Good evening.

Hello, everybody, we're ready to start.

Thank you.

I'm gonna call the special meeting of the Board of Alderman to order on Monday, June 8th, 2026 at 7 p.m.

in the National High School North Lecture Hall, B 166.

We also have an overflow area in room C 146, which I believe is right next door.

Um, so we're gonna have the clerk offer uh I'm sorry.

The prayer will be offered by the city clerk, and Alderman O'Brien will lead us in the pledge for the flag.

Almighty God, we have the high honor and the serious duty to manage the affairs of our beloved city.

Fill us, oh God, with a spirit of unity and understanding, which enables us to face our multiple problems with a serene mind with justice and charity for all, so that any and all decisions made by us will always be for the betterment and greater happiness of all our fellow citizens.

So help us God, amen.

Congratulations to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Sorry, Alderman Dowd was ill and unable to join us this evening.

Alderman Clemens um is home taking care of his wife, who is very ill.

Um also joining us this evening is Mayor Jim Donchus and Corporation Counsel Steve Bolton, and we also have CFO Don Enright.

I am now gonna turn the budget public hearing over to Vice Chairman Tim Senett.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh so we are here tonight to hold a public hearing on the fiscal year 2027 budget.

Um before we begin, I'm going to um read off a couple of guidelines.

We traditionally do this uh every year just to uh facilitate the flow of the public hearing.

Uh this evening you're invited to appear before the Board of Alderman to ask any questions that you may have regarding the mayor's proposed fiscal year 2027 city budget.

Copies of the budget books have been made available this evening right outside the door.

And the proposed budget is also available online on the city's website.

Tonight the meeting will start by the mayor providing an overview of his proposed budget to the Alderman.

When he concludes, we will start to go through various city divisions one by one, and you may ask questions on their proposed budget to the division director.

You may only ask questions directly involved with the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget.

That's the reason for this public hearing tonight.

All other subjects may be addressed at regular Board of Alderman meetings.

To be fair to all the members of the public here this evening, we ask that you please try to keep your questions and comments to five minutes or less per division.

You will not be cut off, but the chair will remind you when five minutes has elapsed and will ask if you could please complete your current question.

You may only come up once per division, but there may be time at the end of the evening when all divisions are complete to ask additional questions.

If your question cannot be answered this evening, you may leave your contact information and a response will be sent to you.

Again, after the mayor has completed his overview, we will proceed through the divisions in the following order.

Mayor's office, including general government, public works and engineering, police department, fire department, public library, other public safety, community development division, public health and community services, education, financial services division, debt service contingency and interfund transfers, capital improvements, and administrative services.

Now, due to the hour that the uh board had received these guidelines uh last week, what I'd like to do at this time is entertain a motion to accept these guidelines as the procedures for the evening.

Alderwoman Kelly.

You've heard the motion.

Is there discussion on the motion?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Opposed.

That motion carries.

Okay.

So at this time, I will open the public hearing at 7.06 p.m.

And I will turn it over to Mayor Donchus to present an overview of the budget.

Oh, actually.

I'm going too fast.

At this time, I will recognize uh Alderman O'Brien.

Thank you.

Uh Mr.

Chairman, I would like to make a motion to take from the table uh 26028, uh, which is the pending fiscal year uh 26.

You've heard the motion.

Is there discussion?

Fiscal 27.

You've heard the motion.

Is there any discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

That motion carries.

Now I will uh open the public hearing at 7.06 p.m.

and turn it over to Mayor Donchus to present an overview of his budget.

Thank you, Alderman Senate.

Well, first I want to thank you all for coming tonight to the annual public hearing on the city budget.

Uh the preparation and passing of the city budget is, of course, one of the biggest responsibilities of both the mayor, myself, and the board of aldermen, uh, because it sets forth what services uh we will be providing to our citizens and how much those services are going to cost.

And of course, we are a service organization, so this is the you know main the basically the main mission of uh the budgeting and of the board of aldermen.

Um and I want to thank those who are here from all of our departments to respond to any questions or comments that uh members of the public wish to have.

I would before I begin like to um thank our budget team, uh consisting of Don Enright, who's right here, CFO, Tim Cummings, uh, who's the administrative services director, and Megan Caron, um, chief of staff right down the way.

Uh, also the budget committee um led by Alderman Dowd and Alderman Senate, and the members put a lot of time into reviewing these budgets, and uh they are looking forward to any comments or suggestions you may have before they consider and amend or and and and pass the budget.

So, what I have here as usual is a series of slides.

We can go through some of the major points that um I think need to be understood as we uh think about this year's budget, this year's budget fiscal 27.

Um the first slide shows you what uh the overall budget is.

The general fund budget uh is 384 million dollars.

In addition to that, we have two enterprise funds.

Uh one is for the wastewater fund, which runs the sewers and the sewage treatment plant.

That is entirely funded by non-tax dollars, so that's paid for by the sewer user fees.

And the other is the solid waste fund, that's the landfill.

Now there is public money that tax money that goes into that, uh, but it also receives revenue from the tipping fees, in other words, the charges that uh commercial haulers pay for uh for bringing uh trash to the to the um to the landfill.

But only Nashua residents and businesses are allowed to use this landfill, and it will come up a little bit um later as well.

The next slide just kind of goes over some of the the major issues that uh we always consider.

Um of the biggest items, of course, uh are the salaries.

These are uh salaries, fringe benefits that um we pay our employees.

This is schools, police, fire, city hall, the library, public uh public health, public works, uh, all of the departments.

Uh and this is this is how uh we compensate, of course, our employees for working very hard on behalf of uh the residents of Nashua.

We do have state uh and county mandates that we have to meet, and there are fixed costs as well, and you're gonna see in a minute that some of these fixed costs are going up uh very rapidly.

Um these are beyond the salaries, wages, and benefits that uh I've already spoken about.

Uh the slide suggests that, of course, we are affected by inflation, and you're gonna see that inflation is hitting us as it is, you know, people uh in at uh uh at home and every family in Nashua, the inflation is also uh hitting the city very hard, and you will see some of the details in a minute.

Um the overall increase of the operating budget is up 6.4 percent.

Um you'll see that most of this is driven, most of the uh the number above kind of the rate of inflation is really driven by these fixed costs, which are escalating very rapidly.

Um but this is as we look around uh the area, this the state of New Hampshire and some of the um other cities and towns across the state.

The 6.4 percent is kind of in line with what, and to some degree less than many than some other communities are facing, uh they too, of course, have the inflationary impact.

Um I wanted to uh just mention that uh our biggest expenditure, and you're gonna see this in a minute, is our school funding.

Uh we educate almost 10,000 kids uh every year.

Uh and the state does provide some assistance uh in the in the and as we look back to fiscal 26, uh the total amount of state assistance is around 65 million dollars.

This includes the adequacy grant, the basic uh 4300 per student, but also um additional add-ons for the number of free and reduced lunch kids we have, which is considerable, over 40 percent, uh, as well as uh um special ed students.

But uh the city, of course, by its in tax money puts in uh when you put it all together about 125 million dollars.

Um people rightly complain about high property taxes.

Uh one of the biggest drivers here statewide is the fact that in terms of the proportion of total spending, and you see here it's about 200 million it approaches 200 million dollars in total, uh if you if you include it all.

Uh when you uh consider the proportion of the total that is paid for by the State, New Hampshire is 50th of all the 50 states.

Uh Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, the the places you think of as maybe not being as education-friendly as uh many of the states here in the New England and the Northeast.

Uh they the states in for those in those states, the state government actually provides a bigger proportion of state spending than uh our state government, our state legislature here in New Hampshire.

And of course, the low level of state funding has been ruled unconstitutional by the New Hampshire Supreme Court multiple times over 30 years, most recently, I think just last year again.

But moving on, I wanted to uh just show you some of the escalating, and I'm gonna say skyrocketing fixed costs that we are facing, medical benefits, um, and we are self-insured, and the city has been self-insured for a long time.

I think Nashua and Manchester are the two cities, communities in New Hampshire that are self-insured.

Uh there is a $3.4 million increase.

Uh that is, and this these are health benefits, of course, for employees.

That's up 7.5 percent.

Um the school department needs to contract and has a legal obligation to provide special ed services to uh students who um need special ed uh need special education.

A lot of this has to be done through contract, and contract services are estimated for next year to go up $1.8 million or 51%.

School transportation.

The school department has tried to address this cost, but unfortunately last year they went out to bid, and there was only one bidder, first student, and the bids uh you know came in high.

The bit the bid, it was one bid, came in high, and uh really there's no alternative but to accept their bid because the school department has a legal obligation to uh provide transportation, and therefore uh the the increase last year percentage-wise was even bigger.

I think it was around 20 percent.

This year it's closer to 16, but there's 1.7 million dollars.

Now the school department also uh anticipates that the out-of-district tuition using general fund money will go up a million dollars or 16 percent between current year and next year.

Another thing that we uh we as the city are responsible for is paying the county.

The county actually taxes us, basically.

Uh the county, Hillsborough County is paid for by the cities and towns in the county.

And every year they pass a budget and pass any increase on to the cities and towns.

Um we're in the county tax, we're going to see a $1.7 million increase, 10% increase in that tax.

Um we also have uh insurance that covers various things, liability insurance for accidents and workers' comp.

Uh those policies and the claims associated with those uh so-called risks uh are estimated to go are going to increase 19.5 percent.

So when you put all those things together, you see that's you know a considerable amount of money.

Um, you know, a very significant tax increase before we even get to really the city services, which, as I've already suggested, uh constitutes mostly wages and benefits in terms of the delivery of those services.

Other costs that are new, um, which also drive this uh uh the the increases you see.

This we decided the city decided to proceed with phase four of the Nashua landfill.

Now the landfill was established in around 1972 and has functioned since that time.

But were this phase four expansion not undertaken, uh the landfill space would have run out in a short time, two or three years, and we would then be held hostage, so to speak, by haulers and others who would uh take the trash probably over to Rochester.

So the city over a long period of time has valued uh the ability to uh control its own fate when it comes to trash.

Um this phase four uh project will extend the length of the uh the the life of the landfill by 40 to 50 years.

So uh well into the 21st century, uh this landfill will still be operational as a result of this project.

But we had to borrow money to undertake it.

It's heavily regulated by State DES, Department of Environmental Services.

So that debt service is increasing by $1.35 million as a result again of this phase four uh infrastructure improvement at the landfill.

The police department um need it needs new body cameras, so the PD has been operating with body cameras for five years.

Uh those have proven to be very successful in terms of um on both both sides of these transactions.

For the police officer, uh it sort of documents anything that happens, and same thing for uh anyone who is being stopped or arrested or anything else.

Uh it it shows the entire interaction.

Um but the body cameras, and so this was a highly successful uh innovation as far as the National Police Department goes.

The body cameras they have are now obsolete.

Uh the new system uh is going to cost $900,000 this year.

It's the first year of a new system.

And if you want to learn about all of the features that could be added to these body this body camera system, I think it would be worth talking to the PD, and you will learn like just everything that could be added to supplement the basic body camera approach.

But that's a worthwhile expenditure, but something we didn't we didn't have last year.

Now certainly with budgets and taxes as they are, we wanted we wanted to show you at least the efforts that are being made to try to consolidate and save costs.

The School Department proposed reducing their payroll by 56 people.

This is certainly, you know, in an acknowledgement that they realize that costs need to be controlled as much as possible.

So there are 56 less positions in the city in the school department, therefore, you know, in the city government than there will be in fiscal 27 than in 26.

In addition, we made City Hall, believe it or not, you know, the is very tight.

There's a little extra there, but we did work with the School Department to consolidate the IT functions.

We have Nick Mysovich oversees the IT for the city, you know, and City Hall.

And he will now be supervising the work over work for the school department as well.

And I want to thank the school department for agreeing to undertake this.

This will save this consolidation will save 100,000 a year.

Now, in terms of the budgets that were sent to me uh earlier in the year, I think in March or so, um, I and the budget team that I work with uh made some reductions, which were which are being proposed to the Board of Alderman, which are in the budget that's proposed to the Board of Aldermen.

Uh we reduced various salaries and wages in various positions by 1.73 million dollars.

There is something called SURF, which is capital equipment reserve fund.

This helps to buy equipment.

Uh we believe we were able, we we felt that we could make do or get by pretty well with $2 million less than was called for, so that's a $2 million reduction.

We did um reduce the school budget by a half a percent, which represents $668,000.

This is beyond the 56 uh positions.

There's something called contingency, we reduced the uh appropriation, the proposed appropriation into the into the contingency account by $250,000 less than requested.

And there is the hydro capital reserve fund, we reduced that by $250.

The effort here is to try to, in a very difficult year and hard times for everyone, to keep expenses as low as we possibly could in order to deliver a tax rate that uh is as low as possible.

Um the next slide just gives you just kind of an overview of the where the city dollars, where your tax money is going.

Salaries and wages, again, big item, uh hundred and eight million uh million dollars, fringe benefits on top of that, 20, excuse me, yeah, 180 million or 47 percent.

Fringe benefits, another 25 percent.

So you see when you add those two percentages together, you're nearly 75 percent of the tax dollars go to salaries, wages, benefits of the employees that uh serve the citizens.

The debt service is 6.2 percent.

Oftentimes people have a misimpression, they see a capital project and they think that, oh my God, you know, that's gonna drive up the taxes a lot.

But you know, certainly it has an impact, but all of the debt service, the schools, the anything, anything else that the city has done outside the outside the uh enterprise funds, anything else, you put it all together and the debt service, meaning the principal and interest that gets paid every year is 6.1 percent of the budget.

And then kind of everything else, uh there's a lot of uh other things, you know, uh the liability insurance and IT costs, uh, software, all this kind of stuff, uh constitutes 14.8 percent, roughly 15 percent of the budget.

In terms of um the allocation to the various departments, as you see the school department, you know, gets the vast majority.

That's without that's the um largest expenditure uh the responsibility of educating nearly 10,000 children.

Um that is expensive.

The police department, uh 11.3, the fire department 9.3.

Uh of course, those two departments are the the departments that work to keep the city safe, and we have been recognized as being one of the safest cities in the United States on numerous occasions.

Again, you see debt service six percent, DPW.

They serve they touch people actually every day.

Uh garbage collection, plowing, streets, potholes, everything.

Uh but they're really actually and parks, they're really only uh uh 4.4 percent of the budget.

Again, showing you the escalating um costs of health insurance and benefit medical benefits.

You just this gives you a four or five year history.

It just shows you how much health insurance, and we are not atypical here.

Um this is all cities and towns are facing this kind of thing.

Um you see that we're really in double digits or approaching double digits every year, far more than the rate of inflation.

Um so that this year the appropriation into health benefits is over 48 million dollars.

And finally, the county tax.

Again, I touched on this earlier.

We we pay the county, they kind of slip by under the radar a lot of times.

Uh you don't really realize how much they're impacting, or at least the in the rate of increase is impact impacting us.

But in 24, there was a 5% increase.

In 29, a 19 percent increase in the county tax.

Uh and then in in this current 26, uh 10 percent.

And uh we're gonna see about I guess that's the projected increase.

Um you see how the dollars have gone up.

Just over a few years, it's gone from roughly 13 million to 18 million dollars.

Uh again, the rising cost that we are facing.

Um but I think that uh there's a thank you.

Thank you for listening to all of these dry statistics.

Uh, but they do touch people's lives uh, you know, every day.

So um why don't we go to we will now go back to Alderman Senate.

Uh I'd like to say before I conclude that uh uh Alderman Dowd is ill and we're we're sorry to hear that because he's done a very good job as budget committee chair for a long time.

But we'll go back to um Alderman Senate and uh uh then listen to your comments and questions.

Thank you, Mayor.

So we're gonna begin with the uh public portion of the uh public hearing.

Again, I'll just remind um folks to um keep your questions relative to the uh departments as we call them out um one by one.

Um any other topics that you may have to be addressed can be addressed at regular um board of alderman meetings and to kindly uh keep your comments or questions to uh five minutes or less.

Um you will not be interrupted, but the uh chair will remind you when your five minutes has elapsed uh and ask if you complete your current question.

Uh so with that in mind, we're going to start with general government, which includes the mayor's office on page 28, Board of Alderman on page 30, legal department on 35, City Clerk's Office on 33, parking operations and enforcement on 43, economic development on 50, and Office of Strategic Communications on 54.

I will advise that I'm doing my best to um keep the page numbers um accurate to the books that are available outside.

Um so if you have any comments on or questions regarding those uh divisions, I'll invite you up to the microphone at this time.

And I'll ask also before we start uh to the various department heads that are here.

Um if a question arises that is uh within your purview to answer that you come down to the uh microphone uh opposite me uh to answer.

Thank you.

Okay.

I'll start off all of them.

Um, just issue.

Mayor Dutch issued guidelines, 6% budget.

It turns out that um per second.

Start your time.

I've got you covered, Mr.

T Mom.

Check tech one two, one two.

We're just gonna get a stand for this and put this one away for a moment.

I'm so sorry.

