Budget Review Committee

BUDGET REVIEW COMMITTEE MAY 16, 2016 A meeting of the Budget Review Committee was held Monday, May 16, 2016, at 7:00 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chamber. Vice Chairman Lori Wilshire, presided Members of Committee present: Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire, Vice Chair Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien Alderman Sean M. McGuinness Alderman David Schoneman Alderman Ken Siegel Members not in Attendance: Alderman Richard A. Dowd, Chair Also in Attendance: Alderman Tom Lopez PUBLIC COMMENT - None COMMUNICATIONS - None DEPARTMENTAL REVIEWS Vice Chair Wilshire I’d like to mention the communication the Board of Aldermen received from Alderman Dowd. What his request was is to have each department give a short, brief overview of what services your department provides to the city for the newer aldermen and maybe for the public. Department 156, Emergency Management Mr. Justin Kates, Director of Emergency Management First, our office is responsible for the emergency planning and operations for the City of Nashua. One of the key responsibilities of emergency management is to work with all of the different stakeholders that might be involved in some sort of an emergency response or special event. Emergency management plays a part in getting those other stakeholders that we don’t typically think of as first responders to the table including public health, public works, transportation and some that are not in the city including the state and federal government and non-profits. One of the primary functions of emergency management since we don’t have disasters every day is a lot of public education and outreach. We do a lot of training, not only training for our responders but arranging everything from active threat response, hazardous materials, natural disaster activities but training for our citizens as well. One of our significant programs in the city is the Community Emergency Response Training which is the free 20-hour program that we offer to citizens as a way to better prepare themselves but also to find ways that they can help the city out during an emergency. We do a number of assessments for businesses within the city to identify gaps that they might have in their emergency plans and also the physical operations within their facility; security assessments and assessments for emergency planning. The most obvious thing that emergency management is responsible for is emergency planning. We manage the city’s emergency operation plan as well as our hazard mitigation plan. Those two documents explain what each city department is supposed to do in the event of a disaster. We are also responsible for exercises and drills. We’ve done a lot of exercises over the last year mainly along the active shooter and active threat line but also Budget Review Committee Page 2 May 16, 2016 some exercises to test the social media capabilities of the city; how we can receive information through social media, analyze it and get those to the right departments during an emergency. We are also involved with special event planning. Our office is the main point of contact for special events that come into the city that need cooperation with city departments for permitting and safety planning. The last piece is financial management; our office is responsible for applying for a number of Homeland Security Grants per year. Currently we are operating with about $550,000 worth of federal grants and I hope to close those out in the next couple of months and start applying for more. One of the questions that came up with the budget we are proposing this evening was to ensure that our department can operate efficiently and I would yes, one of the key things that this budget includes is really to ensure that we are able to promote those community outreach and volunteer programs effectively. We did not cut any services with this years’ budget and we are looking to shift some of the resources that we typically use for equipment funding to more federal grants. Some of the things that might be of highlight with our proposed budget include #54, Property Services, that’s for the CodeRED System. We are currently in negotiations with the CodeRED to identify whether we want to continue service with that vendor or go to a different one. For the most part the other ones are the same as previous years; as I mentioned we did cut back on equipment significantly with the hopes that we fund the typical equipment that we go for each year through federal grants. I would be happy to answer any questions. Alderman Schoneman I am looking at Salaries & Wages and I see that Wages Part-Time have been added that weren’t in last years’ budget. What is that? Mr. Kates Currently we have a part-time employee that works for us that is currently funded through grants. She typically works on specific projects related to whatever grant. For example, one of the programs that she works on is hazardous materials planning. We would like her to start working on the Volunteers & Outreach Programs. Those grants can’t fund those operations so we are looking to try to sure up some sustainability on the Volunteer Programs that we have built up so far and add those 10 additional hours per week; the administration of our CERT Program as well as the construction of additional CERT and other volunteer programs can be maintained throughout the next fiscal year. Alderman Schoneman Is this person a full-time person? Mr. Kates This would be changing some of the hours that we typically use that are grant funded right now and shifting those over to 10 hours part-time from the city budget. Alderman Schoneman And the remainder of her salary would be funded through the grants? Mr. Kates That’s correct. I also should note that she’s not full-time; she only works 34 hours per week. Alderman Siegel Thank you, Justin; you’ve done a great job. I was skeptical about having a Director of Emergency Management but I’ve been proven wrong. I’d like to get an estimate from you on how much money you have Budget Review Committee Page 3 May 16, 2016 been able to bring in with the grant applications? Mr. Kates Right now we have open grants that