City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to tonight's City Council meeting. I first await a motion to leave the non-public and to seal the minutes of the non-public session.

So moved.

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Before we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, I would just like to offer a remembrance to Joan Sussman, who was the proprietor of Corks and Curds for many years, a fixture of the downtown, and certainly a wonderful woman who will be dearly missed. Please hold her family and your hearts for a moment of silence. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Yeah, I guess we didn't do the roll call. All right. Sally, would you please take the roll?

uh yes here assistant mayor kelly here counselor cook here counselor tabor here counselor blaylock present uh counselor bagley here counselor morrell here counselor flynn here and counselor hopkins here awesome um now we have the acceptance of minutes and actions for the may 18th 2026 city council meeting

your honor i move to accept and approve the minutes of the may 18th 2026 city council meeting second all in favor aye opposed um on to recognitions and volunteer committee reports we have uh first a recommendation the public art review committee a gift from our friendship city of santa arcangelo italy do we have chair uh chris dwyer here i believe we do um Is there anything that you'd like to add to this?

can just say that um a little while ago the sister city made it known to the mayor that they wanted to give a gift to the city of public art they have a well-known artist from their city who has done work all over italy and now actually in new york city as well he creates um it's a little hard to describe he creates what he calls luminaires which is lighted script which is over like an alleyway or a street and so he proposed that he do something like that for portsmouth uh which the mayor had accepted and then when um the artist whose name is tiziano corbelli was here about two months ago, we were able at Park to talk with him about what is actually intended. And the idea is that over von Maul, when von Maul is done, there would be a poem in English from one direction and Italian in the other direction. It's about a five-line poem, so it will fit without disturbing the treescape there. We were lucky to have a city engineer participate with us so that we could learn a little bit about what it might take to do that. And as you all know, Vaughan Mall is under construction. so basically it will require polls which were there was a plan for von maul anyway that there would be electricity and some amenities that would be put into it we i assume which we don't know yet i assume the city will be absorb the cost of the installation probably part of the von maul reconstruction project so we don't know exactly yet what that cost will be but the city engineer assured us that the plan seemed to work our concerns were about weather about snow etc but these luminaire scripts are put in the air in many italian towns around the holidays and so they have and they stay up for about a year. So we recommended, after hearing about the durability, which was our big concern about whether this would really work in our climate, agreed that it's a wonderful gift, and we were able to both thank the mayor and the artist, the mayor of San Arcangelo and the artist for that. And so we're recommending that it be accepted, but at this point, we really don't, we can't tell you what the installation costs might be, which is basically going to be poles that will carry the electricity. So I'll be happy to answer anything else I know, but I told you about what I know.

Thank you, Chair Dwyer. Any questions? Seeing none, it's in the agenda online. It will look pretty fantastic. And as you point out, the reconstruction of Vaughn had anticipated some lighting above that. So it seems as though it would align into the existing plans while there. Right.

This probably substitutes for what we had started talking about, which would have been some plans to dress up Vaughn Mall anyway with some privately developed public artwork.

excellent counselor cook um your honor i moved to accept the public gift public art gift from the city of san arcangelo italy consisting of an eliminated installation of the poem the air by tonino guerra as recommended by the public art review committee and to authorize the city manager to coordinate installation of the artwork as part of the bottom wall project second

any further discussion counselor uh thank you thank you to chris thank you to the park committee um i just want to say from the sister city committee we are thrilled to have this gift from mayor saketi and our friends over in santa cargill i think it would be a great enhancement of von maul and really remind people of that relationship i think this is just a wonderful thing

and i will say yet to be determined they probably do expect to give back at some point we will figure out what that is and it will be equally as beautiful i would say that it is a

It works out from a Vaughn Mall perspective because it's under construction. It also works out because Vaughn Mall is the entrance in terms of the old North End as well. And so as you come into the city from the old North End, remembering the Italian heritage that was there was lost to remember that as a positive experience. way i think really is fitting so it's better to be lucky in terms of our construction scheduling here but it seems like it will work out very well indeed to remember that neighborhood specifically excellent all in favor aye any opposed All right. Next, we have Mr. Donald Kreese, our consumer advocate, the Office of the Consumer Advocate, State of New Hampshire, who has agreed to speak with us again on the subject of community power, Eversource, and all things consumer advocacy.

uh thank you mr mayor members of the honorable council um our state capital up the road is not quite as exotic as the adriatic coast of italy and i haven't brought any gifts of public art or otherwise but nevertheless i thank you for doing me the courtesy of granting what was actually my request an opportunity to address you briefly this evening i asked the mayor for this opportunity because it became clear to me that i did not do a good job of communicating my views when i appeared at your workshop on april 20th about the community power coalition of new hampshire That became obvious when I read the op-ed in Seacoast Online bearing the headline, what does New Hampshire's consumer advocate, or excuse me, who does New Hampshire's consumer advocate work for? The city councilor who wrote that op-ed pounced on the fact that I used the word friends to describe the two representatives of the community power coalition of New Hampshire who participated in that workshop. I've been the state's consumer advocate, which means I'm tasked with defending the interests of the state's residential utility customers for 10 years. In reality, I either have no friends or tons of friends, depending on how you look at it. All of the parties who appear alongside us at the Public Utilities Commission are adversaries, vying for various claims on the wallets of the constituency that I represent. But the universe of such parties is small, and we have a longstanding tradition of collegiality. I hope I do not shock anyone by describing Tom Meisner, the CEO of Unitil, as my friend, even though his Hampton-based investor and utility is relentlessly pursuing excessive rate increases. My decision to call the leaders of CPC&H my friends is part and parcel of my strong conviction that the city of Portsmouth should not withdraw from the coalition. The residential ratepayers of this state have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in stranded cost charges in exchange for the privilege of retail choice of electric suppliers. They got absolutely nothing out of that deal until the advent in 2023 of opt out community power aggregation and a publicly accountable consortium of municipalities participating in community power aggregation is, in my judgment, the most compelling approach to community power aggregation. It's the combined buying power and the public accountability piece that lead me to that conclusion. But with respect, if you think that means I have been giving the CPCNH a free pass, you are mistaken. CPCNH dug itself a hole in the winter of 2024 and 2025, which remains the principal reason their rates are now significantly higher than those of Eversource. Their CEO resigned in February of 2025, and the rest of the organization promptly threw him under the bus. I publicly and emphatically called for an independent investigation. The results of that investigation were made public in late April, just a few days after that work session I mentioned, and that investigation called on CPCNH to do a better job of governance. That is the Board's job, and I note that the City of Portsmouth, in the person of Mr. Rooney, currently has a seat on that Board. The enabling statute for community power aggregation, RSA 53E, provides me with no authority to investigate, oversee, or even engage with CPCNH or any other community power entity. Unlike the other OCA, the Office of the Child Advocate, I have no subpoena power and no legal basis for getting in between municipalities and their community power partners. Nevertheless, I and my staff engage extensively with CPCNH, largely by taking advantage of the public's right under RSA 91A to attend their meetings and review their documents. We show up at all of their significant meetings. I personally attend meetings of their board of directors. I just did so the other day. The op-ed that criticized me said, and I quote, if Don Kreese isn't going to ask the hard questions, then who exactly is he working for? In fact, I ask those hard questions via my extensive engagement with CPCNH. And if I didn't ask them publicly at the April 20th work session here in this room, it's because nobody told me that I was expected to come here and act like a prosecutor. What I cannot do, because I don't have the staff to do it, is to show up at every select board and city council meeting in the state where the subject of community power is deliberated. Nobody asked me whether I thought Portsmouth should do a CPCNH refresh in March that put hundreds of your city's electric customers on CPCNH power at a time when Eversource's rate was more than three cents per kilowatt hour cheaper. If you would ask me, I would have said, don't do it, not now. Nor am I responsible for CPC&H's failure to advertise the fact that its rate is so much more expensive than Eversource's to the point where every customer back then should have considered switching back to the utility's default service. You have the authority to hold CPC&H accountable for that. I do not. All I can do is call as loudly and as persistently as I can for transparency, full disclosure, and frictionless switching. Whatever customers should have done back in February or March or April, my advice right now is to watch and to wait. Ratepayers and municipal officials alike should watch CPCNH and watch the PUC. On June 26, Mr. Rooney and his colleagues are scheduled to decide what rate CPC&H will be charging for the six months that begin on August 1. The Board will have to decide how much of a premium to add over CPC&H's wholesale costs in order to rebuild its reserves. According to the estimates I've seen, a one cent premium will give CPC&H a positive cash balance once more, but not until February of next year. This is a difficult judgment call, rate relief versus financial precariousness. Meanwhile, here is something else you should care about. Will the PUC continue to allow Eversource and its default energy service to beat CPCNH on price? By forcing Eversource to buy half of its power in the volatile spot market and by authorizing PSNH to underestimate the costs it incurs thereby, as of the end of April, Eversource was also in the red to the tune of $33 million. Eversource could get back in the black by charging a 1.8 cent premium for six months or a 0.9 cent premium for a year. The moral of the story is that even the local utility knows how to dig itself a hole aided and abetted by the PUC when it comes to retail energy and nobody is served if we allow Eversource to compete unfairly with CPCNH. A loophole in House Bill 1733, now on its way to the Governor for her signature or veto, would allow such unfair competition upon a finding of extraordinary circumstances. That, I would respectfully suggest, is what CPCNH communities should be worried about. In closing, let me be clear. Your neighbors in Hudson are making a mistake by withdrawing from CPCNH. That is a knee-jerk reaction to near-term conditions, but it will have long-term adverse consequences. The last best hope for New Hampshire's residential electric customers when it comes to not getting shafted in the wholesale marketplace is community power aggregation as exercised through a joint powers agency that is CPCNH. I thank you for your gracious hospitality on April 20th and again for your hospitality today as well. I'd be happy to answer any questions and I'd be happy to come back. Thank you, Mr. Kreis. Councillor Begley.

Thank you. I have a few. Mr. Crease, apologies. Before the public work session, I had no idea who you were. I just saw that you were a consumer advocate, and I wrongly thought that perhaps you were an electric expert that was a semi-volunteer like us on the council who make $1,650 a year. not a lot of time, you know, with our day jobs and our families to do this full time and research everywhere that comes to every meeting. Is it true that your budget is about 1.15 million and you have a staff?

That is correct.

Okay. And is it true that you believe residents of New Hampshire should switch to the cheapest power available to them? That is also correct. So it's interesting to me to note, in our local paper, the city of Exeter just had a meeting. The article's about six days old. And it talks about how across the state, cities like Portsmouth have huge opt-out rates, probably because of the visibility in Portsmouth, whereas Exeter has a very low opt-out rate. And I'll just read you a quote. In a way, it's a healthy sign, Sinnott said. It means the fluidity that people have under community power to come and go as the market suggests. They're finding that it's relatively easy to do, and they're doing it. The fact that Exeter's opt-out rate is low may suggest we have not been doing a good enough job getting the word out about that. So my question to you, sir, with your $1.15 million budget, your staff that is paid for by New Hampshire residents in their electric bill,

why are you not getting the word out i guess i don't agree that i'm not getting the word out uh we are you don't agree with the statistics well i do agree with the statistics and i have also noticed that if you go town by town there are some pretty interesting differences in the opt-out rates depending on really what's happening at the local level if you look in a municipality that has vigilant, skeptical, engaged, local policymakers and opinion and thought leaders, then yes, you see a higher rate of people migrating back and forth between the utilities default service and the community power coalition's rates. That's a true statement. And what that teaches me is that it really is a matter of what local thought and opinion leaders are doing and saying, because I talk about this stuff all the time, everywhere I can. I have a column in the Concord Monitor. I've written about this there. I have a Substack blog. I've written about this there. I come whenever I'm invited by a city government to talk about this subject. That's why I was here on April 20th. That's why I'm here tonight. I gather from your question that you feel that I'm not doing enough. I'd be happy to have suggestions on what else I ought to be doing that I'm not presently doing. But you are correct, we do have, when we're fully staffed, a staff of six people. We have to participate in various Public Utilities Commission proceedings, proceedings before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. regional grid operator ISO New England and its stakeholder advisory board and we are very very busy in my office and I am a state employee not a not a volunteer I'm only not a volunteer in the 13th amendment sense in that I'm not forced to do my job

then i have one final question with capelline being acquired by constellation and there being a giant conflict of interest when they go to buy credits on the market and there's going to be not much desire to sell credits to community power because they're underfunded compared to other um you know ai data centers and stuff like that that'll pay a premium for electricity you still maintain that even with this conflict of interest community power is the best for new hampshire

Well, the conflict of interest that you're talking about, or at least that you're alleging, has to do with a conflict of interest between Calpine, which is a counterparty to CPCNH, and the company that just bought Calpine, which is Constellation, which is one of the region's, if not the nation's, biggest providers of wholesale energy. So Calpine is really just, for CPCNH purposes, a proxy that operates as their load-serving entity for purposes of completing transactions. in the wholesale market. Calpine doesn't have any authority to tell CPCNH what to do or not to do in the wholesale market. The CPCNH has a different company called Ascend Analytics that advises CPCNH what to tell its buying agent to do.

And I apologize because I'm sure your community power is not your organization, so you don't need to know all the details. But my understanding is community power is trying to get a contract executed with Calpine, and Calpine keeps delaying them. But effectively, they will be contracting with Calpine to buy power from Constellation, which now owns Calpine, which doesn't sound awesome to me.