It has been requested that I sing a song, and that's not going to happen.

I apologize to my fans in the crowd.

And that's for the record.

Does that work?

This one does, yes.

It's a little loose, but we'll make it work.

Check check.

Okay, can you try it?

Can you hear me now?

Yeah.

Okay, you start the timer again.

Okay, I'm gonna address general government and in terms answer some of the questions that Mayor Doncius raised, but from a different perspective, obviously.

The general fund that's presented to you in this budget is 384.3 million dollars.

That represents an increase of 23.2 million dollars, or 6.43 percent.

I think that's the number you presented, Mayor.

Correct.

And the mayor had a guideline of 3%, which we presented a memorandum 22 December 2025.

So by all measures, Mayor Donchess, you're not doing a very good job managing the city.

Because if you hold things to 3% and they come in at 6.4.3 percent, at your budget that you're proposing, it's not just all the budget.

You're not doing a very good job.

Now 3% of the general fund that would have been increased would be 10.8 million.

Proposed is an increase of 23.2 million dollars, which means that 12.4 million dollars above the guideline.

Now the taxes, I did some calculation because we have a the budget is fairly reasonable uh uh readable, well presented.

What's missing are salaries?

There's absolutely no information about salaries, but I was able to obtain a spreadsheet of all the salaries in the city.

Now the taxes that need to be raised if you look at the calculations of the budget is 288.8 million dollars.

I don't think the mayor mentioned that.

I did not, but you that's a correct figure, yes.

288.8 million.

If it's not the correct figure, you have CFO Don right next to you.

It is it is a correct figure.

It is a correct answer.

Thank you.

So that means that each one percent of the taxes is two point nine million.

Every increase of one percent represents two point nine million.

If you want to reduce the tax rate by one percent, you gotta cut two point nine million dollars for every one percent.

So the question then is what is a tax rate?

I've stood before the Board of Alderman many times, and I said, why isn't it the board asking for predictions of the tax rate?

It's not that difficult.

But now it's an Alderman.

We did it routinely, the Mayor Lozo.

Routinely.

Nobody's doing it.

Nobody's what?

Calculating the tax rate, the predicted tax rate.

Well, we have predicted the tax rate.

Well, I've calculated myself.

Okay.

And I've calculated that 7.5%.

You have an taxes to have you raised 288.8 million.

And the city's valuation, which is an MS 10 of about 16 billion.

That's the accessible value of the city.

You're gonna face 7.5% in the tax.

So what does it mean?

Well, laugh on.

You're going to face a hell of a problem here.

Because if you take a $6.00 transfer from fund balance, that's a lot of money from fund balance.

That's $12 million worth of reduction or offset on this tax rate I just mentioned.

And then you still face a 3.4 percent increase in the tax rate.

Even if you make a 12 million dollar offset.

You are facing Alderman, a six million dollar cut to be made.

And I question whether you have the guts to make it.

No.

Let me make some recommendations.

The city has a staff, and this this again, the city didn't publish this, but the city staff, if you look at the spreadsheets, not published in the budget.

But we have provided the salaries, a printout of all the salaries to anybody who wants it.

So it's not like these are secret or something.

I've never I've never seen it offered by the Alderman.

Well, it dawn is pointing out that it's in the back of the budget, actually.

No, it's not in the back of the budget.

Where is this?

No, the city has a staff of about 1,266 employees, full-time and part-time.

The school has a staff of about 2055.

That is in their budget.

The school made an excellent presentation, much better than the city's.

Mr.

T Boom, I'll just uh caution you're at five minutes now if you could uh wrap up your points.

I'll come back on point, I'll pick up this point, I'll come back later and make more points.

Appreciate you.

The guidelines are published.

What should the city have for staff?

The city should have one percent of the population.

That's a general for a small city of 100,000 thereabouts, city employees, that school should be about 1%.

That represents 926 people.

Not 1266.

The school general is accept on the high end is 150 staff per thousand students, which represents 1425 staff.

So you should have a combined city school staff of 2350.

What you have is 3,321.

You are heavy by 971 staff, Mayor Dodges.

There's the real problem.

You're way over the norm in terms of staffing.

It's been growing and growing and growing, and no one is ever reducing, reducing, reducing.

I'll come back to some more comments.

Well, let me address a couple of those things.

First of all, the number of employees is being reduced, as I pointed out.

Number two, um, I mean, to get to the number that you proposed, we would need to lay off 900 people.

Um what would we do?

Lay off 100 cops, 100 firefighters, 500 teachers.

Uh and we'd get to your number, not quite.

That's your job.

Um, but I every year, and this is um, you know, what is faced every year, that the city, the mayor, the board of aldermen, and the citizens uh have to evaluate whether they wish to continue with the level of service that they currently have.

And this is a uh a budget that basically maintains current level of services.

I mean, it does not uh cut the police department or lay off cops, it doesn't lay off firefighters, it does reduce people in the school department.

We do have a declining enrollments.

But um, you know, overall I think uh um the citizens appreciate the services that they receive.

Uh people work very hard, and I think most citizens realize that.

And so the idea of laying off a thousand employees is just, you know, not in the in anyone's other than maybe you, Mr.

T-Boom.

I I've never heard anyone suggest we should lay off a thousand people.

Anyway, that concludes my thoughts.

Any other uh comments or questions for general government, covering mayor's office, board of alderman, legal, city clerk's office, parking, economic development, or strategic communications.

Can you can y'all hear me?

Cool.

And I should just remind folks name and um city or town of residence for the record, please.

Thank you.

Yep.

Uh Chesley Marvin, 10 Marion Lane, Nashua, New Hampshire.

So I am here to talk about the parking right now.

Although primarily I'm here to support the schools.

And as I was thumbing through this massive tomb, I noticed that the proposed budget between the alderman and the mayor was about a million dollar difference for the schools.

So I was thumbing through thinking about what would I do in y'all's shoes.

Um and parking struck me as an interesting situation.

It looks to be about 50% of the operating budget from just the quick look that I took at it.

Uh, let me find the page I was on before.

Yeah, it looks like parking enforcement and parking operations were paying about 1.3 million dollars, and it the revenue from those sources is about 1.7 million dollars.

So we're funding it like half of its operation budget.

I guess that's kind of a question, but also an observation.

Um so I thumbed over to page 43 after hearing there was more about it on there, and noticed the breakdown on there.

Seems like there could be room here for, and I'm not saying this is the only way that we could make up some ground here, but as somebody who is a taxpayer who visits places in downtown Nashua and across town, the parking is about a dollar fifty per hour, wildly subsidized, right?

And parking and driving in general as a concept in our society is wildly subsidized.

And I would be okay with, and I think many people would disagree with me, but I also think New Hampshire taxpayers tend to gravitate more toward consumer end taxes if they're going to support any, right?

So if you're going to drive into town versus taking the bus versus walking versus biking, which are all things that we as a town should absolutely be supporting and um building up.

But as budgets are tightening, I understand why we're not increasing anything a lot.

I could stomach and I would suggest that you guys maybe take a look at what revenues we could pull from these outdoor dining permits, meter fees, lease garage lots.

Is there any room there to increase the budget?

Possibly.

And before I saw that, it looks like parking meter fees are only netting us revenue-wise 359,000.

You know, it was the same.

I assume 2026 that was the actual.

I I'm sorry, I'm not in finance.

I don't really know how to read this, but it looks like we're predicting it to be about the same.

And I can't remember if the parking was recently raised or not, and if this prediction is taking into consideration any of that, maybe there's room to raise the parking rates from $1.50, which again I feel is really cheap.

Um it's not an equitable service, right?

You have to have money to have a car, you have to have money to park it.

Adding like increasing bus headways all would be amazing ways to discourage, and of course, increasing fees to park would be good ways for the city to discourage car trips, which is overall a really good thing for our city, a good thing for public, people-centric spaces, um, get people walking and biking more is also good for their health.

So I think there's a lot of potential benefits to it in addition to creating more revenue that could in turn lighten the load on the schools because cutting about a million from their proposed budget, I know is really gonna hurt them, and maybe parking's one place we could earn some back.

So that was my thought.

Thought I'd share it, and that's it for now.

I believe Director Hanneman stepped up to uh answer some of your questions.

Oh, cool.

Yes, Liz Hannem, economic development director.

Um we we do plan to revisit the revenue um and the the pricing for parking every three to five years.

We're about a year and a half in um to the the most recent change, which wasn't changed since uh 2008, I believe.

Um so it was it was a long time since we raised the rates um and now they're at a a dollar fifty.

Um so we we try to balance lots of things.

Um affordability for customers of downtown um to support some of the businesses, but um we we are going to um reevaluate every three to five years.

Yeah, and if there is a coalition on this that you guys look for input on, that would be cool.

Um I assume there isn't one because I haven't heard about it, but there's a lot of research out there and a lot of organizations that have you know pretty clearly laid out the benefits to businesses when you create more people centric spaces over car-centric spaces.

So anything we can do to discourage car trips, and again, it's not an equitable way to transit.

So and hopefully get more revenue if that's what people do choose because choices awesome.

Thank you.

All right, are there any other comments or questions for general government?

My name is Bill Ferriot.

My home is number 35 Indian Rock Road.

I had first a couple of questions about the mayor's office budget on page 29.

So Mayor, when you sent out that directive in December requesting that each department be within three percent uh of the last year's budget.

You talked about financial pressures that were on the residents, financial pressures was in that report in that memo as well.

But your budget yourself on page 29, you didn't even meet that three percent maximum directive.

Why do you think that is what wouldn't you think it'd be a good idea for you to step up and set an example and show some priority if you if you really were interested in doing that?

If you really wanted your team to do that, why wouldn't your office meet that?

Fringe benefits went up a lot.

You know, the cost of health care.

Um we did cut back on increases that were slated for city hall salaries, the so-called non-affiliated employees.

So we did a survey and it determined that um unaffiliated employees, this means non-union employees across the city.

I mean, this not just city hall, but elsewhere as well.

Um basically found that they're you know, relative to other cities underpaid.

And so there was a plan to um increase those salaries.

And as a result of the overall increase caused by these fixed costs that uh you know I pointed out already, as well as the projected tax increase that could result.

Uh, you know, we tried to cut back in a number of areas, and um the one of the areas was to um I mean I expla it could explain exactly how this is done, but the um full uh uh step increase that is called for uh in the ordinances as well as the salary adjustments uh that um the study called for to equalize the the pay with other city employees, other cities and towns, as well as um uh cost of living increases, it was too much.

So at least in my budget, we cut that back a little bit and saved I think 400,000.

But in all the departments, and Mr.

T Boom did mention the three percent uh guideline.

Now that was you know aspirational.

This is what we'd like to get.

But when we see um, you know, health insurance going up by nearly double digits, uh school transportation going up 15 percent, uh some other thing going up 50 percent.

Uh there's no way we can hit three percent without serious service reductions.

So if you look at the wages um in terms of say the union wages, uh police, fire, and others, public works, they are either a little over three percent or around three percent, or maybe in a little less in some time in some instances.

Um but it's these other costs that are really driving all these budgets up more than the three percent.

That that that's great, man.

But I was asking about your department only, just yours.

I told you the the the fringe benefits went up considerably.

Okay, so your requirement was three percent excluding fringe benefits.

If you do the math, your department excluding fringe benefits, you're still in excess of three percent increase.

Well, that's true, but there's the salary increases that were called for by ordinance, which we cut back.

So if we hadn't done that, it would have been more.

I guess I don't understand why you would send out this directive without investigating first whether it's really truly something that's aspirational or something that's doable.

Okay, next year we'll make it much higher if that would make you happy.

I'll send I'll say 5 percent.

I won't try for 3 percent.

Uh if that would make you more comfortable.

You are the leader of the city.

You sent out something that said 3 percent.

That's right.

Right.

So you put some thought into that.

You didn't meet that yourself.

Yeah, I don't think there's I'll move on.

I'm gonna do that.

All right, good five minutes.

Um also on page 29.

There's a uh paragraph called services.

You talked tonight about how the state is screwing us and has been screwing us for a long time.

You talked about that a lot, right?

Okay.

So the third bullet under services, I would read some of it.

So this this uh paragraph called services, it's kind of like your job description, right?

This is pretty much what this is.

This is your job description.

This is the stuff you're responsible for, right?

In this paragraph called services.

The third one down, I'm gonna read it a little bit.

Interface with city departments and elected officials at the local state and federal level to find solutions to challenges facing the city.

That that's your job.

That's what you are supposed to be doing.

You should be working with the state to address these challenges facing the city.

Why is that not happening?

Um, certainly I work closely with our legislative delegation, 27 reps and two senators to address the issues that I have raised.

Um our legislative delegation has consistently, and it is mostly Democrats, but uh our legislative delegation has consistently supported improving school aid, thereby reducing property taxes.

But the majority in the legislature is adamantly opposed to raising anything for schools.

So if you know a way to reach the majority party and persuade them that school aid needs to go up, I would welcome that assistance.

I had a couple of suggestions, sir, if if I could.

All right.

The first would be there's nothing wrong with asking for help.

If this is something that's not within your wheelhouse, maybe the city should consider hiring consultant or professor.

I mean, we have asked for help.

We asked through our delegation, for example, the town of Merrimack, the town council wrote to the governor and said this is this is we cannot abide by the, you know, this is terrible what you're doing.

I don't even think they got a response.

Okay.

So working with um the majority up there is uh anybody, any member of any, you know, I have testified in favor of this, I've testified in the legislature.

Um just because we ask doesn't mean anything changes.

I I had one other suggestion, sir.

You mentioned using the um 27 state reps.

Yeah.

I'll skip over that one.

Um you can do what you do best.

Your experience, your background, your training.

You're an attorney.

Go sue the state, sir.

Go get our money, sir.

Do that.

We did sue the state.

We did sue the state.

We did sue the state.

And we got well, let me we uh uh in the um uh recent decision of the Superior Court, I think we're under in 25.

Uh the Conval case, Steve Bolton was one of the attorneys.

Um the Superior Court held that the level of uh school aid in New Hampshire is so low that it violates the New Hampshire Constitution.

We got that decision.

That was appealed to the Supreme Court.

The state actually, the state which has the obligation, the constitutional obligation of providing money for an adequate education.

They argued in the Supreme Court that school buildings, the cost of that doesn't, that's not part of an adequate education.

School they guess they're advocating totally remote learning.

But in any event, the Supreme Court confirmed the decision we got and held the Supreme Court yet again that the level of aid is unconstitutional.

But the Supreme Court did not order anything.

They asked the legislator to address it.

And that has been done over and over and over again for the last 30 years.

This is not the first time that the court has ruled that this is an unconstitutional system.

Yet the majority in the legislature refuses to honor the decision of the court, and they stonewall the court and they refuse to put up more money.

So we have sued more than once.

We've won more than once.

And yet the legislature refuses to follow the opinion of the courts.

Can I keep going?

Yeah, you could have two more minutes.

Okay.

Again, this is on page uh 28, sir.

And this is a question that actually applies to several departments within the city.

I asked this question a couple of times at the uh budget review committee hearings.

I understand that was not an opportunity for question answer, but I didn't really get an answer.

I question the um the math for Social Security and Medicare and pension expenses, those two rows.

What's the math?

How do you calculate those numbers?

And I I don't ask that.

What's the math behind?

What's the specific is it a function of the wages?

And I don't ask that to be annoying.

I asked that for a couple of reasons.

Number one is that you talk a lot about the pension expenses a lot, and how that's another thing.

I have talked about not tonight, but yes.

Not tonight.

Yes.

But that's another that's another that's another we could talk about that.

You want to make sure that's accurate.

Is it accurate?

The other reason.

It is accurate.

It's it's a proportion of the wages.

Well, good good answer.

The other reason I ask is that the dictated by the state of New Hampshire.

If you look at the column called FY27, Mayor Proposed.

There's many instances in this book where the mayor proposed values are lower.

You talked about that yourself, how you decrease wages.

Many instances where you decrease wages.

But the values for Social Security Medicare and pension didn't change in the book.

Why didn't those decrease, sir?

With the wages.

That's why I asked we are asking the budget committee to make those adjustments.

But do you if you want to take a moment, I could talk about the pensions.

That's another.

We're in a state pension system.

You realize that, right?

I'm seeing it.

So are the values in the book in the column called mayor proposed for social care, Medicare and pension correct, or are they wrong?

They need to be reduced in many cases.

So they're wrong.

Yes, they need to be adjusted.

You had about time.

We have submitted the adjustments to the budget committee.

So, you know, we've shown them where they wrong.

Why didn't you correct them when you when you did the mayor propose call?

Um because when the budget I, you know, I I I am not sure because when we reduce the wages, those those adjustments should have been made, but they weren't.

What else gets reduced?

Would the pen would the um benefits get reduced?

No, because that that is not tied to wages.

Are any of the values in the book that you know are wrong?

There are some adjustments that we've asked for, but yes, that you can look at a there's a um sheet of them that you know you we can provide.

The budget committee has it, and it's part of their minutes.

