Budget Review Committee

BUDGET REVIEW COMMITTEE OCTOBER 5, 2015 A meeting of the Budget Review Committee was held Monday, October 5, 2015, at 8:02 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chamber. Alderman-at-Large David W. Deane, Chair, presided. Members of Committee present: Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire, Vice Chair Alderman Richard A. Dowd Alderman Ken Siegel Alderman David Schoneman Alderman Michael Soucy Members not in Attendance: Alderwoman Pamela T. Brown Also in Attendance: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau Alderman June M. Caron Alderman-at-Large Jim Donchess Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy Mr. John L. Griffin, Chief Financial Officer Attorney Stephen Bennett, Corporation Counsel Mr. Steve Dookran, City Engineer Mr. Michael Carignan, Deputy Chief of Police PUBLIC COMMENT - None COMMUNICATIONS – None UNFINISHED BUSINESS – None NEW BUSINESS – RESOLUTIONS R-15-169 Endorser: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau AMENDING THE SPECIAL REVENUE FUND FOR ROAD AND HIGHWAY EXPENDITURES BY INCREASING THE ANNUAL FUNDING AMOUNT FROM MOTOR VEHICLE PERMIT FEES MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO RECOMMEND PASSAGE ON THE QUESTION Alderman Soucy Just so I am clear on this, are we moving that $300,000 from one line item into this fund or are the permit fees going to be going up? Mayor Lozeau The permit fees are not going up; we are just moving additional revenue out of that into this account. Alderman Schoneman What is the total revenue for motor vehicles? Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 2 Chairman Deane About $13,000. Mayor Lozeau For FY15’ it was almost $12.5 million and as I mentioned earlier in the evening this first quarter we are about $311,000 ahead of where we were last year first quarter. In essence we have covered that amount. Alderman Schoneman This $300,000 extra that’s coming out of this fund, it is money that would have been in the general fund otherwise and you mentioned that it was contributing to surplus. So our surplus would be diminished by the $300,000 and won’t affect anything else because surplus is the carry forward or used to buy down the tax rate. Alderman Siegel Effectively we are going to split this up and say well let’s jack up $300,000 so that we can make up the difference and have the paving then paid for at least at the level that it was a couple of years ago. The problem is the reason that we jacked it up to begin with is because the amount a couple of years ago for loan payment was totally insufficient. I understand that you are trying to use that money to leverage a bond issue. It seems like the problem is that the consequences will roll back to a big problem in local paving. The roads haven’t gotten any better they have gotten worse. I very concerned that leveraging this for this bond issue is effectively going to tie us down to doing the main roads at the expense of the local roads. Mayor Lozeau I understand that and it’s certainly a lot of the things that I thought of but if you left $2 million in there and you went and paved Amherst Street for example, which I think we can all agree really needs it, there would be no local roads that got paved. I am trying to propose, although I would agree if we had the ability to put more in either of these areas whether they are main roads or neighborhoods that haven’t been in 30 years, I think that is absolutely what we should have done and if I would have thought of this special revenue account sooner I would have done that. Sometimes the solution to a problem doesn’t come as quickly as you would like. I think that million dollars will go a longer way in doing neighborhoods and more local streets that to have those neighborhoods keep taking a back seat. As you recall, we do two measurement tools on determining what should be paved, the pavement condition index and the benefit value index. The benefit value is how many people are using this so when I have a conversation with an unhappy constituent, which I am sure many of you have had, and they say gee, my street hasn’t been paved or if they live on a street and our elected official would understand that their street hasn’t been paved in 20 or 30 years, you have to tell that there are 20 houses on your street and while you are there driving it every day seeing the problem, there’s 10,000 on this other street and it’s going to decline faster and we are trying not to reclaim streets because we can’t manage what needs to be done. When you take a look at say West Hollis Street you can see that the crown in the road is so high right now and there are drainage problems where it is washing out the shoulders, it’s going into people’s yard and it needs some attention. I am trying to spread a small amount to more than one place that needs our attention, I couldn’t think of a better way to do it. Alderman Siegel I understand that, it’s just that we are at the tail end of your administration and I appreciate that you thought of this fund. However, there is a chunk of money that is associated with this and there is a decision being made about how best to spend that money to pave Nashua. I guess it seems like we tying the hands of whoever comes up next up to bat. I am very concerned about the decrease in the local paving and what especially concerns me is that we are sort of counting on the State Block Grant and I understand that we are pretty good about controlling our own destiny but the state hasn’t been very kind to us. I realized that the two pieces of Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 3 legislation but it’s hard not to because they are so interlinked. Mayor Lozeau It is absolutely not my intention to tie anybody’s hands, the next Mayor or the next Board of Aldermen. I just talk to you year after year about trying to find a solution with this infrastructure problem. I wish it would have hit me sooner but it didn’t. I can tell you that it should not be the next Mayor or the next Board of Aldermen that determines what streets should be paved, we should use the tools to our advantage and pave those streets that I’ve indicated and measure up on the pavement condition index and the benefit value analysis. Any of these roads that are on this list, you don’t have to be an engineer to see that they really need attention and next winter is not going to be kind to them. If it’s anything like the winter we just had, I am really worried about safety in some of these areas that have a lot of vehicles on them. In addition, our new company has been hired, we purchase the software from Cartegrah that is going to update all of these streets so that next year when those decisions are being made the engineers will even have better tools at their disposal for what some of those other streets are and should be. This is just an effort to take some of the most heavily traveled, damaged roads out of the equation so that maybe your money can go a little further. Other than being a resident here it doesn’t matter to me whether you pass it or you don’t pass it. I’m just telling you that I think it’s the best thing that we have at this time and I think it would be great to be able to set us up on the right road and to schedule this ahead of time and have Continental maintain their price and hold it for the two years. We’ve asked them to hold it while we go through this whole process and I think that’s important. One of the things that we are seeing on Amherst Street and Charron Avenue right now about the redesign of that road is that the bid came in too high because nobody can get it done in time there is so much work. We have re-bid it for spring so I think there are some advantages to making that decision now. Alderman Dowd I hear that we are going to lose money to do neighborhood streets and that’s true but these streets that we are talking about are in terrible shape and they all fall within the city limits and somehow we are going to have to pave them. This seems like a very logical way to get these worst streets paved and more usable in a timely manner. Amherst Street