Well, again, I understand your skepticism, and I do think that that's a question to run to ground with the folks at CPCNH. But again, what I do know is that all Calpine is doing is serving as the buying agent for CPCNH on the wholesale market. They're not making any strategic choices about where to buy power. that isn't to say that there aren't some useful questions to be asked because calpine is providing the credit support that cpcnh needs and the reason it needs that credit support is because as i mentioned earlier they ran through all their financial reserves in that awful winter of 2025 and 2024. so counselor bagley i am not telling you not to think about that i'm not telling you not to worry about that and i'm encouraging you to ask questions about it but again i am not as you pointed out a part of the cpcnh management team i don't have access to their confidential documents uh the way mr rooney does and i'm not involved in any negotiation or renegotiation of the contract that cpcnh has with california okay and just for your knowledge uh because computer community power is a non-profit their documents are available online there is like a one month delay but i got this information from their website not because i'm a city council in portsmouth Understood. But again, I have no involvement in their negotiations with Calpine. I personally do not have a problem with them relying on Calpine to provide the service that Calpine provides to them because Calpine is not buying power for them. Calpine is not making decisions about what power to buy or not to buy. They're simply acting as a buying agent, following instructions.

And if that were to change, you would have concerns?

Yes, I would. may be worth looking at the may 14th 2026 risk management meeting of community power i will do that exact thing as soon as i get back to my office thank you no further questions your honor uh thank you counselor bagley any other questions counselor bagley or counselor tabor

thanks mayor Don you stood up at the last year's membership meeting and asked for the third party investigation of what went wrong that that bad winter and this membership meeting The report came back saying that CPC&H didn't enforce their own risk policies and didn't hedge properly and then listed what they were doing to address that. I just wanted your take on did you feel that that third party look was thorough and your assessment of how they're progressing.

I do believe that that investigation, which was conducted by an independent third party, was thorough and rigorous. My gloss on it is, as I stated earlier, that it really found fault with the level and quality of the governance oversight that CPC&H was providing to its executive director or president and manager at the time that these problems occurred. And I noticed that there were, I think, seven recommendations in that report, of which, at the time of the annual meeting, CPC&H was able to say that they had adopted six of them and they were in the process of adopting the seventh. It was pretty detailed, arcane stuff. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to making sure that the board is exercising full and vigorous fiduciary oversight of CPCNH. Now, you know, there's a point at which that becomes too much oversight, right? Like the board is a group of volunteers and it can't micromanage. It has to employ professional management team to really run the organization on a day-to-day basis and I'm hoping to see more stability at CPCNH now that Mr. Herndon who was one of my friends who was here on April 20th has been appointed the permanent executive director of CPCNH I think you as a municipal government along with all of the 70 other towns and counties in CPCNH should expect quite a bit out of him and I think you should keep an eye on what he does.

Councilor Cook.

Thank you, Your Honor. And thank you so much for coming back tonight to talk with us. I really do appreciate that. Do you have any other recommendations for us as one of the members of Community Power for what we could do as far as oversight goes?

i think that it is a matter of consulting with mr rooney you not every cpcnh town there are 70 towns and counties in cpcnh not every one of them has a seat on the board you have a representative who sits on that board So it's important for you to be in very close contact with him and make sure that he is reporting back to you about what is going on, including things that get talked about in executive session. Because what we're really talking about here are wholesale transactions, and those are subject to confidentiality issues, because obviously if you're a player in wholesale energy transactions, Like any participant in difficult contractual arrangements, you can't just lay your cards on the table publicly and tell the world what it is that you're doing and thinking. But Mr. Rooney can tell you what he thinks CPCNH is doing and thinking. So consulting with him on a regular basis is really important. And I think, and this goes to one of the points that Councillor Bagley was making, I think the council and the city of Portsmouth should be very vigilant in publicizing what options are available to consumers within your borders and clamoring for frictionless migration between CPCNH and Eversource. The rates are about to change. It is entirely possible that CPCNH will go back to being the better alternative. It's entirely possible that that won't happen. I don't know, the markets have been very volatile because we've come out of a very difficult winter and we're engaged in what some people consider a reckless military adventure in the Middle East. That is having a disruptive, extremely disruptive effect on global energy markets that has a bearing on all of this. So it's important to keep an eye on it.

Thank you.

Councillor Cook.

Councillor Bagley. Your Honor, thank you. Mr. Kreese, I actually agree with something that you said earlier on. I think you've mentioned that when we had the 3,000 people refreshed, it seemed that you were saying that we should have done like what the city of Nashua did and wait until the cost was less, not do a refresh while the cost was higher. I'm going to ask you this question because I think the numbers are kind of striking. I can't really put my finger on it, but we have 733 people that are now awaiting a refresh. I guess a lot of people either moved to town in the last couple months or a lot of new homes came online or something because that's a pretty big number.

expert opinion do you think we should continue the refreshes as we've been doing or do you think we should opt out new residential customers until prices are more equitable i i think at this point it would make sense not to do any refreshment which is a bit of a euphemism i guess until we know what the new rates are going to be and we will know the answer to those questions by the end of this month thank you

so and thank you uh councillor bagley for noting our agreement about the refreshment problem we figured it out i think there were a couple yeah yeah there's probably more than a couple so uh mr crease uh thank you i guess to you remain a um an advocate for uh community power uh and i'm gonna just try to read back my understanding of your support of that that when deregulation happened to the utilities it didn't lower the prices because individual consumers were not really able to aggregate their purchasing power to act as a worthy competitor to the utility community power came along and was that opt-out version which allowed enough individuals throughout the state of new hampshire through different communities to have an opt-out model that allowed us to compete with utilities at that point the utilities kind of changed from the six-month window of where they would lock in rates to more of an experiment with the spot pricing and so they have now lowered their prices at least in arrears to us and Is it fair to say that if we – it's your opinion that if we were to leave community power, we could go back to a situation where there's no effective competitor to the utility, and thus the benefits somebody might be able to receive individually by changing back to the utility or changing back to the community power would dissipate?

Mr. Mayor, that was an excellent readback of my position. Before there was community power aggregation, opt-out community power aggregation, the only choices available to individual residential customers were companies that are, well, I used to say that they occupied the benthic zone, but then I realized I was being too obtuse. They're bottom feeders. And so that's because each of us individually isn't a very desirable customer, but collectively, as an entire community we're somewhat desirable and as the collective demand from 70 towns cities and counties around the state the second biggest load serving entity in the state all of a sudden we're a very desirable piece of load and so it's just a matter of buying power and what i like about cpcnh is that it's publicly accountable it's not a profit-seeking organization It is publicly accountable. It's owned by us and it exists for us. But like any public body, and you all know this because you're elected officials, it suffers from all the disadvantages of being a public body as well. It has to operate under RSA 91A. It has internal disagreements. Different people serve on the board. They have different agendas. And so it's very difficult and challenging.

i'm optimistic that cpcnh will figure out how to do its work correctly and over the long run it will prove to have been an enormous benefit to the residential utility customers of this state thank you mr crease and then the last question i have is around the loophole which i share concerns around being able to say something that is extraordinary in your experience with something along the lines of this foreign intervention qualify as something that could be used as something that is unforeseen or needing to be able to claw back monies that both Eversource and non-Eversource community or ratepayers pay?

absolutely uh many of you i'm sure are i'm sure some of you are lawyers and all of you are experienced public policy people you know the art of introducing uh vague and indeterminate phrases into statutes and ordinances that's what we have here and so that uh that particular ambiguous phrase in that bill house bill 1733 has a lot of mischief potential now that said i'll be in front of the puc arguing that that actually is not an occasion for basically forcing all of the customers in the Eversource territory to bail out the company. Because I think all of that upheaval, while dire, is foreseeably part of participating in wholesale power transactions.

Councilor Bagley, another point to agree on. Thanks, Mary. Well, yeah, your question actually brought up – my phone started ringing quite a bit when I started – talking about community power. And what the mayor just so eloquently explained about community power and leveraging buying power, there are other options out there for the municipalities, which I wasn't really aware of. I know Keene, I think, has their own Keene Community Power, for lack of a better term. And then the one I found most intriguing Freedom Energy, I guess, with the town of Salem, New Hampshire, in November 2025, they locked in 11.18 cents per kilowatt hour, which is substantially cheap compared to everything right now. And they're with that rate until 2027. And the way the contract's written, there's no opportunity for a clawback. In your expert opinion, are there pitfalls if we were to pursue a route like that in the future? I mean, that looks almost too good to be true in today's climate. What's the missing pitfall there?

There are actually a couple of communities that you didn't mention that have an even better rate that they've secured through freedom of energy logistics I think they're at around 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour 9.4 cents something like that and that rate is also locked in through the same day that you mentioned so I don't have any criticism of that that is another viable approach to community power aggregation and I'm interested in seeing whether that approach and and freedom energy logistics is not the only company that's doing that there's one or two others I'm really very curious to see whether they turn out to be better at this in some way than CPC and H does and if that's true then we'll think about whether that has implications for public policy excellent I'm glad you came here tonight thank you

Thank you, Mr. Crease. Oh, Councillor Tabor has a question. Always as I'm about to close it, Councillor Tabor, that finger.

I just would point out that in the case of Freedom and Keene and Salem, their public elected officials are committing customers for several years at a time. So I think that's something to bear in mind.

versus the opt out model that you can opt out versus the flexibility of opt out no you can opt out of these programs at any time just like community power indeed i believe the law requires that yeah there's it's the same framework okay but we should research that

and i think that so one of the things we did uh mr crease and i'll let you go uh after this but we have created an energy advisory committee within the city of portsmouth to advise on these matters right now we have uh community power as the designated opt-out model but i imagine you know that the work of the committee will continually be reviewing and understanding whether or not you know we are in the best position um with our uh with our uh community aggregator or not and continued the research as I think was a good point of this presentation that the power is within you know the city of Portsmouth and certainly within the board of CPNH which we are lucky enough to have a member as a resident and so we'll be judicious and making sure that we get timely updates from them especially going forward as we have the rate setting that will end it's by the 26th of June is that correct for for CP CP and or the community power and Eversource will be done by June 26 CPC and H has a board meeting on the 26th of June at which they will vote or at least at which they

plan to vote on their new rate that will go into effect on august 1st and before that date the puc has a hearing i forget the exact date but it's sometime before then where the puc will consider what rate to approve forever source based on their wholesale solicitation okay and that uh that uh that legislation is with the governor on her desk at the moment uh to allow that or has been signed by the governor it has not yet been signed as you probably know it takes a mysteriously long time for a bill once approved by both houses of our legislature to find its way to the governor's desk but it is somewhere in that byzantine and circuitous pathway to her desk excellent

thank you for bringing uh more transparency here to portsmouth we appreciate your effort to to be here for the work session and and your request to join us again i think it was productive night thank you thank you mr crease all right next up We get to celebrate. Two different special occasions. First, I wanted to recognize Juneteenth, which we will again be a federal holiday. City Hall will be closed at that time. Tonight we pause to recognize Juneteenth, observed each year on June 19th. This day commemorates the end of slavery in the United States and marks an important moment in our nation's history. President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared that as of January 1, 1863, all those enslaved in states in rebellion against the Union shall be thenceforth and forever free. But it was not until June 19 in 1865 in Galveston, Texas, that this order was finally enforced, when Major General Gordon Granger announced that enslaved people there were free. This delayed but decisive moment brought freedom to the last remaining enslaved African Americans in the Confederacy. Juneteenth is both a celebration and a solemn reminder. It honors the resilience, strength, and enduring contributions of Black Americans to our country. At the same time, it calls us in to reflect on the legacy of injustice and the work that remains as we strive toward the ideals of liberty, equality, and justice. Just last month, Portsmouth was honored to unveil the Ona Judge Thain's mural on Court Street. Her life story, including her escape from enslavement by George Washington, reminds us that our history is complex and that progress depends on a shared commitment to truth, understanding, inclusion, and respect. Juneteenth invites us to listen, to learn, and to continue building a community where every resident feels valued and has opportunity to thrive. On behalf of the City Council, I invite all residents to recognize Juneteenth through the many events put on by the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, the Seacoast African American Cultural Center and others by learning more about our shared history and by joining in community to celebrate and create our common future. And if I could just add after this, this is this is a great holiday for a lot of reasons to be able to recognize that. But it recognizes something that I think is is important that that deserves attention, not just that it was that the Emancipation Proclamation came out, but the actual date in which it was enforced for everyone. That it reminds us that words on pages and laws exist, and they're important, but it is just as important to make sure that we live up to those ideals. And especially as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of this country, and the founding documents, Declaration of Independence, that our job is to always live up to the expectation of the laws that we already have as the bar to reach. And so I look forward to the events on this day and grateful that we can celebrate in Portsmouth. Next, we also get to celebrate LGBTQ Plus Pride Month. Pride flags, messages, and marches such as the one each year here in Portsmouth are prominent reminders of our basic constitutional rights as citizens to the freedom of assembly and expression because any harm, hurt, or disrespect to any of us diminishes all of us. Being the city of the open door means living up to the promises of keeping our doors open to every member of this community. On behalf of the City Council, I invite residents and visitors to join in the celebration of Portsmouth Pride on Saturday, June 20th. This event offers an opportunity to come together in support, to learn from one another, and to celebrate the vibrant and welcoming spirit that defines our city. Let us take this month to listen, to learn, and to stand together in support of our neighbors. By participating and showing up, we help ensure that Portsmouth remains a community where everyone belongs. thank you uh both for the efforts that will go into celebrating both of these uh holidays uh with very uh with with great fanfare so now we have the volunteer committee report of public art review park recommendation to award grant from the fourth of new hampshire 400. your honor um

I would like to suspend the rules and move up item 15A number 3 under my name.

Second. All in favor? Aye.

