Board of Aldermen 12-08-2020 Page 27
Alderman Tencza
Madam President, just | guess a point of order, if we could — the Mayor’s Veto only pertains to the clause
regarding the healthcare. | don’t think it behooves any of us to relitigate this whole thing and talk about the
wages. | respect Alderman Jette’s opinion, he has stated it and | think we all understand it but going
forward | think it may make sense if we can focus debate on the issue of healthcare. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Alderman Gathright?
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
| just want to say | thank former Mayor Davidson for being here and giving us a little history of the fire
department and the many contracts that have come before the City of Nashua even before our time,
because most of us are fairly new to the Board within the last four years anyway. | appreciate that and |
appreciate the conversation from Paul as well. | am going to vote for this contract. | do believe, not
necessarily that it is deserved, but | have seen and heard so many conversations where the contracts are
always failing, they are always behind 2, 3 years or something of that nature. That should never happen
especially if you are working with your Union Representative to help work those things out. And | did get an
opportunity to speak to Mr. Wholey for a while and | really appreciate the conversation that we had. And so
| am going to vote for the contract to undo the veto.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Anyone else? Alderman Dowd?
Alderman Dowd
Yes | just want to bring up a couple random points just for historical — the contract before this one that the
firemen signed up to, they took a health care concession and took 1 year of zero increases. And then the
City offered another large bargaining unit, something completely different and that’s why they are hesitant
to be the first one out of the shoot on this health plan. As was stated they will be probably committed to this
health plan on their next contract. This health plan change came well after the contract negotiations
started. So we are asking them to change course. Also, when they came before us the first time, we did
not approve the contract and the Budget Committee and the Board of Aldermen asked them to reduce the
impact to FY 19 and FY 20 or 20 and 21, because of the funding issue. They came before us after the first
year of the contract had already passed and we would have had to go find money to put back in that
budget. And there was a certain amount of money put forward for negotiations in this year’s budget and
the way the contract is written right now, those first two years of the contract aren’t increasing any
additional spending to the City, that money is in contingency; it’s already there.
And they did a good job in that. And when they did that, because | voted against it the first time, |
committed that, OK, you’ve done what we’ve asked you to do and | said I’d support them. And | am not
going to change my word on that, | am going to support them. | would prefer at some point if they want to
do a sidebar later and switch the wording and take the health plan, possibly after one of the large Unions
already signs up, and | think we can save some money. °22 is going to be the bad year and it’s driven
predominately by the State no matter what anybody says. If you look at the numbers it is the State that is
spending money and putting it down on property taxes. And all the cities and towns, especially in the
southern tier have all said that lately. The municipal association is also saying, hey you can’t keep doing
that.