has holes all over it, I travel it every single day and it’s not getting any better because of the traffic so sooner or later we will have to pave it and this is the plan that paves it with the least impact to the taxpayers. We are going to do Amherst Street, Broad Street, Kinsley Street, Lake Street and West Hollis Street; those roads are all in terrible shape and this is a plan to get that taken care of. Whether it’s the current Mayor or whoever is coming into office, it still makes sense. Alderman Soucy I know that we are talking about maybe losing some money for the local roads but I’d like to point out that some of the roads that this bond is going to cover the local fees. That moving to the body should mitigate some of the loss that you were talking about, Alderman Siegel. Alderman Schoneman The $300,000 additional into the special revenue fund is not as effective by the spending cap calculation at all because there is no other paving in the budget and we are not moving anything out of a line item in the budget into the special revenue fund, this is just revenue that’s being applied to a purpose. Mr. Griffin If I may, Mr. President, basically what will happen is on the pink pages of the budget, which is special revenue; we will increase the revenue by $300,000 coming from the motor vehicle and simultaneously increase the paving expense at $300,000 in the offset so there is no effect on the spending cap. Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 4 A Viva Voce Roll Call was taken, which resulted as follows: Yea: Alderman Wilshire, Alderman Dowd, Alderman Schoneman, 4 Alderman Soucy Nay: Alderman Deane, Alderman Siegel 2 MOTION CARRIED R-15-170 Endorser: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF SEVENTEEN MILLION DOLLARS ($17,000,000) FOR STREET REPAIR AND PAVING MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO RECOMMEND FINAL PASSAGE ON THE QUESTION Alderman Schoneman I like the idea of getting some more money into the fund for some more paving in a way that doesn’t affect our spending cap calculation but I have a few more questions about the bond question. I understand how the numbers work and I think it makes for a very interesting case, however, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the Block Grants and while we say if that stops then we will have to stop paving state roads; if we do this $17 million in two years we will have paved state roads. If we have paved those state roads and then they stop the Block Grant then that would have an effect on our ability to pay that bond because we will have already paved some of those roads that are state roads. Another concern I have is that by doing all of the roads at one time we are potentially bunching the re-pavement. We are going to have a cycle that’s going to occur every 15 years when all of these roads, I am glad that the lifespan is 15 years because the lifespan of the road matches the lifespan of the bond and that’s great but if we wind up bunching things, there is something to be said for doing all of these things in a staggered way. Alderman Siegel I voted against the last piece of legislation because I am not in favor of the paving but basically I just think these are linked together. The problem I have with this is that we are doing a lot of paving of state roads and I have no great confidence in the state these days that they are not going to yank the rug out from under us on these grants. I’d feel a whole lot better if we weren’t spending the money paving state roads, although these roads clearly have to be paved. The roads are the roads and they need to be paved but my big issue right now is this idea of everything at once is going to get put into these main roads and effectively we are going to starve out the local roads because we are cutting them out of paving money available to that. If we said we were going to have a pool of money and we are going to use that pool of money to also make a pretty substantial dent in a lot of the roads that are in neighborhoods, I would probably feel a little better about it because I know I took a voice recorder and drove all over Ward 9 and basically every road I drove over that had problems I just recorded my voice. It was a long voice memo. I’m concerned that a lot of those will get put off and that’s why I don’t feel like I can currently support this although I do appreciate the effort. Alderman Soucy There is no doubt that the roads have to be paved, it’s just a matter of how. To be honest, Alderman Schoneman, I had the same concerns with the bunching. The roads could last about 15 years and it could increase that cycle. I commend the Mayor on a very creative bond repayment analysis so I am going to make my decision, I think I already have and how I vote tonight may not necessarily be my final vote at the full Board Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 5 but I am concerned about the budget. Alderman Caron I have that same concern. I like the idea of the big roads; Lake Street, Kinsley and Broad. Mayor, did you think about maybe the second set, the other $8 million to look at local streets that haven’t been done in 20 – 30 years and making that the second part of the priority of the paving? That might make us feel a little bit better knowing that our local streets are being taken care of one at a time. Mayor Lozeau That’s an interesting thought but I think what we were really focused on was those roads that had the most traffic. Chairman Deane Excuse me, Mayor I was confused by Alderman Caron’s question. I believe the two years of monies, the two paving seasons of monies just cover these main thoroughfares, there’s no $8 million left for other streets after the fact. Mayor Lozeau I think what Alderman Caron was referring was the first priority list and the second priority list that are broken down by their cost as well. I think what she was saying was instead of to do this list at the 13.7 miles… Chairman Deane And that’s predicated on your analysis on the streets, right? Mayor Lozeau Correct, and then priority two, instead of doing the priority two, 12 miles could we do 12 miles of local neighborhood areas is what I understood the question to be. I think one could also argue that although Bridge Street, Canal Street or Concord Street that although we know they are high traffic I think people still think of them as neighborhood roads. I understand people being concerned about the bunching; I just don’t know another way to try to get ahead of it. If you spend this kind of money paving in the city you are going to have that problem no matter where you are. If you look at the Town of Londonderry putting $5 million just in maintenance of the roads they have done, that’s where we should be. In a perfect world we should be budgeting $8 - $10 million per year in maintenance and all of our roads should already be paved so that we could maintain them but that ship sailed long ago. Mr. Steve Dookran, City Engineer Ever since we started with the program to pave and selecting based on pavement conditions and the benefit value. You might remember, Mr. Chair that it was simply benefit value when we started back in the 2000 and what had happened was the program was just favoring the big streets; the heavily traveled streets and the residential streets were really ignored. Years later we decided to come up with a pavement condition index which includes all of the streets that fall under that pavement condition and so we have taken away from the benefit values. That program has been over several years now so this is probably more relevant to the earlier resolution. We are not going to sacrifice the neighborhood as such because in any given year with the annual program we are doing a fair amount of the high traffic streets and in fact why the demand is so high now for these streets is because I think that last winter just did it in for us. We were surprised at how much the streets, especially Chandler Street, suffered over the winter. More city streets are calling for immediate action. You don’t want to get to the point where you have to reconstruct these streets