we are currently operating through, about $553,000. Within the past fiscal year, about $300,000 was applied for and accepted. We also within this past fiscal year have applied for an additional $150,000 that have not been approved yet so hopefully they will within the next few months. We try to base everything on how many open grants there are. Alderman Siegel It’s nice to know that your department is helping to pay for itself and then some. Alderman Schoneman On the CodeRED line item, if we are anticipating possibly looking at other vendors, are other vendors less expensive than this? Mr. Kates The costs that we have been able to get back so far are all around the same range. We are hoping to identify some savings by combining the solution with the school district. It won’t be a complete combination, the two systems have to stay distinct due to some legal requirements for information that is identifiable for students but by looking at the same vendor we hope to see some savings. We are still trying to figure out which features are best out of the four that we have narrowed it down to but we are hoping within the next month to have a final solution and we can present that to the Finance Committee. Alderman Schoneman Do we have any idea of the participation rate of the public in the CodeRED system? Mr. Kates The unique thing about the city versus schools is the schools manage their own data so essentially every year the schools capture the information from parents and guardians and they manage that through a student information system. That information gets transferred every night using an API into their platform which is Blackboard Connect. Right now they have about two to three contacts per student so I think it is 11,700 students in the district so there is a significant amount of people. On the city side currently we have about 25,000 active users in the system. When we initially went with this system we ended up having around 35,000 but immediately after the first test; they do a process of identifying numbers that don’t work any longer so they immediately dropped it down to 20,000 and since then we have seen it fluctuate and we are up to 25,000 right now. Alderman O’Brien What is CodeRED and how do our citizens benefit from having such a program? Mr. Kates The CodeRED system is a tool that the city implemented about three years ago with the intention to better notify citizens of different events in the city that could warrant some sort of a protective action. That could include a sheltering of place, an evacuation or just to be aware of some serious traffic condition or hazard within the community. We let people know about snow emergencies, if we open up a shelter in the city and Budget Review Committee Page 4 May 16, 2016 any other protective actions that we would require, like if we had a tornado warning, we would let all of the users know what protective action to take. One of the key things with the system is it’s not just emergency management that has the ability to send out messages with it. We ensure that not only emergency management but fire, police, public health and public works. Alderman Schoneman How many messages do we send out in the course of a year? Mr. Kates We have identified that we use about 75,000 minutes per year. My average is that we send out about three to four messages on the average per month of an emergency nature. That doesn’t include messages that are specific and targeted towards contact lists, like citizens that have signed up for something specific like Parks & Recreation notifications; Bitty Basketball or transit notifications. Department 157, Citywide Communications Mr. Bill Mansfield, Radio Systems Manager The Citywide Communications Division is comprised of two employees that are responsible for maintain the city’s radio communications system. The people that are utilizing it are the police department, fire department, DPW, health department, building, zoning and anyone else that has a radio in the city. The radio system has five infrastructure sites throughout the city which all have antennas on them. Over the last year we have been upgrading our radio system and the system is upgraded at this point in time. All of the sites that we have are connected with fiber as well as microwave redundancy in the system. Each of the sites also had buildings attached to them and is climate controlled and have a lot of computer equipment in them. The Communications Division is responsible not only for the infrastructure but the portable and mobile radios that are out there. There are approximately 1,200 portable and mobile radios that are attached to the system and the majority of the radios are utilized by public safety and DPW. They are also used by the schools and all of the other entities here in the city. We maintain a VHF radio system which is in police and fire vehicles. The VHF radios are utilized for interoperability when communications outside of the city for mutual aid are needed or if we have a pursuit or fire incident that is on the border we can communicate with other entities while in their community. Also, when other entities come into the city, they also operate on VHF radios and they can communicate with us. As I mentioned the entire infrastructure has been gutted included antennas, cabling, microwave systems, bay stations, every computer and every server. That process has taken a long time and we cut over the final agencies last month; police and fire are up and operating on the system now. There was a $6 million bond taken out for this project and of that there is $791,000 left in that bond; the funds are set aside because we have to wait for the system to be complete before we could move on with the next steps. The budget proposal that you have here this evening is reduced from what it was last year, although there is one line item that was in there for $250,000 and that was for a software maintenance that has been removed by the Mayor’s office and the Communications Division is fine with that at this point. This radio project was supposed to be completed by last summer but we had a lot of delays so our warranty has just recently started so because of that the system