I guess I don't know why you would present this to the public with a bunch of stuff that you know is wrong.

That is time, Mr.

Farriel.

Can I keep going?

Uh that that's five minutes, Mr.

Ferrell.

Thank you.

Gary Hoffman, 38 Per Ham Street Townhouse D.

Uh, so the previous uh speaker had asked uh why you weren't able to make the three percent uh for the for your uh for the city for for your budget.

Um I believe earlier you showed that the health insurance premiums went up what 10 percent, Mayor Donchus?

I think it was closer to nine.

Yeah.

Well, that's that's triple.

And is that uncommon in other towns and cities?

And is that the ours is actually a little lower than some of the others.

I don't know if the City of Nashua can uh dictate to anthem insurance or Harvard Pilgrim.

We have uh anthem right, say, no, no, no, you've got to give us three percent, right?

And that does not really the way it works, right?

Correct?

Correct.

I mean, these these are estimates regarding the claims that will have to be paid over the course of the next 12 months.

Yeah.

So to me, those costs are not something you can really control and kind of explains why you weren't able to make the three percent.

That's all.

Thank you.

Oh my God.

Glory Ortolano Nashua.

Um I'm concerned about the increase.

Uh I don't support the budget as it's presented within the um general government division.

Um I I think that you have to ask yourself for this whole budget, what burden with 7.4% or around that amount will, you know, your average ranch in Nashua C for a tax increase.

And it's going to come out to about $600 with this budget.

And I think that's a lot of money.

And I think every time we look at these budget increases, we have to look at the demographics of our city and consider the impact on that demographic.

Um we talk about the need to deliver services at the level we deliver them, but I can't say I've ever really heard discussion about what reduced services look like.

I happen to think there are too many positions as well.

And it's all about the positions and the benefits and the pensions and the medical.

No question, 75%.

You really got to strike there.

Um there are departments, and I don't want to come up and talk each time that I would I would strike positions from them.

Yours, the strategic communications director, I'd strike that position.

You know, I don't think that's going to be effective.

And I think what the board of Alderman needs to do is become better communicators with their public.

There isn't good policy at the board table to allow the public to address them in areas of disagreement where they're received well.

Go to MHNA, use your free training, get trained on what you need to do to address the public and do it well.

Your management within the city, I think needs training on how to manage better.

You've hired outside employment attorneys to do some of that.

Continue to do that, because I think you've got some management problems.

I think within the positions in the budget that I look at, 20% of those positions are paid above six figures, above a hundred grand.

There's also a lot of management titles where the people aren't really managing anyone or they're managing one person.

I really question whether you need a management title in a management position to be an unaffiliated to manage a single person.

Um I I really think that has to be looked at.

The city clerk's office, they're a good interface to the city overall.

When you go in there, the counters are all pretty busy, the clerks are all pretty receptive to helping you.

The only thing missing is the right-to-know coordinator isn't there.

And he should be in the city clerk's office available.

You still have him behind a locked door with flex hours, doesn't answer phone calls.

I think creates a lot of liability on these right-to-nos.

I think we could do much better without him.

Okay.

And your new software system is, I'm gonna tell you, it's difficult.

Difficult for me.

Doesn't give you the right answers.

So corporation council looks like the budget overall, when you look in the book is pretty flat.

But in truth, we know there's been a lot of litigation, a lot of increased costs, a lot of stuff going on.

None of that appears in the corporation council budget because consultants and outside services are all shoved into the overlay account, which is not part of this budget.

And I'm opposed to that strongly.

That is tax-funded dollars that go into that account.

And to put it aside, and there can be 11 million over there.

There I think right now there's five million over there to deal with abatements, lawsuits, consultants, anyone you need.

It's pushed into this overlay budget, which is like a slush fund.

Why isn't that in the general budget?

You know, other cities and towns put it there.

And if that was in the general budget, we might appreciate, you know, all the complaints that have come in that litigation has become too high, and there's certain people we need to target who do this.

Um, and I don't know with economic development how much uh work is going into developing um commercial and industrial businesses.

But again, I talked to you about the taxpayer, the residential property owner, because they're shouldering based on the last assessment, there's a 13% disparity between commercial properties and residential with residential carrying that extra 13 percent burden.

I know we didn't do an update this year, but I have a funny feeling it's probably as high.

I wouldn't have expected it to go down.

So you're asking the average homeowner to shoulder quite a lot of this.

And you're looking the houses that take the biggest increase and are paying $8,000 a year in taxes, are a lot of these ranches.

So this kind of budget increase is really significant.

And you know, I would be willing to talk about what a decreased services mean.

One less clerk in the office, one day of reduced hours, no right to know coordinator.

I mean, positions, whatever you want to talk about, positions that you're gonna say we're not gonna do it.

I mean, that's what it comes down to.

And I really think you got to look at these unaffiliated salaries.

They're super high.

And, you know, I don't think somebody making 170,000 needs to get a 3% increase, like somebody making, you know, 90,000 does.

These are big increases on very high salaries.

And I I think it's it's become uh overbearing.

We gotta we got plenty of well paid management, but I don't think we're managing the city particularly well.

And that that's all I'm gonna say.

Thank you.

Anyone else for general government?

Yeah, Beth Scar Nashua.

Um I'm looking at page 35, corporation counsel.

I'm also concerned, like Lori, what is that it's not showing what we're really paying in legal expenses.

Um I heard about this very expensive law firms that the city hired um this past year, and for what reason I don't even know.

And it's not here in the budget.

So I I really I'm very concerned about that.

Thank you.

All right.

The legal expenses for these outside for outside uh law firms um appear in the risk but risk portion of the budget.

The overlay is something different.

See what the overlay is is overlay is money reserved to pay for uh tax successful tax abatement.

So we often face many commercial tech many commercial taxpayers, uh property owners of large properties sue the city um in an effort to reduce their taxes.

And usually um uh you know, the corporation council and our legal office represents the city in those cases, but we need experts.

We these things go to court, we need an expert to testify regarding the um viability, the accurateness of the city assessment versus the expert on the other side who says that the assessment is way too high and the taxes should be reduced.

Um so, yes, there are uh expenses regarding tax abatements for attorneys and for experts that appear in the overlay account.

But uh with respect to other lawsuits like um where and yeah, we've had a lot of lawsuits, and we've you you did successfully sue regarding the flags, but generally speaking, we we win these cases, but it and but it costs a lot of money to do that, and we can't just lay down and pay someone two million dollars.

So we have to defend.

Someone sues, they want two million dollars.

They sue ten different, all different police officers, city volunteers, um, myself, Burt Griffin, uh, you know, everybody.

Everybody is a defendant.

And yeah, in the end, it all gets dismissed, and we win a jury trial, but that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to get there.

So the way to save that money is not to have those not that not to have that litigation.

Um those kind of legal expenses, yeah, they're high, and they appear in uh the risk budget, but it is better than just handing over millions of dollars to someone who sues us.

And where is that?

What page?

The risk.

Where is the risk?

What page is the risk budget on?

What is it?

So is it this is the money to hire law firms to fight Lori on her lawsuits?

Um well, she's not the only one, but I mean, would you have paid Ms.

Orlano two million dollars?

Yes.

Yeah, of course.

Well, that you would have.

Well, I thought you were concerned about the taxpayer.

I know what I'm concerned about right now is where these law where the budget, even though the court there were 110 different claims before trial, the city had had 106 of those claims uh dismissed, four claims were tried, we won outright.

Zero cost to the taxpayer in terms of uh verdict awards or anything like that.

I mean, you know, you start handing out two million dollars just because someone files a invalid case against you, we're gonna have not one plaintiff, but ten plaintiffs.

My concern is where is it in the budget?

Oh, okay.

It's in the risk budget.

I'm looking on 77.

Is that is that include the private the law firms?

Look at uh line look at 53 on page 78.

Legal legal services 300,000.

Now that is a big reduction from previous years, because we think we're facing less litigation because we've won some cases, we're facing less litigation than we have in the past, but there it is uh specifically designated.

Okay.

With regard to overlay, as the mayor says, that is used only for expenses related to property tax appeals in more than 10 years, one case, only one case, only four days of trial, did we hire an outside lawyer to do those cases?

Otherwise, deputy corporation counsel Leonard and I have done every single tax abatement appeal for commercial properties or in superior court, the assessing department has done single family home cases, so it's all in-house.

The one exception for that one case was because both attorney Leonard and I were defendants in a different case, and you can't be in two places at the same time, but we don't hire outside counsel to do tax abatement work.

But we do need experts.

We hire expert appraisers, so does the other side.

Those are expenses that we have to bear.

We win more of those cases than we lose if you look at what the taxpayer wants, what their expert says compared to what our expert says.

We settle a lot of them for somewhere north of middle, so in our favor.

Anytime the taxpayer gets any dollar back, maybe you call that a loss.

For example, public service of New Hampshire brought suit against us for several years.

We went to trial on that.

They were seeking a refund in taxes of four million dollars.

We tried the case.

Court ordered a refund of 200,000.

We would have liked the court to order nothing, but compared to 4 million, 200,000 was a good result.

So the idea that this is a slush fund and we go out hire outside counsel and sit around not doing work is totally erroneous.

And you gotta understand there are a lot of these cases.

Like to sue the city, you have to serve the mayor with process.

So I get served by these tax cases probably at least once a week.

The sheriff uh, you know, is uh like as a regular circuit.

Uh a lot of these um big taxpayers, this is what they do.

They sue and they try to keep get their taxes lower.

And we you know, we're not just gonna hand over money.

I mean, we fight the case and we settle as best we can, or we try it, and uh hopefully are successful.

Anyone else for general government?

Uh my name is Kevin Fitzpatrick.

I live on 55 Shelley Drive.

Uh I don't think we should be reducing services.

I think that's a silly thing to do in an economic recession.

Uh people need help.

People need more services now than we ever have.

Uh I teach in this building.

The students need help.

We uh we all need help.

Everyone needs help sometimes, and that's normal.

That's your job.

Please just do your best.

That's all I'm done.

All right.

Anybody else for general government.

Good evening, Lou Juris here uh from uh Hain Street.

Uh just a general general comment for general government.

I don't think tonight is a forum to uh take part shots at our public officials, uh, whether it's the mayor or anybody else.

Uh we should be sticking to to what's relevant in the budget.

Uh and I heard a couple of speakers talk about what's happening at the state house.

Uh there's a group of people up there that are not interested in all, whether it's the legislature or the Senate, and possibly the governor who's from this city, care about public education, care about properly funding the pensions of the uh I think the group two of this city.

Um this is evident, and it has been it is it is history now for many years due to the downshifting that's been going on from the state, whether it whether it's for the pensions, whether it's now the the uh the plan to give vouchers, school vouchers to families with with no limits, no limits.

Families making the poverty level or a little bit above, up to whatever it is, 500,000 a year, 800,000 a year.

Well, they live in they live here.

They can now get a voucher for 4600 or a little bit more to go to to uh uh uh a private school, a religious school, an academy, etc.

This is along with what was presented with health care costs is what's affecting us a lot uh with with these budgets.

And again, um I think one of the one of the uh one of the speakers was uh from uh I forget the the road the street he lived on, I believe.

Uh we're talking about us uh communicating with the ledger.

You it's difficult to communicate with this group, this group's leadership when it comes to public education.

They they don't want to hear they are in the tank.

They are all in with either making this this building in particular, or any other school building in this state buckle or fail for that matter.

Uh but I I believe one of the speakers was from uh he lives in an area where the the governor I I think lives.

So perhaps that speaker can go down the street and knock on the door and say, hey, you know, we're having a tough time here.

This this would, you know, we we've had the we you know, we've had to increase our budget in the city, the taxes are gonna go up, where there's lawsuits going on, we've got a hire outside council.

Maybe that'd be a place to start.

And and as time goes on now, a lot of these bills that were passed are going to be there'll be ceremonies.

There'll be there'll be there'll be media events, there'll be cameras there, there'll be there'll be plenty on the internet of our governor signing these bills, which again are going to directly affect what's happening here in the education system as well as in the general government of Nashua.

So uh thank you for having this opportunity here tonight, and uh it's always uh it's always good to be with everybody here uh uh during budget season.

Thank you again.

Anyone else for general government?

Seeing none, we will move on to public works and engineering, which begins on page 184 of the bound book.

Uh any questions or comments for public works and engineering the first Fed T on 24 Cheyenne.

The first comment I want to make about public works is in the uh Holocaust Memorial, whoever takes care of it does an outstanding job.

It looks beautiful.

Now I can't resist to mention responding to City Attorney Bolton, who says that he does all this great work.

I remember I filed a malpractice complaint with the uh professional conduct committee, and guess who answered me?

On behalf of the city, a very expensive law firm.

Not a Mr.

T-Bone, this is for public works and engineering, please.

Yeah, so I wanted to um mention in terms of public works and salaries.

You know, the uh the mayor mentioned the salaries are 180.8 million dollars in the city and the fringe benefits that people talk about is 98.4 million.

And they say, well, the costs keep going up, and as I mentioned many times, many of these costs depend on contracts.

And the contracts get approved routinely by this board of all of them without a change.

They're never sending contact back.

Not on French benefits and not our salaries.

Now we'll just surprise you when I finally got the hold of the spreadsheet that 20% of the city employees, 20% of the number city as I mentioned earlier, are earning over a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Twenty percent.

The highest paid employees, $220,000 a year.

Chief of police.

And somebody's departments out of control.

Administrative services asked for a 16.5% increase.

Let's keep it to public works, please.

I want to I got five minutes left.

I want to mention the spending cap.

It applies to all departments.

As it relates to the public works and engineering department, please.

Now the city claims without detail to each department that they have $16.2 million under the CAP.

And when I calculate it using supplemental appropriations, which aren't even part of the CAP language in the charter, you're $8.5 million over the CAP.

And if you take away supplemental appropriations, which are designed only to cheat the spending cap, you're $24.6 million over the cap with this budget, Mayor, don't you?

Well, Mr.

Thibault, may I respond to that?

Or if you say the yes.

And we won't take it out of your time, right?

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, um, you we disagree regarding the cap calculation.

You have sued us how many times over this?

Three, four times, I forget.

There's another one coming up.

And and you lose every time.

The court agrees with us every time.

So yeah, okay, there's probably gonna be another lawsuit.

Uh you know, but why litigate the same you want to save legal costs and just trouble for everyone?

Why litigate the same issue over and over and over and over?

I'll tell you why.

I asked for a meeting with Don Enright, CFO.

And the six o'clock in the morning of the day of the meeting, the morning of the meeting, she says, I gotta cancel the meeting.

And I said, Well, we can't when can you re-cancel it, right?

Don't she says, you can send me the questions instead.

And I spent about a day putting together some detailed questions, right, Don?

And I just get it, and she sent it right to the right and the law coordinated that you have hide in the city, and I just got the answer back.

You know the answer was back and why I sued the city?

The answer gave me a corrected annual budget resolution.

That was it.

And it said right and all the questions closed.

That's I can't get a response from you.

I cannot get a meeting with Don Enright to have explained to me why these calculations are so different.

I can't get a meeting, I can't questions answer.

So the only thing I can do is go back to the court.

I think the court has a backdoor to the city legal office.

That is ridiculous.

We do it's no judge would talk to any party to a case.

That's ridiculous.

Will you let me meet with uh uh uh Don Andread?

Could we please refocus the questions to the public works and engineering department?

Can I have an answer to that question?

We'll look I'll look into it.

But I mean, one problem is you you we want to make sure that because we know you're gonna sue one way or the other, that the dialogue is clearly documented.

So it's not like well, she told me X and she says no, I didn't.

And we've seen that so many times in these cases.

So it's better if we communicate in writing so that it's clear what you've asked and it's clear what the answer is.

You got the questions.

Can you at least have the questions answered by Donald Enright without some regional law?

Well, I haven't seen the questions, but I'll go over it with Don with Ms.

Enright, CFO.

Thank you.

Anyone else with questions or comments for public works and engineering?

Hi, my name is Sharon Giulio.

I live at 29 Tashero Boulevard, and I'm also on the Board of Education here in Nashua.

And I have a question that I think applies to all of the items on tonight's agenda, and that is something that the mayor brought up earlier.

What exactly does the county do for us and all our departments with the money that we pay them every year?

I I I know we pay the county money.

What do we get in return?

Well, I can answer briefly.

I mean, they do a lot, you know, they they run a nursing home.

Okay.

There's the county nursing home, they run the county jail.

Okay.

Um, you know, on Valley Street in Manchester, there's a woman's prison out in uh um Goughstown.

Yeah.

Uh they the county sheriff, the county attorney.

So all of this is outside of the city, though, it's for the host.

Yes.

Just for the whole county.

Just for Hillsborough.

But now Nashua pays about 25% of the county budget.

So what it's about us in Manchester kind of fluctuate back and forth as to who's paying more.

But um the tax is based on the total assessment of the of the community.

So if our assessments, you know, our total value is 10 times more than some other place, we pay 10 times as much as them.

So we pay about 25% of the county, meaning we we now should have about 25% of the assessed value.