because it would be three to Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 6 four times the cost. Maybe the idea of taking some of the $17 million and putting it toward some neighborhood streets may be a good idea but we need to spend the bulk of it on major streets as soon as possible. Alderman Dowd I think that, especially with the new approach that we are taking to paving; that in 15 years the streets are just going to fall apart and turn to dust is probably a misconception. There are streets in Nashua and there are probably streets in Manchester that haven’t been paved for 25 – 30 years and they have shown it but at 15 years they won’t necessarily fall apart. These streets have to be done. It’s our main roads in and out of the city and the majority of people in the city travel on them every day. The wear and tear on them has caused them to be degraded to such a point that they are long overdue for being repaired. We can still do a significant number of streets with the other paving project that we do year to year and try to catch up but if we don’t do this and we have to pave any one of these major streets, the neighborhood streets aren’t going to be done for a longer time. The neighborhood streets have a much better chance of getting done sooner if we do this than if we don’t do it. Alderman Soucy There’s no doubt that we are playing catch up and quite often I hear, especially on Infrastructure, that we need to take care of what we have, well we didn’t and this is what we have and we need to take care of it. I think it deserves far more analysis and I want to study it more but at this point, looking at the creative analysis I would rather take care of what we have than have to build roads. I am going to support this with the full understanding that I retain my right to change my mind when it goes before the full Board. Thank you, Mayor, it was very creative. Alderman Siegel The one thing that I would point out is that we do have a piece of software that’ s going to be coming on board, they haven’t implemented it yet and they are going to be doing a complete survey. It seems to me that we are sort of getting ahead of ourselves. Look, we all know that these roads need to be repaired but we are paying for these people to do this survey and to give us good guidance about where we are at today including all of the neighborhood streets, not just the larger roads. It seems to me that we are making a decision and then we will get the data and then we will have no ability to do anything with it. The whole point of getting the data was to make intelligent decisions for something like this which is a major outlay of money. I understand that on a yearly basis going forward we will use that data but that data won’t be available by the time we start this project given the timeline that you have outlined, Mayor. Am I correct? Mayor Lozeau I would say that we do have current data; it’s just that the software program hasn’t been updated the way that we would like. That software program has showed us the need for these roads to be paved based on those same two measurement tools for many years now. We’ve just not been able to do it without eliminating all of the other roads that we believe are in need of attention. The data that’s coming in is a better software program, a different way to look at the data in Cartegraph which is the system that we are trying to implement for other things. There is software that we have that we have used to make these judgement calls so far and they have still identified these same roads. Alderman Siegel I recognize that but we specifically have identified that software as deficient which is why we are going to change it and part of that was that we were also going to be doing additional surveying of the roads and populate the database with more up-to-date numbers. That is what was stated at the Board of Public Works meetings where this was being reviewed and I was at those meetings. Again, it’s fairly clear that some of Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 7 these roads; and you don’t need a software program to tell you that they need work. I’ll tell you right now that I’m staring at one of the priority roads, Lamb Road to DPW Highway and I ride on that several times a day and I can tell you that at least half of that road I would not immediately spend money replacing. I can see part of that eventually but if I had to say Ward 9, would I rather put that into some of the local roads which I know are literally a disaster like the Ho Chi Minh Trail, I’d rather see that. I mean personally, I don’t get to make that decision but again, I am very concerned about us starving out the local road funding and it would be especially bad if the state funding starts to dip such that we have an issue there with paying the bonds. Mayor Lozeau I understand and I am looking up the RSA that creates that highway fund. Chairman Deane Is it RSA 31:95(C)? Mayor Lozeau No, that one is the one that tells us that we can use funds for this purpose. It used to be chapter 235 but they repealed it. Alderman Siegel Again, I am confident that we can but we are counting on the state not changing their mind. Mayor Lozeau Yes, I know but the state money also comes from federal money and there is a required formula that comes to us and it is based on certain factors. Could they suspend it like they have done other programs, I am certain that they likely could, I’m just saying that it’s one of the few that they don’t put their hands on because they know that it’s a different kind of partnership with the community. Having been in the Legislature for 16 years I can tell you that those are some of the things that we talked about. That wasn’t what I wanted to make a point about. The point I wanted to make is this idea that we are starving out the local roads, the argument that I make on that is we have put only that dollar amount until we created this fund year. When I came in with it, this is the first time that we have put more than $1 million in local roads. Chairman Deane But I think the point is, Mayor, that now it regresses back to where it used to be by taking that increased amount to pay the bonds; principle and interest, to pay for major thoroughfares it goes back to the initial million that was said that was all we used in years before. Alderman Siegel The reason why I voted for the special revenue fund is because I recognize that we are starving out our road paving and the local roads. If we were to now regress I have a problem with that. There’s no easy answer and I appreciate the effort and it is creative. I’m not saying you are wrong, it’s just very complicated. Mayor Lozeau I’m not worried about it. Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 8 Alderman Dowd We know these streets need it and are all within the boundaries of the city. With regard to Alderman Soucy’s suggestion between now and the next meeting we can do some more homework so we have a little bit more background. The one thing I am thinking about is if we are delayed too long you run the risk of the cost of asphalt increasing and you don’t know how long the bids are good to exercise even though they are willing to hold the price for another year. The bond rate could also change and go up so this $17 million if we wait could cost us $24 million to do the same thing. These streets that are on the priority one list I think we all agree need to be done. The state and federal government are not going to do them, we have to do them. Also on the second part of the list it’s in the fall of 2016. If things change and we want to move some of this money to some of the city streets I think we can do that within the confines of this legislation but these main roads have to be done. If someone has an alternate solution then let me hear it. Alderman Siegel Mayor, our colleague, Alderman Dowd has suggested that we could change the direction but I don’t know the contract, is it for specific streets? I know Mr. Teeboom didn’t think so and it looked like just a materials contract. Do we get to change our mind on which streets that we wish