Finance Committee

REPORT OF THE FINANCE COMMITTEE SEPTEMBER 16, 2015 A meeting of the Finance Committee was held on Wednesday, September 16, 2015, at 7:05 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chamber. Mayor Donnalee Lozeau, Chair, presided. Members of the Committee present: Alderman Ken Siegel Alderman-at-Large Jim Donchess Alderwoman Pamela T. Brown Alderman Paul M. Chasse, Jr. Members not in Attendance: Alderman-at-Large Daniel T. Moriarty, Vice Chair Alderman-at-Large David W. Deane Also in Attendance: Mr. Bruce Codagnone, IT Director Mr. John L. Griffin, Chief Financial Officer Mayor Lozeau I’m going to ask the committee to just indulge me to let the committee know that Items 5 and 6 have been withdrawn from the agenda tonight. We had thought they would be ready tonight, but with missing information, we’d rather take them up another time. Bicentennial Park is #5 and relative to the access road at Yudicky Farm is #6. If there’s no objection, we have folks here for both the camera purchase and the Franchise Agreement, so I’d like to after public comment, take up item #1 on the security cameras and then move the discussion on the legislation relative to the Franchise Agreement after the cameras so we can let folks go if there’s no objection. MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO GO OUT OF ORDER TO THE DISCUSSION JUST MENTIONED MOTION CARRIED PUBLIC COMMENT Mr. Fred Teeboom, 24 Cheyenne Drive I’m here to talk about R-15-168, which is the Franchise Agreement, on the second page of your agenda. When I ran for Alderman-at-Large in 2005, the primary reason I ran was because I was very upset to see the public channel was not in better funding in the Franchise Agreement. That was ten years ago. The good thing is now it is. The public access channel is now funded. Thank you, Mayor, for placing it in the Franchise Agreement. That’s the good news. There’s also bad news. The bad news is there’s insufficient funding for the public channel. If you look at the revised agreement that was sent to you, not the one that was originally introduced to the Board of Aldermen, but the one that was sent to the Finance Committee, you will find that there’s 3/10 of one percent allocated to the public access channel. There’s 5/10 to the government, 5/10 to education. Three-tenths of one percent represents about $85,000 a year for the next seven years. That’s not adequate. They’ve been funding it for $85,000 a year ever since they existed, at least five or six years now. They should each be funded at ½%. That’s in paragraph 7.2 and 8.1 of the proposed Franchise Agreement. That would set the PEG access fees at 1.5% and it would still maintain 2.5% which represents $850,000 for general fund. It would allocate $450,000 based on current franchise revenues for the PEG operation. $150,000 for P; $150,000 for E and $150,000 for G. That’s what I would recommend. I don’t think $85,000 for the public access channel can be done. It’s a very popular channel now and the load is quite heavy. I see an Access Channel Manager here, possibly he will address that. The other bad thing is that there are no capital improvements funding for the public channel. There’s $151,000 for the government and education channel. You will find that in paragraph 7.3. It says specifically $151,000 for education and government channel. It Finance – 09/16/15 Page 2 says nothing for the public channel. It used to be $201,000. Now it is $151,000. There is nothing for public. I recommend $250,000 for the combination of the next seven years. A number of things have to be done. It’s not for me to define it at this point. I’m not a member of CTAB, but I’m familiar with all the equipment they have, a lot of the equipment they have, and hopefully one of the PEG managers will address that. That’s the bad. When there’s good and there’s bad, there’s also ugly. Let me address the ugly. CTAB, which I used to be a member, I used to really enjoy being on that committee, has legal authority under NRO 12-18 to review and comment on the Franchise Agreement, specifically 12-18(e), “review existing and future Franchise Agreements, provide a recommendation to the mayor and the board of aldermen.” That was not done. If you look at the letter attached to the Franchise Agreement in the revised version, that’s a letter written September 11th by Bruce Codagnone. Bruce Codagnone may or may not know about this stuff, but he does not have legal authority to act in the place of CTAB. CTAB can only act by taking a vote. CTAB never reviewed this Franchise Agreement. I’ve talked to CTAB representatives and they never saw a copy of the Franchise Agreement. When I went down, and I see you shaking your head, Mayor, when I was at the CTAB meeting last Friday, I asked that very question. I asked the CTAB members to raise their hands of those who had seen the Franchise Agreement, and at least four members there had not seen the Franchise Agreement. They were never given a copy. Mayor Lozeau Mr. Teeboom, I’m certainly going to let you finish your remarks, but I am also going to provide the committee with an opportunity to hear from the minutes and the multiple meetings that CTAB had the opportunity to do what you are suggesting. I would also make sure that everybody understands that the members on the negotiating team, 5 of the 6 members or of the 4 of the 5, however it played out, were CTAB members including the Chairman of CTAB. I think that’s very important. I will let you continue with your concerns. Mr. Teeboom What is important is under NRO 12-18, CTAB has specific legal authority under the City of Nashua Code to review this agreement, act on the agreement, make recommendations on the agreement, vote on the agreement, none of which happened. Those are the things that should have been taken account of. They should look at budgetaries of each of the three channels. They should look at the fee analysis in the franchise analysis that affects Comcast. Cable TV watchers pay the franchise fee. What’s really striking is this new document is exactly like the old document. There are a number of appendixes in here, identical appendices. I’m not going to take a lot of time, but Exhibit 2. Exhibit 3, Free Drops, completely out of date. Exhibit 2 is programing, completely out of date. This stuff is exactly how the ten-year old document read. No one has looked at this stuff. No one has reviewed it. I asked the PEG manager, have you seen this? None of them had seen this. None of them had the chance to review it. This document, except for the cost figures that I mentioned earlier, is exactly like the old document and out of date. Mayor Lozeau Why would the PEG managers review it, Mr. Teeboom? Mr. Teeboom Because only the PEG managers really understand the equipment that they have and the equipment that they need. This is not something that an Alderman would know or would be expected to know and not necessarily the CTAB members would know or be expected to know. They are part-timers. We are talking about full-time paid people who manage each of these channels who operate the studio. We’ve got a very fancy, quite sophisticated studio. You’ve got a very sophisticated network that connects 16 or so buildings. This is not trivial stuff. This is not the kind of stuff that you could know as being part-time on CTAB, but you ought to be briefed on it on CTAB. I certainly know. I helped built that studio. None of this happened. None of them were briefed and none of them were given a copy. If you look at the letter from IT Director Bruce Codagnone that was written September 11th. That was written after the CTAB meeting. It couldn’t have been before. They Finance – 09/16/15 Page 3 meet at 8:30 in the morning. I went to CTAB and reviewed it in some detail some of the problems in this documents which I am not