for the purpose of using it for pension costs. | know that
a lot of us here talk about the spending cap and not overriding the spending cap. My prior four years on the
Board, from 2008 to 2011, | remember that all of those budgets under Mayor Lozeau were under the cap and
they came in; | think one of them was close, maybe $250,000, some of them were $500,000, maybe $1 million
under the cap. Subsequent to that we have always been under the cap. The city could have said, the Board
of Aldermen could have said the limit is $300 million and that’s what we are going to make the budget but we
didn’t do that. We looked at what was appropriate to spend that year and if it happened to be $500,000 or $1
million under the spending cap then that’s what it was. The point that | am trying to make is that there comes a