upgrade agreement that we had initially thought was going to be needed is not at this point in time. Motorola has agreed not to begin that process until July, 2017. That’s where we are at. Alderman Siegel I think you answered my question but it was why did the $250,000 get removed and it was because you anticipated that as a warranty cost that we didn’t have because the project was delayed and we were already covered for this year but will probably end up seeing that in next year’s budget. Budget Review Committee Page 5 May 16, 2016 Mr. Mansfield That’s correct and I don’t want to have it confused as a warranty; it’s for software upgrade. The radio system is maintained by myself and another gentleman and we consider ourselves to be self-maintained. With the new technology we propose that every two years the system be upgraded to the current technology that is out there and that’s what that software agreement is for. Alderman Siegel So we can anticipate that $250,000 a couple of years from now? Mr. Mansfield It’s an annual fee and every two years you get your upgrade. Alderman Siegel Okay, so we should anticipate it in next year’s budget? Mr. Mansfield That’s correct, the FY ’18 budget. Alderman McCarthy I just want to make sure we are clear on that, it has to be in next year’s budget because it is what stands between us and another forklift upgrade in five to ten years. This is the money that upgrades not the radios but the infrastructure piece, correct? Mr. Mansfield Yes and the software maintenance agreement doesn’t only upgrade the software it upgrades any hardware as well. Alderman Schoneman On Property Services, Communications Equipment Maintenance, Equipment Repairs and Maintenance, I see a budget amount for FY ’16 of $34,000 and an expenditure of $8,600 and the line above is just $1,100. Is that what you are referring to as the equipment not fully installed yet? Why are the expenses lower? Mr. Mansfield The reason why a lot of that money was not spent down this year is because we were under warranty with a lot of the stuff we had. The only maintenance agreement that we have for the system is a back-up insurance policy so that a local radio shop, if we are not available to respond to an incident or emergency or if we are out of town, a radio shop will respond to the location and work on that system issue even though we are not there and it’s a very minimal fee for that. Alderman Schoneman If much of that expenditure was due to the fact that this equipment is under warranty, is the warranty expiring in the coming year? Budget Review Committee Page 6 May 16, 2016 Mr. Mansfield Yes, it will be up next year. Alderman Schoneman And would it be your anticipation then that likely the 25 and the 30 would be spent? Mr. Mansfield Yes. Alderman Schoneman But that money would be for a local shop to do work that we can’t do? Mr. Mansfield Correct. The Communications Equipment Maintenance and the Equipment Repairs and Maintenance are two separate things. The Communications Equipment Maintenance is maintenance for the radio equipment and the infrastructure for that radio shop to come in and the Equipment Repairs and Maintenance are for our portable and mobile radios if we have issues with them that have to be sent out. We have 200 portable radios here in the city that have been in service for about seven years and those radios are utilized by non-public safety entities and they are not under any type of maintenance or warranty plan. We intend on doing, before July 1st, is taking as many of those radios and ship them up and getting them tuned up so we don’t have to replace them for two or three years. Some of that money will be spent down but I don’t know how much it will be at this point. Alderman O’Brien I would like to know, our portables, particularly go through fires and incidents with the police department; what is the average life expectancy in the emergency service radios that you find? Mr. Mansfield The end of life on a portable radio is about seven years. It depends on the use. If the radio comes in and it’s totally gone then we are going to replace it and the replacement cost of that is anywhere between $3,500 and $5,000. I would anticipate that within a seven year period I will be back before you looking for replacement for police department and fire department radios especially because of the amount of use that they go through; especially on the fire side. Every time I pick up a fire radio I go home smelling like a fire. Department 152, Fire Department Chief Steven Galipeau With me tonight is Assistant Chief of Operations Brian Rhodes and in the audience are Commissioner Paul Garant and other deputy chiefs. The fire department responds to a plethora of incidences. Any time anyone calls we go and do the best we can to solve their situation. The budget that we are presenting this year; we’ve worked really hard with the Mayor’s office and CFO Griffin and his staff. There are no positions in the budget; we are just looking to maintain our current levels of service. In earlier discussions with Mayor Donchess that was the indication that we were given, he wanted us to present a level service budget to him. The current staffing that the City of Nashua Fire Rescue has afforded the city the ability to attain its current ISO rating; we are a Class 2 fire department. We are very tight with maintaining this rating with regard to response times, Budget Review Committee Page 7 May 16, 2016 communications and community risk reduction programs. We are also in the process of going through an evaluation with ISO. A drop in the city’s ISO rating will affect all of us with our insurance rates but will more importantly affect our industrial and commercial properties within the city; most notably would be owners such as Clocktower, Brady Sullivan’s project and other industrial properties within the city. According to the city’s Master Plan it was revealed that the fire department is running very lean according to the International City Management Association, the standard for the northeastern U.S. is 23.4 personnel per a 10,000 population and at an estimated population of 83,000 that would equate to 194 fire personnel. Back in July