doing here. In summary, this document needs to be reviewed with recommendations made to the Finance Committee from CTAB by vote in writing. Then you take it to the Finance Committee to the full Board. I recommend you hold this in committee until that is done. Thank you. Mayor Lozeau Mr. Teeboom, you should also know that I did speak to the legal department about the role of CTAB relative to exactly the NRO that you pointed out. There is no requirement that they vote. There is no requirement that anything be in writing. They are an advisory committee only. Based on the approach that we took with members, including the Chairman as members of the negotiating committee, and the meetings that did take place which we will be specific about when we talk about it, there is no requirement as you’ve outlined. (Inaudible, multiple speakers at once) Mr. Teeboom Article 6, Cable Television Advisory Board, Paragraph (e) “review existing, future Franchise Agreements and provide recommendations to the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen.” Mayor Lozeau Right. Mr. Teeboom That is in our ordinances. That hasn’t happened. Mayor Lozeau Thank you, Mr. Teeboom. Alderman Siegel I want to address an inaccuracy that Mr. Teeboom said publicly and this is about the .3 percent. That is in fact, incorrect. Apparently, Mr. Teeboom has not read the contract as closely as I have. The change was from 1% to increase to 1.3%. It’s not .3%. It’s an increase in the public and government funding. Public comment is over, Mr. Teeboom, but you’re welcome to review that. Mr. Teeboom You made a statement about me being inaccurate. The .3% is the addition to the 1%. We’re talking about ½% for E, and ½ G and 3/10% for P. Mayor Lozeau Why don’t we review that with Mr. Codagnone. Alderman Chasse Point of order, can we get back to public comment, please. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 4 Mr. Dick Gagnon, Operations Manager, Access Nashua I’m here for two reasons. One as an individual who has been involved with public access for 20 years and who firmly believes in what public access is all about. I’m here to urge the committee here and in the future the Aldermen seriously reconsider the .3%. We’ve been here for four years and the last three years at $85,000 and I’ve thanked the Mayor every time for the fact that she put us in her budget because we are not in the Franchise Agreement. Now the Franchise Agreement is coming forward and I want to thank the Mayor again for putting us in, however, .3% right now equals approximately $92,000 and you are talking about maintaining that for seven years. We’ve been struggling the last year because of the amount of exposure that we’ve had and the fact that people are coming to the station and looking to do shows. I sent a report yesterday to the Mayor and since we have started, our first show was on December 1, 2011, and it was called Gidges’ World; it had Ken Gidge and former Mayor Bernie Streeter and I was in for half of the show and since then we have done 1,322 episodes of different shows, 54 different shows series. That comes out to almost a show per day. I can tell you, because I am heavily involved with the New Hampshire Coalition for Community Media which encompasses other PEG stations in New Hampshire, that what we have done in the four years there is no other station that equals that as far as the amount of involvement that we have and the amount of shows that we are doing. I’d also like to take this opportunity to publicly mention that Monday the result of the Alliance for Community Media Northeast Region video festival results came in and we had two of our shows; Fairy Tale Access won first prize for profile talk shows and GarageX won for documentaries and instructional videos. We were the only two public access shows in New Hampshire that won an award. The rest of them are in Massachusetts and Vermont who I can tell you in Massachusetts they are very well funded. It’s kind of sickening when I went and visited their station and how much they are funded. However, what I am here to do is to respectfully ask that you really consider that the public channel get the equal value that education and government have. We are dealing with the public and we have more requirements and needs and more manpower that we need to be covering in order to keep doing what I think is the best public access in New Hampshire. The other thing that I wanted to talk about too is with the playback equipment that we use to send the signals to Comcast, either the education channel from the school or the public and government channel form here in City Hall. That equipment is eight years old. It’s about two years past normal life expectancy of a playback server. In fact, we are using XP and in order to upgrade to Windows 7, never mind 10, and to get further software updates that we can’t get anymore because they are not supported on XP systems, we are talking about having to replace the equipment. You can wait until it dies which is normally what we all do, every station does. That’s an expense of $100,000 to $120,000 to replace the three systems. If you are only going to put in $150,000 in the capital improvement what you are doing is you are burdening any future administration to coming up with the additional funds to take care of all the other capital needs that the station would have. Again, respectfully I am asking that you reconsider the capital improvement as well as the funding of the public channel. Thank you. Mayor Lozeau Does the committee object if we just go right into the Franchise Agreement instead of the cameras while it’s fresh in our mind? I think that might make sense. Thank you. Alderman Chasse There’s no deadline on this? Mayor Lozeau The contract expires in September. Comcast will just keep going month to month until we have a new agreement. If there’s more work that anybody would like us to do, I think we have time. But I also think it would be appropriate to walk through with the Director the process that was taken, the role that CTAB played, the role, that Mr. Codagnone’s staff played because the PEG managers’ report to the Director of IT. I think we should have that conversation and then when we’re done, decide whether we have enough information to move forward or not. Does that make sense? Finance – 09/16/15 Page 5 Alderman Chasse I have a dilemma where it’s .3% and they are looking for more money. They are looking for money for capital improvements. That doesn’t belong, I believe, under this committee. That should go to budget. That’s my opinion. Mayor Lozeau One of the reasons I’d like to go through the conversation is not only is there the $150,000 that was put into the agreement, but they are carrying a balance of almost $300,000. I just don’t think we have the full picture yet, and I’d like to be able to have that full picture before we decide whether we’re in a conundrum or not. Does that work? Alderman Chasse Okay. COMMUNICATIONS From: Bruce Codagnone Re: (R-15-168) Comcast Franchise Agreement – Updated MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT AND PLACE ON FILE MOTION CARRIED NEW BUSINESS – RESOLUTIONS MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO AMEND R-15-168 BY REPLACING IT WITH THE REVISED AGREEMENT ATTACHED TO DIRECTOR CODAGNONE’S MEMO ACCEPTED EARLIER THIS EVENING ON THE QUESTION Alderman Donchess What is the difference between the original and the amended version of the Franchise Agreement? Mayor Lozeau There was a paragraph that had been left out inadvertently. The current Franchise Agreement that we are operating under speaks specifically to franchise dollars only being used for the government channel and the education channel. It actually prohibits money being used on public access. I had asked the committee to consider changing the “shall” to “may” so that all three channels could be compensated through the franchise fee. Right now we do public access through the operating budget in the 505 category. The committee considered that, agreed to that and then somehow that paragraph got left out so that’s really in essence the difference between the two documents. Alderman Donchess So all the motion does is really substitute that paragraph so that we can consider the version of the agreement that was actually approved by the negotiating committee. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 6 Mayor Lozeau Exactly. Alderman Siegel I believe it is section 7.3, that’s the new paragraph in there. Alderwoman Brown Was this in our mailboxes or was this left on our desks? Mayor Lozeau We caught it in time on Friday so it should have been attached to your agenda. Alderwoman Brown Okay, thank you. Mayor Lozeau Director Codagnone, if you wouldn’t mind walking us through the process that would be great. Mr. Codagnone A little over a year ago the Mayor put together a franchise negotiation team made up of five members from the CTAB Committee in addition to one other member who is Director Galligani from the Economic Development Department. First we reviewed what we could and what we couldn’t do. There are certain restrictions under it because it is federal law controlling the cable act and there are a variety of things we can’t do. We can’t affect the programming; we can’t affect the prices they charge for all of their services. We can’t even touch internet or voice; it’s strictly dealing with the T.V. The franchise fee only deals with T.V. Once we figured that out we met and came up with an action plan. The first thing we did was to have a public meeting which we did last year on December 10th in the auditorium upstairs to get input from a variety of people. The next step was that we put together a survey posted on the website and kept it up until March so we’d gather public input that way. We got the public input and analyzed it and most of the public received was around internet connectivity, internet problems that they were having or the pricing structure. There wasn’t a lot that affected what we were trying to do. We looked at the current contract and we didn’t want to raise the rates to the consumers so we looked at what we could and couldn’t do. The current budget, the quarterly fees that we get through the Franchise Agreement actually go up every quarter and they have been going up every quarter. It’s kind of unusual because the trend is that more and more people are going to on-line streaming and not watching the additional cable and that’s one of the reasons why we decided to have a reduced agreement. If you look at what we get quarter by quarter… Mayor Lozeau Excuse me, Director Codagnone, just so we are clear, it’s reduced in the sense of time. The reduced contract is in the sense of time; it’s not a reduction in services or anything like that. Mr. Codagnone That’s right. We are anticipating there is going to be a change at the federal level in how they cover this. The last change was in 1986. The traditional cable T.V. itself is going away, cable into people’s houses; more and more people are watching in other ways whether it be the internet or using Roku devices other Finance – 09/16/15 Page 7 Netflix or things like that. What we are seeing in the trends is what we get for the franchise fee is actually has been going up year after year. The current quarterly 1% brings us roughly $320,000 per year. The reason why we came up with the .3% was that actually gave an increase to the public channel if we were going to include it to $96,000 per year. It would actually be more than that because it is going up quarter after quarter. The other thing we looked at was the 1% itself that pays for the government and the education channel; in the budget it not only covers their operating expenses but it also covers capital improvements and it’s budgeted at roughly $200,000 per year for capital improvements which is the replacement of aging equipment and failures in equipment. Currently right now they are sitting at, as the Mayor mentioned, a little bit under $300,000 and that money each quarter goes up because their operating expenses don’t come close to the 1%. We did put in the agreement for $151,000 only because it’s a seven year agreement and not a ten year agreement so it amortizes roughly the same. I want to make it clear that there is money in there for capital improvements, it’s actually part of the 1% and each year in the budget, if you look at the budget from that special revenue fund, there is a line item for… Mayor Lozeau Excuse me Director Codagnone, do folks have access to what their budget is right now? Mr. Codagnone Probably not. Mayor Lozeau Mr. Griffin, would mind making a few copies of this? Mr. Codagnone When the Franchise Agreement Subcommittee met after every CTAB meeting or at least after every CTAB meeting that there was a meeting, there were a few times the CTAB meeting was cancelled given the bad winter that we had and subsequently the Franchise Agreement meeting was cancelled. Each time I gave an update of where we were and what we were doing. I also gave a presentation to the Planning and Economic Development Committee which covered the whole Franchise Agreement and what our direction was and what our thought process was and where we were going and why. The contract is essentially the same as it was ten years ago because we are renewing the contract, there are only a few things that we are changing in the contract and again, there’s not a lot we can change. Mayor Lozeau Did you mention the survey? Mr. Codagnone Yes, I did. Mayor Lozeau When I looked up the minutes from the CTAB, because Mr. Teeboom had expressed his concerns to me, I went to check because as you know, on our regular meetings, I asked. It was actually on their agenda under “old business” the Franchise Agreement update on the ones that I looked at. Mr. Codagnone It’s on every agenda. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 8 Mayor Lozeau Okay and then on every agenda you would speak to that? Mr. Codagnone On every agenda I would speak to it and I would also mention that the next step was for the Mayor to review and approve the contract and then bring it to the Board of Aldermen. We didn’t get challenged on whether or not that was the right thing to do either. Mayor Lozeau Okay so now we all have the budget sheet so you can see that it’s a special revenue fund. It shows you the revenue coming in so 1% of the 4% we receive goes to the special revenue fund and the remaining 3% goes into the city’s general revenue fund. The capital number is demonstrated at the bottom, the 81100 capital improvements shows you how much is in there and then the closing fund balance is as I said, just under $300,000. Then you have budgeted another, so along with what they currently have another $150,000 under this new agreement. Mr. Codagnone Correct, for capital. Mayor Lozeau For capital only. Mr. Codagnone Correct. Alderman Siegel Just a point of order, should we accept and place on file? Mayor Lozeau Sure. MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT AND PLACE ON FILE THE MEMORANDUM THAT MR. GRIFFIN HAS JUST PASSED OUT REGARDING THE BUDGET AND SPECIAL REVENUE FUNDS FOR THE CABLE MOTION CARRIED Alderman Donchess You mentioned that the length of the agreement that is being proposed is seven years as opposed to the length of the previous agreement which was ten years and you said that the reason for that was that you have some expectation that federal law on this subject which is Cable T.V. is going to be changed. Mr. Codagnone Correct. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 9 Alderman Donchess Federal law governs this in detail. Mr. Codagnone Correct. Alderman Donchess Why seven years, why not five or three? Mr. Codagnone There is a requirement by the federal law that the negotiations have to start and Comcast needs to notify us in writing three years prior to the end of the contract. We looked at five years and then that meant that in two years’ time we would have to start the whole process over again so we kind of came up with a happy medium of seven years. Salem, NH, were I live, they actually do it every three years which is insane. Alderman Donchess Is the budget is for the current fiscal year? Mr. Codagnone This is for FY 16’. Alderman Donchess So in the left column we have the entire years’ budget and then the third column shows what has been expended so far. Mr. Codagnone That’s correct, the actuals to date. Alderman Donchess The last column shows the balance. So the current budget for government and education in other words is channel 16 and 99 is $471,000 and within that is $208,000 for capital improvements. Will that $208,00 be spent at the end of the year or do you think that there will be money remaining? Mr. Codagnone That gets carried over. As you can see in the first column the third line down is accumulated earnings, it gets carried over year over year. Alderman Donchess The accumulated earnings are $170,000? Mr. Codagnone Correct. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 10 Alderman Donchess Which implies that most of the $208,000 budgeted for use this year would be spent with a little bit left over? Mr. Codagnone No, last year we only spent $16,000 in capital improvements and that’s why there is $170,000 remaining. We don’t know how much we are going to spend in this fiscal year. Alderman Donchess Who decides how much should be spent on capital improvements and what those capital improvements should be? Mr. Codagnone It’s myself working with the PEG managers on what the priorities are. Mayor Lozeau They will often times come to CTAB and say “boy, we think we should do a new camera here or a new piece of equipment there.” The work in the auditorium was done through these funds and the studio is not that old and it’s in pretty terrific shape overall. Alderman Donchess The budget that we are looking at is for the government and educational channels but not the public access? Mr. Codagnone Correct. Alderman Donchess I think you said that you explained the change that is being proposed with respect to the public access, it’s being moved out of the budget and into the Franchise Agreement. You said that the .3% that would now go into the Franchise Agreement would be approximately $96,000 a year and that would be an increase over previous years. Mr. Codagnone Previous years it has been flat at $85,000 for the funding of the public channel. This would bring it up to $96,000 plus. As I mentioned they do go up and they have been going up quarter after quarter year over year. Alderman Donchess The franchise fees? Mr. Codagnone Money we get from Comcast for that franchise fee. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 11 Alderman Siegel I think it’s understandable why the revenue is going up, people are doing on-demand video and that contributes to the revenue streams. Separate from that I would think that, one of the issues that I had in the contract that wasn’t spelled out is whether or not we are going to be able to transition to HD channels and that’s clearly a big capital expenditure and I would assume the head ends for the HD are going to be several hundred thousand dollars in expenses total. I don’t see that in here. The cable provider clearly has to be the one that allocates that bandwith but right now we are on analog channels and that really is about 25 years behind the times. Mr. Codagnone We’ve tested that with Comcast many times. Comcast is responsible for providing the head end and right now they have no plans because they would have to actually bring a lot of the communities up on that. We have been migrating internally towards that. All of the changes that we have done upstairs in the auditorium - the switcher in the back end is all high definition and the cameras are all high definition. As these cameras fail they will be upgraded to high definition. As the switcher in the back room here needs to be replaced it will be replaced with high definition. Since it’s not an immediate to change these public access channels to high definition there is no rush so I would rather wait until the equipment is aging and failing to replace them rather than replacing good equipment. These cameras aren’t that old and there are also the schools; but the head end is the responsibility of Comcast. Alderman Siegel The one thing to keep in mind though is while a lot of people do watch this on the standard channels on Comcast, internet streaming is very obviously a medium by which people are getting this information and that is available in HD or theoretically it should be available in HD and if the only thing that’s preventing that from happening is the fact that Comcast isn’t allocating us a non-analog channel, it would be kind of nice to address that. Is sounds like we are not getting an HD channel from Comcast within the term of this contract, is that correct? Mr. Codagnone Right now I guess they are not analog, they are digital but not HD. As far as the streaming on-line, like I said we did look at a variety of things when we were trying to make decisions here. We did look at the viewership but we couldn’t get the metrics on T.V. because that’s a Nielson rating however we could see how much people were streaming on-line. For the month of March the government channels, I think there were ten government meetings during the course of that month and there was only 126 people that viewed those ten meetings so it’s an average of twelve people per meeting that watch it on-line. Alderman Siegel Thank you. Mayor Lozeau I would just add that when we started this negotiation with Comcast I wondered about increasing the franchise fee and when you look at your cable bill you know that it’s a direct pass through. The majority of the complaints that we receive in my office are about the cost of cable. The only way that the city can impact that is by having a smaller franchise fee or not increasing the franchise fee. I wanted to thank the committee because I think that it is good that we were able to do all of this; add public access and still keep the franchise fee the same. I think that was an important accomplishment and I appreciate that. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 12 Alderman Donchess We had a couple of people come to the committee tonight and express the point of view that the .3% that is being allocated to public access through the Franchise Agreement is not enough and I don’t even know what my opinion on that is. Would it be possible to get the budget for the public access channel and take a look at it to make a judgement as to whether the.3% is adequate or not and perhaps talk to Mr. Gagnon a little bit more? Mayor Lozeau I guess I’d say a couple of things about that. Certainly it’s possible. We went from not letting them be funded that way at all to moving them in. I was surprised that we actually allocated percentages, I just thought we would have just kind of this pot of money and whatever it was it was. Before it didn’t allocate it just said it won’t be. We currently budget in the operating budget the $85,000. We put a contract out and they responded to the contract and they have kept it level as they discussed earlier. As also was mentioned I was e-mailed a budget that came in at $157,000 for public access and I can tell you from my perspective that I think that far exceeds what we should spend on public access, especially in these times. That’s not to say that…I think it’s absolutely wonderful that we get