Thank you, Your Honor. In conjunction with this report, I would like to move to award a $10,000 grant from the PNH 400th Anniversary Education and Public Art Trust to history through art mural making, submitted by Terrence Parker in conjunction with the Portsmouth High School Art Program. I second. Your Honor, we have the chair of the Public Art Review Committee here, Chris Dwyer, who can also speak to this. But I will just preface by saying the Public Art Review Committee and Portsmouth Public Library director reviewed the grant proposals submitted for this trust in response to a request for applications. And the committee decided to recommend this award, which is one grant for 2026 in the amount of $10,000.

and if anyone has questions i am i am sure chair dwyer would be happy to answer those questions i don't see any questions any further comment or discussion awesome job all in favor aye any opposed all right next we are on to public comment this is and then you know we can speak here there's also the public hearing which is still held open for the budget but first up is Paige trace on the topic of Portsmouth

Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, Paige Trace, Portsmouth. I find myself in a rare position tonight to speak off the cuff regarding CPCNH and my very common sense feelings towards it and what happened to me. I now understand, Councillor Bagley, that what you thought you did to me as a city was refresh my account. If you go back to before CPCNH, I had the option of calling up Eversource and saying, I very specifically want to stay with Eversource. Now this was long before I sold the house on Hancock street. So my account on Hancock street was with Eversource, not CPCNH. When I sold the house, Suddenly, I found myself calling Eversource saying, I'm changing my address, not my account. Fast forward a year later after thinking that it was my right as a free resident of the city that I was still with Eversource. My account hadn't changed. I dutifully changed my address. And lo and behold, guess what? The City of Portsmouth, as you say it, Councillor Bagley, refreshed my account without my permission. So suddenly I found that I had been paying CPCNH which let's remember the city of portsmouth is a part shareholder of cpcnh so you changed my account to something you own thinking it was a new account one of those 783 new people moving in and suddenly i don't have eversource i've been paying Now, because we live in a smaller place, probably $10 to $18 a month more. Thank you, Councilor Tabor, Councilor Cook. You basically all took it upon yourselves in a conflicted manner to change me. it's it's not right it's common sense if one of your residents wants to be with eversource you need to take the high road you need to be more transparent you need to offer residents the choice of what they want instead of mysteriously in the middle of the night changing the power supplier to one resident Only it's not just one resident, I called CPCNH. And they specifically said to me that yes, you had changed me, and that if I wanted to be changed back to Eversource, it would take another month. Well, the city of Portsmouth has spent an extra $100 of my money putting me over to CPCNH.

Granted, it's helped CPCNH.

But where's the common sense in this? Where's the transparency? There is none. And so I say thank you, Portsmouth, for yet again not being transparent to everybody. Oh, and automatically CPCNH says anyone new moving into the city automatically is signed up for CPCNH. They aren't given a choice. Do you tell everybody new that they're signed up with CPCNH? Anyway, thank you for your time. I'm sorry I went over.

Thank you, Paige. Next is Esther Kennedy. Yeah, that's scribbled, but on the topic of Portsmouth. There is, but Paige wrote her name a little bit off this time.

Esther Kennedy, 41 Pickering Ave. I agree with everything Paige said, and what I find really upsetting is that you're willing to put city citizens on this, and if this such is a great thing, then how come the city isn't doing it? How come you're not utilizing this power? Just a thought. But what I'm here for tonight is I really want you to think about your transparency for meeting minutes. I was going through meeting minutes to look at budgets and information, and most recently, the minutes have dwindled. I guess the policy I'm asking for is what happens when you don't put what people say in the meeting minutes? What's the policy to hold that video for how long? What's the policy to make that history? And I didn't see anything in our charter, and I didn't see any policies to do that. But you're basically taking all the information out of the meeting minutes. So in other words, when I speak, Paige speaks, whoever speaks up here during public comment, it just says public comment, Esther Kennedy, public comment, well, she even says this in a row, Esther Kennedy, Paige Trace, and so on. Nothing about what we said, no topics, no concerns. I find that appalling. And I understand technology. I understand the moving forward. But if we're going to do that, we need to have a policy on how we're going to capture that information for history, how we're going to capture on who talks about what. Quite often go back to the meeting minutes and look before I speak to gather information gather data I was in the meeting minutes last year for our budget to see what was said what has changed and now I'm being told that I need to go on a video and I guess I can scroll through the video takes a lot longer as a citizen But my then I started realizing how long is this video going to be capped? There's no policy on it So what are we trying to do? Are we trying to bury history here? Are we trying to bury transparency? I ask for you to give me an answer. And lastly, on the meeting minutes, I find that it's very interesting It's right in the rules for the state that you must put in what your non-public is about, just a brief statement. And yet, that never happens. Particularly if you just want to look at tonight, it didn't happen. So if we're going to truly follow law and truly want to preserve what people are saying and thoughts and even what you folks are saying, because even the many, many minutes of what you're saying are pretty bleak compared to what they used to be. So we don't know where counselors are coming from. This happened recently, so I ask you to fix it. Thank you.

Thank you, Esther. Next is Johnny McNeil on bike rack.

hi there i'm joni mcneil 67 crescent way and i'm here on behalf of the atlantic heights neighborhood in an honor of the bourbon family who sadly lost their nine-year-old daughter last january nora was a staple at our bus stop and should be graduating from new franklin next week um us bus stop moms would like to have the city install a bike rack at our bus stop in her memory specifically we intend to purchase a bike rack in the shape of a butterfly the symbol the family has chosen to remember her with funds raised by our kids selling pup cups in the neighborhood we just need the city's help and blessing to install it thank you

Thank you. There's none on Zoom.

Can we bring up the motion to suspend the rules and bring forward 16b? Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Your Honor, I move to accept the donation of a bike rack from the Atlantic Heights neighborhood to be placed by the Department of Public Works at the bus stop in Atlantic Heights.

Second. Any further discussion? Thank you for bringing this and for speaking on behalf of us this evening. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you very much.

Your Honor, should we let people know they don't need to stay for the meeting if there's nothing further?

Do we need Mr. Crease? I think Mr. Crease is just watching. Oh, okay. All right. So we have the public hearing now. What's that? It's public hearing. We're opening public comment. This is public comment now. Sorry, the public comment. You're speaking on public comment? Okay. You didn't sign up, but I bet it.

sorry uh can't always get here when the sign up sheet um actually was on the golf course so anyway rick texted 1395 islington street um i just wanted to say a few words one being about the meeting minutes i've spoken diligently many times about the meeting minutes and how future councils are going to be able to get an idea of what we're speaking about and video may or may not always be there what i found interesting is we take such pride in the city of portsmouth i always have my entire life being here in portsmouth and we are at the bare minimum state requirement by doing the action minutes i actually took the time made an appointment went up and saw the secretary of state a few weeks ago on some interesting information stay tuned because we're working on a couple of other things but we are at a bare minimum requirement and i think for the city of portsmouth to be at a bare minimum is unacceptable no different than trevor did a wonderful job with the i guess the explanation of how you all did not vote for the final city clerk and you did during the interns What Trevor didn't say is the Secretary of State is deeply concerned because the New Hampshire state law says that a council, an elected body, appoints that city clerk because what they don't want is, they don't want the thumb of a city manager over city clerk when it comes to elections. The city clerk should have her own identity when it comes to a city election. There should be no one over the city clerk's head when it comes to elections. And I think that's something that we seriously need to be taking a look at. And again, I've got a group of people that are working on it, and we'll see what happens. As far as the budget, which I will be speaking on, I think we missed the mark. I know when we formed the audit committee, which you have, I think, continued to do, I don't really hear anything about audit committee anymore, I think we missed the mark. I think we should have a budget committee that's made up of counselors, you're going to have them, but also private citizens to be able to do that because this is getting so expensive that when you went to a graduation and that's where i heard the most on two graduations was my kids out of school were leaving town they managed to get their kids through high school to be able to graduate people are coming here because they want their kids to go to portsmouth high school and the minute they graduate they're gone and they're done because they can't afford to live here anymore we need to take this stuff into consideration thank you thank you rick any other speakers

Seeing none, we will open the, or go back to the public hearing at the vote on ordinance resolutions, the continued public hearing on the proposed FY27 budget. We'll open that, do for or against?