to pave? Mayor Lozeau In my experience and I am not a City Engineer, when we do the contract the first group of streets that we will get started on still allow us to look at the second set. As I mentioned, Manchester Street, which we are doing right now will come out of the contract. Although they have done their bid on the specific streets it’s really more important; the distance, the linear feet and the mileage. Mr. Dookran Essentially that’s all correct. Like I said earlier, the paving contracts are not completed contracts and what you are looking at is virtually a few items and unit cost and you can transfer those items quite easily to streets. Alderman Siegel Mr. Dookran, I understand that they have specifically gone through in and noted the condition of some streets which implies the amount of work that had to be done to mill and fill and I know going back to my own Ward there are certain streets that look like they need to stripped right down. I don’t know how that affects them or not, I’m no expert on this but I am hoping there is some level of flexibility if that because that certainly makes the plan more attractive if we can be more flexible about how we apply it. Mr. Dookran For instance, let’s take Amherst Street. We asked in the bid that the contractor remove essentially 3” of pavement by milling and then come back and put 2 3/4” of pavement. If you remove that from the contract and you save that money you can put in another street and if it’s a neighborhood street the treatment might be different. If it’s far gone and you have to rebuild the street then you would have to work out a new contract. For your average residential street you are probably milling less than 3” so you could probably get more mileage with a residential street. It’s because of (inaudible) on the contract they strip the end units and it’s not a difficult thing. Alderman McCarthy One of the things that I see in here is that there are a substantial number of miles in those major streets that are D.W. Highway and Amherst Street and I suspect an even more substantial number of lane miles because of the size of those streets. A lot of the traffic on those two streets is not Nashua residents necessarily but is Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 9 traffic from surrounding communities both in and out of New Hampshire that are visiting businesses that are fairly lucrative. It occurs to me that there is a lot of use of those streets that is not being paid for by the people who use them. Have we looked at, in those two particular cases, a concept like creating a Business Improvement District on those two streets just to pay for the paving of the streets? Mayor Lozeau No not that I am aware of. Chairman Deane I thought he was going to say toll booths. Mayor Lozeau The section for the apportionment of the highway fund is §235:23 and part of that includes tow road revenues that goes into that Block Grant Fund. It comes to communities and the way that formula is designed it’s meant to include people throughout the state who use roads. As far as the businesses, other than that first fee that they pay; in many instances when they come into a community, like a significant piece of D.W. Highway when the lighting project was being done my first year here came from developer fees that were contributed into the fund and that paid for the paving. Short of that I don’t think we’ve looked at anything. Alderman McCarthy I think that’s my point. Particularly on D.W. Highway there is a tremendous amount of revenue there being generated by the fact that we are maintaining a road in front of the Pheasant Lane Mall and all of the other retail businesses that are on that street and perhaps we could find a way to have them share in some of the expense for the road in which they share the benefit. Alderman Siegel Getting back to the new software program, approximately when might we have data available? The reason I ask that is because if we are going to change course it would help us to decide what to do. Would we have enough time, if that database was populated, and the software up and running so that we might be able to take a fresh look and make decisions within the timeframe of these contracts in the next two years? Mayor Lozeau The goal is to have that information done and engineering to be able to take a look at it for the new paving season for the local roads and I would say you could probably do the same with the priority two roads. I don’t think it will be done in time to be able to hit the ground running on delaying the priority one roads. Again, if they are going to hire somebody they would like to know what they are doing in the spring sooner rather than later. Alderman Siegel But the real issue becomes whether or not priority two roads, the priority one roads seem pretty obviously bad. Mayor Lozeau It’s pretty frequent too that we have a list and it’s a draft list because sometimes the winter will treat roads that might be not on the list yet but close to getting on the list and so they bump something else off which tends to happen sometimes. Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 10 Alderman Donchess First of all I thought Alderman McCarthy’s idea was very good and should be explored. It sounds a little messy to change the streets because the contractor, once they are on the contract they have some leverage. My question is if the Board of Aldermen did this and if then the Board of Public Works comes in with a contract, who has the authority to decide what streets are on the list? Are we going to get into one of these things where the Finance Committee says well we would like shift this to local streets and the Board of Public Works says sorry we have authority under the Charter so we are not going to do that? Are we headed into that kind of disagreement for the end of the calendar year? Mayor Lozeau The Board of Public Works has made the effort to follow the protocols that have been in place for a long time since those two measuring tools that I described have been put in place and I have not really gone through the list and changed it. They have really relied on staff to present the best way to do that. The way it works as far as whether there is a show-down between the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Public Works on this, the Board of Public Works may have the authority for the streets and sidewalks, as we have discussed many times before but the Board of Aldermen decided whether there is money available. The Board of Public Works can only work within the money that’s appropriated. Alderman Donchess I guess my point is that once the bond issue is authorized it’s totally within the authority of the Mayor to put the money out. I want to avoid one of these things. We had this over a dump truck, there was a constitutional crisis over that and we had legal opinions and all of that. What if the Board of Aldermen says look, this is a policy decision, I mean we’ve got our priority list and no one disagrees with that but we want to put some money into the local neighborhood streets opposed to the secondary list of priority streets. Are we inviting trouble if the Board of Public Works says sorry we don’t want to do that and the Board of Aldermen says well then we don’t want to sign the contract and then the Board of Public Works says sorry you have to because you don’t have authority as we saw with the dump truck. Shouldn’t we try to avoid that kind of disagreement? Mayor Lozeau I think we work together. I think when it comes to paving and infrastructure I think the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Public Works have been pretty much on the same page. I think that is a different conversation, I wouldn’t put the type of truck we were using in the same conversation. I would suggest that it may make sense that from time to time I have asked for joint meetings of the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Public Works to talk about really big ticket items that made sense so that we knew that we were going in the same direction. I think that is still possible here. I see that happening as we discuss Burke Street that the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Public Works should be together and heading in the same direction. The Board of Aldermen will be in charge of building out that building not the Board of Public Works but you might want to hear their opinion about how they see their staff operating in that building; no different than you would with police or fire or schools. Chairman Deane The Board of Aldermen has authority over Burke Street. Mayor Lozeau That’s what I just said. What I said was that you would likely want to get the opinion of the Board of Public Works on how the staff might operate in the building to be able to say that we need 20 offices, etc. Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 11 Chairman Deane I don’t think anybody is denying that. Mayor Lozeau All I am saying is that I think there is an opportunity to work together here for a common purpose and I think both Boards agree that paving and infrastructure is important and we need to do more of it. Chairman Deane How much do we put aside in Nashua for road maintenance every year? Londonderry I heard $5 million, what do we do in Nashua? Mayor Lozeau We don’t. Chairman Deane So there is no maintenance plan. If this were to be done where is the maintenance plan and what is the yearly cost that will be required to fund that? Mr. Dookran We do pothole patching and I guess there is some money for that. Chairman Deane Is there $5 million? Mr. Dookran No. Chairman Deane This just goes back to the fact that we don’t take care of what we own, our school buildings are a perfect example of that, our roadways are a perfect example of that and our sidewalks are a perfect example of that. Now you want to speed $17 million to make everything new but we don’t have maintenance plan in place to maintain that after the fact and I find that troubling. It seems like we spend more time chasing problems. If we maintained what we own the problems wouldn’t arise like they do. The depth of the asphalt at 2 3/4” versus 2”, what do we get out of that ¾” of extended life between the 2” and the 2 ¾”? Mr. Dookran The previous program was that they would do up to 2” of total pavement. For many roads we’ve followed before you get around 10 to 14 years of average life. Chairman Deane Is that 2” or 2 ¾”? Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 12 Mr. Dookran That’s for the 2”. Chairman Deane So if we go to 2 ¾” what is that going to add to the life expectancy of the roadway? Mr. Dookran The additional ¾”, using the new DOT standards would bring us up to fifteen years. Chairman Deane So we are going to gain a year by adding ¾” of asphalt? Mr. Dookran Probably about 2 or 2 ½ years. Chairman Deane So it goes from 10-14 to 10-15. Mr. Dookran Probably 12 to 15. Chairman Deane That’s doing what to get to that number? Mr. Dookran Meaning? Chairman Deane Since we don’t take care of anything we own like roadways, in particular. You can look like that Mayor but when you drive the streets like I do they are a disaster. So following the same path that we are on if we are going to pave all of these roadways, what are we going to have to do to get to these 12 to 15 years? What necessary yearly maintenance of the roadways is going to be required? Mr. Dookran For the first several years you probably just have to do your typical street sweeping. There will be streets that may deteriorate more than others. You have to make sure that you keep up with the patching. Our intention is to start having the street department do some crack sealing and that will add some life. Chairman Deane Is there a maintenance plan in place to address this? Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 13 Mr. Dookran We haven’t developed one yet but the Cartegraph program that we’ve been talking about, that in of itself will give us recommendations for maintenance, not just of these streets but of all of the city streets. Chairman Deane So there’s no maintenance plan in place. You had mentioned the liquid asphalt at the intersections, what does that do for durability? Is that being put down after they scarify as a binder, like when you get off at Exit 4? Mr. Dookran No, what I meant was that at the intersections where you have a lot of movements of heavy vehicles, the mix itself will have additional liquid asphalt, richer in liquid asphalt. We are using two types of asphalts. For the streets we are using a very high strength asphalt. It’s harder and it’s better for that kind of travel. When you have a lot of turning we use a mix of more liquid asphalt which gives it a little more flexibility and it wears better at the intersections. Chairman Deane If the sub-surface is insufficient to begin with, which unless they do core samples no one is really going to know, going through this entire process really isn’t going to deliver much of a change after a while unless the sub-surface isn’t adequate. I wonder how this is going to play out when we…like when you get off at Northeastern Blvd. and you have those 4” ruts over by the Shell Station from all of that truck traffic. That section of roadway has been paved and I would imagine pretty thick but it almost appears like either the water table is high there or the sub-surface is inadequate or inappropriate for roadway construction. How are we going to address that? Mr. Dookran That’s not on this list, most of the streets as we have here on this list, I would say that they have a very good road block structure, we don’t have serious deterioration because of the road blocks; what you have is the pavement of how many inches we have today failing because of age. By giving the new standards, the new specifications we will get more life from the pavement. Where you do have road substructure that will require major reconstruction of those sections and that will have to be done on a case by case basis. Alderman Siegel You mention that you spoke with one of the bidders, Continental Paving and reviewed things and got some costs down. Did you have the same conversation with all of the bidders? Mayor Lozeau Yes, I thought I had mentioned that, we met with each of them and asked all of them the same questions. Alderman Wilshire I appreciate the effort that you put in coming up with this plan. I don’t know how we are ever going to get ahead on paving if we don’t do something now. I mean our streets are going to get worse and we are going to have to reclaim them. I guess I’m not really sure why we wouldn’t support this. I think it’s a pretty innovative way to do the paving that we have fallen so far behind on. I don’t know what other plan we could come up with that would get this much paving done. Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 14 Mayor Lozeau I acquiesced on maintenance plan because in my estimation, I think it’s fair to say that we don’t have a very robust maintenance plan. When I came into this job, our vehicle plan needed to be updated; in short up and it’s been done. Our city buildings; we put a million dollars into this building, $1 million in the Hunt Building and we created a building fund and every year we are putting $150,000 in that fund to be able to try to maintain the buildings. For the maintenance of our roads I agree that we don’t put in nearly as much as we need but after I got here in looking at trying to find a solution that most of you supported we put in the Mill & Fill Program and we’ve increased its funding every year and we’ve skim coated in some places where we thought a road was going to have to be reclaimed so we expanded the life and I do think that we should have a more robust maintenance plan but we have done something in all of these ways to try to overcome that but you also have to still invest money in putting together a plan. We should be filling our road cracks every year where we can after frost heaves and things like that and the money that we’ve put in the line items that the city engineer mentioned we have been increasing those. It’s like many other things, not enough but we do have to start somewhere and I do think that we have time to look at