recognized, that shows are busy and their schedule is full but this budget breaks down to $144,600 for staff and then $12,500 for things that aren’t staff and I believe all of the equipment used by public access is the city’s equipment. We provide a studio and then provide the staff. They do a significant amount of work so that anybody that walks in and wants to do a T.V. show; they train them, they help them, they produce it, they edit it and I think it’s worthwhile to give them increase over the $85,000. I don’t know if the answer here is to not put in the .5% and the .3% and just leave it as it is and when the budget comes in have the Board of Aldermen make a decision about that budget like they do everything else. I think that may be the better way to handle it. Each fiscal year you will get the budget like you do everybody else’s and you can say no or yes or increase this or decrease that and that might be a better way to do it because I know that Comcast doesn’t care what’s allocated to which channel and it’s the 1% that we get here. The other option is that out of the other 3% that we get that goes into the general fund revenue, you could still budget a separate amount for public access if you wanted to add more money; nothing prevents that from happening. One of the other benefits of moving that public access into the special revenue account is that it doesn’t then get counted in the budget in a way that impacts other services. I think this is all a good thing and I think if the committee’s preference is to not choose how much we fund public access T.V. tonight which would be my preference, I think it’s a budgeting decision as Alderman Chasse was saying earlier so I think we take out the percentages out of the Franchise Agreement and leave the 1% in and have the budget come in for all three channels and you decide during the budgeting process. Alderman Donchess I didn’t at all disagree with moving the .3% into the Franchise Agreement. I’m just sort of trying to understand what everyone is saying. It seems like the $96,000, which equals the .3% that’s in the Franchise Agreement, up $11,000 on $85,000 is a fairly good increase. We do have people saying that it is inadequate or whatever so I am just saying can we look at the budget. Madame Chair, you made a statement that I didn’t totally understand. You said that there was $144,000 in of staff in this budget. Which budget are you talking about? Mayor Lozeau No, excuse me, Alderman Donchess, I certainly did not mean to cloud the issue. You had asked about seeing the budget for public access. Public access, right now the way we are set up, they are a vendor to the city. We put out an RFP, they responded to it, we have a contract with them for $85,000 worth of service. Based on this Franchise Agreement, just recently, Access Nashua sent to me and to the Director what they would like their budget to be. Now that we’ve said okay we are going to actually allow funding to come from here instead of just the general fund, it’s not an RFP right now; although nothing prevents it Finance – 09/16/15 Page 13 from being an RFP in the future, we could still go out and get an RFP for public access because they are not city staff. The budget as presented in the e-mail to me shows a requested budget for Access Nashua at $157,100 and of that $144,600 is staff which would include the operations manager, a creative director, a 30-hour per week communication and program assistant and a 25-hour a week post production assistant. That’s what I am looking at and what I am saying to you is that I object from going from $85,000 to $157,000 in one fell swoop. I agree with increasing it and maybe we have to say to people that we can only do this many shows per week, I don’t know what it is to manage that in a way that when I compare it to the budget that we’ve done for our staff and others it’s very different. What I am saying tonight is that I think the best course of action would be to eliminate the percentages so public, government and education wouldn’t each have .5% but instead it would be this amount of the franchise fees goes for the purpose of these three channels so that’s done and the contract passes and then when the budget comes in this season they will have to provide a budget for government, education and public access and then the Budget Review Committee can make some decisions as to where you want to see that money put. I think that the capital is correct right now. I think the $280,000 that’s in there plus the $150,000 that’s being added is likely enough funds for the next five to seven years. I could be wrong but I think based on the state of our equipment today I think that’s in pretty good shape. I think that conversation shouldn’t just be a finance discussion over the budget for public access, I think our job here tonight is if this Franchise Agreement is within the scope of what we think we are allowed to do and if the numbers are correct and then leave the budgeting for the budget cycle. We do have an agreement through this budget year right now with public access. Alderman Donchess Okay, it is now clear to me what you were suggesting. As I understand it, regardless of how the .3% is expressed, whether it’s a joint percentage or it is broken out, the amount that’s expended on public access is determined by-laws the budget as opposed to what we approve in terms of the Franchise Agreement now. Mayor Lozeau That’s correct. Alderman Siegel I am definitely not in favor of having a huge bump in the public access channel, I think we have other priorities and I agree with you, Mayor. It is a hefty increase the way it’s written right now, we are talking about an 8%+ increase which is above the norm for other departments and I like the idea of this going before the Budget Review Committee and just having a flat percent associated with this type of service. I don’t know if we can amend it in committee. Mayor Lozeau I think we can and I think the only thing that would make a difference is if Comcast comes back and says I have an objection. I don’t see a reason why Comcast would have any interest at all on how it’s broken out. MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO AMEND BY REMOVING THE SPECIFIC PERCENTAGES FOR THE THREE CHANNELS AND PASS IT THAT WAY WITH THE EXPECTATION THAT LEGAL WILL WRITE THE DOCUMENT TO CARRY OUT THAT REQUEST OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE QUESTION Finance – 09/16/15 Page 14 Alderman Siegel This is a contract with very exact language so we have to modify the contract to reflect any amendment made. I know what the desire of the committee may be but I don’t know how best to modify this to reflect the committee’s intent. Mayor Lozeau Just remove the language that…just remove those percentages. Let’s put it this way I think that our intent is clear and if we adopt that we will have legal write the accompanying language and we will have it for our full meeting before the Board of Aldermen on Friday. Our intent is that the franchise money that goes to for these three channels would be as proposed with the exception of identifying an amount per channel and we will have legal change it accordingly. Attorney Leonard has been the contract author thus far and I think we all know her capabilities so I think we are in good shape. Alderman Siegel I have tremendous confidence in Attorney Leonard, however it is not clear what the exact motion is. There actually has been no motion to pass or table this as amended. What is it that we are actually going to do with this piece of legislation, just forward it without recommendation to the Board of Aldermen for modification? Mayor Lozeau My suggestion would be that we amend it to remove the specific percentages for the three channels and pass it that way with the expectation that legal