of 1999, we had 174 personnel, excluding secretaries and fire dispatchers. Today we are currently staffed at 164 personnel and if you go with the City Management Association, we are approximately 30 personnel short for the City of Nashua. We are not looking to make that up this year or in the near future just to calm everybody. We are expecting this year to do approximately 2,000 more emergency 911 calls and we equate that to so far we are 4 ½ months into the year and we are tracking at a much higher rate; I believe a lot of it is the opioid situation and several other reasons. The city has a large number of rehab projects going on and new construction going on and that takes a lot of our time through the Fire Marshall’s office; site plans, fire protection review, working with contractors, city staff and fire protection engineers. Lastly, we continue to work to maintain the city’s infrastructure and what I mean by that is the city’s fiber plant and the 100 mill fire alarm system. Through our own assessing department we were able to gather some figures there that the city’s fire alarm system provides early notification for approximately $1.6 billion of assessed property value in the City of Nashua. Alderman Siegel Chief Galipeau, just out of curiosity, if you had to estimate, what percentage of the calls do you make are now opioid related or other drug related calls? Chief Galipeau They all get looped in with an EMS run. Right now we are tracking; the last few years we’ve been around 50% and this year we are probably closer to 57% at this point right now. Alderman Siegel That’s too bad. Chief Galipeau It is; it’s a shame. Alderman McCarthy Can you go over with us where the areas of bad response times are? Chief Galipeau Absolutely, it hasn’t changed. Ever since the Master Plan was put in place and prior to that was the Fire Pro Study and we still have the areas of the southwest quadrant out past Captain’s Corner on 111A and the further out we get out on Amherst Street. From about Thornton Road out we start to go beyond the 4 to 5 minutes response out to 7 minutes plus and that’s with good traffic. We all know how 101 can get and heading down south the D.W. Highway can get challenging as well but with all things being equal, those are the two worst areas that we have. Budget Review Committee Page 8 May 16, 2016 Alderman McCarthy I assume the Fire Pro number of 30 to low also reflects the fact that we basically should have a station on the west somewhere that does not exist and therefore, doesn’t have 30 personnel at it. Chief Galipeau Correct, the study that was done that was also mentioned as part of the Master Plan was to include a fire house out in the area of Thornton Road and another fire house out in the area past Captain’s Corner to close up the gap on those 4 minute responses. Alderman Siegel If you recall, last year when we were sitting here you were able to conjure up a 5-alarm fire on West Hollis Street and I noticed that Alderman Schoneman isn’t asking as many questions so I appreciate that. Alderman O’Brien Chief, in the short fix of the southwest quadrant, I know that the department has had a plan to increase the size of the Spit Brook Road station, perhaps to include another bay; could that go somewhere to help relieve that stress point right there? Chief Galipeau Actually, adding that extra bay wouldn’t put another fire company in that building, it wouldn’t help us at all as far as the response out past Captain’s Corner but what it is going to do is provide us the ability that if a ladder truck or fire pump breaks down in the middle of the winter we can bring a spare ladder or spare pump and put it into service out of that facility and not have to park a fire pump outside overnight. The other thing is that we’ve looked to bring our forestry vehicle down there because the south end of the city and the southwest end of the city has a lot more potential for woods fires than we have in the downtown area. Alderman O’Brien To get back to the southwest quadrant, was there a plan at one time called Hollis Acre or Hollis Development that was going to possibly include that fire station but it fell through, yet the land was parceled out and therefore, no fire station was ever built but yet the area still continues to be developed? Chief Galipeau The Hollis Corner Plan was a big plan in the city and I’m not sure what the whole situation ended up being. Alderman Schoneman Let me ask you a couple of questions with the 7 minutes down to that quadrant. The standard is that we’d like to have 4 to 5 minutes and of course that’s a 20% difference or 25% in call time. 7 minutes plus, does that mean we can do it in 7 minutes or is it 7 minutes plus to 8 minutes or 9 or 10? Chief Galipeau Again, as I said… Budget Review Committee Page 9 May 16, 2016 Alderman Schoneman Assuming we have no traffic issues. Chief Galipeau No traffic, good weather we are looking at 7 to 8 minutes to get out towards Hadley Woods. Alderman Schoneman Where would you come from? Chief Galipeau Connant Road. Alderman McCarthy Can we talk about the fires that we’ve had out in the Hadley Woods area? Chief Galipeau The last couple of years we’ve had some interesting fires out there. Potentially our biggest problem in not quite as far out as Hadley Woods but there’s a section in the middle that we don’t have fire protection as far as fire hydrants in that area. Two years ago we had a fire out on Jenny Hill Drive and it created some challenges. We had to wait for tanker trucks to come in from Dunstable and Hollis to help us with the water supply situation. Alderman Schoneman Can we get hydrants out there? Chief Galipeau I believe it’s a Pennichuck thing but I’m not 100% sure. Alderman O’Brien We can get you hydrants but I don’t know if we have the money. Alderman McCarthy There were a couple of fires and one over in Maplewood, the loss was pretty much total even though we responded as quickly as we could. Chief Galipeau Correct and actually the one over on Sun Blaze Drive in the Maplewood Development, we actually have fire hydrants in there but that area is a 5 minute response. With today’s construction fire gets ahead of us and it’s tough to stop it. To go