then adding to the maintenance of the roads but we are far behind. I think we have solved a significant amount of problems and this is a way to get ahead and maybe the next Board and the next Mayor will see fit to add even more to that line for cracks and other things. I think when you have a plan coming through the system that we have described it may give you a greater confidence in funding it at a different level. Chairman Deane I would have a great deal of confidence in supporting funding it if there was a plan in place but there isn’t. You just got done telling me that. Mayor Lozeau I said there is not as robust a plan, Alderman Deane as there should be. Chairman Deane Can you provide me with the plan that you have in place now? Mayor Lozeau Sure. A Viva Voce Roll Call was taken, which resulted as follows: Yea: Alderman Wilshire, Alderman Dowd, Alderman Siegel, 4 Alderman Soucy Nay: Alderman Deane, Alderman Schoneman 2 MOTION CARRIED Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 15 R-15-176 Endorsers:Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire Alderman Michael Soucy APPROVING THE COST ITEMS OF A COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE NASHUA BOARD OF POLICE COMMISSIONERS AND UAW PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEES OF THE NASHUA POLICE DEPARTMENT, LOCAL #2322, FROM JULY 1, 2015, THROUGH JUNE 30, 2018, AND AUTHORIZING RELATED TRANSFERS MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO RECOMMEND FINAL PASSAGE MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL THAT THE RULES BE SO FAR SUSPENDED AS TO ALLOW FOR THE ACCEPTANCE OF A COMMUNICATION RECEIVED AFTER THE AGENDA WAS PREPARED MOTION CARRIED Attorney Bennett The first change in the cost items was a change in vacations. For employees with 15-19 years employment would receive an additional year. For those with 20 or more years would receive also an additional day. That would move those with 15-19 years up to 24 days’ vacation and those with 20 plus years would receive 29 days’ vacation. Insurance, the union has dropped the Point-of-Service plan. As a practical matter, I don’t believe there were any employees on that plan. That plan has become very expensive over the last couple of years. In addition, we added a high option dental plan which gives a bit more coverage. That plan is paid entirely by the employee. The city doesn’t pay for any of the premium on that. Article 18, Bereavement Leave. The contract already had the term “domestic partner.” We just added a definition. Then it allowed one bereavement leave for a death of a member’s spouse’s aunt, uncle, cousin, niece or nephew. Article 21, Wages. It’s a two-year contract with an increase of 2.25% for each of the years. There’s also an update in the hiring/promotion grid to reflect current wage ranges for covered positions. Chairman Deane How did the grid change in the percentages? Attorney Bennett It wasn’t even a percentage so much as we had to look at the existing positions where people have arrived at in that range. It wasn’t so much an increase the grid to a specific amount. They had fallen considerably behind. It hadn’t been touched in a number of years. We looked at where people were sitting at this point and tried to go from there to provide a range. Again, it’s somewhat misnamed. It shouldn’t really be a promotion. There’s one position where you go from fleet supervisor. There’s an assistant fleet supervisor, and there’s a fleet supervisor. That’s the only room for that assistant to go to the fleet. The rest of the positions, there’s only that one person in a position so there’s not going to be any motions from those positions. It’s more of a hiring grid. Again, you would try to reflect where these positions were sitting now and try to make sure that was a fair hiring range to give the police department an option to find people who were competent for those positions. Work schedules, there’s a long list of what constitutes time worked. This does not reflect any change. These categories existed before this round of negotiations. We just included a list of them. There was no change in the practice in the police department. We just included a list of what counted towards time worked. Overtime and Flex Time, this union is split between exempt and non-exempt people. There have been several occurrences over the last couple of years where exempt people were not just working late in the day but they were called in on the weekends to deal with a public event where the police department brought out all their equipment. An example would be when we had the Touch a Truck. They had these same types of activities at the police department where they show their command center or had some type of public event and these exempt people were called in on a Saturday or Sunday to work that. They weren’t paid anything for those Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 16 events. They were just coming in during the weekend and working. This provision would in fact pay those people to come in during the weekends to work at those events. Seniority, we had a couple of instances where people had left and then come back after a relatively short period of time. The practice was when they came back to allow them to maintain the accrued rate that they had when they left before. This says if you are rehired within 12 months you will essentially maintain your seniority. That’s already in the contract but also the accrual rates you for vacation and so forth. They wouldn’t go back to two weeks after being gone for six months. There’s a new article, longevity. It’s in $200 increments except for the last. At 20 it goes to $1,000. The police department has several unions: patrols, supervisors, teamsters and communications. Communications does not have an article on longevity. What was built into their schedule was every five you get a double jump, a double step. That was the longevity. Essentially all the unions have longevity except for UAW. The duration is for three years and will terminate June 30, 2018. Alderman Soucy Thank you. It looks like a very good contract for the most part. I don’t have any heartache over most of what I see. However, I do have concerns I hope you can address. Looking at the 2.25% for each year, how many employees are we talking about in the UAW? Attorney Bennett 15. I believe the cost is based on the 15 members. Alderman Soucy Knowing the piece of the pie that we’re probably going to get of the spending cap that’s estimated to be at 1.3, this is .95% over. Is this something that the department can afford understanding that you’re going to be a 1.3 next year? I hope we’re not losing any more secretaries or any police officers and that you were able to mitigate this raise. Deputy Chief Carignan Yes, we are. We will not be eliminating any position to support this. It is within our contingency budget that we had put aside. Alderman Soucy So this is something you support and you’re saying you can come in with your budget at budget and this is not going to affect it. Deputy Chief Carignan That is correct. Alderman Siegel 1.3 is not really the number I think. It’s going to be lower because we have pension obligations. The effective ability for us to spend money is unfortunately lower than that number. I am a little concerned. I understand there’s contingency money put aside for this year, but what about the other two years? What gets hit because of that? Deputy Chief Carignan That’s something that Karen and I spoke about. We feel comfortable with absorbing each of those increases over the next three years where we will not be taking it from any positions. We will not be eliminating any Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 17 positions or changing any staffing to meet the current needs. Alderman Siegel Something has to give. I know your budget is really, really tight now and you’ve had all sort of issues with overtime and crime. I’m impressed. I guess its 15 employees and it’s not a huge amount of money per year because of that. I think $25,000 was set aside for contingency for this year, as I recall. I assume that