Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 2
Chairman Dowd
Also, if a question comes up and it can’t be answered from the Mayor or Chief Financial Officer, we
have people from every Division here to answer the question. So the first area to be discussed is
General Government.
Mayor Donchess
Mr. Chair | do have this presentation here, an overview of the Budget which | was going to do.
Welcome everybody to Nashua North and our Fiscal 2020 Public Hearing on the proposed budget.
So here are the strategies and some of the things we wanted to accomplish in the FY2020 budget
and they are listed here. First, a lot of paving, 30 miles of paving will be done this year along with
31 miles crack sealing; crack sealing a very cost effective way to maintain the condition of a street
this is in relatively good shape but could deteriorate for a period of 3, 4, 5, 6 years at a very limited
cost. This has been implemented a bit by Public Works in prior years, but this year that program is
being expanded considerably. These 31 miles of streets will cost about $143,000.00 | think the
number is; while the 30 miles of paving will be more like $11 million. So the crack sealing is a very
cost effective way to at least maintain condition.
Another strategy we employed this year is to limit the proposed tax increase to the lowest we could
possibly keep it given some of the challenges that you will see on another slide. That increase | am
saying should be no more than 3%. Another strategy, we want to maintain or improve the quality of
services that we offer and while I’m on this bullet | would like to thank all of the 2,800 City
employees in our schools, in our Public Works, our Wastewater Treatment Plant, at City Hall, who
work very hard every day to provide services to our City’s residents. And | wanted to take this
opportunity to thank each one of them for everything you do for our citizens every day because we
do provide a very cost effective set of services for our citizens.
A new thing is that the budget funds an Energy Manager that will help us reduce energy costs and
cut the emission of greenhouse gases. This is as | mentioned the first time and we think that this
position over time can more than pay for itself. I’ve asked the Board of Aldermen, we wanted to
include this in the budget but somehow it was left out, but we’ve asked the Board of Aldermen to
amend the budget to include half the cost of a grant writer, the other half being in the School
Department. And here, again, we think that by working together with the schools with a
professional grant writer, we can bring in far more money than it costs to pay the grant writer. These
would be grants that might be directed to education but also other areas of City services, other
areas of the City and we think this is a very cost effective way to bring more revenue to Nashua.
Another effect of the budget would be to increase the ELL teachers in the School District by 4.
What we’ve done is we have placed $200,000.00 in the contingency account for that purpose over
and above the recommended School District School Board Budget. The point there is that when
the School Department asks for the money or if the Board of Aldermen wishes to make a change to
the budget to make an immediate transfer that would be provided to the School Department for the
purpose of hiring ELL teachers. Now ELL for anyone listening that doesn’t know what that refers to
that is English Language Learner Teachers. We have a very increasing number, a big increase in
the number of students who come to our schools who do not speak English as a primary language
and we have many languages spoken by the families who kids come to the schools in Nashua from
all the continents of the world. So that we think will at least help to improve English learning by our
students.