back to the non-hydrant area, we are working with our mutual aid partners to try to get some sort of an automatic response with their tankers if we get a call of a report of a building fire; if we can get their tankers on the road to help us out quicker we are trying to do that. Budget Review Committee Page 10 May 16, 2016 Alderman Schoneman In response to Alderman O’Brien’s comment about monies and the priorities, that’s exactly what it is; everything in this budget and in every budget year is also a matter of priorities. Money can only be spent one time and so we decide as a city and as a department how we are going to spend the money. Given the money that we have listed here, this is the money that the Mayor allowed, is this how you want to spend it? Chief Galipeau Correct. Alderman O’Brien I’d like to take a step back with that Jenny Hill fire. There was a learning curve with that in that tactics were developed and additional equipment was brought to try to compensate for the lack of hydrants in that area. The citizens do not need to feel that the fire department did not react appropriately and come up with a tactical plan for that area, am I correct? Chief Galipeau That’s correct. Whenever we have a situation that is out of the norm we look at it and make whatever tactical changes that we have to correct the situation. That’s why I made the comment that we’ve been working with our mutual aid partners to get their tankers on the road much sooner than after we get there and find out that we’ve got a situation. Alderman McCarthy I will point out that with regard to the hydrants; I don’t know that I recall us ever paying to put them in. The hydrants have been put in by the developers as the water system is extended and donated as construction (inaudible) capital to Pennichuck. I think if we were to do that it would be a new program that we would have to decide and I don’t know if there is anything happening out there that’s likely to cause those water mains to be put in. As I understand it’s a fairly long run out there to where there is water. There is water out at Groton Road but there isn’t in between there and Gilson Road. There is the possibility to run mains down out of Tanglewood but you are still talking about 1 or 2 miles of hydrant line. Chief Galipeau It would be a pretty considerable distance to go, yes. Alderman Schoneman With regard to our mutual aid partners and the location of stations and city boundaries, are there some sections where our mutual aid partners are actually located closer to Nashua properties than our own stations are? Chief Galipeau Yes, South Merrimack has a station out on Camp Sergeant Road which is just past Pennichuck Square by about ¾ to 1 mile. If we have a situation at the far end of Amherst Street they can get there a little quicker than us, yes. Budget Review Committee Page 11 May 16, 2016 Alderman Siegel Referring to page 117 of the budget, under 52 – Fringe Benefits; 52300, Benefits, there is a proposal that was originally made by the department for $2.61 million which was reduced to $2.246 million by the Mayor. What I’d like to know is how did that happen because most of the time those benefits are automatic. Chief Galipeau I wish I had a good answer for you but that was a provided number from the CFO’s office. Alderman Siegel So he calculated that out. Chief Galipeau Correct. Alderman McCarthy Is Merrimack fully funding the South Merrimack station these days? Chief Galipeau Yes. Whenever the main station goes out that station leaves their area and goes to Merrimack’s main station. They are out of that station a lot more than they are in it and it is staffed. Alderman McCarthy I thought they had cut to partial staffing some years ago. Chief Galipeau At one point they did. Assistant Chief Rhodes I will address this to Alderman Schoneman, at one point we did have an automatic aid agreement with Merrimack but that was terminated more on Merrimack’s side than our side. I think what happened was they were spending too much time coming into the City of Nashua and they weren’t able to provide their own residents with the protection that they had and as the Chief just said, when based upon their manpower metrics that they have, when they get tied up in the city they bring that particular piece of apparatus and I’m not sure of the consistent manning on it but they bring that to their central station so that leaves that entire section of the town kind of uncovered. Department 150, Police Department Chief Andrew Lavoie, Chief of Nashua Police Department With me tonight is police commissioner Jim Tollner, Deputy Chief Michael Carignan and Karen Smith, Business Manager. Also in the audience are Commissioner Dahl and Commission Plante. Budget Review Committee Page 12 May 16, 2016 Chief Lavoie The police department’s proposed FY ’17 budget we have submitted represents a 2.5% increase over the FY ’16 budget. This 2.5% increase meets the budget guidelines set for the police department by Mayor Donchess. This budget guideline was met by level funding in the majority of our budget. Other than an increase to payroll of approximately $485,000 to meet pay raises which were collectively bargained and an increase of approximately $10,000 in the operational budget for IT related service and e-mail back-up. To keep our budget request at no more than a 2.5% increase as previously stated we have level funded most of our budget items. We also kept in place many cost cutting measures that we had undertaken in January of 2015. Some examples of these is having only one school resource officer in each high school, no longer having a full service records division available 24 x 7; our records division is only available Monday through Friday until 8:00 p.m. and not at all on the weekends, we no longer have a dedicated footed bicycle patrol on Main Street, if it would cost us overtime we don’t have an officer assigned as an inside sector to handle reports in the lobby and several more. We’ve also looked for ways to get more bang for our buck so to speak so we are repurposing the salary of a retired detective bureau secretary and using that to hire a full-time civilian booking officer on third shift. This has