Manchester is about the same.

And then various towns pay, you know, on down from there.

Okay, well, thank you for clarifying that because it was interesting to hear that we give money to the county, and I wasn't even thinking about what the county does for us.

I mean, I forgot all about the nursing home and the jail and the prison and everything else.

But are we getting a fair deal for our first?

It's kind of a loaded question.

You're asking someone who has it at that.

We have to write this check.

We have to write this one big check.

Is it you know, um so you know, it's a uh painful one to um send.

Thank you.

Anyone else for public works and engineering?

My name is Bill Ferrio, my home is number 35 in the EMROC route.

I had a question about actual public works, if that's okay.

So I wanted to ask about the budget for the design of the new garage, Mayor.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

So prior to that bond being approved, there was a memo from Mr.

Cummings to the Alderman that showed the basis for the three million dollars for Cicero.

There's like five or six items that add up to three million dollars.

Okay.

Good news.

Yeah.

So the first item on the list is called HKT architects.

The architect.

That's $650,000.

Okay.

This is the contract and the proposal between the city and HKT architects for this same scope.

It's $550,426.

I didn't understand why the bond would ask for more, you would ask for more money to be bonded and allow more money to be borrowed than the the uh the architect actually needed than he actually proposed.

So I actually asked, I figured, well, maybe he's got some additional scope beyond this proposal.

This is Mr.

Cummings, this is the culprit right here.

You know, can I finish my question, sir?

Yes, yeah, yeah.

I'm just telling you, he's coming up to answer.

Okay, good.

So I asked the DPDW directory if there was some additional scope.

I think that must have been it.

That's about why does an additional hundred thousand or so dollars being asked for being requested to be borrowed?

And she told me no, I was wrong.

There's no additional scope.

This is the only scope the architect has is $550,000.

So my question is, why would you ask?

Why would you request more money to be bonded for more?

Why would you request to be able to bond more money than you need for the architect?

And does that mean that all these other tasks within that $3 million are inflated as well?

Do you commonly inflate the bond for I don't know, whatever reason?

No.

Uh Tim uh Cummings can answer this for you.

Uh yes, uh Tim Cummings, Director of Administrative Services.

Um to address the question at hand, and there's a few points that you you raised.

I want to I want to just uh take them one by one.

First, um to clarify, uh there is additional scope that was added to that contract, um, not known at the time, but actually uh recently we amended the contract uh once, and I actually believe we might be amending it again.

Uh so there's additional um design work that that is necessary to be able to move the move the project along.

Um so I wanted to just clarify that one uh minor point.

The second point, and this is goes more to the question at hand, is all of those items are budgeted uh estimates that we get, and we need to have those in advance to be able to we need to have the bond in advance to be able to enter into the contract with a bona fide source of funds.

And so um a lot of what we are are working with are our estimates at the time, and we um then obtain the bond.

Um I want to note that just because we get the bond authorization does not mean we actually sell or spend uh to to to the totality of it, because we understand that we are working with with uh uh estimates at at the time.

Thank you.

Okay, but at the time that was not an estimate.

That was proposal from the architect from the engineers, $550,000.

Did you know at that time there was going to be additional scope?

If if I may.

No, I didn't.

So again, so how did you calculate how what's the basis for the 650?

If the only scope at that time.

Would you had a proposal from the architect?

Very detailed proposal from the architect was 550.

Why did you select?

What was the basis for the six?

Why did you inflate it to six fifty?

Okay.

If if I may, the bond was authored.

I'm gonna say six months in advance, may roughly.

And it was predicated off of an estimate that was done by the uh project manager who works very closely with the various consultants and whatnot to help develop a budget estimate to propose a budget resolution.

And then as time went on, it starts to get more crystallized, more uh fine-tuned, in which is when the contract comes about.

Okay, so you didn't have opportunity to edit that resolution a couple of days before I went to the Alderman, or the day before I went to the Alderman?

Because that's when you knew you knew it was 550,000.

So several days before the bond was approved.

Yeah.

Uh again, Tim Cummings, Director of Administrative Services.

Uh and that's because we want to have some of that excess capacity contingency there, if you will.

So when we do have scope that arises, that uh increase in scope that arises, we are actually able to cover it without having to go back for another bond resolution.

No, sir.

You have a line here for contingency as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's correct.

So do you do you commonly do this?

Do you commonly inflate the bond?

Because maybe there's one thing that isn't clear.

When the authorization is passed, we don't borrow the money at that point.

Um it's not like we borrow more, you know, in most situations more than we need.

I understand.

And when when the authorization is made, we don't we might not borrow the money for months or a year down the road.

So we fund the we have a good cash balance, so we fund the project with cash, and then we when we figure out exactly what the cost is, then we borrow that amount, that amount, not necessarily what's been authorized, and we use the tobackfill for to replace the cash that was used to uh begin the project.

So the authorization is kind of an estimate.

We're not necessarily going to borrow that number.

Um but it um we're not necessarily gonna borrow that number, but it's an estimate at the time.

Do I still have another minute?

I say two more things.

It it it seems to make no sense to me.

You got a hard estimate, a hard proposal at that time.

Well, I'm not looking at all that right now, but I'm just giving you kind of the general approach.

I'm not sure what that means, but um.

Okay, one other thing.

So don't you commonly manage the amount of money that you bond each year and has to be you talk about 20 million and 25 million?

We we're trying to average, we're trying to average about 25 million of new debt a year.

So would this bond be that would be three million dollars towards that 20 and 25?

Even though you know it's gonna be less than that?

No.

We don't know it's gonna be less than that, but yes, um, this would be towards the the target of 25 million, average 25 million a year.

And to clarify that, that would be the debt service on what's sold, not not the bond authorization figure, just to make sure we're clear on that.

I I keep going back to this three percent directive that talked about financial pressures.

You know, I think you could bond a little more accurately than that, sir.

Thank you.

Anyone else for public works and engineering?

Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to public safety police, which begins in the bound book on 106.

Uh invite anybody up for a public safety police department.

Yes, I had some questions about the body cams.

And just your name and residency.

Steven Scare, um, East Hobart Street.

So, Mayor, I think you said the body cameras were 900,000.

Correct.

Okay, so I'm looking at the budget book and it has 1,195,000.

Um I don't know what page you're looking at, but we reduced the police department had proposed a million.

I talked with them and they thought they could do with 900, so we reduced it to 900.

Yeah, I'm looking I'm looking at page 10, and that that's where I got got that number.

And while you're going there, as far as the department proposal, it says the department proposed 295,000.

So it's that's a bit different than what you're saying the police proposed.

Well, 295 would be for the current year, would it not?

It for fiscal 26.

It says 2027.

So maybe that was just a misprint.

Well, I think um I mean we talked about this body camera idea after that budget was given to us.

So uh I you know I'd have to look at the details.

But in in any event, maybe Deputy Kenny can come up.

But the body cameras are worth the money.

They are um I mean they're not cheap, you're right.

They're worth the money.

Uh they they really improve the police experience for both the officer and this and the and the resident.

And they this new system they're getting, Axe Axon, I think it is, is going to have additional features that could be added that will do unbelievable things with drones, going to crime scenes, all kind of stuff.

So that's not paid for now, but um, you know, it's a start on uh on a system that could uh very much aid in responding to uh you know calls, which are many thousands every year.

Um so what did you say the what's the brand that you're getting, the company?

Um so Brian Kenny, deputy chief of police.

So we we aren't contracted with a new company as of yet, uh, but we are coming to the end of contract with our current provider, which is that 295 number that you see.

Uh we know we're going to possibly the vendor that the mayor mentioned, um, or any number of vendors which we know are going to be significantly more expensive than that.

If we do go to a new vendor, the city uh the police department has to deal with a transfer of services, and what that means is we can't just stop the current vendor on today and start a new vendor tomorrow.

There has to be an overlap.

So that's the discrepancy in the money that you see.

We will have to essentially double pay for a couple months for the data that we have saved this entire contract to stay with us into the new contract, if that makes sense.

Okay.

Um just so be clear on this axon, they have not decided who they're gonna go with.

I'm saying, you know, I think Axon's the best, but I'm not making the decision.

They're making the decision, but um the new uh body cameras, whoever provides them will be more capable than the current ones.

Okay, so what's is that the the company that gave you the number?

Who gave the where did the estimate come from?

Where'd you go shopping to check the prices?

So we've we've looked at multiple vendors.

Um that would be an accurate number, we think, uh, with the with Axon the the vendor that the the mayor mentioned.

But um even our current vendor is going to be more expensive in a new contract.

So we know it's going to be significantly more, and we are projecting that as a very safe number for us to receive the services that we require.

And the the vendor we deal with right now is the mayor mentioned earlier in the presentation that it is outdated.

Um we have had significant problems with it, so it will be more expensive to have sufficient technology.

Would you please spell the name of that company, Axon?

I think it's AXON.

Okay.

Correct.

Correct.

And we are we are not under contract with Axon at this time, just to be just to be clear.

And again, this is me speaking, and I do not make the decision.

So I've just become aware that the axon system is quite good, and maybe there are others that are just as good.

I don't know, but uh the axon is one of the leading vendors.

They are the industry leader at this point.

Okay, I I don't I I'm a big fan of body cams and of our police department, so I don't want to be misunderstood at being against those.

But I mean look, let's say if my math is right, maybe I'm a little bit foggy.

So you had a plundered police officers, wouldn't it be like 10,000 bucks a camera per officer at that price?

You're saying it's a whole system.

We're not really talking about body cams.

You're talking about drones and what else.

Correct.

It's uh I mean we it's not just the camera, it's the software that's backed up.

It's um it's mounts, it's it's computers.

It's it's not as simple as just having a body camera on your uh on your uniform.

Everything gets recorded, so you can, you know, there's a database of ever of everything.

So if you want to go back and check an interaction, you can see it, you know, on the camera.

It's all saved.

You know, so there's a lot of technology, you know, back end technology.

Okay.

About how much does that break down?

I don't know how many officers you have.

Um, how many, how does that m cost per officer?

Uh I I don't have the math in front of me, sir.

We have an 100 we're budgeted for 122 officers.

We're about we're about nine short right now.

Okay, so that's within we're really talking about six.

I'm doing trying to do this in my head, six, seven thousand per officer for this.

Okay, I'm I'm eager to learn more about the system.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Anyone else for public safety for the police department?

Seeing none, we'll move on to public safety fire department, which begins on page 11.

Questions or comments for the fire department.

Stephen Scare 11 East Hobart Street.

Um, regarding the fire department budget, and I was trying to figure it out.

We have these very charming anti-quated um fire alarm systems through our city.

I was reading in the union leader that I think the the Manchester stopped using theirs.

We're st and a mention that we're still using ours.

Is that correct?

Your fire boxes.

Yes, but the chief can tell you the details.

Okay.

I think they find them to be useful, actually.

So um, first of all, my my question is can you give me a rough idea of how much it costs to operate that system?

And also how how old is it?

When were those installed?

Steve Buxton, National Fire Chief.

Um, I can't give you a rough estimate on what it costs to main uh to operate that system because our system is very well maintained uh day in and day out.

A lot of communities that are taking their systems out of service have not maintained them throughout the years, and the investment it would take to get them up to modern standards is not sustainable.

Our system has been maintained through the years, it is very reliable.

Um, and it is a default for us so that when we lose power, uh the cell towers go down, all those other things.

There's redundancy built into the system so alarms can still be transmitted to the fire alarm office and our companies can be dispatched calls.

And about what year were they installed?

Oof.

I I apologize, I don't have that on the sometime in the 20th century.

Yeah.

It's better than 100 and something years old.

How often are they used?

Uh very frequently.

Uh when buildings are constructed within the city, we require them to put a master box on the the building.

Um we have uh place boxes in more efficient locations.

They used to be in neighborhoods off the main roads.

Now, if you look there mostly on the main roads, uh but uh alarms are transmitted to our fire alarm alarm office utilizing the system every day.

Okay, how do like I'm walking down the road and I see one of the one of the boxes?

How exactly is the people using those boxes?

How exactly are they being used now?

Yep, they so that somebody could pull that alarm.

Does that happen?

Yep, absolutely.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Well, you're very welcome.

Any other questions for fire?

Laurie Ortolano Nashua.

Um just quickly on um staffing.

Do you have any new positions in your budget this year?

Yes, we have three new positions in our budget this year.

What are they?

Uh there is safety officers, accountability officers.

Um we haven't quite decided what we're gonna officially title them yet.

They're positions that were taken out of service in our budget back in 2008.

So we're actually trying to get those positions back at this point in time.

Are they management positions?

No, they're floor positions.

Okay.

And how well staffed are you right now?

How many openings do you have?

Are you fully staffed?

Uh we just graduated recoup class approximately a week and a half ago.

Um, and we have three openings after that, those members hit the floor.

Okay, and is it typical that you only have a few openings?

Uh yeah, towards we hire once a year, typically in the springtime.

Uh and by that time we'll average anywhere between 10 and 15 openings.

Okay.

You know, I'm just going to state because of this budget increase, and I know it's may not reflect on yours, but the 7.4, it's difficult to bring in new positions this year with this budget.

That's just how I look at that.

But I'm very happy with the work you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for fire?

Seeing none, we'll move on to other public safety.

Anyone with questions or comments for the other public safety.

My name is Bill Ferrier.

My home is number 35, Indian Rock Road.

Did you choose to skip over public library, sir?

That's fine.

No, I have public library listed after.

Okay.

I apologize if that differs from the agenda posted.

Okay.

All right, my dad.

I had a question on uh page one hundred and twenty.

Street lighting.

So this really applies to several departments throughout in this book.

Electricity.

You didn't mention it tonight, Mayor, that I heard, but I think recently you talked about how the increase in electricity costs was a high nail.

Yeah, I could have, but I didn't.

You mentioned No, I mean I could have tonight, but I didn't.

You should have.

You should have, sir.

Okay.

I would think that if it's a it's an important, it's a large part of the budget increase.

You would want to make sure that you estimate that very carefully and very definitively.

Okay.

I know when I I asked this question through one of the aldermen to the school department, they talked in detail about how they had estimated their electricity costs for 2027.

Can you talk about how some of the other departments in the city estimate their electricity costs?

They don't seem to be very consistent.

Um, we have an energy manager who purchased these the electricity.

Um there are different contracts.

One for the as I understand it, one for the school department, one for the city, or at least one for the city.

Okay, great.

And um I think the estimates are done based upon the expected use and the rates that uh are secured as a result of the you know the efforts of the energy manager.

Okay.

Do you remember what that rate was at the city?

Um the rate was that you contract for for 2027.

I don't.

There are different rates for differ on the different contracts.

Different rates between the the school and the city, you mean?

Yes.

Okay, I understand the school has the remate.

I was asking about the city's rate.

The non- I've forgotten right now exactly what the word is.

I question whether it's done very accurately, sir, because this one here on page 120.

Street lighting.

Actuals to date on that line item have been well below 2026 budget.

So it's unclear why that would increase for 2027.

I mean it's just because there was a lot of fidelity put into the estimate for the engine for the electricity.

All right, so which numbers are you looking at?

Well, for example, I'm looking on page 120 of your budget book.

Well, I'm looking at street lighting of page 129.

This is this is this is um other public safety, right?

This is other public safety, right?

Yeah.

Oh, that's well, I have that as page 118, but okay, yes.

I got it.

Look at look at that estimate for 2027, sir.

All right.

525,000, 000.

Does that look like a number that was created by calculating the usage times a rate?

No.

Doesn't it looks like somebody kind of made up a number?

Well, Mr.

And if you go through all of the Yeah, but there are how many thousands of street lights?

And what is it?

I mean, how is it possible to calculate precisely how much electricity is gonna be used by thousands of street street lights?

You don't know what the usage was.

I'm sure there's some variance.

Sometimes they're on for more hours than other times.

I you know, it's just it's an estimate.

Like everything, like most a lot of the numbers in this book are estimates.

There's different levels of estimates, sir.

Well, maybe, but you can kind of you can spend very little time on it.

Do you have an actual or if it's a high nail, it's driving your budget.

You could spend a bunch of time on it and come up with something more detailed.

Like 527 instead of 525.

I'm gonna go back to the December memo that talked about financial pressures.

When you have financial pressures, you put some fidelity into your estimates.

You go back and look at actuals.

You should know what your usage uses have been for the last two, three years.

Maybe even by month.

You should know why your actuals are way below your budget for 2026.

I just got this high.

I don't think you can estimate, I don't think you can determine to the dollar how much thousands of electricity outlets are going to use during the course of a 12-month period.

Yeah, but would it be precisely well, first of all, the rates different, but but that's just sometimes street lights are out, sometimes they get replaced.

Uh you know, a lot of things happen.

It's a huge system.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else for other public safety?

If not, then we'll move on to the public library, which begins on page 156.

Questions and comments for the public library.

That's scare, Nashua.

Um I just I've been observing the library for a number of years.

This is the one area of the budget I know a little bit about.

