Upcoming Nashua Public Budget Hearing

A Nashua Public Budget Hearing is coming up soon.  I'll be there.

I encourage everyone to read the City of Nashua’s FY 2009 CAFR, which the City has graciously provided to us citizens via an online medium.  So, all page numbers listed hereafter refer to the digital Acrobat .pdf edition (simply subtract 8 to get the printed page numbers).  First off I'd like to give kudos to the City for receiving a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting, on page 23, for which I do think they do a great job of summarizing things.

However, now diving right into the controversial actions of the City, we can go to page 15 where the City talks about "taking" Pennichuck through eminent domain.  This is morally reprehensible to the concept of private property not to mention fiscally unsound considering that the other City's businesses lose money on "business-type activities" which need to be subsidized at a rate of 15% just to operate (page 34).

On page 32 we can see that 66% of the City's revenue comes from your property taxes.  You can see the breakdown on how the City spends our money on page 111.  But please note that only 38% of revenue gets spent on education and that already has the best student teacher ratio of the past 10 years as shown on page 142.  Anyway, my point is that a budget cutting argument doesn't necessarily have to be about schools.

I'd like to point out that pensions are a huge drain, with NH state, city, and town workers getting a fat benefits plan that is unheard of in the private sector.  This is a problem that I intend to focus on at the State level when acting as a State Rep, and hopefully will be able to pass down that savings to the cities and towns as well.  Another big drain is the interest on a perpetual debt that, as I see it, does nothing but benefit banks and bond holders.

What would you cut in the budget?