allowed us to see a net gain of one officer on the street five days a week without costing us anything extra. The heroin epidemic is unfortunately still growing. To date we’ve had 117 overdoses with 13 being fatal and this includes a death this past weekend. We’ve looked for ways to combat the situation and still work within our budget. Faced with the fact that a person can die from an overdose from just a one-time use, we’ve decided that we needed to put a full corp press on the addiction portion of our enforcement. We already had the narcotics unit in place and we diverted the POP unit to drug interdiction and October we made the decision to pull our traffic unit and have them work exclusively with POP and narcotics on drug interdiction. Since January of this year, we’ve made 312 drug arrests and every one of those arrested wasn’t able to sell their drugs to people who could have overdosed. We feel that the potential is so high for fatal overdoses that we need everything we can do to take the dealers selling this poison off of the streets. We feel that by our aggressive, invisible patrols we can even deter some drug sales which also save lives. Certainly, it wasn’t an easy decision to pull the traffic unit but when working within our budget we regularly have to triage what we feel is the biggest threat to the safety of the public. Our biggest thing is manpower; we are a service based organization. We have several detectives on federal drug task forces because that allows us to have a reach into the State of Massachusetts which is where most of the heroin is coming from; out of Lawrence, MA. Because of manpower issues we had the opportunity recently to add a detective to a federal human trafficking task force that was being formed. We had to turn that down because I simply couldn’t afford to lose the one extra body and Nashua is what matters the most. It’s nice to be involved in everything we can be but we have to take care of home first. Some of the questions we were asked to answer by Alderman Dowd is we feel that this budget we are presenting is an effective budget and that being said we feel the budget merely allows us to tread water and not make any meaningful progress in moving our police department forward. We are commissioned authorized at 185 officers yet budgeted for only 179. A meaningful start towards full authorized strength would be increase of two officers to our budgeted strength. This is in answer to the question of what would you want for your dream list. This would cost approximately $60,000 per office plus their benefits which could be up to $25,000 and could be a total increase of $170,000. We can’t conjure up a fire to shorten this up but I will say that our officers were just dealing with a suspect who was suicidal and had fired off several rounds from a gun and barricaded himself in his residence on Marks Street. I’m happy to say that he ended up surrendering and nobody was injured. As a team hopefully we can answer any questions you might have. Vice Chairman Wilshire I have a question about the records unit. We had a 24 x 7 records unit before? Chief Lavoie Yes, for as long as I’ve been with the police department, almost 30 years. Budget Review Committee Page 13 May 16, 2016 Vice Chairman Wilshire What is the effect of not having that? Chief Lavoie We provide less of a service to the citizens. We feel the changes we had to make in our budget to allow for that are acceptable but it’s not the same service. People could pick up pistol permits and any paperwork any time of night. People coming into the lobby after 8:00 p.m. have to pick up the phone to our Communications Division and tell them what they need and an officer will come out. It makes thing less efficient but we have to decide what we are willing to give up to have certain things and we understand that. Vice Chairman Wilshire I understood the other cuts you made but that one I wasn’t sure of. Alderman Siegel Did you draw down any of the expendable trust fund for overtime? Chief Lavoie We did not, we save that for any potential homicides. We had one homicide this year as opposed to six the previous year and we looked upon that money as strictly a major crime homicide fund. We would go over budget if we draw from it so we didn’t touch it. Alderman Lopez I have a question with regard to the school resource officer, is there an associated impact with your ability to follow drug trafficking; is working in the schools as effective as an information gathering like parents and kids know they can go to somebody? Chief Lavoie It certainly is a benefit, we get information from students all of the time through our school resource officers but again, when faced with I need that body to cover sectors on the street to preclude overtime; it’s a decision we felt we could live with. Everything we take from somewhere else makes us less efficient but we still believe we are extending a tremendous service for the City of Nashua. We’ve been well served with the one officer we have in each high school. Alderman Siegel You’ve got quite a number of arrests, what is the net effect? My concern is that there is a revolving door and you see the same faces in the newspaper. Chief Lavoie It’s very frustrating. The other day one suspect was out on bail from the previous week from being arrested. It’s our job and when this kills you with one use, every person we take off the street, at least nobody is dying that night and it’s become that bad. Our job is to try to keep as many people as we can from dying and overdosing as we can. We do that by aggressive patrol and the drug interdiction. Most of those arrests are active dealers and/or selling it for their habit. If we get one person off the street a day I can’t quantify the lives it saves but I know for a fact we are saving lives. I can’t fix the entire picture but as far as the courts or any Budget Review Committee Page 14 May 16, 2016 other system that lets them go, we need to stay in our line and we have to enforce the law as written but that’s the hand we are dealt. Alderman Siegel Do you think that it’s making a difference? Chief Lavoie I certainly think it is because I can only imagine that since January there