good evening Peter Huda to a South Street so I want to address what I believe is one of the most troubling aspects of this entire budget discussion the growing gap between what the taxpayers are being told and the council and what the budget documents actually show section 4.9 of the city charter is very clear except as otherwise provided by this charter the city council is hereby empowered to fix a scale of salaries to be paid to all officials agents and employees of the city that authority belongs to you not staff not department heads you not on an individual basis by appropriation which means accountability for these salary appropriations ultimately rests with the council. This discussion is not about individual employees. It's not about whether employees deserve a fair compensation. It's about whether taxpayers are given an accurate picture of what they are being asked to fund. At the last council meeting, numerous questions were raised about salaries, staffing levels, reclassifications, and budget growth. Yet, I did not hear a single request for independent verification of this data. I did not hear a request for a detailed position by petition analysis. And I did not hear a proposal to reduce any of these increases or questions or cuts. As a tech payer, that sends a clear message. This council appears prepared to approve exactly what was presented. If so, then taxpayers deserve complete honesty about the numbers. Throughout this budget process, the public has repeatedly heard that salary increases are approximately COLA of 3.3%. But when I review the actual budget data, that is not what I see. I see management and administrative positions receiving increases of 6% as a starting point. I see numerous positions receiving 10, 15, 16, 19, and I even saw 24% due to reclassifications and title upgrades. Those are not 3% increases. They're not even close. So the question is simple. Why does the public keep hearing 3.3% when the actual salary increases something dramatically different? Because when taxpayers hear 3%, they reasonably assume that compensation growth is modest and in line with national average. That is not the picture these budget documents paint. And I would ask each member of council to consider one simple question. Most Portsmouth households are fortunate if their income increases 3% to 4% this year. Many retirees are receiving less. Yet the budget asks those same residents to fund salary increases of 10, 15, 20%, in some cases, as much as 24. So since you're not asking any questions, do you agree with that? Do you believe it is reasonable to ask residents to receiving a 3% cost of living increase to fund compensation increases that are several times greater than what they themselves receive? Because that policy choice is in front of you tonight. The reality is taxpayers are being asked to fund substantial increases in compensation spending while simultaneously being told the number does not reflect what many positions are actually receiving. Whether intentional or not, the result is the same. The public is not getting a complete picture of the true growth in payroll costs, and that matters because every one of these increases becomes part of a permanent cost structure of city government. They compound through future budgets, benefits, retirement obligations, and pension liabilities. The council has a legal authority to approve these salaries by appropriation. But with the authority comes the responsibility to ensure taxpayers are receiving accurate, complete, and transparent information. If the increases are justified, then defend them. If these reorganizations are necessary, then explain them. if these compensation levels are right are the right policy choice then own that decision but do not allow taxpayers to walk away believing this budget is built on a three percent salary growth cola when actual numbers are showing something very different the public deserves the whole story not just a the most convenient number next i'd like to move on to something that was spoken about earlier tonight, and it's about transparency and accountability. And this is taken out of the budget book. The FY27 budget includes more than $100,000 for interns, somewhere around $132,000, over $220,000 for on-call personnel, and various educational stipends within the salary accounts. In prior budgets, many of these costs were separately identified, allowing a clear year-over-year comparison and oversight. Basically, it's called an audit trail. When expenditures are consolidated into salary lines, it becomes more difficult for both the council and the taxpayers to determine the actual cost of these programs and evaluate spending trends over time. The interim funding also raises questions regarding duplication of services. Many of these positions appear to support, and again, engineering-related functions. While engineering costs are already budgeted across multiple departments, including public works, water, sewer, parking, and now trees and greenery, The big question is how many engineers does Portsmouth really need? The budget does not clearly identify how those additional positions complement existing resources, what specific needs they address, or duplications have been avoided. Effective oversight requires expenditures to be clearly identifiable, measurable, and traceable from year to year. Before approving these appropriations, the Council should have a clear accounting of intern costs, on-call expenditures, educational stipends, and their relationship to existing departmental resources. Transparency is not achieved by simply appropriating funds. Transparency requires that taxpayers and policymakers can clearly follow the money and the results that it achieves. Next, on the same issue, if you don't ask any questions, I have to assume you agree with whatever was in there. So I'm going to enlighten you on some things that I found, and my key word tonight is excessive. So I was wondering if you know about the $30,000 for the office refurb in finance from FY25. About the 200,000 in rolling stock request noted as miscellaneous in water and sewer, $100,000. And something that was very concerning to me that was from an accounting perspective and from a reporting perspective is in legal, After you get the salaries, and I could tell you the page where this is on, there is a line for FY27 unverified grant that is subtracting $82,000 off the legal cost. This is an estimate. This is not anything that's provable. This is not labeled. Nothing. This grant, like everything else, belongs in the revenue section as income, if it is in there. You've got one in there and you've got one in planning. the other thing that was very concerning to me and i mentioned this last week is in your cost centers as you go down through water sewer parking and specifically in between water and storm water there's a there's a cost center named additional these are additional head counts totaling two hundred four thousand dollars these are salaries that are not counted in water They are counted in your apportioned salaries, but nowhere else that I could find. Neither are the head counts. So that's why I asked, how accurate is your head count information with all the 0.3 of a person moving from here to there? The next thing I'm going to address, and I'm going to address this early because I read this, and I'm not going to wait till it comes up, but the new writing of the investment policy. So first question is, why are we changing this? And the second question is, are the persons responsible for this account only listed as the deputy city manager of finance and accounting? Is that person bonded? The next question is, who's the backup and are they bonded? It doesn't say anywhere in here that they need to be bonded, but I wanted to touch on that briefly. So the next thing I'm going to touch on is also was mentioned previously on audit. So in the budget, we have audit fees in finance, $90,000. In parking, $6,000. In sewer, $15,600. And in water, $8,400. Total, $120,000. How do you know how much to budget without an RFP or a proposal in front of you? Did you just guess? Or are you just putting it in there? Because I noticed you're having an audit committee meeting this Wednesday when you haven't had one and you didn't put out an RFP and you didn't say anything about a proposal coming in that you could present to the public on this. And it doesn't matter who's the chair, Mr. Tabor or Mr. Bagley, but the meeting should have occurred in January according to the admin code that you put in there. Next I'm going to talk to you, since I didn't get a chance to do this last week, next I'm going to talk to you about excesses. And a lot of these might be small, but some of them are really big and bring up big questions in my mind. And my question to you is, did you notice any of these? Because it doesn't appear you're asking any questions about this. So I'd like to know if anybody actually noticed or was wondering about it. So the first thing is public works. So engineering, we've got an amount in there for professional services engineering. In engineering, we only spent $1,520, but we're budgeting 10,000. Why? We have in facilities, professional services, again, we spent 24,000, but we're only budgeting 20. We're putting new amounts in here for overtime. This one just blows my mind. Facilities in City Hall, overtime. We only had $9,000, but we're putting $25,000 in there. And we have something new in here, which I don't understand, which is added to a lot of them. Professional services, $29,500. If you want to follow on the pages, Councilor Bagley, it's page 350 in the book. Public works, professional services, brand new, $8,700. For what? Repairs heating system, public works facility. You budgeted $500, you spent $42,237. Now we're budgeting 8,000. Materials, you budgeted 5,000. We spent $79,763. We're budgeting 5,000 again. Why isn't anybody asking any questions like this? Facilities, Spinnaker Point, professional services, you budgeted 15, you spent nothing, we're budgeting 15 again. Do we need it? Facilities, indoor pool, professional services, 26, we spent 30, 958, we're budgeting 47. What is justifying that jump? Any questions? outdoor pool professional services budgeted 2 000 spent 3 000. now we're budgeting 12 500. these are very interesting to me that's the only thing i the only word i could use to describe this this is equipment maintenance in public works repairs vehicle by outsider keep in mind this is the repairs cost center repairs by outsider 85 you budgeted 49 we spent 85 000. now we're budgeting 71. repairs equipment we budgeted 30 spent 30. now we're only budgeting 14. repairs vehicle We only spent $78,000. We're budgeting $128,000. Why? Gasoline. Councillor Bagley, on your $56,000 ad, it's already in here. If you went through all the accounts, you'd see that they're going up almost $20,000. so it was very prudent of the department managers to already add it in and in my opinion it doesn't need to be added there's a lot of fluff in here to cover everything as far as that goes tree program part-time salaries and this is for an intern we didn't have we didn't budget anything we spent 4 000 and now we're spending 12 160. Professional Services Engineering. We budgeted $13,000, we spent $16,750, and now we moved it down to Professional Services. I still know what it is, Peter. This one, to me, is very excessive and it's disturbing. This is Parks and Cemeteries. Regular salaries were budgeted at 400. They came in at 363. Now we're budgeting 517. Cemeteries didn't grow. Part-time salaries. Again, we budgeted 35. We only spent 13. We're going up to 24. Professional services. We budgeted 96. We spent 98. Now we're going up to 142,250. Any questions? Building repairs and grounds, we budgeted 4,000, only spent 1,500. Now we're going up to 7,000. Materials maintenance, we spent 23,000. This is FY25. We're going up to 52,500. Materials, athletic fields. Now this is also included in the rec department and in the other places. And I've been told that volunteers do this. But we're spending $26,000 on this. And the interesting thing here on parks and cemeteries for equipment, we budgeted $1,000. We spent $60,699. Now we budgeted $1,500 again. don't want to keep going on these small things so i'm going to hit the ones that are really excessive to me sewer department part-time salaries we budgeted 14 last time we spent 14. we're going up to 65 000. this one i don't know if it's a mistake or what but i i would ask you to check insurance on workers comp board budgeted 46 spent 46 we're going up to 71 000. Professional Services Engineering. Budgeted 225, spent 262, now we're back up to 215. Professional Services Outside Counsel. This is outside of legal. Budgeted 125, spent 288,000. Now we're budgeting 250,000. Do we have overlap here? Or do we not have the proper skill sets in the right places? Professional services same thing 19 that we spent 19,000 So that's just a couple of them This one is extremely excessive to me this isn't a treatment plant in Portsmouth repairs for equipment we budgeted 50,000 we spent a hundred and sixty six thousand now we budgeted a hundred one hundred eleven five hundred and Treatment plant at Pease. Professional services engineering, budgeted 25, spent zero. Now we're in here, now it has 50,000 in there. Repairs, building, and grounds. You budgeted 75, nope, you budgeted 37. You spent 141,000, and now there's nothing there for maintenance. repairs equipment you budgeted 100 000 you spent 351 819. that's capital folks now you're budgeting 87. that's I'm going to let some of these go, but some of the ones that are excessive. Collection administration in Portsmouth. I'm still in the sewer department. Repairs, buildings, and grounds. You budgeted $15,000. You spent $134,980. Now we're budgeting $10,000 again. You would think by just looking at your budget and having the same manager do this and review this that this would be adjusted. But the problem here is the name of the game is to get that bottom line. And then anybody can move, a manager, can move all of the money wherever they want. So budgeting is totally irrelevant here because budgeting is a tool to help you know what you're going to spend next year. And if it's not put in the line that it's expended for, it doesn't help anybody. And it really looks like that's what's being done here. The other thing, after I told you about all of the machinery and equipment, I urge you to ask or pull it out until you get an answer. In the water rolling stock request, miscellaneous equipment, the total request is $400,000. Miscellaneous equipment, $100,000. Nothing to say what it is. In sewer, same thing, only it's $200,000. $200,000 is capital. Is that what we're seeing coming in here? Anybody want to ask the question? So the water department. And this one is. Regular salaries budgeted at 538 came in at 408. This year there are 827,000. That's 102% increase. Anybody can ask any questions on that? Professional services engineering, 25,000 budgeted. You spent 60,000 15 again, budgeted engineering Portsmouth. This is in water and this is in water professional services engineering. This is an engineering. 65,000 budget spent 112 079 budgeted again 32,000 treatment plant professional services was never budgeted before all of a sudden we have 39 5 in there what is it what is it for anybody can ask grit disposal Budgeted at $141,775, actual $40,544, now it's budgeted at $153,670. Why? Materials, chemicals. Now I would understand if this did go up, but the size of the increase after what was put in here as actual is significant. You budgeted 575. You spent 430 and now we're budgeting 637. And on this one again in water, machinery, equipment. In treatment. 30,000 budgeted spent 54 and now we're budgeting 36. So I don't know about you, but I'm. i'm just baffled by a lot of the increases here and a lot of the questions that weren't asked that i'm asking tonight let's go to parking so parking we budgeted 117 in fy25 actual came in at 87. now we're budgeting 100 111 720. why Parking enforcement, this is another one I consider excessive. Regular salaries were budgeted at 224, came in at 212. Now they're at 229, but we added part-time salaries. Budgeted at 196, came in at 96, now we're at 235,000. I would also like to know parking meter operations. Last time you budgeted 191, came in at 181. Good. Now we went up to 269. That's an $88,000 increase. Anybody wondering why? I am. I'm sure Ben has an answer. And the parking administration. Part-time salaries budgeted at 92, came in at 94, up to 119. So on a lot of these, I know you're sick of hearing me, and I'm sick of saying it, but we need some more questions and we need some more answers. And as a resident, I didn't get any answers last time on the FTEs. I looked through the packet. There's nothing in there about the 40 FTEs for school that were claimed by the committee, by the finance committee for the school, that they didn't know where they were. So it's just puzzling to me that this council is not asking any questions like that. You're just taking all of this and it's going to rubber stamp it. The questions need to be asked. This is your responsibility and you own it. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

good evening rick beckstead 1395 business street i don't even follow petra huda when it comes to that i wish some of you would probably try and reach out to her i'm going to follow a couple of remarks so i did four budgets two as a regular counselor two as mayor mayor one i want to say counts but doesn't count because we're during covert very difficult times so i mean it was easier said than done i mean for the most part as far as what we came up with the budget flatline budget the first year very little the next year but it's a city council's job to ask the questions and fine tune and one of the things that i always took into consideration as i would go and learn from some of the other ones chris weyer actually left but um i would pick a number of like five hundred thousand dollars and i would try to chop away at literally a half a million dollars for every 50 to 55 000 that's one cent off the tax rate So it's a pretty good goal if you can go and chop some of that down and it is a significant savings to the taxpayer. So that was something that I always did. Now what Petra took down, if we had minutes and we were taking minutes and writing them down, it'd be easier to follow, but you've got to go back to the video and you've got to write them down yourselves now. Not that I would expect that all of that would be in Petras as far as with the meeting minutes, but once again, you've got to watch a video to get what happened. My recommendation would be is not adopting the budget tonight and fine-tuning some of those things, especially some of the things that Petra Hood has, some of the excessiveness, but just little, $15,000 there, $20,000 there, $35,000 here, makes a big difference. You know, Councillor Hopkins, when you were running for counsel, I listened to one of the questions that came through what you would offer and you talked about zero based on zero based budgeting was one thing you really talked about future who brought that forward and got pushed back so many times. It just kind of disappeared. And whether you did that and then it was like, that's a good idea, but we don't do it. That was kind of what it ended up leading to. So I'm hoping that you were at least making an argument to say, but But the rest of you, I mean, you've done four budgets. You're on your fifth, you know, sixth, whatever it is. But those little things and those little details, I didn't look in the book as much as probably some of the others did. And unfortunately, life has just taken its toll that I can't always go and attend. But one of the things that I went after, if it is in the budget wayfinding, wayfinding is usually pretty significant. It's $200,000, $300,000 a year. Get rid of it. I think we've got enough site pollution that's out there. Even those little signs, the last ones that came out, you can't even read them unless you're standing right in front of them. Once again, I'll make the argument that everyone that comes to town uses their cell phone. I spent two weeks in Europe between Italy and Germany, and this is how I got around in a different country. and everyone uses these to be able to go way find their way around town i don't how many how many signs do we need to know where dpw is or where city hall is or where the dump is i mean we've got them in all different directions now it's a lot of money that's being spent and those little cost savings save the taxpayer money Now, enough with that. I'm going to go down my list. I've said it on social media in the past and so on and so forth, but you have created 30-plus positions since COVID. During COVID, we didn't lay it off one person. Everyone kept their jobs. The part-timers were let go and then eventually they were brought back in again, but we had no positions. You have added 30 since the seven of you have been on the council. And I don't think the demand got that big or 1 person can't do a job. So now you've got to hire 2 people to do that job, but that's significant savings. Do we really need all of those? Do people need assistance? Somebody that's assisting the city manager. They need that assistant need an assistant because you actually have that in there. Simple things during cobit. I'm going to say it again. I met, the city manager met, along with a couple of other city officials, and it was Todd Germain, Chief Germain, that came to us during COVID. And the problem that we had with COVID with the fire department was we had a shift of, and I believe, and they'll correct me if I'm wrong, a 10-hour shift and a 14-hour shift, and it rotated. We went to a 24-hour. The argument was made and it wasn't much of an argument to be made because it was the safety of our public and the safety of our firefighters and the safety of their families was to lessen the exposure. Because what would happen is they would have those short shifts of 10 hours or 14 hours and then they would go back to their loved ones. and if they were on call they had that exposure they were putting them at risk if they were exposed or vice versa if somebody in the family was exposed and those firefighters came back in there was exposure time that 24 hours worked it was necessity it was safety public safety for the safety of our community But during that time, we had less than overtime of the fire department of less than $700,000 a year. And within four years, and COVID gone, not gone, I just had a friend that just came down with it, but the safety measures, we were almost $2 million. Right there is a savings. I figured you could save over a million dollars. You've got a contract you haven't signed yet. that's something that tom clarson should be negotiating right now to go back and you have the ability and the power they came to me they came to the city manager and staff to ask for the 24 hours outside of contract and contractual obligations all of their salaries and everything going to go up then you just put that in the new contract that you're going to go back to the shifts It's probably not going to make you popular with them. You're probably not going to get your name on a banner the next time around. But I'll tell you what, they're not the ones that are putting you in office. Well, I take that back. They promote you to get into office. So at the same time, they don't put you in office. The elected, the public is what puts you there. You've got a contract in front of you for the first time. It aligns. You know, you guys went and gave them raises based on the city manager and others going and saying, okay, we've got to go up, you know, as far as 6%, 9%, whatever you were increasing. Outside of contractual obligations, this is your moment. You can save the taxpayer and this budget over a million dollars by going back to a shift of what was needed at that time. COVID, as far as the standards is over, the exposure is over. And it's really scary at the amount of money that can be made with the overtime. And I, as literally a city councilor and as a mayor, was actually endorsed by them during an election time. Two times I was. I wasn't asked the last time. I never got a phone call. mean i know there are others too that didn't get phone calls but anyway regardless so i i'm not going to go after the bus or i'm sorry the the boat um they're going to do what they do but in the words of chief achilles and for some of you aren't that actually predates as far as with todd germain he was before and i would listen to him due diligently as a resident before i was even on the city council and he said look you are the governing body you are the one that sets the price you tell me what you're going to give me and i'm going to do my job no matter what period because they knew there was restraints they knew i have nothing against the fire department i think they do a great job they helped my son last year when he literally was almost killed in a motorcycle accident they scraped him up they put him back together they got him to the hospital he's about 90 percent now uh from what it was a year ago um so they do a great job again it isn't going to make you popular it may not get you back on a billboard or ballot but the residents of portsmouth are counting on you to do your job all you have to do is take petra's list and it's nickel and diamond 15 here 20 there shave a half a million dollars off shave a million dollars off of that that's 1.5 million dollars off the proposed budgets and i think everyone will be happy with it i know i will thank you very much have a good night thank you rick any other speakers