Um I've been very confused about the the salaries at the hours staff hours at the library.

Um what I see is they seem to be they're not well paying jobs, but they get a lot of hours.

And strangely, if you go there at like 8 30 at in the evening on a weeknight, you'll find two people at the front desk waiting to check out, and you'll have someone in the teen room and someone in the children's room, even though it's probably too late for most kids, and there's someone downstairs, and it's like they there could be easily be more staff than there are actually people in the library at that time of night.

And I it's I'm wondering if they're getting more hours to compensate for the low pay, in which case, I mean it all seems very strange and doesn't seem well like a good plan for paying our their staff.

So I I just I have been thinking about this for a long time, and I wanted to, you know, bring bring awareness to that, because I don't know that anyone else has noticed it.

And um also for the library director, I I was just wondering if her pays is um comparable to other library directors in the region.

It seemed kind of high um relative to you know what other people are getting paid in the city to do, you know, for uh for other positions like that.

Um so that's my concerns about the library and and also and where's all this money for moving for like renovation and moving it.

The whole thing, I mean, I've been listening going to the trustees' meetings and hearing how they're gonna move the whole library out and there's gonna be a new building.

I believe Director McCormick is here to answer some of your questions.

Thank you.

Jennifer McCormick, library director.

Um, thank you for those questions.

I'm gonna try to answer them in order.

So in response to the question about staffing at the library, and if you're there late in the evening, it's true.

It can sometimes after 8 30, it will certainly feel like there are more staff people in the building than there are customers at times.

We staff the we fully staff the building until nine o'clock at night because our meeting rooms are used and booked until nine o'clock at night.

Sometimes a group will book a room until nine and they'll leave at 820 instead, but we we certainly wouldn't close early or then our posted hours.

And for a point of reference, our meeting rooms were used almost 4800 times in the last year.

So that's one of our key services.

And this is a good segue to talk about the renovation plans.

Um one of the major outcomes of a library renovation will be more efficient use of space.

And at most of those desks, we have two people, sometimes only one.

We expect in the renovated building, we'll be down to one or two service desks for the whole building, and that will radically change our the way we use our staff and the kinds of services they can provide.

As to my salary, I think my salad salary is comparable to directors in other similar-sized cities.

Believe I'm paid about 10% less than the Manchester Library Director.

Um qualifications to be a library director.

You are required to have a master's degree, which is a little bit different than maybe some other positions.

That is all, I think earlier tonight someone used the word aspirational.

So the trustees and I have been working since well, I've been here since 2010, and I've been thinking about it since then.

But we've been working since 2022 on a feasible uh facility assessment and then a feasibility study, trying to identify what library services the community needs and how best to provide them.

Our building is not in the best of condition.

We are currently working with the at admin services director on the next phase of design for the renovation.

The board of Alderman approved a bond of a million dollars last year to continue the design process, but there have been no funds identified or secured for construction or moving.

Um, that's all part of the process.

And the trustees will start meeting with the committee on infrastructure on Wednesday, January 24th, I think is the first joint special meeting.

So those would be good meetings to attend uh to keep up on our progress on design and funding for that.

Thank you.

I hope I think I hit all the points.

All right, anybody else for the public library.

Uh good evening.

My name is Marina Vaz.

I live at one clocktower place here in Nashua.

Um, I just wanted to like echo what Jen is mentioning and how wonderful a resource the library is.

Um, one of my uh community advisory uh group members uh spoke earlier tonight.

We meet at the library, that's an amazing free space to meet.

Um they have so many more things than books.

Um and not to knock the books, they're great.

Um, but they have a seed library.

Um, there's so many community events that I've attended there that are wonderful, it's accessible, it has sufficient parking.

Um so I just wanted to echo like what an amazing resource it is for our community, and then also like I meet with community members who like the library is where they can get access to a computer, you know.

So those are just like very small examples of how our community benefits from the library, the staff is super attentive, so I just wanted to say that.

Um, yeah, thank you.

Anyone else for the public library?

If not, then we'll move on to the community development division, which begins on page 160.

Anyone who would like to speak to community development, Gloria Orlando Nashua.

Um, a couple things.

I went and listened to the budget presentation by the director, and urban programs was completely skipped over this year.

But in the prior year, urban programs was covered.

And um, you know, there's certainly been some questions raised about urban programs and the distribution of block grant money, lead paint, abatement, and healthy home money.

But I've also addressed with the board my concerns with staffing and turnover, it's been really high over there.

Um, I'm gonna say 18 to 20 positions have turned over since 2021.

It's a department that appears to have about 38.

And when I hear a director say, well, that's because they all move on to better jobs.

I don't think that's entirely true based on my research.

So I think the board has to do a little more detailed in-depth probing into what's going on in community development.

I'm not a supporter of the sustainability program and the turbine program.

You know, we pay very high pro uh costs and uh salaries for these people.

Um, you know, sustainability with electric rates, that position pays about 115 or 16,000 a year.

Um, the other one that works turbines pays maybe 135, 145,000 a year.

These are very high-paid positions.

And Fred T-Boom presented information to the board on the turbine program.

It showed it Alderman Dowd was running that budget meeting saying, oh, we get a thousand, we get a million dollars of revenue.

I wouldn't scoff at a million dollars of revenue, but the problem is the costs are about 2.6, 2.8 million dollars for that million dollars of revenue.

Manchester's turbine generates 5.5 million in revenue.

It's high, and their costs are much lower.

It's a moneymaker.

It is not a moneymaker in Nashua.

And it was put in place by Donal Elozzo.

I probably should not have been put in place, and I don't think it works well.

And I don't think we need a sustainability coordinator for electric rates.

I mean, it really didn't work out well.

But you know, and I'm not not green.

I mean, my husband ran a green solar business.

He's been a businessman for 26 years.

He ran a brick green solar company for 10 or 12 years and sold it off because profitability was so difficult.

But he was on the roofs of all these big Massachusetts companies putting up, you know, thousands of panels and doing that work.

And I had a solar system on my house in Litchfield.

I mean, I'm not opposed to it at all.

But if it's not profitable and you're not doing much by way of really lowering rates, then I I think that department should be cut.

Um I'm also concerned about the qualifications of the people and community development when it comes to urban programs and handling these grants.

These grants are very sophisticated.

They have a lot of um complex uh contract issues, and you have to be on top of them.

And I don't think we have the people over there to be on top of them.

You know, I paid attention to complaints that were in there.

I got information, I paid attention to a whistleblower complaint, and frankly, I don't like what I see.

And of course, the individual ended up being terminated, and I'm sure most of you know that, but I don't really like what I see going on over there when it comes to urban programs.

We're talking about qualifications of individuals.

Well, these are staff positions that are in there.

Like this person who's gone now is in there.

I don't see a new position offered to hire for them.

Um I don't know, you know, when we did the lead paint and healthy homes grant, I think it was I, you know, set to have seven people working on it.

Certain number of people had to work on it.

I don't think we have three on it now.

I mean, that's a problem.

And it was a big grant, it was a huge award, maybe one of the biggest in the country.

It was huge.

I mean, it was bigger than what Boston got.

But we don't have the staff for it anymore.

So I raise those issues.

I think there is, you know, trouble brewing and costs there that need to be looked at.

And I I don't think the board has paid attention the way it should.

And I think overall staffing in the city and turnover is something I've asked the board to pay attention to.

And it's not just community development, it's other departments as well.

And that's all I'm gonna say.

Anyone else for community development budget?

Let me pick up where Ortolano left off on the hydroelectric bank.

I um kind of interested in it because it's an engineering project.

Unfortunately, the person in charge of that project has no engineering background whatsoever.

Um I wrote a memorandum back March 26th to you, Mayor, to Board of Alderman, to Deb Gisham, Matt Sullivan.

Says NYSHA hydroelectric business, a big loser.

Showed it lost about over a million bucks, Mr.

Cummings, Mr.

Solomon.

And I wrote this memorandum.

Nobody responded to it.

And you know, if you look at this, first of all, why is this a community development?

This is an engineering project that should be probably under engineering, public works, where you have engineers, real engineers.

At least the city engineers are real engineer.

Second of all, why is this not a special revenue fund?

It's got all kinds of expenses, none of which are shown here.

Bond expenses, repair expenses, licensing expenses.

This is this is not a good picture.

It is not a complete picture.

This mayor don't just should be converted to a special revenue fund.

And if it loses money, then either you have to subsidize it from the general fund, which you're doing through these bond payments, and big repairs coming up, and big fish hatchery stuff coming up.

You know, the fish agencies.

You know, I don't know how you're gonna pay for this.

You're gonna have to come with more bonding, more transfers from the supplemental from the uh funds, like you did last time is the $600,000 repair transfer.

At least a special revenue fund would show exactly what are the losses.

And then get rid of it.

All you do, you get a single customer that's that's being your 11.3 cents a kilowatt hour.

And the whole thing, it's it's uh it's a the I don't even know where the revenue is $1,600 come from.

I presented in this memorandum the rundown of the different revenues based on the kilowatt hours produced in both of these dams.

And right now, one of them I don't think it's even running.

It's got a blade missing.

Um you gotta fix this, Mayor Don, just and you can save yourself a million bucks by divesting it.

Now it's gonna be difficult to divest because who the hell wants to buy losing low profile water dam, or two of them that were initially a bankrupt company when they bought the bankrupt operation up in uh I think it was Mindfall Spark, but one of the two was bankrupt.

I forgot which one.

So anyway, can you answer the question?

Why A, why is this not part of a special revenue fund?

B, why aren't you getting rid of it?

Mr.

You know, maybe you're right, we should have a special revenue fund so that it is clear what you know what's being uh how this is uh netting or not netting out.

I mean, it does generate considerable they do cons they do generate considerable revenue.

But uh oh, you know, a million seven or something like that a year.

But but um the re you know, the dams are old.

We acquired them some years ago, decades ago, really, and um the repairs have been expensive.

There is no question about it.

And you know, uh what like the the turbine uh you know to get into all the problems, uh you know, it's just too much for right now.

But there have been a lot of problems, a lot of repairs, expensive.

We have to relicense the if we're gonna have any revenue, you know.

If we were to just stop right now, we still owe the money and we have no revenue.

So these things, the licenses uh which are generated by FERC, a uh federal agency, have to be renewed.

And in order to continue to get revenue and not just have expense, we need to relicense these things.

And they are the requirements that they're imposing are considerable, like a six million dollar fish ladder we've got to build in order to um get the relicensing.

And that that you know can be bonded and paid over years, but you know, that's a lot of money.

But if we don't do that, we have to stop using the dams, and we lose a million seven in revenue, and we still have the expenses.

So you know just it's not agreed.

But I agreed, I agree with you.

Maybe we should have a special revenue fund.

You know, they made millions and billions of dollars of revenue, but they went bankrupt.

You gotta stop somewhere, you gotta stop the bleeding sometime.

And I'm trying to catch it to save some money.

I'll win earlier about how you can save the save a million dollars.

Why don't we agree on the special revenue fund so that we can clearly see um what's coming in and what's going out?

And also get this transfer to the engineering department where you have engineers that can watch it more closely that know the difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt hour.

May I may I respond to Mr.

T-Boom?

Yes, Mr.

Tebum, I appreciate your opinion that management of a hydroelectric facility is is in better care with an engineer.

Financial management of a hydroelectric facility, in fact, two of them is not the job of an engineer, in my opinion, and that's my opinion.

You are welcome to have yours.

Your revenue numbers are absolutely 100% incorrect that you've presented over and over and over again.

And we are gonna present revenues when we go to the ad hoc committee to talk about the bonding that will need to be done over the coming years.

There's no question that the bonding required for the fish passage projects and eventually a minefalls turbine replacement project will put the city in a position where it needs to examine whether or not it's willing to run these facilities in the red.

The current revenues and expenses from the date that these were purchased by the city absolutely yield the fact that the city is in the black on these investments.

That is a fact.

We've looked at this in detail.

Will that change in the future?

Yes, no question about it.

And you are absolutely correct.

The city will be faced with a question of whether or not it wants to run these in the red, or whether it wants to look at an intrinsic value of having two hydroelectric electric facilities producing four megawatts of power that or is green power, and whether that has a value above dollars and cents.

I've said repeatedly in front of the budget committee, the ad hoc committee, that the value of these facilities was always intended to be on beyond just collecting revenue.

It wasn't it was intended to be a green power generating facility.

And so let me interrupt you.

You're taking a lot of my time.

No, I'm not, Mr.

Cheeham.

I'm not taking I'm not taking your time.

I'm not timing for answers.

I'm not tying, I'm not taking your time.

Well, you said my revenue values are wrong.

On that memorandum, I quoted you.

I produced a chart.

That chart was produced by your department for just children.

Send us to me.

Okay.

That chart shows the revenue at one point, and you take both coin hours and multiply by the rate that ever source is your sole customer pays you.

And it goes, yes, at one time it's a 2.4 million.

That was back in 2021.

That sense that time it's reduced.

In 2025, it's 1.179 million.

I mean, this thing is not producing 1.6 million.

And my I could my numbers are very accurate.

If I'm wrong, you better check the check this memorandum I gave you.

I will be very brief if I may respond.

Sullivan.

So uh uh Mr.

T boom.

The the error in your assumptions and your calculations is the rate that you're using.

And Ms.

Chisholm and I actually looked at that memorandum that you provided because we we took those comments very seriously.

But the reality is that revenues have been very volatile from year to year, and I've talked about that volatility and why it impacts the ability to actually run this as an enterprise fund or special revenue.

You will ultimately have to subsidize this operation from year to year in the event that we have low flow, aka very little precipitation.

And so we've always been always been very resistant to moving this to an enterprise fund because of the need to go back to the taxpayer to subsidize.

Unlike the landfill or a parking fund that has consistent revenue coming in, this relies on precipitation.

We simply don't want to have to put the taxpayer in a position to be supplementally appropriating to the fund as a on a regular basis, unpredictably.

So we've resisted moving to an enterprise fund.

That's that's my position on that.

That's why when ASIS That's a crazy position.

Well, I appreciate your opinion.

That's a ridiculous position.

Okay, thank you.

Not what it's but yes, but the revenue is gonna vary depending on how much it rains.

I mean, you know, so if it rains a lot, the revenue goes way up.

If a turbine breaks, the revenue goes down.

You know, there's a lot of variance.

And if it's a loser, you get rid of it.

No, there's one other thing.

I mean, I I see the point of a of a revenue fund.

I do, so that it would clearly, you know, this year we lost, this year we gained.

We you know, it would be very evident from the uh final report of the revenue fund.

But um Director Sullivan has pointed out what the other side of the argument is.

I think I'm just ridiculous.

Mr.

T Boom, you're at the end of your time.

If you could just wrap it up.

One other thing while I think about it.

You've had time to think about it.

We can direct Don Andrite to answer my questions on the spending cap.

Can you send the question?

Have you sent the questions?

Yes, I'm not sure.

Yeah, well, we we haven't had time to talk about it.

We will look at the questions and otherwise I'll see you back in court.

Probably we'll see you in the court either way.

I mean, yeah, you some people never stop suing.

That's right.

Any other questions or comments for the community development division budget?

Seeing none, we'll move on to the budget for public health and community services, which begins on page 128.

That's scare Nashua.

Um, I read the public health newsletter every month, and it's wild, the stuff she puts in there.

It's all lots of DEI, climate change.

Uh trend, you know, transgender crap, and I'm just very concerned.

I mean, hopefully, is this contained to the newsletter in her whole office isn't run like this.

I mean, last year in this newsletter, she advocated this department lobbied against bills to ban puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children.

Ms.

Scare.

Do you have any budgetary related questions?

I I just want to, I'm just concerned what this office is spending all this money on.

It's uh if the if it's anything like her monthly newsletter, I'm very concerned that we are blowing a lot of money on ridiculous stuff.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh any further comment or question for public health and community services.

My name is Bill Ferrio.

My home is number 35, Indian Rock Road.

I had a question on public health budget.

On page 130.

There's a list of FY27 objectives.

There's a bunch of bullets here.

I wanted to ask about the third one, if I could read this.

It says effectively operate a low barrier winter warming station.

An all-season resource center.

So the question I had was is unfortunate it doesn't look like the resource center is going to be in service July first.

So can you tell me how much was budgeted to operate this all season resource center?

And did you plan it to start July 1st, or would it be make more sense to plan it for later in the season, later in the uh budget season, when there may be another opportunity to develop a resource center, mayor?

If you look at um the sorry, if you look at the um list of um changes which we proposed to the budget committee, you will see that we suggested that they reduce or eliminate the staffing cost for the resource center because the decision was made not to proceed.

So you need to look at the um list of changes.

I didn't have opportunity to see that.

Was that made public, sir?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Okay, all right.

My post.

How much was that budgeted for?

How much was the budget for that?

177,000.

Okay, great, thank you.

That's all yeah.

Lori Ortolano Nashua.

I just want to talk about positions um in public health.

It seems to me we've grown the positions a good bit over the last maybe three years.

And um, I I think it's position heavy.