will be an equivalent now for each successive year. It’s one thing to set this amount of money aside for this year, but again, I’m concerned. I don’t want to see an officer come walking off the street into the office because all of a sudden we can’t afford to keep him out there. How are you addressing this? It seems tough for me to understand. Again, I’m ignorant about this. I just feel there’s a small pot of money and something has to give. It’s a big increase relative to the amount of Cap space you can have. Three percent is the actual loaded cost per employee. Deputy Chief Carignan Are you talking about the retirement cost and insurance benefit? Alderman Siegel The total bottom-line cost that I saw in the legislation was 3%. Deputy Chief Carignan Three percent in the first year, and 2.4 and 2.8 annually over the next two years is what it was projected out for. As I understand it, Alderman Siegel, the highest amount was based on that first year which we had the contingency based on. The subsequent years aren’t as much for that. Chairman Deane You’re still adding to the bottom line is the point. If you look at the rest of the contracts that are coming in, what’s the net effect? Where is the money going to come from? If you’re looking at your allotted increase for the Cap calculation, how does that work? How are you going to fund it? If there are only 15 FTEs now and you keep doing this with the balance of the contracts eventually that dollar amount is going to increase again. The money has to come from somewhere. Deputy Chief Carignan The last seven years we’ve been forced to budget through our attrition, and Karen will cover some of those costs through. We manage our manpower based on those numbers. Chairman Deane She’s does matrix on attrition and she feels confident what you will pick up in attrition will cover the costs of these salary increases for this contract and others? Deputy Chief Carignan That’s correct. Alderman Siegel There’s one other thing that was missed here as a change. The city contribution in health insurance went up from 70% to 80%. You can see that in the legislation on page 23. It talks about the change. It was 70%, it’s Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 18 now 80% of the premium Option A. Attorney Bennett No. Alderman Siegel That’s what reads is. I’m looking at the legislation, itself. It’s on page 18. The pdf file is page 23, but of the actual paper it would be page 18 at the bottom. At the very top of that page is something called “City Contributions, Part A.” The strike-through copy changes that from 70% to 80%. Attorney Bennett We pay 80% of Premium A which is now the HMO. We pay 80% of that. A used to be the Point of Service where we paid 70%, but we got rid of it. Alderman Siegel So you got rid of that plan and upped the percent. spending cap Attorney Bennett Right, it’s just the way the lettering went here. It used to be 70% for Option A, which was a Point-of-Service. Now Option A is the Health Maintenance and we pay 80%. There was no increase. Alderman Siegel But the problem is according to you, nobody was using the Point-of-Service plan so everybody was already on the other plan. Attorney Bennett At this point, there was no one on the Point of Service plan. Alderman Siegel So we’ve effectively gone from 70% to 80% on a plan that everybody actually uses is what I’m hearing. Am I wrong? Attorney Bennett The Point-of-Service plan is a higher premium for everyone - for the city or for us. We still do for the people that have that plan, pay 70% and they pay 30% for the Point-of-Service plan. We’ve gotten rid of the Point-of- Service plan out of every single other. The supervisors still have it, I guess, but this is the second of the last union. I’m leaving out the school district. I’m not sure exactly what they’ve done with their teachers. We’ve been trying to get rid of this plan as it is an expensive plan for everybody. Alderman Siegel I see where my mistake it. Let me clarify because actually there is no change. It says it went from 70% to 80% for Option A, which was completely eliminated. It was 80% for Option B. The wording is the same, it’s just shuffled around. It’s a little deceptive. I apologize. Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 19 Alderman Dowd We want to treat all the unions fairly. If we say to one union you get 2.25 and the next union comes in and we say no, you can only have one. They are going to say you gave these other guys 2.25. What’s going on? We get in that argument all the time. I’m concerned about the first year cost. The other thing is if we are setting any kind of precedent with longevity. We tried to get of longevity and now we’re adding it to a contract. Is this the only group in the police department that doesn’t have longevity? Attorney Bennett Communications do not have a longevity article, but built into their grid every five years, 5, 10, 15 they get a double bump. When that was brought in, the explanation was that was in fact longevity. Patrols, supervisors and teamsters, all have longevity articles. As far as the 2.2 that was consistent with the library that was just passed by the Board recently, it was 2.25% each year. As far as setting the stage for the other unions at the police department, the patrol was passed last year with a four-year at 3% a year. It comes out to 2.75 because it’s a 2 and 1 split from July to January. The only other union that’s out right now is supervisors. I’m sure they are going to be looking at much more at the patrol contract than the UAW or teamster contract. Teamsters going forward at ’16 and ’17 are 2.5 essentially for those two years. Alderman Siegel First of all I voted against a lot of the contracts. I know they got that, but I didn’t vote for that. One of the reasons is again we have a spending cap. The reason I supported the patrolmen’s contract is because we have an incredibly high training cost associated with people. The cost of attrition is very, very difficult to deal with. That’s an area where we need to be very, very careful about losing people. I’m not advocating losing anybody, but my issue with the way this union is constructed, it’s like a real hodge-podge of different positions, some of which are clearly positions that are difficult to fill, that have a different private sector, salary structure increase. But they are all lumped together. They get the same. They may be in different areas on the grid, but the increases are the same. I have a problem giving out those increases knowing that it isn’t 1.3%. It’s probably more like .9% if you factor in the pension obligations we have to deal with. The actual amount of cash we’re going to spend. It’s very difficult. I mean the police pension obligations. The state is giving us the bill for the pensions that we have to pay. It has nothing to do with the police department pension obligation. Alderman Soucy To Alderman Dowd’s concern about setting a precedent, I believe this is a tail end. It’s not a precedent setting contract. I understand the attrition costs. I think I’m going to support this. Alderman Schoneman What attrition do we have besides retirement? Deputy Chief Carignan We had one of our IT administrator leave and come back. That is probably it. Our other employees have been here for a long period of time. Alderman Schoneman Where did the one person go? Deputy Chief Carignan He went into the private sector. Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 20 Alderman Schoneman And he came back because this is a better deal. Deputy Chief Carignan I don’t believe it was financial for him; it was more of a stimulation. Alderman Schoneman I support the police department. These kinds of questions that come up are very difficult because I support the police department. But we have a budget issue with our spending cap and it’s very, very hard. There’s just no more money. Whether this is the first of a new round or the last of the old round, every contract has some sort of overlap with every other contract. There’s always something else. I think we need to put the brakes on this whenever we can. I’ve traditionally voted against most of these contracts, not all, but most because we have to put the brakes on. I think it’s great to have low attrition, but we have low attrition because this is a good deal compared to what the private sector offers. Everyone should always be wondering as an employee for any job you have, what can I get elsewhere. The overall package of stimulation or compensation or vacation, whatever it is, that entire package provides a benefit to somebody. That entire package I think provides more benefit here in this role in Nashua than in the private sector or anywhere else. Even though I support the police department, I don’t know how I can support this. Alderman Siegel Most of the attrition money is used to fund overtime. That’s the conversation I’ve had with Karen Smith. Now we’ve just put a fund in place to account for a lot of the overwhelming issues where we’ve had overtime. I don’t want to all of a student have to tap the overtime fund to essentially fund a contract. That was not the intention. That was sort of an emergency to have that. I can’t speak to the thinking of inside your department, but it was my understanding that attrition should primarily go to fund overtime. Effectively what we’re saying is it is going to go to fund this contract which is higher than the spending cap. I have a problem with that. Deputy Chief Carignan I can assure you we have no intention of tapping into that contingency fund to pay for payroll or increases. That fund was set up specifically by the aldermen in the event we get major incidents like we ran into last year. I think we’ve shown and we’ve proven that we can articulate every penny that we spend on the major crimes that we do and we manage it pretty wisely. Karen and I have gone through this and she feels comfortable supporting this and feels we can manage it through these conditions. I think it’s a fair contract. I think it shows the respect that these civilian employees provide us on a day-to-day basis. Our attorneys are inundated with an enormous amount of work. Our IT specialists keep that place going and they keep up advancing at a very slow public sector pace. I would hope that you support them and know that we do manage our money well. Alderman Siegel I never said I didn’t support them. The question is: Can we as a city support this pay increase for this particular class of employees. Part of the reasons is there is a lot of seniority in there which is great, but there are other reasons why people will stay, not the least of which is vested pensions. We’re concerned about paying people fairly but also retaining employees. Alderman Dowd You see these numbers, particularly in the first years, as a catch up to other union current positions. You don’t see any of these numbers in these three years in this contract that could be a precedent for any of the other Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 21 unions? Attorney Bennett When we negotiate, we keep that in mind. Its negotiations, we try to reach the best contract we can. We look at a number of things. If you look at the most recent contract, the library, I think it was 2.25. If you look at the other contracts that have been approved, the 2.25 isn’t out of whack with those other union contracts. Then you get to the other argument which is the spending cap. Those are two different things. Employees look at how other employees are treated. I’m not sure the Cap calculation is a big part of their strategy or consideration. It’s an issue you have to deal with here, but they typically, like most people do, look at what other people are receiving for like work. Alderman Dowd At this level, I think I’m going to support this, but at some point we have to draw a line in the sand. I’m concerned about other contracts that may be coming in. I know some that are up for renewal. I hope the city takes the position what we’re up against this next year, and we have to watch our spending. They want to offset that in the out years, but next year is tough. This is a relatively a small amount of money because it’s a small group, but if we get a larger group that comes in, I don’t think we can afford it. Alderman Soucy I get it that the employees aren’t looking at the Cap; they are looking at what everybody else is getting. But we have to look at the Cap. We have a larger responsibility to our citizens here in Nashua. We have to look at that Cap. I’m telling all union members who are watching right now that you need to start looking at the Cap, too, because the brakes are about to come on. Deputy, if you’re telling me that you can do this without losing any employees and that you can mitigate this then I can support it this time. But we really, really need to start looking at this Cap. As long as we aren’t going to lose any employees and you can do this. I haven’t heard Alderman Deane yet ask the question. Do you want me to ask the question? Chairman Deane You can ask it. Alderman Soucy Is this how you want to spend your money? Deputy Chief Carignan It is. Alderman Schoneman I just want to reiterate that we have start slowing down at some stage. We can’t keep saying the next contract that comes in we have to do something different. We said that the last time. We have to do it now. I have to vote no on this one. Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 22 A Viva Voce Roll Call was taken, which resulted as follows: Yea: Alderman Deane, Alderman Wilshire, Alderman Dowd, 4 Alderman Soucy Nay: Alderman Siegel, Alderman Schoneman 2 MOTION CARRIED NEW BUSINESS – ORDINANCES – None TABLED IN COMMITTEE O-14-017 Endorser: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau ADOPTION OF AMENDMENTS TO MERIT EMPLOYEE RULES AND REGULATIONS EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2014  Personnel Referred to Budget Review Cmte & Tabled Pending a Recommendation – 6/29/15  Tabled in Cmte – 9/21/15 GENERAL DISCUSSION – None PUBLIC COMMENT Mr. Fred Teeboom, 24 Cheyenne Drive I want to talk about options. The school department, they took a look at the custodian union and eliminated them. Here, these union people get a raise. Maybe it’s time to say to how critical are these people that they cannot be supplied by administering? Maybe eliminate that union. Dispatchers, they can find dispatchers. You use dispatchers at a lot of departments. We cannot afford 2.5% when the Cap is 1.3%. It’s very simple. With the school, the union has already come back and said please reconsider the contract. That’s how you negotiate. Think about the citizens that you represent. The other option I want to talk about is the highway paving. I mentioned there’s always a cost. It’s a good plan, but there is a cost. $4.76 million divided by 15 years is $300,000 a year. The cost of that bond is $300,000 a year. Someone said there are no other options. There are lots of options. You can decide to pave these streets without a bond. Put them on a 15- year schedule. I don’t think that’s a good option, but it is an option. Another option is there were two plans. Plan A and Plan B. If you look at the details, it’s about 50-50. You can decide to do Option A and forget Option B. Now you have an $8 million bond instead of a $17 million bond. Or, you could mix it. You could come up with a plan. Take a look at the plans yourself and say we don’t have to do all these streets. Another option. Is that a better option? I don’t know, but it’s an option. You’re never locked in. Somebody said that’s all we can do. You’re not locked into a contract. You’re not locked in a paving contract. You’re not locked into a plan the Mayor offers you. That is not the only plan. There are a lot of plans. Thank you. Chairman Deane Thank you, Mr. Teeboom. I couldn’t agree any more with you. It’s $300,000 a year on top of the $1.2 million that’s coming out. It is $2.5 million a year that we could be paving but the majority rules. REMARKS BY THE ALDERMEN - None POSSIBLE NON-PUBLIC SESSION Budget Review – 10/05/15 Page 23 ADJOURNMENT MOTION BY ALDERMAN WILSHIRE TO ADJOURN MOTION CARRIED The meeting was declared closed at 9:43 p.m. Alderman Ken Siegel Committee Clerk