were 300+ drug arrests and even if we only made half of those that’s 150 drug dealers off the street. It’s not solving the problem, we have to do it one bite at a time. Alderman O’Brien I commend the work that you are doing and fire too. Are you working with another potential budget that is going to come up before us and that is the health department, do you liaison with them in any way with the opioid addiction and do you see the need between enforcement, the care that the fire department is giving and to have Community Health involved with the picture? Chief Lavoie Absolutely, it’s a team effort. Myself and Lt. Rourke are on the Mayor’s Opioid Task Force, we meet every two weeks. We liaison with Bobbi Bagley daily. We refer people and have publications right in our police department. Anyone that comes in for help gets help. We need always remember that our job is the enforcement leg of that. The 99.5% of the citizens of Nashua is my job protects and deserves that protection as well. Alderman Lopez Is there a difference between tactics and resource allocation when you are trying to interdict a dealer versus arrest a user; you described a grey area where a user may be dealing in order to feed their habit. Chief Lavoie In my mind there is no grey area, if you are selling heroin you are selling heroin which can kill somebody else. Interdiction of the dealer’s long time takes quite a bit of time. We weren’t able to put people on Main Street more than about 50% of the time from July to the end of October but since then we’ve watched our overtime and put them out there first and second shift 100% of the time. Something as simple as someone is about to sell or buy drugs and see our bike coming by and they don’t do it is success in my mind. Alderman Schoneman With the 2.5% you have been granted and how everything has flat-lined except for wages you are essentially saying that this is how you want to spend your money. Chief Lavoie Yes sir. Keeping the manpower that we have is the very crux of where we need to spend our money. Alderman Schoneman One of the tradeoffs is between what we pay the officers that we have or hiring two more. I understand that Budget Review Committee Page 15 May 16, 2016 you want to keep the good ones that you have than to get the two extra. Chief Lavoie Yes because to get the two extras in the current budget I’d have to make a cut and I’ve got nothing to cut other than manpower. Alderman Siegel On page 113 you have flat-lined ammunition and fire arms supplies but has the price skyrocketed? Ms. Smith We receive a budget from ammunition, the personnel that handle that. This is right in line with what they are expecting. They are not concerned that the price is going to be a problem. This should be adequate. Chief Lavoie In the past, it’s been in the sixties. Now it’s in the high nineties. It certainly has gone up. Alderman Siegel Thank you. I heard this from Sargent Alton, who is on SID, in the wake of the Brielle Gage case that we’ve seen an enormous increase in reports from the DCYF. Clearly a huge cost driver for NPD. Everything that is even remotely something is going to go and have a police officer involved, including skin eczema or something. I’m very concerned about that. You have in 2014, 117 cases from DCYF. 2015, 342. I’ve got to believe that it isn’t like there’s an explosion in horror shows hopefully against children, God forbid. This is more a bunch of Staties that are super paranoid about their jobs and they just want to get a police officer involved with everything. Is there anything we can do to try to mitigate that so we don’t incur this insane expense? Basically they are playing cover my butt at Nashua taxpayer expense. Chief Lavoie Certainly we’ve seen the increase. Some months, it’s been up to a 300 percent increase. Because of that certainly our SID detectives were unable to handle the routine number that they were getting because again they have all the other investigations they have to do. We’ve incorporated our patrol officers to take the preliminary on that. Again, that’s more work on them but with the same number of people. We had to spread it out among patrol officers. Certainly it’s good experience for them. I can’t answer what DCYF reports and what they don’t report. The fact is if they report everything now, we’ll investigate everything and we do. If it turns out to be something other than routine, it is then forwarded to our SID. We’ve actually absorbed that and spread it out over everybody in the police department. Alderman Siegel Clearly everybody wants to investigate anything that’s an issue. No sane person would be against that. Imagine the shock of parents that all of a sudden there’s a bunch of police officers converging on them because somebody decided I want to keep my job so I’m just going to have police come by. What happens if the kid has poison ivy? It’s not a problem. Not that that’s a real incident. I’m just sort of making that up. There’s both the cost and social problem associated with that. It’s different than the heroin epidemic. What we have is a “cover your butt” epidemic that you are facing here also. Budget Review Committee Page 16 May 16, 2016 Chief Lavoie Certainly our calls have increased. We’re going to investigate them. That’s what we do. As many as we do, we’ll certainly investigate them. Alderman McCarthy On the drug arrests, how much product have we taken off the street in those 300 arrests? Chief Lavoie I couldn’t tell you exactly. It depends on the arrest. Some have been a decent amount of weight. Others have been sales levels which are packaged individually. We don’t cease tons like they do in Florida, but we’ve seen a lot more guns. We take knives and guns off those people. As far as total weight, I don’t have that information. Alderman McCarthy Is most of what we’re ceasing heroin or other illegally manufactured drugs or some of it diverted prescriptions? Chief Lavoie Some of it is prescriptions. A huge amount is heroin, fentanyl. Most of it is fentanyl. We’re still getting cocaine. Unfortunately in the past month we’ve gotten a decent amount of meth. We rarely, rarely saw meth. I certainly don’t wish that’s the way we’re turning, but