Good evening Mr. Mayor, Councilors. My name is Eric Anderson, 38 Georgia Terrace. I've been here before with regards to the annual budgets and the couple of tough acts to follow and I hope I can't hold a candle to Petra on what she does with the budget and how she can go through and find efficiencies and I think it's the obligation of every one of you to take you know to listen to her or go through and find the efficiencies that you think are appropriate to reduce this budget It was observed in tonight's handout that you've decreased the fire boat from 900,000 on a CIP basis to 150,000. It's a little confusing to read because that 150 was supposedly going to be used as a 25% match against the $600,000 fire boat. Have and it's a match for federal estate funds have those federal estate funds been secured I Don't the motion doesn't say that they have or have not been secured to appropriate the hundred and fifty thousand dollar match 25% match but you know with clarity on that I Think Councils have asked questions within with no malice to the fire department of the chief but you've asked some questions with regards to this this boat and Other fiscal issues that come along with it. It's not just the boat itself There's a variety of other fiscal issues to go with it whether it's training whether it's labor whether it's maintenance whether it's equipment I think you've all asked questions and to what I can see none of them have been answered yet even to the respect of how many calls have the fire department in the last period of time responded to on the water and how many of those calls required a larger vessel of this stature i think they're i think they're reasonable questions for the city to get you know to start making commitments for um this type of vessel and it might be appropriate but at least for now until some questions are answered with the fiscal issues that you know have been asked and not responded to i think you should put this as a placeholder for some future you know for a future budget um There was also, I think it was under Council Cook, that she did reduce $65,000 out of the operating budget for an artist live and work study. i was a little confused by this only with the respect that um when has the city made a commitment to one particular profession to make sure and secure living and workspace for this particular occupation why isn't there something in there for apprentice carpenters apprentice plumbers uh wait staff affordable housing is a larger issue that we're trying to address and i think it's it's it's going you know it's it's moving in a direction that there will be some resolution but in the same respect council cook has suggested that you take 65 000 out of the housing trust fund this fund is woefully this this thing is woefully underfunded even at the amount that's in there it's woefully underfunded to make the inroads to housing that's needed in the city and to take 65 000 out of it for an answer that we can probably all assume is going to come forward saying yeah we need affordable housing not for just one particular sector but one particular occupation but for all occupations for all people And I don't think it's fair that this city has identified one particular occupation over a variety of others that needs a particular level of assistance to this degree. i hope you take some of these suggestions you over the course of time here you've been given i think i think some reasonable observations recommendations suggestions on this particular budget and efficiencies that could be used to bring it down i think taxpayers residents deserve that the way i look at it right now at least through what's on the agenda you're taking 174 000 out of the fire for um first for a an assistant um 65 000 for for the um artist living workspace 50 000 for um electrification of the fleet And then you've added $56,000 for fuel. So that nets out to about only a reduction of $230,000. $239,000 out of a budget of this magnitude and the increase that you're dealing with here. that's nothing and the efficiencies that have been presented to you that you can make some decisions on some meaningful decisions to reduce it to a larger level i think are appropriate i hope you don't i hope you take a pause take these recommendations seriously and come up with a better solution thank you very much thank you eric

page trays portsmouth i have one word efficiency some of your departments are incredibly efficient i registered two cars this afternoon wrote you a nice healthy check very healthy three minutes and I had a pleasant conversation with a lovely woman who didn't know who I was. Didn't matter. She didn't need to. She was just nice and she did her job quickly and efficiently. I then went back to the end of the line for a $4 dog license. And I waited politely 40 minutes for my $4 dog license. Now, I realize that you have two new city clerks. You got rid of a fabulous old city clerk. That's not my business. You know better than I do. But 40 minutes, do you not think that you could find somebody a little less highly paid than $106.303 a year? Translates to $51 an hour and 10 cents, do the math, for my $4 dog time. If I were... still literally writing you the big huge checks for taxes in this city i'd be angry that there was a lack of efficiency i worry tremendously with the amount of growth the departments that work now police fire I just, it boggles my mind with the amount of growth that you have the number of people to work efficiently in this town. I feel for chief Newport. I feel for the fire chief. We need to think from a standpoint of the future, but you need to look at your departments and look at them and look at their efficiency. and $51 and 10 cents. I'd like to think that my time is worth the same amount of money, if not more. So that actually translate. If you figure I'm equal to the city clerk that translates into a hundred dollars of time for a $4 dog tag. No, I'm legitimate, I did it. How many of them are out there that you haven't gone after? And is it just that people are finding it too difficult financially to live in this town that even a $4 dog license becomes a matter of issue to them? So I'd like to think that you will think of efficiency and that if the two city clerks that are there now need help, then you're gonna have to figure something out because the cost of a dog license is not costing the city taxpayer $4. It's costing the city taxpayer and the owner of the dog far more. Thank you. Thank you, Paige.

Esther Kennedy, 41 Pickering Ave. First of all, I'd like to thank the police department for adding a social worker. i'd like to thank uh the mayor for bringing forward the rationale of getting moving the fire boat out i'd like to thank whoever it was under the mayor's name but whoever else looking at staff development and the assistant fire chief those were all nice savings and i appreciate it however When we were talking, Petra and I have attended either in person or by Zoom every budget meeting, all departments. And we were honored to be at all those meetings. But one of the reasons we were there is we're getting a lot of support from the community to ask us to help understand the budget and figure out ways to bring the budget down. i heard from the counselors in the last public hearings on the council is that it really is about employees and i would agree about the amount of employees about the cost per each employee it's about the insurance it's about retirement that is the budget drivers as someone that oversees 120 employees personally um I understand those drivers so I really wanted to look at the um how can we look at the employees and Peter brought up some great things tonight and what we heard from Nate last week is that the average increase is 3.03% cost of living. However, steps are around 5%. So that means you have to look for anyone over 8.3% in the budget. And as a counselor, you need to question why is it more than 8.3%. That's assuming that the 3.3% cost of living And the 5% step would be 8.3. And you have numerous people in there that are over 8.3. And so as a citizen, I'm asking you, why? Why is that increase? That is way above the cost of living. And the sad part is when you look at those people that are over 8.3 and I could go through and we could give you positions and then people in the community could say who it is because of many of them are in management. And I know as a manager for 28 years and a public entity, I have always made sure that my cost of living increase is less than my paraeducators. if they get three percent i get 2.5 if they get four i get three because those are the people that have the boots on the ground those are the people that are making all the difference the people up at the um waste areas the people that are doing the garbage pickup the people that are just standing on the downtown as police officers. They deserve the increase, not management. And if you go through and look at your positions, it is all management. That's where the biggest increase are. If I saw paraeducators, then I wouldn't be standing here. But we don't. I also, in looking at the budget, I want to remind us the number of positions at one point seven of you added 44 positions then you brought it down to 32.4 and now you've brought it down again you brought it down to roughly 25 positions a little hard to tell because there's so much movement But what is perplexing to me over positions is that on April 1, 2026, at 8.35 in the morning, there was a meeting of the financial board of the school board. And in that meeting, it talks about financial compliance and the 207 cost centers and basically talks about 40 possessions. And it was found not in compliance. It identified as non-compliant. And the description is, there's a lack of transparency. These 40 plus positions are often hidden from the main budget book, making the true number of employees questionable. Strategies for resolution by the committee. The goal is to shrink the 207 account over time by moving new hires into the operating budget. We have asked about these 40 plus, right in the meeting minutes. We've asked about the 40 plus positions to no eval, no resolution. So now I have two things when we talk about employees. First is, look at the number of employees that over 8.3. And then how many employees are hidden? There are employees being moved all over when you do comparison contrast of these budgets. And that's one of the reasons I was going to the meeting minutes to look to see if there was any conversation about how employees got moved. You have to ask folks, that's the cost driver of your budget. We are at $157 million. The citizens, that you all have said you're going to support the artists the one person eric forgot was the fisherman what is the cost for those folks how are we going to support them how are we going to support these people we're asking people 60 000 how can they live in our city and the only way they can is if you bring the budget down you haven't created much housing But we can hope that some of our landlords might treat people fair. And if they don't have to pay high costs for taxes, they will. So I ask you, no one can beat Petra. She gave you a lot of suggestions tonight. i ask you to look at that and how can we save some money how can we bring the budget down and how can we make the cost of living in portsmouth fair to all because right now it's not thank you thank you esther any other speakers

All right, any council questions? And we'll pull up amendments as they come along to.

Councillor Begley. Thanks, Eric. Since I was called out three times by name and maybe the fourth time when some shade was thrown at engineers, I thought maybe I'd address some of the questions. The first one was I was writing down when the budgets change from $20,000 to $24,000. You know, that's a relatively small number in a $158 million budget, and I don't want to trivialize any of the money that we spend because it's our money as taxpayers. But I think it's important when you talk about the number of employees we have and how they're paid. Most of us up here, this is our fifth budget. The mayor and councilor Tabor, I believe it's their seventh budget. We've all pretty much had a chance to negotiate all 15 union contracts. There used to be more, but some of the unions consolidated over our terms. There's six city contracts that we negotiate directly. The city manager, the police chief, deputy chief, fire chief, deputy chief, and superintendent. so we do set the salaries and the positions and we do negotiate you know the cola increases and and you know we've been increasing the the burden that employees pay for their health insurance premium by 1% per year with with every contract which is you know We're always trying to get the best deal for our residents while also getting the best employees. And to do that, you have to pay fair wages. When people get promoted to a new position, their salary is going to be jumping to the rate of that new position, commiserate with that. That's not something that the council needs to approve or oversee. We have 884 FTEs in the city of Portsmouth. About half of them are in school. A large number of them are police, fire, and DPW. These are the people that keep us safe and maintain our city for us. for me as a counselor or for any of us as counselors to think that we know what's best for all 884 employees individually and that we should be setting every employee's salary. To me, that would not be good management. One of the other things that was mentioned was gas. There was $20,000 increase over last year. It's important to note that the budget's put together largely in January and February. Since then, as many of us have realized, gas has gone up 48%. When we ask our management staff to create a budget, we like to work collaboratively with them you know we typically sent the guidance counselor taper is usually the one that brings it forward you know he puts the research and the time in sees what the uh you know inflation is what the city needs are what you know unusual things like health insurance and then he's he's kind of set the tone and then it's been up to staff to meet that which is a collaborative approach instead of a antagonistic approach where you know if somebody spends 54 000 instead of 60 and the next year they want $50,000. That's not a red flag to me. That's very good management. We shouldn't be in a situation where our city employees feel like they've got to buy a bunch of cardboard boxes at the end of the year so that they hit that $60,000 budget number. If they only spend $54,000, that's great. The inverse is also true. If you're running a sewer treatment plant with pumps that cost upwards of $1 million and something breaks and you have an unexpected $156,000 repair cost,

That's not going to be in your budget.

You can't budget for those types of things. So the insurance spike, I mean, yes, the, I forgot the term, the workman's comp insurance at the sewer plant went up. The story of this budget with the exclusion of workman's comp for firefighters has been drastic increases. That's the reality we live in today. The other thing I wanted to mention, the state has spent, I think, $6 million or so on the fishing pier here in town in the last four or five years. So we do look out for different industries. I mean, is that fair? Maybe not, but it's something that we do. The investment policy, that's set by an RSA in the state of New Hampshire. Sorry, I lost it. RSA.

We're going to just let everybody speak. We're having our deliberation.

RSA 4816. We've got to set it every single year. And basically, it authorizes the city manager's designated set our investment policy. And it's not very glamorous. The order of operations is safety of principle first, liquidity second, maximum yield third, but only after the first two are satisfied. And then the city can actually invest in only a few things based on RSA 4816. These are things like local New Hampshire public investment pool set up by RSA 645, federally insured bank deposits, money-mounted credit accounts, CDs, you know, the stuff your grandparents probably invested in. we don't need bonded financial advisors to come in here and do these investments these are short-term liquid assets that the city puts money into because we're in accrual we basically get paid twice a year when people send in their taxes in december and july i think it's december july june um i guess i'm laying on my taxes um We collect all that money. We put it in a CD account or something. We probably get 3.5% rate of return, maybe 4%. And then we spend it over the next six months. That's just sound fiscal policy. We're not investing in crazy startups or doing angel investment type things. We're doing sound, reliable things because this isn't our money. This is our money as a community. There's another thing on here. Well, I've kind of gone on a little bit longer than I intended to, but I do take exception when people say that we don't represent the community up here. I mean, that is why we have elections every two years. The budget is fundamentally the most important thing this council does. And we don't always agree. Last year at budget season, I had three motions. One, I failed to pass eight to one. The second one failed to pass seven to two. And the third one failed to pass five to four. There's several motions tonight. I don't know if they'll pass or not. We don't all agree as a council. And we don't ask every single question in this one meeting per year. What we do is we work collaboratively with city management and staff to make sure that we have the best city we can have for our residents and acknowledge that that costs real money. And that puts a real burden on our residents. But we should not be up here trying to figure out who's using too many paperclips. That's just not good management. You don't go through a budget that is 814 pages long and just find out where every difference is and call out that that's some sort of issue or a lack of transparency. this is a very sound budget this is a budget i am proud of i'm not excited that i have to pay about 500 more in taxes this year that you know that's that's a drag but i am excited that i live in a city like portsmouth with great schools great fire great police great public works great rec department great library i mean there's really nothing in the city of portsmouth that i hear people complain about except that too many people want to live here hey councillor bagley