I think there's too many employees in the public health budget, and it could be reduced.

Um, and I know that's a difficult concept or thing for you to consider, but um, I think it's something the board should be looking at more closely.

Um, the value of each position and what can be done to reduce positions um in the public health budget.

That's you know how I feel.

I saw I know some are grant funded, as long as the grant is being administered correctly, and you're getting what you think you're supposed to get from that grant funding, that's fine.

But there's also usually some overlap um, you know, in the processing of grant fund money through the city.

There's some services that are used.

Um, but I would ask the board to pay attention to the number of staff positions in public health, and and you as well, and consider uh if every one of those positions is vital.

Thank you.

Are there any other comments or questions for the public health?

Seeing none, we'll move on to education, which begins on page 215.

Okay, this is a big one.

There's a school department than you.

First of all, I'd like to say that the school made a presentation to the Board of Allemand was outstanding presentation.

Very good one, much better than the Cities.

And it had the salaries.

Uh if you it didn't present it there, but if you look at the school board of education, you find a salaries listed.

It's in the PDF sheet.

It takes a while to decode it into Excel, but I was able to do it.

Now, if you look at a school, they're asking for a 7.37% increase.

If you want to know how much money that is, that's 14 million dollars.

If it went by the guideline of 3%, they'd uh they would get 5.7 million, a difference of $8 million.

$14 million increase over last year.

The school department represents 53.4% of the operating budget.

And it represents 41% of the total city budget of about 501 million dollars, if you take everything into account.

And so you just want to kind of start looking into the details.

I didn't micromanage the other stuff.

I'm glad, Mr.

Andrew, that you're there.

So one of the things I looked at after I decoded the salary, PDF, is I found you're on top.

But you're on top by a percentual margin.

Your salary from your own spreadsheet is 197,940.

No, 197,000.

You're not as high as the police chief and the fire chief, they make more.

But you are your next highest paid guy is a guy named Matthew Pascar, who is the assistant superintendent, and he makes 140,800.

How do you justify a $57,000 difference between you and the next highest paid guy in a school department?

Um Mr.

Posca deserves more money.

140,800.

He's he's if you do a comparison of our salaries across the state of New Hampshire.

We are not uh in the top tier.

We're not in the top five.

I'm talking about here.

Yeah, no, you asked the question, and I'm answering your question.

He he deserves a highest salary.

Why?

Why $50,000 more than the next highest paid guy?

Because that's what that's my contract, and that's what I negotiated, and I said Mr.

Posco deserves more money, and we can negotiate that.

So the board of all the if I can add before we hop.

Um, I think to Dr.

Andre's point, if you actually look at Manchester, which is the comparable school district, um the superintendent and assistant superintendents are probably actually not making what they should be making for a district of this size.

They should be making more, they absolutely should.

Well, it's up to the board of element to cut your bottom line.

They can control your salaries, but advise them to cut your bottom line by about well, what did I say it was?

A uh $14 million increase.

Cut it by two or three, four million dollars, bottom line.

The next question I have is you have a fellow called assistant superintendent ACA.

What in the devil is that?

What is he?

What does he manage?

Um do you have a name?

Because I'm not sure who you're referring to, sir.

Uh Matthew Poskar.

Oh, so that is the assistant superintendent.

So at the school district, we have Dr.

Andre as the uh superintendent, and then we have two assistant superintendents.

One is over elementary and one is over secondary.

Okay, what's the ACA stand for?

Um, it's probably an abbreviation for assistant.

I looked it up.

It's a Swiss superintendent of transgender and non-coming staff.

No.

No, no.

That's what ACA means.

No.

So you must be looking at a position con uh position code based off of the PDF that is posted on the website.

Now you have two, you have a director, let me go next up.

Director of CTE, which is a career techno technical education.

You have a director of TEC, which is technical education, and you got the director of STFs, which is a safety transportation and secure.

I'm not sure what all STS totally stands for.

But it's you have at least two directors, high paid.

One guy is paid $129,900, the other guy's paid $116,300.

Why have you got two technical directors?

Yeah, I sorry.

I'm not I'm not sure what position you're actually referring to.

Again, I think you're looking at our job coding.

So the job coding doesn't necessarily reflect the position.

Okay, do you have a name?

No, no, I'm sorry.

Tion.

Ilian Telbow is one, the CTE.

So Helene Talbot is our CTE director.

Yeah, and the regular Rodriguez is TEC.

And why have you got two technical directors?

So we have one CTE director, and then Tian is our civil rights coordinator.

Is your what coordinator?

Civil rights coordinator.

No, no, I'm talking about Gregory Rodriguez.

So the position for Greg is actually the IT position that was listed.

That position is being eliminated based off of uh the presentation earlier.

We are moving into a shared resource with the city.

Okay, you're getting rid of that position.

That is that's correct.

All right, that's good to hear.

Mr.

There's a civil rights COR.

Thayan Calliccio.

Tion.

So Tian, that is the individual that I just uh mentioned.

She is our civil rights coordinator.

She works side by side with our HR department, a lot of the HR uh investigations.

Why do you need the director for that if you've got an HR director?

Due to the number of claims with 10 nearly 10,000 students and 2,000 employees.

There's a lot of complaints that come in around um discrimination, Title IX cases that that need investigation.

And between you and the HR guy, you can't handle that.

Absolutely.

This position is absolutely needed.

Robert Cioopia is director of STS.

What is that person?

He's the director of uh ELL.

He's our director of uh English language learners.

Don't you have a director of special education?

That's a different department.

We do.

And you have a different director for Fed and a different director of the absolutely.

So in uh we nearly have over uh 2,000 uh ELL students and 2,000 special education students.

Um director of special education.

Um you can see the rising costs, so there's a lot of oversight and liability um in that department.

And then as you know, over the last four years, we were under a DOJ settlement agreement because we were not providing enough ELL services.

So that his position, our director of ELL is absolutely absolutely needed.

Yeah, one of the problems I have with ELL, EL, being a foreign language entry myself, is you got Vietnamese students come in, and the EL teacher doesn't speak Vietnamese.

Somebody speaks English?

Yeah, with all due respect, sir.

Like there's a lot of criteria and and um regulations around ELL.

I I don't want to belittle your comment, but there's a lot that goes into uh ELL services.

Well, there's a lot that goes into all of these positions.

Absolutely, and there's a lot of questions.

Now let's talk about your attendance.

Mr.

T Boom, just before you proceed, you're at the end of your time.

Uh over the five minutes.

Yes, sir.

All right, I've got a second.

I have some more comments for the school department.

Uh we've been pretty lenient.

Uh if you could wrap it up, please.

Mr.

T Boom, as I in our emails, any time that you want to come in, I'll be more than happy to have a conversation with you.

Well, when I came to this country, there was no such thing as EO.

Everybody spoke pretty damn good.

Pretty damn fast.

And any further for the education department.

Lori Ordalado Nashua.

I just want to talk about buildings.

I didn't make the meeting on Thursday because I was ill.

And so I watched it from home.

And you know, my take on the issue with our buildings and the management of our buildings and usage of our buildings.

Um, is that we had a study done, I think it was 21 or 22 by a gentleman who produced a report that said we have too many open schools based on enrollment.

And it was pretty detailed and laid out the reasoning why.

And then we paid 400,000 and we had Harriman come in and do another study.

Excuse me, I'm still recovering.

And um, you know, they came up with the same issue that we have too many open schools, and they presented a lot of these models of what you can do in closing.

Personally, I found it to be too many choices.

There were a lot of choices in there.

So trying to parse through the choices was difficult.

But I just want to express my disappointment with the board of aldermen and the board of education in not addressing this more timely.

I think we know what we're facing.

I think with the report that was done four years ago, we knew what we were facing.

And I think we should have had this budget reflect schools that weren't going to be open next year, that we were going to redistribute kids, as painful as that is and difficult as that is, we have to move in that direction.

And you know, the future of numbers still shows decline.

And we're kicking the can down the road and drawing this out to be a six, seven, or eight year problem that we have to deal with when the costs go up and the circumstances change.

And you know, I think I think this required more expedien from both the board of Alderman and the Board of Education to deal with the buildings.

And that is my criticism.

I appreciate the reductions you've made in staffing.

And I understand that a lot of your staffing reductions don't come down more because your special ed issues are through the roof.

And that is a big problem for the school.

But I'd like to see McCarthy Middle School, which is pretty underutilized, consider doing something with special ed programming in there, or using it for you know, another part of a school, the school to make it more efficient.

I don't know.

We've got to figure out how to use this space more effectively for our kids and reduce the cost to the taxpayers still delivering services.

Thank you.

Okay, anybody else for the educational budget?

Hi.

Sharon Gelio, 29 Tashrow Boulevard Board of Education.

I just want to speak to a few issues that have come up relative to our declining population, which is absolutely true.

However, the students that we now have, as a previous speaker mentioned, have greater needs than any students we have ever seen before.

That includes our ESL or ELL students, it includes our special education students, it includes fragile students, it includes students that need have disabilities and need to be accommodated appropriately.

And I think that us even having to take a 56 or 57 job cut was extreme.

Part of the problem is that people since COVID, apparently, are just not coming into education as a career.

So a lot of our expenses have to do with the fact that we have we can't just hire all of our regular paraprofessionals and pay them on our regular scale.

We have to pay through a contract to an outside agency to get enough people to offer the services to our special education students, and that is extremely costly.

And if there's anyone here who would like to go into education or have children who would like to go into education, now is the time.

We need you.

Our students deserve everything we can give them.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Regalampier, and um I'm at 237 Brook Village Row Department 4.

I'm on the Board of Education.

Um actually the chair of the Finance Committee.

So I work pretty closely with both um Mr.

Gray and Dr.

Andre.

And the amount of work that they do to run these schools and to keep our books looking the way they do, especially in this year that was so challenging, um, was incredible.

And um they are important to the school.

And Dr.

Scarpati is as well, our assistant superintendent, and um our other people as well.

Um, the ELL services and the director of special education, this is what we need to take care of children.

This is what we need to provide a good education.

And so um I just it made me um a little bit upset to hear anyone disparaging these people because they have given their given devoted their lives to caring about our kids.

So um, I just want to correct the record.

Thank you.

Although I did expect maybe um a proposed budget of a little bit less than this for the schools after attending all of the meetings and hearing all the struggles that were happening.

I'm happy to see that it's not like a you know complete and utter 3% destructive budget proposal.

Um, but just speaking as a parent, I have two kids.

One is four and one is two and a half.

They're not yet in the public school system, but they will be soon.

It is really disheartening, even with the amount of funding that they're going to get that they've had to make such steep cuts to staffing, and as we know, the staff are the most important part of our schools, among other things.

And it's also very stressful climate.

I'm zoned to New Cyrils, and their name has come up in multiple conversations about closure.

Um, it's it's hard to imagine what's gonna happen in the next couple of years and where my kids are gonna go to school, and it really makes me consider what am I gonna do?

Am I gonna stay in Nashua with my young family or am I gonna move us somewhere else where the schooling situation is less volatile?

Um not sure where that place is, but I know it's a struggle across the state and across the country.

Um I just wanted to I I guess speak to that.

Um, what does the budget?

I guess is a representation of what the city of Nashua values, and even though we have an aging population in the state, I think it's worthwhile to still invest in our schools, even if we're down from our peak enrollment, right?

I don't think we're that far down from what our historical uh enrollment trends are, and if we could historically support all of these buildings, let's maintain them, let's invest in them, let's invest in our communities.

I think it's really important to put fund, like put our money where our mouth is.

If we care about families, if we care about kids, if we care about bringing people to the state, we will fund education.

Thank you.

Anyone else for education?

My name is Bill Ferrio, my home is number 35, Indian Rock Road.

I had the opportunity to listen to you present your budget to the Alderman, I don't know, a few days ago.

You both speak very well.

Um you had a whole mess of slides, but you know, the biggest takeaways I got was on the first slide before you presented any numbers.

You said a couple of things.

You said that you encouraged curiosity.

I remember that.

I wrote that down.

That's a good thing.

And you said that you encourage the difficult questions.

That's that's a good thing, too.

And you said that we are all learners.

I remembered that.

Okay.

So I have a couple of questions, please.

Um, on page 215 of the mayor's budget.

There are two line items for transportation.

I know you talked about how you considered combining routes, bus routes for some efficiency.

So that didn't work.

That didn't that didn't seem to be an advantage.

Did you consider adding an additional start time?

So we are investigating that.

We had conversations with the um the CHATO schools.

Um, because we run four different tiers, but um some of the complications is to start times with the CHATO schools as well.

So they didn't not receive or notify their families early enough to change their start times.

Um so we did consider that.

Um but we would be looking at um potentially start times, not this September, but the following September, once we can balance out the number of routes that we would need.

But uh that is a future consideration of looking at moving start times.

So that's not in this 20 years, not in this year's budget.

Okay.

Can you estimate what you think the savings might be within?

It depends on when we run the calculations and and what the um how many runs we would need.

One of the bigger um complications is the number of special education buses, and that's um what uh big impact was um at the time was the location of Makathi Middle School in the the time that it takes in between the high school run um to get to Makati and then Makathi to the elementary schools, and that's been causing um some delays in our buses.

So once we can actually iron out of how many buses that we need, I think we'll get better data to see if we need to adjust start times.

One of the complications with the start time is the impact that it has on our late school.

So if we move like our late schools, they currently get out um 3:30, 345.

So we would actually have to move their start times to later, where uh elementary students might be getting out after four o'clock in a in a like uh uh straw poll that was not met well, or the high schools are starting earlier.

So they would be starting before seven o'clock in the morning.

And that's not a good alternative either.

So we we need to kind of balance out the number of buses that we need and look at those efficiencies.

So we have looked at start times.

Okay, thank you, sir.

Um the next thing I wanted to ask you about was um you talked about uh difficulty in in uh filling the unstaffed positions, and you talked about how some positions you plan to fill as contract positions, and some you plan as full-time.

How do you decide for each open position whether to budget it as a full-time position or a contract position?

You want to take this one I can take that MTPT?

Yep.

Um so of course the primary focus would be to go ahead and hire these individuals on our own.

We want more staff as Nashua School District employees.

Um as you probably saw during our budget presentation, we're not seeing staff go into these positions.

Uh it's not just us here in Nashua, other school districts are struggling with it as well.

So the primary focus would be to recruit uh these individuals on our own, but at some point a decision does have to be made that if we cannot find this talent on our own, we do have to have a teacher or paraeducators with these students.

Um we cannot have them coming into school on day one without a teacher in the classroom.

Umce we've exhausted all of our staffing resources, whether it's recruiting, trying to go ahead and have employee referrals, et cetera.

Um, we will have to go ahead and do a contract service.

So there is money set aside in contract services, um, usually about 10%.

But again, our primary focus is to hire these folks on our own.

And more specifically, our OT, our occupational therapists and our physical therapists that um provide services to our students historically, those have been hard to fill positions, so we need 20 OT and PT people.

We've been only able to hire, say, like eight um in a union position.

So a lot of those positions year over year through contracted services.

So we know that going into the school year.

I I understand we just talked about the difficulties in hiring and the difficulty in placing getting full-time employees.

But the question was how did you how did you plan it?

Did you plan that of all these open positions?

You're not gonna be able to hire any full-time people as you put all the budget into contract, or is it some blend or yeah?

So, as I mentioned, it's a blend between wages and a blend between contract services.

So most of the positions, as I mentioned, you'll see sitting in full-time wages.

Um, and then there is money set aside for contract services to hire these positions as well.

And to your point, it's we look at our trend data.

So year over year.

So we look at three to five years of are we able to fill those positions?

Okay, so it sounds like what you said is most of the open positions you budget as full-time employees as opposed to contract employees.

Okay, is it possible that you may have double budgeted for the same position?

No.

Um, so here's the challenge that we run into this year alone, we are contracting several positions.

Um, and we're gonna spend almost eight million dollars in contract services this year.

So when we budget positions and wages, we can go ahead and move wage money uh to offset some of that contract service cost, but it's not a one-for-one ratio.

Most of the time we're paying double or triple the cost that it is to hire an employee, plus we cannot touch the benefits.

So there is no way in our budget that we did a I think what you're referring to as a double dip between wages and contract services.

Okay.

The open positions that you plan for uh for full-time employee, do you plan those all to start July 1st?

Do you plan that they're gonna full-time?

You can hire everyone July, all the open positions are gonna be filled July first.

No, so uh scatter them through the yeah.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Go ahead.

I'm done.

I said plan them all, all the open positions, you plan them all to be filled July 1st.

So our school year actually doesn't start until August.

Um, I think we as a school district would love to see everybody hired as of July 1st.

Um so when we pay our teachers and most of our support staff, it's actually August through June based off of the salary that you're seeing.

So the positions are uh budgeted as if they were starting in August.

August through June.

Correct.

And when you talked about your your experience, your history with that, do you typically fill all the positions by uh August?

We do not.

Okay.

But you plan it that way.

We yep, I mean, that is our anticipation to go ahead and hire everybody again.

