A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, April 12, 2016, at 7:30 p.m. in the Aldermanic
Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch; Alderman Tom Lopez led in the Pledge to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman-at-Large Michael
B. O’Brien, Sr. was recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also present.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
You see under recognition the Gate City Light Award which has been awarded by the Mayor’s Volunteer
Recognition Committee. This is a committee that was established some time ago to recognize very important
community contributors, volunteers who have done a lot for our city. We've got several members of the
committee here; Carol Eyman, Marguerite Garno, Stacy Hynes and Shawn Nelson. The award is going to be
made to a group of people who have done a really good job in the inner city. That’s the Habitat for Humanity
volunteers. | understand that the award is going to be accepted on their behalf by Jennifer Skeva. We really
appreciate everything that Habitat has does for Nashua. The Clocktower refinancing is one of the resolutions
on the agenda. This will result in the city benefitting to the tune of about $500,000 to $600,000 as the result of
our agreeing to permit Clocktower to refinance some debt that they have on the project. This was endorsed
unanimously by the finance committee. It’s important to note that Nashua never loaned any city dollars to this
project. We were awarded a debt position as a result of a federal grant that we received and passed onto
Clocktower. We stand to do very well, money that we did not expect and is not in the budget. We have the
legislation pertaining to the use of the pension funds that have been saved over a period of time. This has
been discussed for quite a while at various times. | know there’s not a full Board so I’m don’t know if there will
be a final vote on this, but the pension money has been saved over a period of years. The resolution as
proposed would enable us to use that money over a period of three years while we attempt to design some
kind of solution that might be feasible at the state level. | did meet with people from the Municipal Association
along with John Griffin and others to discuss strategies at the state level. We are dealing with two problems,
both of which together have amounted to an increase in the city budget by 10 - 13 million dollars. The first is
the withdrawal of state support for the state mandated pension system which used to be 35 percent of the city
contribution, no is zero. It was 35 percent from the initiation of the state’s pension system until just recent
years. The second part of the problem is the statutory mandate passed by the state legislature requiring that
the unfunded liability in the pension system be contributed by cities and towns and that we go over a period of
time to 100 percent funding for the pension liability. Pension experts say that a healthy pension system does
not have to be at 100 percent because the pension system will last basically into infinity. There’s not an end
date to the pension. The state will continue to perpetuate itself; contributions will continue to be made. If you
get into the 80-85 percent range, that is a very healthy pension plan. We're talking about trying to accomplish
a revision of the statutory mandate to reduce the 100 percent number to a lower, more realistic number of 80-
85 percent. We think if that was successful it could result in a significant reduction in the pension obligations
for all of New Hampshire municipalities. Tomorrow night we have the City Hall Plaza meeting where I’m
hoping to get your input regarding an initial design that was presented to the city as well as some revisions that
were proposed to that original design so we can decide how to proceed. There are funds for this in a reserve
account which we have already collected. Any input would be very welcome. On Friday night we have a Tree
Streets meeting at the Boys & Girls Club to try to engage residents of the Tree Streets. Alderman Tom Lopez
and Manny Espitia from my office was very kind to do some door-to-door in the Tree Streets over the weekend,
telling people about the meeting and hopefully generating people to come and talk with us about the
neighborhood and city government in general. We also are going to something regarding the website. The
new website has been live for about four months, since December. In order to improve it and communication
with citizens and everyone, we’re going to look for feedback. We are going to be posting a survey on the
website for people to respond to for one month. The survey might have gone live this afternoon. If not,
