Board of Aldermen
February 23, 2016 Page 14
down the path that Mayor Lozeau pointed out last year of increased costs for flat-lined services and a loss of
value.
Alderman Clemons
’ve heard a lot spoken tonight about the spending cap. | want to address that at least for constituents who
elected me to represent them. | did not run with a pledge of upholding the spending cap. The spending cap
was put into place in 1995 and it’s gone up with inflation so if you think of it in those terms we are spending
1995 dollars in 2016. For a city this size and that has grown in different ways; we have a more diverse
population than we had in 1995, we have different struggles particularly that the police department has to deal
with than they had to in 1995 and yet here we are arguing about whether or not these gentlemen should get
raises that essentially would be the equivalent of raising their pay with 1995 dollars. | don’t think it is fair and |
don’t think it is right. That’s my opinion and the voters at least in Ward 6 didn’t vote for me to come into office
to make sure that everything would fall under the spending cap. They wanted me to use my judgement and
my judgement is that we need to make sure that our police department is taken care of so that people like
Alderman Moriarty said, want to come and work in Nashua and so that people want to stay in Nashua and
retire in Nashua because if we don’t do that then what is going to happen is we are not going to get the top
quality candidates that we have gotten in the past and that’s going to affect our crime rate and everything
thereon down. For those reasons | am going to vote for this contract regardless of the spending cap because |
don’t believe the spending cap should come into discussions because | think it is something that is strangling
the city.
Alderman O’Brien
| would just like to throw out an air of caution. To say that people retire just to retire may not necessarily be
true. There’s a whole host of reasons why an employee choses to retire. It could be health reasons or
something else that is going on in their particular life or maybe we are not paying them enough and they are
seeking employment. To that end we do have a Board of Police Commissioners that did due diligence
negotiating with this particular union. They brought us back a contract for us to approve. | am going to vote in
support of it but if we shoot this down then may | recommend to come join with me and let’s roll up our sleeves
and sharpen our pencils and do the work of the police commission or are we going to trust a duly appointed
Board that brings back negotiations from an organization whether it be the Board of Fire Commissioners or the
Board of Public Works or whoever is up on their contracts. | understand that we do have the right to shoot it
down despite what other people think but again, | would not say as a complete blanket statement that people
retire just to retire, they retire for a whole host of reasons and we have to respect the individuality and maybe
we need to look at what age these people are retiring at. If they are getting out at the first opportunity then
maybe something is wrong and we need to look at it. That has not been brought up by this Board because we
are not sitting here with the negotiations so maybe we need to be a little bit more active and take a look at what
is the particular reason.
Alderman Lopez
| would like to speak in support of the police because we’ve been talking mostly about the spending cap.
Alderman Siegel made some good points about the potential of our vote tonight doing nothing but signaling to
the police that we put a dollar value on their service and then ultimately having to pay them anyway. There is
that concern but | would like to acknowledge more along the line of what Alderman Clemons was pointing out
of not only do we have a heroin epidemic which has received a lot of publicity and public support from my
fellow Aldermen and the Mayor a commitment to do something about it. | don’t think it’s a good time to
necessarily start cutting back on our number one tool to address that. The Public Health Department is very
effective. Numerous community organizations are also stepping up with trying to help with prevention and
recovery but the police department are the ones that are dealing with the emergency calls and issuing the
Narcan and dealing with the emergency situations that arise. They are usually our first line of response so
making sure that they are coordinated and trained and overseen by qualified, competent supervisors | think is
a major priority for our city. | recognize what Alderman Moriarty said about the pieces of the pie and you can’t