We need uh teachers and support staff in front of our students.

Um, but as I also mentioned, if we do not hire these individuals on our own and we have to contract service them, then we are able to move the wages into contract services to offset some of that cost.

So for any position that you don't hire by uh August, you automatically fill it with a contract position?

No, I wouldn't, I I would say automatically is not probably the right wording we would use.

Uh, we as a district would look at a contract service, but it would be on like a 30, 60, 90 day.

Um, and again, we are recruiting up until the last day of school to fill an open position.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else on the school budget?

Gary Hoffman, 38 Perham Street, Nashu New Hampshire, Townhouse D.

Um, we want to save money on education costs.

I recommend everybody speak to their legislators.

If we had state funding of ELL services and special education services, we bring back the old interests and dividends account.

Cities like Nashua that are disproportionately shouldering this cost, we would certainly benefit.

I mean, last I checked, Manchester and Nashua alone had over 60% of the English language learners who are providing a great service to the state, welcoming these new uh these newcomers, these new New Hampshire residents to our state who, you know, we have an aging population is a good thing.

But the state should be covering these costs.

Vermont, our neighbors, just a little bit to the west, they do that.

And we can follow that model, and we wouldn't have this or these sorts of things.

And you know, there's other problems with the way we fund special education in New Hampshire.

I attended uh Able New Hampshire's um form that they did at the library a couple weeks ago, and a woman from Merrimax said that you know, she has a child who's uh who's uh disabled, and she she told me that when she moved to the town, one of the residents told her, said you should be paying quadruple taxes because you're costing our town so much money.

You know, that was horrible thing to say to that woman.

And if we had state funding, these sorts of conversations wouldn't be happening.

This should be a burden that our entire state is funding.

We should be um, you know, and there'd be a much more fair system.

We wouldn't be talking about these sorts of things.

We should do this as a state, not have individual towns and communities shouldering this burden.

Thank you.

Hello again, Steven Scar, 11 East Hobart Street.

Um, please pardon the digression.

I need to correct uh just on something you said earlier.

You said the fire alarm system was installed sometime in the 20th century.

Chief Bucsen looked it up and apparently it was 1886 that they were they were installed.

Well, I was only one century off.

So you got it.

So um something I just my question about um special ed services and contracting.

Um I need some clarification on page 216.

I'm trying to get these numbers together.

Um in your presentation, uh, Mayor Doncius in your slide, I think you said we were looking at a 51% increase in contracted special ed services going up to 1.8 um by one eight point million.

If I look at the bottom of page 216 where contract services are listed, it lists um 4 million um 24,466 dollars.

That would be a little less than a million increase and a 31% increase.

And I just heard you say 8 million is what you're looking at.

So I'm trying to put these numbers together.

What's actually budgeted for contract services for next year?

Yeah, so let me add some clarity.

Uh so budgeted for contract services.

I'm seeing it on page uh 214 on my side, but 53628 is contract services in totality, it's just over 4 million dollars.

Uh that roll-up is contract services as a whole for the school district.

That's not just special education contract services.

Uh that portion of special education contract services, I believe is about 2.5 million dollars in that line item.

Um for clarity, your $8 billion uh that you had heard me say just a few moments ago is actually what we anticipate to spend this year for fiscal year 26 on contract services.

Okay, so help me out a little bit here.

That so the figure here, which is a bit over 2 million.

I'm sure I'm I'm looking at the right one.

For the little over 4 million.

Yep.

That's strictly for special education contract services.

That is not.

So contract services on uh this appropriation detail is contract services as a whole for the school district.

So anything related to like IT services, any other contract services that we as a district will do, we're anticipating that budget to be right around four million dollars.

Okay, so where am I looking to see the contract services for special ed?

So I believe the item is that yeah, in this specific budget, you're not gonna see a breakdown for what the exact amount is going to special ed.

Um the school district's website.

There was a more consolidated presentation that Dr.

Andrade and I presented, and you'll see exactly how much is going to contract services related to special education.

And I'd be happy to send you that link in that document as a follow-up if you'd like.

Um, in my opinion, look sounds a little high.

Um, because my math is right that when we're talking about going up to 12 million.

Um I spoke at a school board meeting, and I I expressed concerns about um having enough special ed teachers, and I think you addressed that a little bit tonight.

Um, and I suggested it's if someone works for a special education agency, the agency is taking half of the money that it works.

These people aren't making a fortune.

So, why are people preferring special ed teachers and other service providers?

Why do they prefer working for the agencies over working for the school district?

And I'm wondering if that's something that you've looked into, because ideally we're gonna have kids serviced by employees in the in the district.

I mean, it depends on I mean, there's different reasons why certain people work for an agency over um a school district.

One might be um just the rate of pay.

They might uh a new teacher might be working for uh for an agency that comes in at a higher rate than what we offer in our union contract.

So we see that um but BCBAs are different positions that the market demand is higher than what's in the union contract if they come in as a uh step one teacher or a step one um BCBA.

So it might be the market rate where someone prefers to work for an agency over um a school district, or the contract might be again higher wages and they don't need benefits.

So there's many reasons why people choose an agency over working for a school district.

I have some experience in this, and I'm gonna suggest again the the biggest draw for the agencies working for them isn't higher wages, and you don't get the fancy benefits.

It is they will say we're gonna hold you to 40 hours.

If someone works for a school district, there's no limit that a special educator is gonna work.

And it might be worth talking to the special educator teachers from that.

It's not a job that many sane people would want to take.

It's beautiful it is to work with young people.

Um, two, so I I suggest checking with it with your your special ed staff and saying, you know, is this all an entirely manageable job?

What would what would make it possible for you to do this?

Maybe everything's ducky, maybe maybe I'm wrong.

Um, regarding we talked about facilities and schools.

If someone's gonna be really upset if you close any school where the students will be better served because you'll you'll be able to allocate the resources better.

So that's some place I hope that you move.

Also, regarding, I'm I'm a big proponent of school choice, and uh I I'd be concerned about my maybe some of the money in the students fleeing the district.

I've been working in a lot of different schools, different types of schools over the years.

The reason kids aren't parents aren't sending their kids to public schools is they're terrified of gender ideology.

You have teachers here that believe a girl can be a boy.

Mr.

Scare, this is not relative to the budget at this point.

I I'd ask we keep it to budget lines, please.

It's why you have empty schools, it's relevant.

It's relevant.

People are making choices to go out.

And you allowed a member of the public to talk about people going out because they have way um way tax vouchers so that they could go somewhere else.

Why are they going somewhere else?

And based on the groans in here, you're not gonna address that problem.

So thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I hope that you have good luck recruiting special ed teachers.

Anyone else for the school department?

All right, Alex Samola, Nashua, New Hampshire.

Is that better?

Okay.

All right, short people problems.

There we go.

Alex Samola, Nashua, New Hampshire.

Um I just want to ask the question, I guess, when someone, whoever, the city stops caring about our children, who's and stops taking care of our children, who's going to take care of us.

Anyone else for the school department budget?

I Beth scare Nashua.

My concern is Lou Jurish did get jurists did get to talk about school choice about why he's against education freedom accounts.

Stephen can't say why people are using education freedom accounts.

That's totally unfair.

But also I want to ask if a kid does use an education freedom account, how does that hurt the school?

Doesn't the superintendent doesn't the school get to keep they lose a kid, they don't have to educate the kid, and all they lose is the a few thousand dollars from the state aid, correct?

Is is that not true?

It's not that simple.

Can you explain it to me then?

Um so I'll start and then Dr.

Andre can hop in.

So if a student does go ahead and take one of the vouchers, uh the state adequacy aid does follow them.

So we as Nashua would not receive that funding.

Right.

But then they they don't have to educate the student.

However, the the expenses to operate a school does not go away.

So if we lose, say, a hundred students, right?

Across K-12, um qualify or use the EFA accounts, right?

So that's call it 400,000.

We are not taking a bus off the road.

We are not laying off a teacher, we are not turning off any lights.

Um we are not making any cuts, but we lost 400,000 in revenue.

So that is a a cost to the school district.

There's a loss of revenue.

However, again, we lost a hundred students, but we didn't consolidate.

It's just a loss of revenue.

So if Alderman Gregg sent her child to Bishop Girton, that's the same, that's the same effect to the school district.

The schools that individual alderman students go to is not relevant to the okay.

Let's let's say anyone in this room sent their child to a private school, it's the same effect as an education and freedom account.

It's the same loss to the school.

Um again, I think there's still a cost associated.

There's an additional loss, which is that some would advocate that those funds that go to the private schools should be devoted to trying to improve overall school aid.

I mean, you we've already talked about how we're at 50th in terms of school aid.

Uh, where the money going to the vouchers directed towards the public schools, we could increase that a little bit.

And so there is that loss.

But isn't isn't there, isn't there a matter of what of I mean, does the school think about why are kids leaving?

Do you look into it?

Do you talk to the parents?

Yes.

And what do they tell you?

It depends on the family and the situation.

And and uh is there are you putting out any kind of reports about that?

We haven't aggregated put out a public report, but we we look at um why families leave all the time.

I mean, it just seems to me like there's if if the schools are as wonderful as everyone is is saying parents would stay.

Why would they leave?

It's convenient.

I mean, I would have loved to send my child to the neighborhood school.

It was just a couple blocks away.

But you know, it would it didn't work for us.

And I I see a lot of families dealing with the same thing, and I I think it's really unfair to beat up on edgy on school choice when families have needs for their children that aren't being filled at this at our public schools.

Thank you.

Anyone else for the education budget?

No, Mr.

T Boom, you've already had your opportunity.

Rob Johnson, 70 Weathersfield Road.

Um I would just like to thank our schools for being open-minded and welcome to all students.

Mr.

Johnson, I have to extend the same request that you keep it to the budget.

Yes, thank you.

Um, and it's one things that we have a concern about is our playgrounds.

Um it's something we have to look at for future that our playgrounds are especially when you look at like Lead Street, um, are worn down, and we want to make them more available.

So that's something for future budget considerations that will look at those playgrounds and improving them.

Thank you.

Anyone else for education?

Seeing none, we'll move on to the financial services division.

Page 100.

My name is Bill Ferrio.

My home is number 35 Indian Rock Road.

I had a I had a question.

I had a question about a line item on page 99, the revenue item called interest income.

It's about halfway down the page.

Mayor, can you explain what monies are being invested there, what it's invested in, who's selecting the investments, and why that revenue has been up and underplanned for the last several years.

Um the city has um you know quite a bit of money in the bank.

And typically those that those funds are seat bank CDs.

Um we don't really have much latitude.

Uh we don't have legal latitude, nor do we want to take you know buy any kind of risk assets.

So I I mean we can't legally do it either, but even if we could, we probably would not.

We're not putting money into Bitcoin or something like that.

This is these are bank CDs.

Okay.

So it's a very low risk.

Zero.

Well, we consider it to be zero risk, but I suppose all right, zero risk, uh, guaranteed income almost.

So why would you underplanate several million dollars every year?

Um the you've also raised um the issue of why the automobile revenue is and this is a similar thing.

So on this one, sorry.

Well, I know, but it's similar, so I'm gonna answer them both.

The both they're both the same reason.

Um the automobile revenue is estimated lower than we than we think uh we're gonna get as well.

And that is done intentionally and has been done that way for I'm gonna say decades.

I mean, I think this was when I was an alderman, as like in my twenties, I think uh it was the the same thing was happening.

And the reason is is this is a conservative approach towards budgeting.

The one thing that we never ever want to encounter is a deficit.

So by underest, so this is one facet of the answer.

So by under underestimating revenues, we make sure that at the end of the year the books are balanced and we typically have a surplus.

Now you have also asked the question of a valid one.

Well, why, you know, if you were to um accurately precisely predict revenues, um, wouldn't you then have a lower tax rate?

The answer is that these surplus revenues, for example, the surplus revenue that comes from the automobile uh registrations does go to the taxpayer.

For example, in at the end of uh the last fiscal year fiscal 25, we had you know a number of several million dollars of excess um automobile registration revenue, which came to us in the form of surplus, but we devoted six million dollars of surplus to buy down the tax rate.

So although it it's so it accomplishes the same thing, and it gets us um security regarding the uh you just make sure that we never you know go in the red.

And one final point.

The rating agencies, and we do have a triple A bond rating, they like this.

They like a conservative approach like this.

So this and this isn't the only reason we have a triple A bond rating, but it contributes to a strong financial picture, which the rating agencies appreciate.

And the benefit of that is we pay lower rates when we borrow money.

Okay, you mentioned burning down the the or buying down the following year's tax rate.

I I understand that I don't remember that the figures exactly as you do, but um I seem to recall it's only a percentage of that surplus that you use.

Yes, but we we but I'm just saying that the amount that we use to buy down the the um tax rate, that number, six million dollars, was greater than the amount of surplus generated by the automobile registration.

So, in a way, I mean, so we are you know, uh basically devoting the surplus generated by the automobile registration, the low the low estimate.

In the end, at the end of the year, that goes into the tax rate.

Do I have another minute, Mr.

Senator?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you he doesn't my long-winded answers.

He does not count that against you.

So you've still got your five some of your five minutes.

Are there other revenue sources besides these two that you commonly underplan to build surplus?

Um these are the big ones.

I mean, I I don't not really.

Not really.

I mean, the other, but you know, like sometimes other revenues come in higher than estimates.

For example, there is revenue that comes in in the community of community development, but it's more variable there.

I mean, because you know, it has to do with how many people apply for building permits and all that kind of stuff.

So I'd say that these are the two main things.

When it comes to the direct question regarding the interest, I mean we don't the automobile registrations is pretty predictable.

But very predictable.

But the um the interest revenue is a little different because the very you know, one year um, you know, we made half a million, next year three million, based upon the fact that these, you know, the Fed and all the stuff that goes on, the 10-year bond and all this, those interest rates vary.

So sometimes we get very little on a CD, other times we get more.

So sometimes those rates can change early in the year or in the middle of the year or late in the year.

And so we don't we can't absolutely predict interest rates as maybe as um accurately as we can predict automobile registration.

Are there specific expenses that you commonly overplan to build surplus?

I would say no.

No.

Okay, I'm sad.

Thank you.

Anyone else for financial services?

Um just quickly.

Uh you know, I think our financial service office was more transparent some years ago when it came to getting information or accessing people in the office.

And that has changed a lot in the last couple of years.

Um I noticed, so I think financial reports, you know, right to no law was created around financial reports, the need for people to see information.

So I think the financial reports are really important.

The accessibility to those reports is really important.

I noticed some new interface was put up when you try to look at some of these reports that ask you what do you want and what you know what are you looking for, and you click so you can get assistance.

I don't know where that came from.

And it it's almost like it's being turned into a right to know to look at financial reports.

I don't really know what it is.

You know, stuff happens on the city website, like when next request got launched, it just happened.

And all of a sudden, boom, your requests come in in a whole different format, and you don't even know what it is.

Create a password, push a button, and you don't know how to filter, you don't know how to do anything with it.

So it's not helpful.

And you know, I would encourage and I'm gonna say the lack of transparency, I really feel rests on the shoulder of Director Cummings.

He's the one who's styming all of this.

And um that has to change.

I mean, you talk about litigation and you shouldn't go into court and all this stuff.

The reason like Fred T blooms up here and you're doing that is because information is so restricted.

And what you get in court is an opportunity to ask questions or have a dialogue that you never get in the city.

You know, consider the transparency issues.

And I I think uh financial reporting is not as transparent as I'd like to see it.

Thank you.

Well, I won't go into detail, but I disagree with basically everything you just said.

Anyone else for financial services?

Seeing none, we'll move on to debt service contingency and interfund transfers, which are beginning on page 221.

Seeing none, we'll move on to capital improvements, capital equipment reserve funds or SERF, which is on 224.

Okay, and seeing none, we will move on to administrative services, which begins on page 56.

Okay.

You got a pretty good where's Mr.

Cummings when we need him.

A question for you, Mr.

Cummings.

Aren't you the director of administrative services these days?

Aren't you the CFO these days?

Aren't you running the city these days?

Question, Mr.

Cummings.

I'm looking at all these uh departments.

And I already mentioned the school department was the king of the increases of 14.15 million.

But they only asked for seven only asked for 7.37% increase.

You on the other hand had the temerity to ask for 16.47% increase.

When the mayor, I don't know how the mayor let you get away with this, but he asked for 3%.

That means you asked for three point two million dollar increase.

How the devil do you explain that?

Uh again, uh Tim Cummings, Director of Administrative Services.

I think what I will say just in brief response to those comments is um I'm not sure that that's a hundred percent accurate depiction what we had uh occur, particularly in a couple of the departments, and I'll just say buildings and grounds as one of them, uh, where we moved money from one uh operational department budget to another operational department budget.

Um library as an example.

We had some of uh the building-related expenses from that operational department budget move over into buildings and grounds, so it's not necessarily um new dollars uh added to the budget, but uh it could certainly show the administrative services budget increasing uh more so because there was a decrease in in the library budget.

I'm not talking about pennies, Mr.