will write the document to carry out that request of the committee. Alderman Donchess Under 7.3 there’s the $151,000 for capital improvement and as I understand it that’s over the entire seven years of the agreement. On the other hand we have an accumulating percentage for capital improvements just within the operating budget; within the 1% as it currently exists. Mayor Lozeau Within that special revenue account. Alderman Donchess Yes, do we really need the $151,000 if we are accumulating a fund towards capital improvements if we have an accumulating amount of money, a growing amount of money for capital improvements within the operating budget. Mr. Codagnone The increase that is there is roughly $80,000 per year above and beyond the normal operating expenses. If we didn’t spend any money on capital $80,000 each year would be contributed to that fund. After ten years that would be $800,000 but there are expenditures that go on so we felt that the $150,000 was negligible, it is a fixed fee on people’s bills and it’s roughly .10 cents and we felt that was sufficient to take on and add to the amount of money given that at some point we will have to get ready for HD upgrades because it is coming down the road. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 15 Alderman Donchess Do you have a sense of what the HD upgrade would cost? Mr. Codagnone We have some rough figures right now. We were figuring on roughly about $300,000 for what we had to do internally for the cameras in the chamber, the switcher and the educational component. Alderman Donchess When do you expect the HD to begin? Mr. Codagnone Comcast hasn’t put forward any plans to broadcast in HD for the public channels because if they do it they have to do it for a few of the surrounding communities from my understanding. We want to be ready when they do. Alderman Donchess Do we have the right in the Franchise Agreement to insist that they go to HD or is that under federal law within their discretion? Mr. Codagnone I think we can put it in there if we wanted to but I don’t think we can attach a timeframe to it. Mayor Lozeau My understanding is that we can’t tell them that they have to. Mr. Codagnone Make their infrastructure changes. Mayor Lozeau Right but we could strongly advise or ask. MOTION CARRIED Mayor Lozeau Those ready to vote on the agreement as amended. Is there further discussion? All those in favor say “yea” – those opposed say “nea” MOTION CARRIED TO RECOMMEND FINAL PASSAGE AS AMENDED COMMUNICATIONS MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO TAKE FROM THE TABLE THE COMMUNICATION REGARDING THE PURCHASE AND INSTALLATION OF EXTERIOR SECURITY CAMERAS MOTION CARRIED Finance – 09/16/15 Page 16 From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager Re: Purchase and Installation of Exterior Security Cameras (Value: $18,241) MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AUTHORIZE THE PURCHASE FROM TYCO INTEGRATED SECURITY IN THE AMOUNT OF $18,241. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 129, CITY BUILDINGS; CITY BUILDINGS EXPENDABLE TRUST; 71, EQUIPMENT ON THE QUESTION Mayor Lozeau At our last meeting there were many questions regarding the cameras and I asked Director Codagnone to walk through the issues that were raised. Mr. Codagone The questions that I heard were around whether the cameras were 1080p or not. They can actually do 1080p but they are also 3 and 5 megapixel cameras so they are a higher resolution than a 1080p which is only a 2.1 megapixel. Mayor Lozeau So in my language is that better or worse? Mr. Codagone They are better. The other question was around saying that they are too expensive. They are expensive cameras but you also get what you pay for. There are industry standard ratings dealing with exterior grade cameras. There is an IP rating and an IK rating. The IP rating deals with dust proof and water proof and these cameras are IP 66 which means that they are extremely dust proof and as far as water proof goes they can be hit with a power washer and anything higher than that means that they can go under water and I certainly hope that City Hall won’t be under water anytime soon. The IK rating goes from zero to ten and that has to do with vandal proof. There are cameras that are IK 0 which is the lowest rating. These are IK 10 which is the highest rating you can get for a vandal proof camera. They are expensive but they are expensive for a reason, they are high resolution and they have the highest rating with regard to vandal proof and being water proof. There was also another question whether they did license plate and facial recognition. They do that however, it is illegal in the State of New Hampshire per the Highway Video Surveillance, section 236:130; there is a law that says it’s illegal to capture license plates or people in vehicles. It’s only allowed in toll booths in the State of New Hampshire so that’s another reason why we stayed away from putting it on the front of City Hall as it’s a public spot. There was also a question as to whether or not we use DVR’s instead of NVR’s which is the server. DVR’s is an older technology, it cost us $32,000 to install cameras at Solid Waste and at the Streets Department; each with separate DVR’s. Those areas are not conducive to having electronic equipment as we have had multiple failures and we now have to replace a DVR in streets at a little over $7,000. We are going along the approach of using the NVR; they are IP based cameras and we capture the image through the network and if the NVR is not available you can still access the video stream from the camera through IP. There’s up to three video streams coming from the cameras so we have multiple resolutions that we can capture. On a DVR the cameras are usually by Coax and the DVR itself is IP based and you can see the stream from the DVR but if the DVR is not available you lost all of the cameras. There was a question around bandwith. We have 2 gigabit switches that we bring in the cameras via fiber and we have more than enough bandwith. A 10 ADP camera uses about 1.46 megabyte of bandwith to stream. We are also using gigabit POE switches as part of this project and those are also very costly. The wiring that we are concerned about, the reason that it is costly to install in City Hall is because we have requirements about this being a historic building and not being able to see any cables. We don’t want any conduit on the outside or anything being Finance – 09/16/15 Page 17 shown on the inside of City Hall. We chose Tyco as a partner because they have familiarity with the software that we use and it’s not proprietary software, it’s not even their software. They also have a great deal of experience installing cameras in historic buildings. They have proven to do quality work. When we did the parking garages, every little bit of conduit had to be replaced, we had to put fiber the length of the interior parts of the garage because it exceeded the limits for Ethernet which are over 400 feet long. We have hardened switches at the ends of the garages and between the two garages we have almost 50 cameras streaming to our NVR and we don’t see any issues at all with that. Alderman Siegel I’m glad you say that we are using gigabit switches but the spec says 10/100 switches. Mr. Codagone There was a mistake, they are gigabit FUE switches. We wouldn’t use 10/100 anywhere. Alderman Siegel That’s good to know. My other question is, just as a point of reference, some of the things that you are saying make me feel a little better about some of the pricing. Your memo initially says it was 12 frames per second but the cameras go at 15 or 30 frames per second. 