Nathan, I had a question for you. Going through, and we've talked about this a couple of times, you had a very detailed slide on it one time, but I wanted to get again to the idea of comparing FY25 actuals. We don't have all of FY26, so you've got to go back to FY25 actuals to look at that, and now that we're in FY27. You know, there are some individual line items that go up 18%. There's also some that are decreased by a similar fashion. And how do we kind of rectify what we've heard in public comment of increases beyond 8% with our total budgeted salaries in the general fund

going up 2.33 percent could you speak to that absolutely thank you mayor counselors uh as i said in the in the work session on the 28th if you look at the fy 26 budget book there are positions there more than in an average year where we had eight expiring contracts all of which were in negotiations or headed into negotiations and for the settlement of which we budgeted 1.99 million dollars of contingency for collective bargaining so you saw a number of positions in the fy 26 budget book that reflected some or no change from fy 25 excuse me some or no change yes from fy25 because if they were entitled to a step that would have been there but only that because there was no provision for cola in an expiring contract subsequent to the final approval by the council of collective bargaining agreements we made transfers into the department accounts salary accounts to reflect the increases that were negotiated And sometimes that is a simple COLA. Sometimes there are new stipends or changes made to stipends. There's COLA not only on the salary itself, but on the stipends maybe that are defined and established by the contract. And so if you then move up a step and a 3.03 COLA in a settled contract to FY27's book, you will find positions that show more than the change of 8.03%, which is the 5% and the 3.03. because you'll be comparing back to FY26 where there was no COLA included. So there's additional percentage that was added in FY26 before the 27 book is compiled. pause for a moment, make sure that that made sense. So you could see an 11 plus percent increase, 11 and a quarter I think is what the standard would be if there was nothing else involved, if there were no additional changes made in the course of that negotiation. And so really anything beyond 11% would suggest multiple other things may have happened. Someone may have vacated a position and the replacement that was hired was hired at a higher level because of experience. And certainly you will see situations throughout the book, they won't jump out at you the same way if you're looking for increases, but you'll see numbers that pop out where positions are lower than they were in the previous book because we've had a departure and a replacement at a lower level. And then there are, as you've heard in public comment, other changes that take place, reorganization, reclassifications, et cetera. But I would also suggest to you that as the mayor reported, we're looking at an all across the board in general fund increase in salaries of 2.33%. And so I guess as I stand here, I would say to you, I would not dismiss that there may be some examples that can be found somewhere in the book that are different from the norm, but in the aggregate, In the aggregate, the sellers are not even up the predicted 3.03% of COLA. They're only up 2.3. Now, some of that is explained by a reduction of nine FTEs, 9.06, because that comes out of salaries. But I would say to you, to the extent that you look at an individual position and can identify that in last year's printed book and this year's book, that's some of the explanation. And to the extent that we look at other lines, throughout the budget I would only caution that when you consider an FY 25 budget and its representative actual in that year which we were able to report there is an intermediate year of FY 26 budget the actuals of which are not yet known and then we move to an FY 27 so when you consider budget an actual in 25 to the budget two years later in FY 27 contemplate the increases and changes in vision and mission that happened uh with inflationary pressure in fy 26 and then again consider mission vision and inflationary impact moving to 27. sometimes those are just not apples to apples that can be compared and i think if we were to sit with you and walk line by line through a review much of the answers that you would receive from department staff would be explanation of things that happened that were unexpected and things that we now anticipate with greater clarity or no clarity at all as we move to FY 27 depending on the the account that you're looking at So I would commend you that it is part of the budgeting process for sure, but it's difficult to draw conclusions based on FY24 actual and FY25 actual and two years later as we forecast out for as much as 12, 13 months today, but 18 months when we envisioned the budget in the first place.

Thank you. And you probably don't have these figures off the top of your head um but when i looked at the the numbers for my first two years on the council uh in terms of salary increases first in the coveted year uh and then second the year after it was 2.37 and then 2.38 um and so you know the uh the salaries which are driving you know a majority of the budget are in line with what this council has done and what previous councils have done in terms of the actual dollars amounts and this is with a much higher Cola than we experienced in that time and part of it was the increases that were needed to happen in terms of keeping folks in positions that were very difficult at that time and certainly one that it's easy to kind of say in the rear view we should have done things differently but you know it's a scary time during covid and and we made some salary adjustments to keep people out there um in order to do that but again you know this in terms of general fund salaries uh you know looking back over all my times well within line and even lower uh than the first two years that i enjoyed being on the council so thank you nathan thank you councillor cook you had your hand i did thank you your honor um

one of the things that i think is really critical and and and i hear this in the the public comment and concerns around the budget is that um we we need to try to keep the budget within range for what residents can afford and i absolutely agree with that as a resident of the city um i've watched my taxes go up and they're pretty high at this point and it's painful to see them go up any more year over year But I think a lot of municipalities are facing some serious headwinds, and Portsmouth is not immune from this. Since 2010, the state has downshifted $39.4 million in costs on the city of Portsmouth in retirement costs for public sector employees. And $39.4 million is just a considerable amount of money for our residents to pick up in taxes over the course of the last 15, 16 years at this point. in addition to that we're seeing increases in health insurance costs they're astronomical over 26 percent for school care this year that alone those health insurance costs between school care and health trust are driving a 2.21 increase in the budget now that's that means everything else is a 2.9 increase now imagine if we were trying to get to the social security cost of living adjustment with the budget this year we're talking about a little over a one percent increase across the board that would be a considerable reduction in head count in fact it would mean cutting most of our services across the city and that's because of our health insurance costs now i realize that every person you cut you're cutting health insurance costs but we are cutting 9.06 full-time equivalents out of the general fund budget this year those are those are jobs that are going away in the general fund budget this year so we are effectively cutting some services now you're not seeing that because our city staff does a really good job of picking up the pieces when we lose staff And in this case, we're not replacing some individuals. But that does create a hole. That doesn't mean that those services are just automatically covered. It means shifting other individuals and shifting their work elsewhere. So there's some serious challenges we're facing, and we are adapting to try to meet those challenges. I was actually really surprised that the budget only came in at 5.11% increase. with that much of a health insurance increase and that salaries are only going up two point three three percent once again that is because of some of these full-time equivalents going away so when I've gone through the budget I've tried to think very clearly about what it means to make sure that we're good stewards of the budget for the city of Portsmouth but we also have to be good stewards of the employees we have to be protecting them as well and And one thing that I'm always reminded of is that people don't go into the public sector work to make a lot of money because they really don't get paid that much money. They get good health insurance, good retirement benefits that the state used to pick up 30% of but doesn't anymore. They also get continuing education credits that they have to keep going and getting in order to maintain their licensing for the positions that they're employed in. lot of the driver on the budget is the cost of living adjustment and those contracts which is three point oh three percent and all of our settled contracts right now but it's also step increases which are frequently front-loaded in order to keep people here because hiring is difficult and every time we hire another individual we let somebody go and then we go back and hire another individual it costs us money in human resources to go through that hiring process and the training process once again so when we get a good employee we want to retain them and And the only way we retain good employees is make sure that we have competitive contracts that compare well with other communities. They're not competitive in the private sector, though. They're only competitive with other public sector employees in the state. And in some cases, we hadn't kept up. And so we had to make some decisions across the last several years to bring our contracts up to a position where they are more competitive and even with that it's 2.3 percent 2.33 increase in salaries this year so i'm thrilled with the the budget changes so far um and i'm asking for one change in the budget that i would like to move to suspend the rules and bring up item 15a under my name second

If we don't pass the budget, I'm going to keep the public hearing open, so I'm going to... I will close the budget before we... I'll close it after we pass the budget.

If we have more questions, can we ask them before motions go?

if you have what questions oh yeah i mean yeah yeah i mean we're we so we're getting into the the amendment process and feel free to ask any of your questions as you do that i would like to bring up chief mcquallan if we could because i have a question i'd like to ask him if that's possible before this amendment sure i have a couple of motions on that

those are separate then because of those that I'd like to ask a question because I don't believe we can bring up staff once we start deliberating right I don't think it is but we can suspend it

i will wait to ask if that's the case all right all right councillor cook you've asked for motion it's been seconded to spend the rules and bring up the item under your name all in favor aye any opposed councillor um thank you your honor um you'll see under my name a request to um essentially move funding that's currently in the cip budget 65 000 for the artists live workspace um to move it to a request to take the money out of an existing trust, the City of Portsmouth Below Market Rate Housing Trust Fund. Before I make the motion, I want to say first that this study, the LibWorks study for Artists LibWorks Space, came out of two years of work of the Arts and Cultural Commission. They produced a report for this council, the council reviewed the report, and they put in requests to include this in the CFE budget, which has already passed. um and what's critical about this is the artists in the community contribute over 70.2 million dollars a year to the economy for the city of portsmouth that's why artists are so critical they're a major driver of our economic success success in this community and that's not money that they make that's money that comes into the community that's that goes to small businesses into the city of portsmouth that we collect in fees Because of the arts that is in the arts in this community So I think that that's really critical and that's what is recognized in our cultural plan and that's why they asked for an artist live workspace because we're Losing artists at a considerable rate because they cannot afford to live in the city like many individuals But they don't just need a place to live they need places also to work because it's the the double issue of having to fund your own art space that's challenging so um my first motion is to move to authorize the trustees of trust funds to expend 65 000 from the city of portsmouth below market rate housing trust fund for artists live work studio for artist live work studio study for below market rate housing second any discussion councilman

Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you, Councillor Cook, for bringing this up. I agree, artists are an integral part of our community. But I would argue that teachers, police officers, firefighters are a little bit more priority on this list. I would argue that the teachers that teach our own kids have contributed more than the 72 million. I think that number would be priceless. I mean, someone's going to have to pay for housing, obviously, if you can't afford housing. I don't know what this study is going to tell us that we don't know someone's going to pay for it. You know, I mean, I understand looking for grants and stuff like that, but I don't think we should be prioritizing sixty five thousand dollars for one one job, one occupation.

So to be clear, this is coming out of, is this in the CIP that we passed? Yeah, yeah.

Yes. No, so I'll go on. I think I was against this one in the CIP. But if we want to cut the budget, I would entertain a motion to remove the $65,000, not to take it from the housing fund.

My only concern with this is not bringing this to the committee itself to discuss. I mean, that was a huge part of the four or five months where we were discussing the formation of the trust fund, how the funds would be distributed, figuring out within state law of how this money would be spent within the community. So while I'm not against the funds Being spent I would want more involvement from the Community from the from the below market rate housing committee or the affordable housing committee and I guess I would not be sure if. guess a question would be if it was if it was removed from the budget and then presented to the committee then what steps would have to be made to expend those funds would it just be the committee's recommendation to the trustees of the trust or does it have to be within the budget to then go before the trustees

So I guess within that I would wonder if there would be a

a vehicle to to send this to the committee before for a recommendation then to the trustees or um if you're i guess i would look for kind of uh a way to involve the housing committee as we part of our our conversations this term um are figuring out outlined ways to spend um the funds and figuring out kind of a rating system in all of these uh conversations with the in the committee after we you know go through the housing action plan um so i just i just want to make sure that you know part of the the trust is also going through the committee for recommendation to the trustees

Thank you. First a question, just to make sure I have my facts right. We adopted the CIP. This was in this year's CIP. So as a councilman, I honestly don't remember if I voted for or against it. We said we were going to fund this this year. The motion tonight is not whether or not we should fund it. The motion tonight, as I understand it, is that instead of funding it from bonded monies, since this is some capital outlay which would be money in the budget this year we're funding it from the trust which has money in it i believe from a settlement so the money is coming out of money that's sitting in the bank somewhere for housing and this is a housing thing so i don't think this needs to go to a committee it's really up to us as a council do we think this is something that is housing and should be funded for with money we already have in the bank on housing or do we think it's so far from that that we should fund it with new taxes

Councillor Tabor, and then the Assistant Mayor.

Thanks, Mayor. The artists community drives a lot of our economy, but the Housing Trust Fund it is dedicated to direct payments that help people afford houses what this 65 000 is is a study by art space they presented to us in october of 25 and they would research the feasibility of an artist's live work program i have two concerns that unfortunately I can't support this first the study could be done and due to the shrinkage of my tech credits low-income housing tax credits and reductions in state funding this would have to rely on philanthropy in the community that might not happen so in terms of where can something like this feasibility study be done that can take the risk? Our $260 million capital spending program is much better able to shoulder the risk. I think if a feasible plan came out of this and philanthropy and private money and LIHTC credits all were put together and we needed that little extra, that's when you could come to the housing trust fund. And it would be direct money that would go to direct housing benefit. And then the other issue to me is this is live workspace. So we're essentially subsidizing a business. And I think that's okay to create a critical mass of artists to drive economic growth, but it's not strictly housing. And the Housing Trust Fund is for Strictly Housing.

So the Housing Trust Fund does contemplate development studies, analysis, planning, and consultative efforts related to below market. it's within that realm of which this is brought in and to reduce the tax rate through this and that there's been you know I could see where the you know the desire to suggest this to the housing committee but what we you know we voted you know and just go on the record I did vote for this so you know your mileage may vary if you remember but the you know the idea you know as an effort to take this and put it into a fund that we have that's not from the general funds you know and it's not from taxpayer and saying this is a way to reduce the overall budget by something that we agreed to is needed that we agreed to as a part of the CIP counselor cook can simply withdraw her motion if it's something that uh the council would like to deliberate and send it to another committee ultimately it's our authority whether or not to spend the money on this or not and we have you know under the uh the uh below market rate housing trust fund the authority to do so you know by the uh you know the i think it was the adoption in 2025 uh to do so Councilor Begley?