Cummings.

I'm talking about 3.2 million dollars, 16.47%.

The number is very accurate and come directly of the spreadsheets of the budget book.

Nothing inaccurate about it.

I can give it to you the penny.

You asked for $3 million, 199,000, $809 increase.

16.47%.

The mayor proposed 22.627, 22 million six hundred and twenty-seven thousand three hundred and twenty-six thousand when before the last budget nineteen million four hundred and twenty-seven thousand five hundred and seventeen.

I hope that's accurate enough for you.

So what's the answer?

I believe I just answered your question.

No, you didn't ask.

You said there was some stuff moved around.

I want an answer.

Why'd you let 3.199809?

All right, but there are there are elements in here that we've covered already.

For example, benefits, the insurance costs, non-medical insurance costs are within the administrative services budget under risk.

Um risk is up 25%.

And or more.

And there is money in there for liability insurance, which is going up considerably.

There's workers' comp that's going up considerably.

But for example, the uh new um legal approach is that if a firefighter uh gets cancer, the presumption is that it's job related.

That was never never true before.

That adds costs.

Again, I'm not saying that that is a, you know, because uh a firefighter has much higher cancer rate and they encounter carcinogenic uh agents uh in the course of their work uh com uh commonly, and in fact the protective clothing that they wear uh as carcinogenic to protect them from the heat has carcinogaric agents in it.

And they're trying to develop protective closing now that would not but like PCPs is really what I'm talking about there.

It's in it's in the clothing.

So you know, we we just had a firefighter die of of a cancer, and the she wasn't the only one.

So anyway, that was done by the legislature, and so that's going to increase workers' comp costs, and that line goes up.

Um I'm talking about administrative services.

Well, this is within the administrative services budget.

It's the risk budget is within administrative services.

Risk management.

How much did that go up?

So the risk management budget went up from FY26 adopted $8.7 million to 10 point four being proposed now.

About 20 percent, about two dollar wise?

It's about a million seven a million eight somewhere in there.

Just about two million dollars.

Increase.

So that $3.2 million extra.

Just one seven has to do with just this insurance, this insurance issue and the kind of risk issues that are involved.

Um another thing is uh an employee, at least one employee was transferred in here.

Um the sort of we are often criticized that we don't take proper care of buildings and that they deteriorate.

So the idea here is to kind of consolidate uh building maintenance, and therefore the personnel from the library that did their building is now under administrative services in an effort to uh more efficiently manage more effectively, efficiently manage uh building maintenance.

So there are things here that uh are increasing beyond the control you know of the administrative services director.

Well, I didn't look at the details, I admit that.

I'll only look at the top level notes.

No, and that's okay, and so that's we're not I'm not arguing that you did that, and fine, but this is I'm giving you the some of the reasons.

Well, it's a very large increase in one department.

So it's the biggest increase other than the school department.

Thank you.

Florian Ordolano Nashua.

Um how fully staffed is assessing now for positions?

It did have nine positions at one time.

Where are we at staffing in there?

And I know we have a part-time chief.

I don't do we budget for a full-time chief.

Uh no, we have a contracted service for uh for the uh chief assessor.

And we have um, I believe one position that is open right now at administrative uh assistance position.

So there were four administrative positions, so there's three right now that are filled.

Yes.

Okay.

And we have there were four assessors.

Do we have all the assessors?

So I believe we have two full-time assessors on staff right now, not counting the chief assessor.

open right now in administrative uh assistance position so there were four administrative positions so there's three right now that are filled yes okay and we have there were four assessors do we have all the assessors so I believe we have two full-time assessors on staff right now not counting the chief assessor okay because it was four plus a chief it is what it used to be do we fund for those additional two positions through a contracted service oh so the there those are contracted those other people that come in and help out okay um have you given any thought to moving the right to know administrator from uh administrative services to the clerk's office for record distribution and what what do you why do you why are you so intent on keeping the uh right to know administrator in the administrative services office what's the benefit of that uh if I may Mr.

Chairman yeah director Cummings thank thank thank you uh again uh Tim Cummings director of administrative services um I'm not so sure that I would actually say that uh I'm intent on keeping the position in administrative services um so I I uh I I wouldn't go that far um actually what I believe and what I would recommend and I've been talking internally about is actually creating its own department and this department of record management actually um could be handled in a way where yes there could be some aspects with the right to know um coordination facilitation needing to occur but then there's also more where you could have an archivist and preservation of records being done which certainly uh comes more traditionally out of a clerk's office and I think we could have a little bit more of a hybrid approach to our records management system as we recognize that we need to um preserve records and and take better care of them storage and retaining records and how diligent we are in doing that is an administrative burden um that we uh sometimes don't prioritize or resource as well as we probably should uh moving more towards did digitalization these are all um uh services that we should be providing at a higher level and it's uh an idea that uh has been circulating in the back of my mind for a year or two now and over the coming you know year or two I'd like to raise that as a as a potential way to uh better provide a service to the community and uh enhance the service offerings okay so that was an unsatisfactory answer for me on a number of levels because the right to know administrator is here and now I don't really want to know that you need to grow it to another position or archivist Manchester has an archivist they're very hard to find.

When I go to Manchester on a right to know request and I go through the archivist I'm hard pressed not to get an answer back in 15 minutes literally it's lickety split okay that guy is so on top of his work.

I'm talking about making a right to know administrator who everything is funneling through him who is sending all these responses more responsive and accessible to have discussions about records.

He's tot I mean I can have a discussion with Mr Dowd and Keene.

He's awesome he's quick again I ask for a CD he mails it to me in the US mail and I get it in under five days so this stuff is very fast and um you know we're not seeing that kind of responsiveness.

The other thing is he keeps flex hours he's not available there's no office hours listed if you go to the door he's not in nobody knows when he's gonna be in that doesn't work for a somebody who has should have a public interface.

So I'm not supportive of the position I would encourage the city not to keep it anymore because I don't want to hear it's gonna be another two years.

You've had it for three and what are you doing to improve the situation with records?

You launch a new software program and don't even tell us it's happening I mean and that was a difficult software program really difficult.

That software program doesn't give you the answers to your right to know requests.

I mean you know you end up in this litigation issue because you have no communication and I don't think that hiring a communication specialist is going to fit fix that I really think it comes with management and the people you yeah you hire they have to be willing to talk to the public you know um it just case in point uh Fred T boom was talking about his you know his record he put out to the board of aldermen on hydropower and turbines and we learned that you know community development director and Deb Chisholm talked about it and said his numbers are all wrong.

So uh it's too closed a door.

That position has not worked, it's created more liability than benefit, create some more questions than answers, and I think uh it's it's really been a bust.

Go back to the departments handling it.

And I'm not a big advocate of next request, there's a lot of problems with it.

Try to address it with the board, nobody's really interested.

That's fine.

We'll address it with the court.

But uh, you know, that's a problem.

Thank you.

So if I may, uh Ms.

Chairman.

Director Cummings.

Thank you again.

Tim Cummings, Director of Administrative Services.

There's a couple items mentioned there that I feel uh I need to respond to, uh particularly because um some of it was a little inaccurate.

First, I want to make sure everyone knows that um we did a soft launch of the new software being opened, this right to know uh software and uh called next request.

Um but then you know, once we once staff got a little bit of a handling of it, and once we were starting to to use it, we offered uh a training to the to the public.

Um and we we encouraged the public to attend, and we offered individualized training.

Um so we we are trying our best to try to make it user-friendly, and and also I want to note for the record this next request software is um uh a national type software.

It has a wonderful reputation.

It is uh a name brand, it is not something that the city of Nashua created or it's uh a mom and pop's type uh type of endeavor.

It's it's something that's utilized across the country in an effort to be uh effort to be responsive.

I'll close my comments by saying, unfortunately, due to the treatment uh that has been received by the previous speaker.

I don't know if any uh right to know coordinator, no matter what office they're housed in, would uh be as accessible, and that's because of of how she has communicated and uh in particular um the the amount of litigation that gets imposed upon us, it is too much of a risk.

We have too much of a liability when we have uh one-on-one communication.

We often find that communication gets distorted, so it's better for us to communicate in writing and make sure that we have it memorialized appropriately, just to protect the city.

And no matter where that position is housed, I believe you'd see the same type of of treatment.

And then my last comment there is certainly more things that we could do in terms of service offerings, and I know we're focusing on the written record, um, and we're talking about that record management type system being done in a little bit of different way, but another aspect of again just providing a higher level of customer service.

A lot of communities offer 3-1-1 type systems, and it's something that's in the back of my mind, and I've often asked the question is the city of Nashua grown to the point where we offer a 3-1-1 type system.

It's a service enhancement.

I don't know if we can afford it, but when I hear a community asking for a higher level of service, which is what's being asked of us right now, we have an obligation to look at it, and there will be a dollar uh a cost associated to that.

And and if that is what this community is looking for, you know, we are with something that we can study and and develop a plan and bring back to the community leaders, whether it's the mayor of or or the board of Alderman.

Um, but but what I want to leave with is is the comment of saying, I hear you, and we can certainly look at some of these service enhancements and and adopt them in in future budgets.

Certainly, nothing I've talked about right now is in the FY27 uh budget, and I apologize for going a little bit off the record.

Anyone who hasn't spoken yet on administrative services, seeing none, that concludes our departmental uh hearing on the fiscal 2027 budget.

Uh Alderman O'Brien.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I would like to make the motion to table over.

We have to speak one more time.

I apologize.

Yep.

We we do have a period for additional questions.

Um I would ask that this be kept to questions relative to the fiscal year 2027 budget.

I know we have lost some directors.

Um they may not be here to answer your questions.

But we will uh we will do the best to accommodate.

Um please keep it to a timely fashion.

And one per uh one per turn.

Thank you.

So no.

We had established one per department.

Well, that's what's kind of a dumb system.

I didn't want you to come all the way back up here and go through all the exercise.

Which may have that long.

I asked them to stay over.

Okay, the one uh Mr.

Gray.

It was when we talked on the phone, I said I liked your presentation, but the one thing you left out was the administrators, not a word.

Now it turns out that you said that you have a staff of 20 of 2,055.

And your teachers are 958.

So you have a non-teaching staff larger than your teaching staff of 1,097.

I suspect some of them are part-time from the spreadsheet I saw, but not too many.

So is there any reduction planned in the non-staff teaching?

Non-teaching staff.

Can you repeat your question?

Okay.

So you have uh 1,097 non-teaching staff, and you have 958 teaching staff.

You talked about reduction of the teaching staff.

I think uh it's almost like well they're reduced by um 11 teachers from what I see here.

No, maybe that's 26, 27.

I don't think so.

There's uh reduction of about 58 positions this year, 23.

Uh we we'll pull up the slide, but it's about 23 teachers, a number about 20 paraeducators, two administrators, um, and we were proposing uh a few secretaries.

We are not cutting the secretaries this year, but it's um a combination of teachers, paraeducators, and two administrators.

Okay, so you're cutting how many teachers are you cutting?

Uh 30.

There it is.

21.

21.

Okay, and and non-teaching staff.

So eight eighteen paraeducators, two teach um technology instruction um assistants, five instructional coaches, and four administrators.

So four administrators.

That's all.

Yes.

And why is this?

You got more non-teaching staff than teaching staff.

Like I said, thousandth, it's almost split nine fifty-eight teachers staff and thousand ninety-seven non-teaching staff.

Why aren't you cutting more administrators?

And you didn't report on this in your briefing.

So why not more administrators?

Because they feel teaching staff.

Well, the non-teaching staff also includes uh plan ops, uh custodians, uh paraeducators, our clerical.

Um so there's a number of different areas other than we do not have a thousand administrators.

I understand that.

Right, so I just want to be clear.

So cutting more administrators.

Because we feel that we have the right amount of administrators at this time.

Well, it's my opinion, got too many, far too many administrators.

The bottom line is up the of the ultimate, and I said they should cut your budget by about in my estimate by probably around four million bucks.

Yep.

Thank you.

The other the other point on one question is number of students.

You gave us a very nice presentation about the last 12 years of history in your presentation, and the number of students, there's 19, it's almost 2,000 less students over the 12 years.

There's only 33 left that 2,000 students that represent 17% reduction in the students, almost 20%.

The teachers change over the 12 years a reduction of 33 teachers total, which is 3%.

So there's a lot less students than teachers.

Now, if I look at um the regular teacher, then you have regular students and you have sped students and you have ELL students.

That's how you broke it down.

And the regular students are down by 3,302.

That's the regular students.

3,302 less regular students.

But you got 379 more special education students.

And you got 936 more ELL students.

ELO has just gone up like crazy.

But the special education is also going up.

Now we said, what's happening to our population?

I mean, I've been I'm older than 12 years.

I've been around the city almost over 50 years.

Is the population is getting dumber?

Is the population just get I I think that's that's not uh uh accurate.

Um that's so in insensitive to our student population.

Let explain why better education is up at 379 students.

Because that I mean, for a student to qualify as uh for special education services, there's a number of assessments that need to take place.

So students qualify for a special education?

It does not mean that they're uh I don't even want to repeat that.

No, it's yeah, because the need of the students keep on going up.

So the student why is that why because the these are the students who are residing in in Nashua who qualify for special education or ELL services.

Why does it keep going up?

Because those are the students who were attend our schools who qualify for those services.

And why does ELL keep going up by 936, 83%?

Because those again, those are the students who reside in the city of Nashua who qualify for ELL services.

Are we overqualifying these students?

We are not overqualifying our ELL students, and quite honestly, we where we got in trouble is that we weren't identifying enough ELL students.

And so over the last five years, we've increased the number of ELL teachers, and we are still not satisfied on where we need to be for the ratio of the number of ELL students to the number of teachers.

So at one time, and this is a again, we had over 2,000 students and only 30 ELL teachers.

Do the math that's one teacher for every 65 students in ELL services, and they've they require anything from one period or two periods a day for a direct ELL um education.

Were you here?

You were not a superintendent.

We had a special school in Amber Street.

I forgot what we're calling.

I forgot the name of it.

But Mr.

T Boom, you're at the end of your additional five minutes.

And much lower expense.

More kids that speak that come in speaking another language.

I mean, that's it.

I, you know, it's just that's the way it is.

I I I if you see the languages spoken in the schools, uh, the number of different languages, it's it's astounding.

I, you know.

So there's more kids that need to be taught English.

If I may, Mr.

Chairman.

I just and we welcome the diversity in uh in all of our classrooms.

I think that's uh uh privilege and uh and uh something the city should be celebrating is uh wider range in the uh in the diversity in our community.

Does anybody else have any final questions for any other divisions?

Oh all I can tell you is Mr.

T-Boom, you've exceeded your time.

And I didn't have an ELL student teaching.

We pay the rent to MPAC um for the art center.

I think it's up to about 700,000 for next year.

I don't know what budget that's in.

But we also start the unwinding of the new market tax credit yet next year.

And I actually believe in this budget cycle that unwinding will begin.

I know I talked to Keene and they spent the better part of like 10 months on winding their new market tax credit.

So when we unwind, does the rent that we're paying to um the art center go away?

We have like a 25-year schedule.

Well, we get an offsetting distribution, so it's basically a break-even situation.

Right.

So we but the MPAC won't be there anymore.

If if the if the transaction is unwound, and it's not mandatory, but maybe it's advisable.

But when it when and if it's unwound, yeah, all the all that all those interrelationships would be ended.

Okay, perfect.

Um, one other thing regarding the software that Director Cummings corrected some information on.

I went to the training that was done, I think on March 9th.

Um Ms.

Ortolano is this going to be a budgetary question on the software?

Well, he's not here to help what he's going to do with the software, and he talked about the training he offered.

Right, but we're not here to discuss the training or the utilization.

Okay, we're here to discuss the year 27 budget.

Okay, so within the budget, I've asked this board two years ago to take the right to know log of everything you log and put it on the website so everyone knows what material's been given out.

So everyone knows what material's been given out.

That is so simple.

That is not a technology uh nightmare.

It's not that simple given what thousands of right to know requests.

I mean he keeps this an Excel spreadsheet.

I don't I mean, it's an XL spreadsheet.

Why can't you put the X update the XL spreadsheet every two weeks?

He sends it to me.

I file a right to know and he sends it to me.

But I have to file a right to know for it.

Do you have any budgetary questions related to any other departments?

I feel I should be able to counter what he told the board in the meeting.

This is not a session for debate.

It is a session to discuss the budget.

Well, why didn't you stop him when he gave those comments?

Thank you.

Alderman O'Brien.

All right.

I guess we we did it.

Okay.

Uh Mr.

Chairman, I would like to make the motion at table R26028 by roll call.

You really want it by roll call?

I really don't, but it does say it.

Uh can we do it?

We don't need it by roll call.

Motion is to motion is to table.

All in favor?

All opposed.

That motion carries.

Alderman O'Brien, do you have one more uh motion for us?

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I have a motion to adjourn by uh a motion to adjourn.

Motion is to adjourn.

All in favor?

Opposed?

We are adjourned at 1041 P.M.