12 frames per second is an unusual rate, that’s normal film speed versus NTSC video rates so what’s the right number there? Mr. Codagone We record at 30 frames per second but livestream video – it is doing multiple, it has three different streams coming from the cameras so we can do livestreaming at a lower rate where you don’t need that much detail and we record at a higher rate. Alderman Siegel So the actual recording is 30 frames per second? Mr. Codagone Yes. Alderman Siegel Okay, that’s what I was most interested in. Thank you. Mayor Lozeau I think there was one other question that you may have missed which was people were looking at the drawing and it showed the area. Mr. Codagone Those were just where the cameras were pointing and not the area that it is covering. Mayor Lozeau Okay so it’s not the sweep, it’s just the direction. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 18 Mr. Codagone Yes, these are WDR cameras and being the high bandwith we can zoom in with the cameras to any pinpoint within the filming range. Alderman Siegel Last time I raised the issue of redoing the way the plaza is laid out and how this might affect our choice of camera and camera location. Can you comment on that? Mr. Codagone With the City Hall Plaza we can add cameras at any time, we are not tied to any one vendor to do that. We only wanted to start with something but not go overboard. When we looked at the garages, in order for it to be effective we put cameras in every nook and cranny to cover an area. We didn’t think that was appropriate or wisely spent money. Mayor Lozeau Alderman Siegel’s question, so the plaza in the front we’ve talked about doing some work there. We don’t have any cameras in the front so that shouldn’t impact anything one way or the other. So, you have recommended Tyco and from seeing their work I am very pleased. I think it’s important that we understand that this is not a situation where we can’t change from Tyco or that we would have to redo everything if it wasn’t Tyco. It’s not a Motorola radio type of situation. Mr. Codagone Correct. Mayor Lozeau Could you explain that? Mr. Codagone Yes, they are standard, off-the-shelf IP cameras with standard networking capabilities. The POE switches are standard and not proprietary. The software we are using is not their software it is Victor software and they have familiarity with that software. It’s a very robust software. It provides a lot of forensics capabilities which is one of the benefits of it. It’s also helped quite a bit already with some issues we’ve had in the garage. We are not tied to Tyco in any way for that. Mayor Lozeau Thank you. Is there further discussion or questions? MOTION CARRIED From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager Re: Purchase of Personal Protective Clothing (PPE) (Value: $18,000) MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AUTHORIZE THE PURCHASE FROM BERGERON PROTECTIVE CLOTHING IN THE AMOUNT OF $18,000. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN DEPARTMENT 152, FIRE; GENERAL FUND OPERATING BUDGET; 61, SUPPLIES AND MATERIALS MOTION CARRIED Finance – 09/16/15 Page 19 From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager Re: Purchase of Radio Communications Analyzer (Value: $37,544) MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO TECHNICAL COMMUNICATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $37,544. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 157, CITYWIDE COMMUNICATIONS; CAPITAL PROJECTS FUND; RADIO PROJECT MOTION CARRIED From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager Re: Contract Award for Transit Garage CNG Retrofit (Value: $295,140) MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO DL KING IN THE AMOUNT OF $295,140. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN DEPARTMENT 186, TRANSIT; GENERAL FUND OPERATING BUDGET – PRIOR YEAR ESCROWS (29,514) AND TRANSIT GRANTS ($265,626) MOTION CARRIED From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager Re: Purchase of Broad Street School Guardrails (Value: $15,976) MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO CWS FENCE AND GUARDRAIL IN THE AMOUNT OF $15,976. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 161, STREETS; PRIOR YEAR ESCROW ($15,000) AND GENERAL FUND ($976);55, OTHER SERVICES ($15,000) AND 61, SUPPLIES & MATERIALS ($976) ON THE QUESTION Alderman Donchess As I understand this is where the work took place at the Broad Street School where the work took place and this is at the corner of Upstone and Broad Street. Mayor Lozeau It replaces where the jersey barriers are, it will be replaced with a wooden guard rail. Alderman Donchess Will it come around the curb and go down Upstone? Mayor Lozeau I don’t think so, it will just follow the path where the jersey barriers are and I think they end a good 15’ to 20’ before the corner on Upstone. Alderman Donchess I remember getting comments from some people that there was some concern that because the intersection has a downward grade as you make the turn into Upstone that there could be people sliding in the winter and their comment had been that the guard rail should come around the corner. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 20 Mayor Lozeau That corner on Upstone has not changed due to the construction. What changed is that trees were removed where the jersey barriers are and that’s what we are trying to protect against. Alderman Donchess What was removed? Mayor Lozeau It used to be that it was all tree lined along that asphalt so if anyone slid they would bump into a line of brush and trees. I feel different ways about this. On the one hand the elevation has always been there it just wasn’t noticeable and the trees gave you this peripheral vision safety net. Once they are removed if a car does go over someone in a vehicle can certainly be hurt but it can’t get to the school or the kids, it goes into the drainage culvert. This is 200’ worth of guard rail. That’s pretty significant and I don’t think it goes around the corner but it might. MOTION CARRIED From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager Re: Purchase of One (1) Snogo WK800 Front-End Loader Snow Blower (Value: $116,705) MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AUTHORIZE THE PURCHASE FROM H.P. FAIRFIELD IN THE AMOUNT OF $116,705. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN DEPARTMENT 161, STREET; CERF ON THE QUESTION Alderman Chasse Who is going to be using this snow blower? Mayor Lozeau Public Works. This is the machine that hooks onto the loader and it drives down the street and it blows the snow into the dump trucks. We have one now but it’s old and they don’t make parts anymore. We borrowed the airports blower last season. MOTION CARRIED From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager Re: Purchase of One (1) 2015 Ford Transit T-250 Low Roof Van (Value: $24,156) MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND, CONTINGENT UPON BOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS APPROVAL, AWARD THE CONTRACT TO MHQ IN THE AMOUNT OF $24,156. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 161, STREET; CERF ON THE QUESTION Alderman Chasse Who gets this one? Finance – 09/16/15 Page 21 Mayor Lozeau This replaces one that they already have in the Engineering Department, it’s the surveyor’s vehicle. Alderman Siegel This is replacing a vehicle that only has less than 40,000 miles, what’s going on with that? Mayor Lozeau It’s a 2002 but there’s not a lot of miles. It’s local things back and forth most of the time but they are having problems with the corrosion on the frame and the floor and again it’s another reason why we really want a truck wash. Alderman Siegel Okay so it’s really the age and that’s it has been exposed to the elements for that many years. Mayor Lozeau Exactly. Alderman Chasse Are these vehicles stored in the garage or are they exposed to the elements? Mayor Lozeau The majority of our vehicles are out in the elements and they drive in bad weather and they are not able to be cleaned underneath and that’s a problem. MOTION CARRIED From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager Re: 2015 Sewer Replacement Program – Change Order #1 (Value: Not To Exceed $260,000) MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO DEFELICE CORPORATION IN AN AMOUNT NOT-TO-EXCEED $260,000. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN DEPARTMENT 169, WASTEWATER; SEWER REHAB AND SEWER STRUCTURES MOTION CARRIED UNFINISHED BUSINESS – RESOLUTIONS R-15-161 Endorser: Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire APPROVING AN AGREEMENT WITH THE NASHUA TOWING AND RECOVERY ASSOCIATION  Re-Referred to Cmte – 9/9/15 MOTION BY ALDERMAN DONCHESS TO TABLE R-15-161 PENDING APPROVAL OF LEGISLATION TO CHANGE CERTAIN MOTOR VEHICLE FINES AND TOWING ORDINANCES MOTION CARRIED Finance – 09/16/15 Page 22 DISCUSSION Alderman Chasse I brought my Comcast bill but I guess we don’t have anything to say about the fees. Mayor Lozeau We don’t. Alderman Chasse My Comcast bill is more than our electric, gas and water combined, it’s pretty tough to take. Alderman Donchess There was a memo from Mr. Codagnone which outline the legal situation. The federal government greatly binds the city and prevents the city from really doing much with this thing at all. It makes it clear that what the city cannot do is control prices which of course if what most people are looking for. It also says we cannot control what commercial channels Comcast makes available and we cannot touch anything having to do with internet. I don’t think everyone knows just how little discretion the city has with this. Mayor Lozeau For what it is worth, the cable company is just like the electric company or anyone else we want to rail against for cost and I think that’s all fair game, they are big boys but Comcast does provide a significant amount of services at no cost to the city for our buildings, our library and our schools. The other question that I get aside from the bill is they have a monopoly, how come nobody else is bidding. The answer to that that everyone should make sure they know so you can tell your constituents as well is Comcast purchased and owns all of the infrastructure in the city for this so for somebody else to competitively bid they would have to have another way to provide that infrastructure and that’s not really possible which is why we have gone from Time Warner to the next company to the next company. I’m trying to remember how many times my e-mail address has changed over the years. RECORD OF EXPENDITURES MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL THAT THE FINANCE COMMITTEE HAS COMPLIED WITH THE CITY CHARTER AND ORDINANCES PERTAINING TO THE RECORD OF EXPENDITURES FOR THE PERIOD AUGUST 28, 2015, THROUGH SEPTEMBER 10, 2015 ON THE QUESTION Alderman Siegel The school grants fund, there are some charges here that sound crazy. There’s a Hilton Garden Inn; two different charges of thousands of dollars and the Radisson Hotel in Plymouth and I just have no idea what that is but you are talking about almost $19,000 in charges. Mayor Lozeau I can tell you that my experience has been when I have asked about that is that under those grants there are training requirements and people are required to go and it’s usually more than a single day and it’s usually more than one staff member but we would be happy to get a specific on that. We have no discretion over Finance – 09/16/15 Page 23 school expenditures but I am making a public plea for our Board of Education to take a closer look at some of their expenditures. Alderman Siegel The other thing is I do appreciate that we are going to get some information on the Country Barn and I don’t want to beat a dead horse here. I don’t know what our discretion is on suspending payments to some of these more controversial locations until such time as we have an investigation as to what we are getting for what we pay for our welfare clients. Mayor Lozeau I can tell you that we do not choose where our citizens that receive city services go to for their services so we will approve them for an overnight stay or some rent accommodation but it does not relate to their choice as to where that is. They get to make their own choice. There are not many places in the City of Nashua that will accept payment from welfare so that’s limited. Alderman Siegel I understand those limitations and I also understand that the City of Manchester sends their welfare clients down here occasionally because we have locations that accepts vouchers so they are taking up slots that would otherwise be used by our welfare clients and if those places are healthy and desirable then that’s a big problem for us. We may not have control over the choices we do have control over the payments because we are supposed to be looking out for those people and we have an expectation of public safety and health I think it might be worthwhile for us to look into whether or not we can at least suspend payment until such time as we can verify that these places are safe. Mayor Lozeau We can certainly have that conversation when we get all of the other information that we’ve asked for. I’ll add that to the list of things we would like a response to. Alderman Siegel Thank you very much. Alderman Donchess What is the information that is being requested? Mayor Lozeau As you know there has been a lot of discussion around the Country Barn Motel. We have convened an internal staff group to look at the responses to different locations in the city and what it means, what our authority is, whether people are in compliance or not. There is a whole litany of things based on conversations that were had and questions that were raised. Alderman Siegel and Alderman McCarthy had asked some and so we are putting together information to present to the Board. Alderman Donchess When do you think that will be ready? Mayor Lozeau Finance – 09/16/15 Page 24 I think it will probably be at least a of couple of weeks. MOTION CARRIED PUBLIC COMMENT Mr. Dick Gagnon, Access Nashua First of all I just want to make sure the amendment that you made. The Franchise Agreement would have 1.3% period and then it would go to the Budget Review Committee to determine how much for public, education and government, is that correct? Mayor Lozeau There is a set number for the franchise fee that goes to PEG, government and education and the determination of how that money is allocated between those three is the Budget Committee. Mr. Gagnon The other thing is I would just like to respectfully make another comment in reference to comments that were made previously about the proposed budget that I presented you as far as payroll being $144,000 and a comment was made that it seemed excessive compared to what is in the other budget. Just to let you know the other budget for two people is $167,531, what I am talking about is two full-time employees, a 30-hour and a 25-hour part-time employee of which all four of them don’t have any benefits and we are coming in at $144,000 so it’s apples to apples just so you know. Mayor Lozeau Just so you know that is not apples to apples, the salary line in the other budget does include benefits. Mr. Gagnon I know, I totaled them up. Mayor Lozeau Yes, I know, yours doesn’t include benefits. Mr. Gagnon That’s because there are no benefits. Mayor Lozeau The city budget includes the benefits for our city employees. Mr. Gagnon Right and that comes up to $167,531. Mayor Lozeau I understand. Finance – 09/16/15 Page 25 Mr. Gagnon Have a good night and thank you. POSSIBLE NON-PUBLIC SESSION ADJOURNMENT MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ADJOURN MOTION CARRIED The Finance Committee meeting was adjourned at 8:37 p.m. Alderman Ken Siegel . Committee Clerk