So just looking at the meeting notes, funnily enough, 10.03 p.m. on December 8th, we adopted the CIP 8-0. There was no motion for or against this particular item, so that, to me, would have been the time to take up issue. What we're now trying to decide in this meeting is do we want to use the, is it 65,000? The 65,000 that we put into the bank two years ago, getting, as I mentioned earlier, not that great a return, because it's a really safe investment, I would assume. Or do we want to raise an additional or a new $65,000? To me, it makes sense to use money that we've already raised for a housing study instead of raising new money for a housing study, since we've already approved 8 to 0 that we were going to do this. I guess I don't understand why we'd want to raise new money when we have money sitting in the bank already.

Any further, Councillor Cook?

Thank you, Your Honor. I just brought this forward because I thought that it would be a good way to save the taxpayers some money and bring do a study that is for below market rate housing out of a trust that is for below market rate housing so that is essentially the goal here was just to try to reduce um a little bit of capital outlay this year um and to continue this study um counselor Tabor I want to push back on you on something about live work and how the money is dedicated just for living space because our zoning code allows for artists studios within living space now and allows artists to teach even within their living space so so that's what we're talking about we're talking about space where artists live but also can have their studio within their space which most artists do the challenge we have in this community is that artists don't have studio space because they don't have living space you know they're really struggling just to find living space and they and and those artists need below market rate housing like many people in many professions do but they oftentimes work in their homes not outside of their homes and so they need that space to even be in the community as a worker within the community

all right any more discussion on the amendment on the floor um okay i will call the vote all in favor aye any opposed opposed opposed it's too opposed okay do we need a roll call because it's oh for amendments do we need roll calls on the amendment i don't think so i think it's the final vote on your resolution just on Okay.

Your Honor, I have a second motion that follows that first one because the first one just authorized the trustees to release the funds. The second motion is to move to amend the proposed fiscal year 27 budget to decrease the capital outlay by $65,000 amount representing the cost of the artists live work studio study upon authorization by the trustees of trust funds to release the $65,000 from the city of Portsmouth below market rate housing trust fund for the artists live work studio study second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed next

Oh, yeah. Let's do the fees one.

Then might I suspend the rules to bring up under my name, 15B, mine and Councillor Bagley's name. Discuss that because it is about fees.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? um i just after getting an email from a resident regarding um

non-resident um access to spinnaker i did a little bit as a member both councillor begley and i and councillor tabor are members of p committee i remember they were going up but now actually doing a little bit of research and looking at market rates and understanding that there might be a lot of people going there that aren't residents and it is supposed to be and there's obviously a lot of repairs that place needs i've heard a lot i've never actually been there but it's great it's great but if there's maintenance and whatnot if we could raise fees so i've made a proposal uh to increase fees and in this case it would take the adult non-resident membership per year um up to four 575 the adult non-resident membership per month up to 50. the senior citizen non-resident membership per year up to 300 senior citizen non-resident membership per month up to 35 and daily guest fee for non-residents up to 25. second i haven't actually made the motion oh i thought that was the motion the motion is to increase the adult non-resident fees for spinnaker point as presented second are you can second that um but to discuss it a little bit further when you take a look at what the actual numbers are because then i asked started asking some more questions around this we actually do have a cap there's only allowance of 2 000 members uh in total that are allowed at spinnaker and there's a cap on non-residents of 300 of those 2 000. um some of our numbers are above that so i think we need to probably do a better job of keeping track of the members that are non non-residents because I think that would really help. The currently recommended increases based off of what I just told you are like for the adults, it's $100 more than what was given. non-resident per day was increased to 42 i increased it to 50 it's like eight more dollars 50 more dollars for the senior citizens and um both about equal and the daily rate for them as well so i think that by going up on these and really asking the staff to do uh really good job of tracking the numbers as far as registrations and non-resident fees i think that we could one possibly raise a little bit more money based off of the increases to try to help with any deferred maintenance costs that the spinnaker might have but will also hopefully allow residents to have more access um right now the numbers as i've been given it seems like there's almost double residents to non-residents that are typically there they gave me numbers for like a day and you know what's gone through on one particular day and what's gone through since like july one so i do think we have a lot of residents that take advantage of this but it is so inexpensive when you look at um uh fees for now that's my right page where did i have that uh fees for like the ymca they're 67 monthly which is equates to like 804 annually um that i think is a real equivalent we're not even at market rate with the requested changes that we've put forward when you look at a premium gym um in portsmouth they're like 99 a month and that's you know sort of looking trying to look at apples to apples as far as what the the facility offers so that's almost 1200 annually so i still think that our numbers are very low but i think the committee could continue to really keep an eye on that each year to make sure that we get closer to what market rate might be maybe not all the way there but at least closer so i will stop talking

Councilor Bagley. Thanks, Your Honor. Yeah, and I appreciate Councilor Moreau bumping these numbers up more, because when we did it in the fee committee meeting, we weren't super prepared to raise them, so we kind of thought what would what makes the most sense but counselor went out did the the research the reason i think this is important that we do and it's for non-residents first and that's about 600 memberships versus 1202 resident memberships is we're coming the spinnaker is a kind of a unique thing it's um a city-run gym with a pool spa sauna indoor track, all sorts of cool things in a not super young building that the city doesn't own and leases. And I believe that lease is coming up due in the next few years. concurrent with really severe budget challenges and when people talk about cutting the budget they always want us to cut the budget and not eliminate anything this is the type of thing that could potentially be eliminated now a couple years ago i talked about you know spinnaker being expense that maybe didn't make a ton of sense for the city and i do believe over the next week or so all 1200 and two members came up to me and expressed their displeasure with that perspective um so i think it would be a highly on popular thing for us to get rid of but if we get non-resident fees in line this year resident fees in line next year perhaps we get to a point where we can maintain spinnaker as a revenue neutral instead of a subsidized gym thank you counselor bagley i can imagine those conversations um any other discussion on uh counselor tabor

yeah i support this too um spinnaker is we don't own it so it's hard to justify capital spending on it so if we can generate more funds from non-resident users and we can equalize the difference the tremendous This is a tremendous bargain, even for non-residents. So we can add some revenue that can help with maintenance. And we're getting to where the facility's crowded. So it makes sense to try and use an economic lever to control the number of people and control behavior and actually put a little money in our pocket for maintenance as well. Councillor Cook.

Thank you, Your Honor. I absolutely support this motion. I think a resident wrote to us a few weeks ago and specifically highlighted this issue. I think it's really critical that we think about ways that we can save our residents money. And Spinnaker is a challenge because we don't own the facility and can't really invest a lot in capital spending in it at the moment. So increasing non-resident fees does help significantly. I also think that beyond the fee increases that we're considering, we need to think about other ways the Recreation Department can increase fees over time for non-residents for things like pickleball court usage, which was also highlighted by that resident. any way that we can, it's not just about increasing fees, but it's about making space for residents to be allowed to use these facilities, but also allowing them to use things like our pickleball courts and not having overcrowding in our community because we do provide great services. It's not that I wanna exclude people that don't live here, it's just that our residents who are paying taxes should probably come first.

thank you for bringing up the pickleball courts because i did forget to mention that because right now um i looked all through our fee sheet and then asked like how has that been set and i guess it's been practice for renting out the court that it's five dollars whether you're a resident or non-resident so i really think that we need to as a council look at how we can bring that all fees that are charged to folks into the fee study committee so that we can make sure that we track what's being charged even those five dollar fees i think it would be really important because right now i guess anyone can pay five dollars whether you're a resident or not and you get a court so i think we need to just take a harder look at that and so over the course of the next year we can really try to bring all fees that are charged from the city in line with the fee study committee and make sure that that's all tracked appropriately

Sensing agreement. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. We'll move to the items. I ask a question on fees and the fee schedule.

Should we get the motion on the floor and then discuss it? Sure.

I'd wait a motion to adopt the fees as scheduled, as presented, or as amended.

Your Honor, I move to adopt resolution number 7, 2026, municipal fees.

Second. As amended, right?

As amended. As amended. Thank you.

Okay, counselor cook motions on the floor.

Thank you honor I just had a question around doc utility access fees, which I noted were going up this year At least the recommendation is that they go up But they're they're scheduled to be the exact same for residents and non-residents and I didn't know if there was a way to Differentiate or if that was something that is by statute. We can only charge what the services cost

We have both Todd and Tim Bailey here. Is there a way to differentiate between what a resident would pay versus what a non-resident would pay?

For dock utility?

mean they pay a different docking fee under doc utility fees are listed as the same cost residents per day is $16 per season 320 same thing for non-residents that's an increase from last year but I didn't know why residents and non-residents were the same and why we didn't have differentiating fees there so thanks I'm gonna let Tim Bailey who's a direct supervisor of that

good evening Tim Bailey spinnaker Point supervisor and question about the marina so it was about utility fees yes currently there's not a separation of the utility fee there's a non-resident rate for rental or for a seasonal but the utility fees a flat rate are we allowed to charge more of non-residents for utility fees I just wasn't sure what the law was on that Not that we're aware of.

Okay. Great. Councillor Boyle?

Thank you, Eric. Tim, while you're here, do you mind just, do you think the lady have any severe negative impact or anything from the changes we just made for the spinnaker fees?

In terms of the fees? potentially I mean the increase will generate more revenue you know it's just a guess how many non-residents will not continue their memberships for that increase of the rates we've relied on that non residency amount that we differentiate which is 50% more than the resident rate to kind of offset the resident fees however I think an increase in the rates is helpful and probably required um it's just i'm not sure how that's going to affect this long term but regardless i think it's necessary and you know we can work with it thank you

Thanks your honor and thank you to counselor cook. So there's it looks like there's 15 docking fees from Pierce Island Transient to for our dockage to seasonal dockage and day dockage and weddings And I don't think we caught that on the fee committee that they're the same for resident and non-resident. We did amend Council rules I think last year or two years ago so we can come back and revise the fees at any point so what I would suggest is um, take council of Rose lead, do like a bit of a study and then what one, make sure we're allowed to under New Hampshire statute and to establish what a good differential is. Because I do think, you know, our residents subsidize all of these things. They should get the advantage when it comes to, to usage fees. Um, and, Just wanted to move forward. So we can give a quick synopsis of what we did at fee committee. There's a lot of fees and some of them are a little bit hilarious because I think they're from the 1800s. But we had 95 fee increases, 14 new free fees, over 10 departments and one fee elimination. But the highlights are water and sewer, we're doing drastic changes to, but those have been covered in the work sessions and will be covered So I don't think we need to get into detail about those fee changes here. Parking is another big one where we're making changes to the foundry garage rate and we have the wrap coming up and we'll have more parking discussion. So probably we don't need to talk about it too much here. Planning and sustainability is a big one. We drastically increased the maximum fee, which is the fees that you pay for permits when you do large projects. So we kind of looked at ways we can get revenue. And sometimes these fees, they stay stagnant for years because they're not that substantial. But 20 years ago, it cost x amount to register. I don't know. for a valet station you know that price probably shouldn't be the same today so we kind of went through with the health of staff and we made adjustments more in line with what the reality of one the cost of these fees to the city to implement and two to make sure we weren't losing revenues that we could capture this way instead of through property taxes thank you councillor bagley any other questions

All in favor of adopting the motion as amended?

Roll call.

It's a roll call. That's right, because we're into the big... Let's see. We've been going since... Yeah, we can take a little break. We'll take this vote, and then we'll take a quick restroom break. So we'll have a roll call vote.

roll call vote um assistant mayor kelly yes counselor cook yes counselor taylor yes counselor baylock yes counselor bagley yes counselor moreau yes counselor flynn yes counselor hopkins yes oh mayor i'm sorry about that yes all right passes i will uh take a five-minute recess

So we are on to get the fees done. We are going to the next portion of this, and that is the general fund. So there's a couple of motions, both remaining from myself and Councillor Bagley.

I will... Your Honor, should I kick off the motion and then we can start amending it?

I'd wait a motion to take up one of those you're on our motion to suspend the rules and bring up 15 C All in favor? Aye. Any discussion? Councillor Bagley, what is yours?

15C is yours. It's yours.

I'm on the wrong page. Fuel subsidy.

Sorry. Your Honor, I move to amend the FY27 budget to include a $56,000 fuel subsidy due to the drastic increase in fuel costs since the budget was first prepared.

Second.

And I'll just speak to this briefly. Obviously it's not fun to add money to the budget, but as I alluded to earlier, I think we've established a very collaborative approach with city staff and management and setting the expectation that if you bring us a reasonable budget, we're not gonna just look to cut things from it. The challenge that everyone is facing is back in January when these budgets were starting to be prepared in February, gas was 46% cheaper. If you think about the fire trucks, the police cruisers, the DPW plows, basically all of the vehicles that the city uses, that's a lot of gas. We have two options tonight. We can say okay You got to cut from something else and figure out a way to pay for your gas next year Or we can acknowledge that this is something that nobody could have reasonably budget for Because it was such a drastic increase and create a subsidy for it. That's what typically what happens in the commercial sector I have a bunch of freight rates that I use for machines and they all have fuel subsidies tacked on them and if gas goes back to historic prices those subsidies will go away so it's kind of a clean way to say we don't want to set the new budget that the fuel is so high because hopefully next year we won't need it but the other thing i don't want to put in future years in people's minds like oh i better i better pad the budget somewhere just in case gas goes up like that again so this is kind of a way for us as a council to say hey we acknowledge you couldn't have accurately budgeted for this but we're not going to take the cruisers the trucks off the road you're going to have to put gas in them And you gotta figure out how to pay for it somehow.