basically we’re getting everything. Alderman McCarthy How is the prescription return program working? Chief Lavoie Very well. We’ve had the box for a long time in our police department. Plus, we just did a drug takeback that occurred through DEA. They authorize that. It used to be twice a year, sometimes it’s once. 24/7 in the police department we have that. Sometimes we get 100 pounds, sometimes we get 300 pounds. It’s been very steady. We advertise on the website. Places get burglarized and that’s just another way those opioids can get on the street. Alderman O’Brien Would you consider in the future discussing some of those concerns that Alderman Siegel has brought up? Maybe have a meeting with the Nashua Delegation from the state to discuss these things that have occurred and how it rolls back and how it affects your department and budgeting to make the average state rep aware of that? Chief Lavoie Are you talking the DCYF letter? Alderman O’Brien I’m torn. We’ve been represented by Lieutenant Baxter extensively in that senate subcommittee. We fought hard to get tough regulations with DCYF. I certainly don’t want them to worry about reporting anything. I’d Budget Review Committee Page 17 May 16, 2016 rather have it thrown on us and then we’ll check everything out rather than one slip through because we think they are worried about reporting something. It certainly has been eye-opening what they are reporting now. Once they are doing it, as much as it takes my manpower, I’d much rather let us take care of it and make sure it is nothing than have them worried about taking our time and having it be something major because that’s our job. Law Enforcement Training Chief Lavoie This is an account that we in Nashua for 20 years, a national recognized instructor. Quite frankly that’s the way he did things. We wanted us to do the advertising and things like that so we set that account up for it. He has since retired. However, there are still some instructors that utilize that so we’ve kept that there but that’s what that is for. Commissioner Tollner Just building off of Alderman O’Brien’s comments about how the state can help out, why don’t you talk about the legislation that was up in the State House to divert funds back to the state that we used to get for the pistol permits? Chief Lavoie A law came out last year. Pistol permits are now diverted to your town or city, the money. You folks have been nice enough to continue to make an account available for that. That certainly helps us out with that. We appreciate that. UNFINISHED BUSINESS – RESOLUTIONS Alderman Siegel I was hoping we could postpone discussion until such time that CFO Griffin is available since most of the questions that are going to come up as we re-work this is going to involve input that he can provide. R-16-015 Endorsers: Mayor Jim Donchess Alderman Ken Siegel Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire Alderman Richard A. Dowd Alderman June M. Caron Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr. ESTABLISHING AN EXPENDABLE TRUST FUND FOR STATE EMPLOYER PENSION COSTS AND APPROPRIATING $2,230,000 FROM FUND BALANCE ASSIGNED FOR THIS PURPOSE INTO THE EXPENDABLE TRUST FUND  Re-referred to Committee – 4/26/16 UNFINISHED BUSINESS – ORDINANCES – None Budget Review Committee Page 18 May 16, 2016 NEW BUSINESS – RESOLUTIONS R-16-029 Endorser: Mayor Jim Donchess ESTABLISHING AN EXPENDABLE TRUST FUND FOR RIVERWALK WALKWAYS, BRIDGES AND RELATED IMPROVEMENTS AND APPROPRIATING AT LEAST $500,000 INTO THE EXPENDABLE TRUST FUND MOTION BY ALDERMAN MCCARTHY TO POSTPONE UNTIL OUR NEXT MEETING ON THE QUESTION Alderman O’Brien Would it be better to try to fit it in on the May 23 meeting? We have two others that meeting, R-16-030 and R-16-033. Alderman McCarthy To take action on it? We can do that whenever we want to. MOTION CARRIED R-16-030 Endorsers: Mayor Jim Donchess Alderman Richard A. Dowd Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire Alderwoman Mary Ann Melizzi-Golja Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr. Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy CREATING A SPECIAL REVENUE FUND FOR SCHOOL CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATIONS (CTE) TUITION FEES MOTION BY ALDERMAN MCGUINNESS TO TABLE R-16-030 IN COMMITTEE PENDING THE PUBLIC HEARING SCHEDULED FOR MONDAY, MAY 23, 2016, AT 7:00 PM IN THE ALDERMANIC CHAMBER MOTION CARRIED R-16-033 Endorser: Mayor Jim Donchess AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF TWO MILLION TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ($2,200,000) FOR THE PURCHASE AND INSTALLATION OF A CITYWIDE TELECOM SYSTEM MOTION BY ALDERMAN MCGUINNESS TO TABLE R-16-033 IN COMMITTEE PENDING THE PUBLIC HEARING SCHEDULED FOR MONDAY, MAY 23, 2016, AT 7:00 PM IN THE ALDERMANIC CHAMBER MOTION CARRIED Budget Review Committee Page 19 May 16, 2016 R-16-034 Endorser: Mayor Jim Donchess RELATIVE TO THE ADOPTION OF THE FISCAL YEAR 2017 PROPOSED BUDGET FOR THE CITY OF NASHUA GENERAL, ENTERPRISE, AND SPECIAL REVENUE FUNDS  Public Hearing scheduled for 6/9/16 at 7 PM at NHS-North Auditorium MOTION BY ALDERMAN MCGUINNESS TO TABLE R-16-034 IN COMMITTEE PENDING THE PUBLIC HEARING SCHEDULED FOR JUNE 9, 2016, AT 7:00 PM IN THE NASHUA HIGH SCHOOL NORTH AUDITORIUM MOTION CARRIED Alderman O’Brien What is the difference between postponing and tabling? When we table, do we need a vote to bring it back it or are we just technically postponing it to another meeting? Vice Chair Wilshire We will take it off the table at our next meeting. Alderman McCarthy From a parliamentary perspective, one is when you want to stop debate you table something. That motion is non-debatable, so is the motion to take it from table and you just do that at some later point. The motion to postpone is debatable as to when you want to postpone it until and then brings it up as a regular item on the agenda at the time of that meeting. NEW BUSINESS – ORDINANCES – None GENERAL DISCUSSION – None PUBLIC COMMENT – None REMARKS BY THE ALDERMEN - None ADJOURNMENT MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ADJOURN MOTION CARRIED The meeting was declared closed at 8:20 p.m. Alderman Sean M. McGuinness Committee Clerk