Council Bagley, any other discussion?

council moreau so are you seeing this as a separate line item within the budget so it's included as a budgeted number or i guess could you explain what you mean by subsidy a little bit more yeah i would probably lean to the city manager it was talked about one of the workshops that we estimated an additional 56 000 in fuel costs would be needed um i don't know the best way to kind of earmark if that's the right term that's what gets used for fuel

so one way would be to increase this the contingency by 56,000 but we anticipate that the numbers that were generated because the numbers that were generated came from DPW anything from the projection of what fuel consumption rates were what the budget generally speaking across the city DPW weighs in on and makes recommendation of what the gasoline budget should be so they weighed in on what this subsidy subsidy might look like fifty six thousand and they have a breakdown of the departments that it falls on predominantly DPW and police I think with some small dollars to a couple of other departments so we intend right now that we will just add those dollar amounts to those departments in their budgets

in their fuel line in their fuel line yep okay so it'll get distributed separately not one as opposed to putting it in one line and then having to transfer it out later no other question so i guess the um i'll pass the gavel since i'll probably talk more than expect to on this as well so we have $300,000 in contingency we also are you know I have two motions under my name and I'll pick up after the budget passes because they're not related to the budget but they're specific to the fact that we historically over the last five years over over over budgeted um on salaries even minus overtime and that we've been very conservative on revenues um you know going back to five years i wrote down uh some of the numbers but you know um we were uh we're still waiting on fy uh 26 but in fy 25 we were uh 2.38 million dollars um over uh our our budgeted amount and so it's difficult to do um budgets but it's also difficult to predict revenues because a lot of that comes from permit fees a lot of that comes from car registrations those are dependent upon uh the economy we are more conservative with our interests than we're receiving and we reduce that by about seven percent partly due to cash flow reasons partly because of the fact that um we are uh uh we're experiencing lower returns um all of that uh is saying you know we're talking about 56 000 while not the most amount of money is that I believe that there is room specifically within the contingency that identifies this as well as money that will otherwise go back to the general fund through a fund balance that we are looking at a 3.5 million dollar increase to the fund balance or use of the fund balance that's below our average in the last seven years and so i think that there's some things that i'll talk about later but i i do think that you know before we start you know i i would love to you know be in a point where we are saying 56 000 is what we need to appropriate for this because we are being so stringent on the other aspects of the budget and move from kind of things go back in the fund balance and uh and come back into the budget on the next year to things like a vacancy factor that we're employing across all of that. So it gives real transparency to what we expect to be budgeting, even when that budget is that we expect to spend two weeks trying to hire for a position that we lose, and to be able to do all those things. So I... just can't support the addition of the 56 000 at this moment because i think there's some structural things that we got to change and i'll ask and it's not for specifically this budget because i know that that was a lot of work and it might not pass but it would be for before we set the tax rate to be thoughtful around what we are projecting. Once we get all the revenues back, because we still don't live in a world where we set next year's budget without our revenues all the way in from last year. And so I want to be able to look at that. I don't think that right now, before we make these changes and have much more streamlined accounting of what we are going to actually spend versus what we're budgeting and what we're then using salary savings to pay for overtime it's a necessary ad right now but appreciate the effort to deliver what the the the departments will need to run their position or run their departments department heads to run their departments

I agree. I don't think $56,000 needs to be added to the budget. As the mayor said, I think this can be found in there.

Any other discussion? Councillor Cook, I think you're raising your hand.

I am. Thank you, Your Honor. I know this budget's a pretty lean budget. Where do we think that cost cutting is going to happen in order to pay for

is additional fifty six thousand dollars in fuel surcharges this year i think one of the ways to address uh an overage like that would be through the use of contingency funds i i would recommend that among the options that would be on the table i think we'd have to see where the overages and through which departments but to have a better understanding but contingency is an option so 300 000 and just for

We do have I took the gavel back too quickly, but quickly We set department level budgets and you know looking if we had added a salary Vacancy factor which was even below the lowest rate that we've experienced over the last five years which out, you know cutting out overtime from that of 1.25 percent it would have netted six and a half thousand Yes, $650,000 in this year alone, and so that's with the most conservative estimates. We could be fully staffed and never lose an employee this year, but given the fact that it's not been our trend, it's possible based on our previous five years that this would be coming back to the general fund through fund balance. Councilor Hopkins?

I guess I just have a clarifying question. Can you, you know, from what I'm taking from this is that Councilor Bagley is saying, you know, hey, let's budget a fuel subsidy because, you know, costs are crazy. And what you're saying is that, you know, we don't need to budget for that. We will find it elsewhere after we balance, you know, get all the revenues in and contingencies and whatnot. Is that kind of, could you?

tell the public what we're doing in a fifth grade level sure well i could try um so um and again the motion on the floor is to add 56 000 in the budget and the thing that i am um what i would like to do going forward is have a better understanding of the salaries that we budget on a yearly basis that go to different departments and the vacancy factor meaning that if we have it takes us three weeks to hire somebody and looking for a job that that budget is going to be out those three weeks of that salary the other place that this would be you know it's difficult to I mean I I once worked when I was in the as a rower I worked at a natural gas company and there was a quote that said show me the man that's gonna predict the price of oil tomorrow and I'll show you the first person to do so in history not that I expect any of these systemic things to come back you know in line very quickly because of our international escapades in in in that realm but we have contingency for things that are slightly unpredictable and the price of oil is one of those things that is slightly unpredictable and I guess finally trying to figure out how do we I guess I think overall it's for me I would like to support this because I think it's incredibly important that we tell the public exactly what we're going to be spending on. In that same token, we have historically for the past five years, underfunded overtime knowing that we're going to have salary vacancies pay for that that's something that i want to get us away from and i don't want to you know this is a smaller amount and i don't want to get this uh in there until we have solved that i think once we have a a better understanding of exactly what departments are spending in terms of the salaries that they're actually spending versus what we're allocating and then what comes back to the fund balance on the school side there's very little you know overtime you know compared to some other departments and so being able to understand what it is the salaries that we're actually um supporting and the monies that are actually being drawn down and given in w-2s to folks versus you know what's in the budget item and then what goes over to cover overtimes That's where I think the money is for this, and until we get that tighter, I would love to be able to not add this here. Councilor Wagner.

Thanks, Your Honor, and I'll take my shot in the different opinion that I have. I mean, right, there's the world we would all love to live in, and then there's the world we do live in. How much gas we use as a city is I don't know this for sure, but I imagine Director Rice can get that within plus or minus 10%, depending on how heavy the snow is that year. It's relatively known. You put an escalation factor of where you think the cost per gas is, and then that's how you generate that budget. To me, it's not about the $56,000. It's about telling our staff, hey, when something happens outside of your control, you don't have to have padded your budget somewhere else. And I think this is a small step to set the tone that we wanna have razor thin budgets from our staff. And when things that are outside of your control happen, we're gonna back you up.

Yeah, I agree with that premise. I just think that it's i guess i i believe that there is other areas specifically in overtime and sours that we've not been as diligent in delivering that and you know to start with you know that process of of asking you know knowing that we are going to uh send money back to the fund balance with this budget that um and we've taken less on the fund balance than we have to draw down the taxes then the average of the last seven years it's hard to see you know why we start with increasing a revenue when we know that you know we've been you know whether or not we've been you know conservative in whether or not we've been conservative or not in revenues this year it's just that we've been conservative on revenues for every year previous and you know next year if the change happens and it has you know even with the parking fund of going up 2.6 million dollars versus what's rev what's predicted in this budget at the moment i just don't see that there is a that this is the place on the back of the taxpayer to say where we're going to find these efficiencies at the moment and i would come back to you know that the until we get the salaries and benefits which i think will be beneficial for all of the contractual obligations that we have to to wait on this um and to be able to you know keep the current practice until next year's budget when we can be a little bit more predictive on the salaries that are going to be incurred and spent versus the salaries that will be paid on overtime versus the salaries that will not that will just go back to the fund balance Councilor Cook.

Thank you, Your Honor. So I wanted to know what the fund balance projections are for this year. And the reason I'm asking that is that if fuel contingency comes essentially out of our contingency fund, that's money that doesn't get returned to fund balance. And fund balance is so critical for keeping our AAA bond rating. And so essentially, I want to make sure that we're not making a back of the budget cut by passing a budget that doesn't include funds that we end up depleting more fund balance than anticipated.

thank you for the question for a projection for the end of fiscal year 26 I'm not anticipating I'm not anticipating a significant operating surplus on the budget side we're trying to meet a 1.57 million dollar price tag for a school care assessment and we're taking steps to try to preserve dollars down the stretch to make sure that we're not doing Christmas in June spending on things that we might otherwise have picked up to free up dollars in the next year budget to do different things so on the budget side i don't expect there to be much give back and on the revenue side conservatively we're somewhere between three and 3.5 million dollars that we anticipate those coming out of the same items that the mayor has talked about in the last couple of meetings we're generating some surpluses beyond our estimates in motor vehicle We have permits and registrations in building permits. some smaller some smaller surpluses i think we're generating ambulance billing a couple of others so those are cumulatively we're always very conservative with our revenues i i applaud the change in change in fees uh we'll create in fy27 another let's call it 140 or so thousand dollars so you saved a penny there we'll have to adjust that revenue and the fees uh because certainly we will generate some we'll lose some members but we're taking that into account right now our plug number is around 140 000 so we revisit all of those but right now looks like our excesses will jive about 3.4 million that should be the fund balance contribution at the end of the year the fund balance that's the contribution that we'll make the fund balance we work very hard to keep right at that 13.65 level that we've had according to our policy and staying in the middle of that range

So do we think that it will continue to remain there at the end of this fiscal year?

At the end of this fiscal year, yeah, I'm confident that we're going to be able to stay in that range. It's worth a conversation over time. As the organization grows, as our total budget grows, does 13.65, if you will, still represent a good target? If we were a $2 billion, would we still want 13.65% or would we be happier with 12 or 11? Right now it's been a big part of the commentary from Standard & Poor's when they've done the rating. talking about the reserves that we have. And so we have been consistent right at that level. And this year, I think we'll be fine with that. Every year is its own creature, but for right now, FY26 looks good.

Thank you. Thank you.

Councillor Tabor.

Yeah, I think any time we're adding to the budget, I have to ask, is it needed? And this would be another $8 or $9 for the average homeowner. And from what I'm hearing, it's not needed. We have contingency, and we have other ways that we can flex to find this.

Any other comments? Seeing none, it's an amendment, not a roll call vote. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Opposed. Did you catch that? I'll have to count it. All right. We'll go through the, we'll call a roll call vote.

assistant mayor kelly no counselor cook no that's the tabor no counselor blaylock no counselor bagley yes councilman no counselor flynn no counselor hopkins no mayor mckechn no all right um thank you councillor bagley uh well i'd wait a motion to take the

items where am i 14 14 e f and g your honor i move to suspend the rules to bring the uh following forward second all in favor aye any opposed um we'll pass the gavel uh the first is um uh so i can make this motion uh the men the proposed fy27 budget to decrease decrease the fire department budget as proposed by 174 740 that amount representing the cost associated with the deputy chief training position second and i have a second so um let me uh give the rationale uh for this and then happy to discuss this uh so um went back and watched the minutes and We can bring up Chief McClellan. I think there will be some questions on this. On the minutes of the February meeting where it was adopted, there were two budget proposals, one for 0.99%, which accounted for a level funding of all positions, and then one with 2.03% or so that asked for an additional member, so additional services outside of the scope. some questions that I that I have on this are around one of the reasons although I didn't hear that in the budget session was around succession planning still not really clear so we will have the chief speak to that the second is there's a lot of overtime across all departments and in terms of being able to make decisions that you know support it's difficult to make a you know positional hire in the management level that's not a positional hire that's a direct frontline supporter and given the fact that we you know have a you know we have the ability to level fund services know and that was presented to the fire commission i would like to be able to given that we're asking other departments to reduce school department to reduce the city to reduce it seems hard to justify in this budget year to to increase this now think the argument that we received is that this was level funded understand that from a workman's compensation the state finally agreed as we do that having a professional firefighting outfit is a is a good and right thing to do and it should come with accruing certain benefits especially in workman's compensation but there was also an 11% increase in health insurance costs that you're wiping out you know a large portion of of that savings in that in that for the workman's compensation and i just it's difficult to right now support a position that's in addition especially in command staff outside of what we have been doing and what the department and has presented as level funding the services they have So I'm happy to invite the chief if he could answer specifically around succession planning and how this is related to that and why this is needed at this juncture.

Thank you, Your Honor. So specifically around the new deputy position, to talk about session planning, right, I'm under contract which expires next June, right? And the thought was that we would try and bring somebody up in this budget session to be able to bring online in the command staff. Additionally, the training position we had spoken about previously because the number of new people that we have in the last five years of the 65 people that we have that respond to emergencies, I have 20 with five years or less. I have 11 that are in their first year of employment. The goal was to try and make sure that in the next coming years that we have these folks trained to the same standard. that we're not relying on the captains and lieutenants who are answering alarms and going on calls to do this training for these folks and to make sure that our folks are set up for success in the future. Additionally, last year when we brought this forward, the other idea that we're talking about here is looking at the services that we provide with respect to emergency medical services in that we could be doing more and that we want to be able to do more and to position ourselves to do so. We believe that we could start a rapid sequence intubation program, which would require some intensive training, but more importantly, some serious record keeping. And then on top of that, looking ahead at some of the changes that are coming in the EMS world. Elsewhere in other states, we see folks being able to deliver in the pre-hospital setting antibiotics in the field and doing blood transfusions for trauma victims. So those are the types of things that we thought that this job would be able to do, be able to train for, and to have the city position ready to do so. And then the other problem that we've identified is the commercial driver's license piece, and that in working with as that sort of record keeper and training person to be able to administer the program to make sure that our staff was able to get their commercial driver's licenses in a timely manner and to increase the training of our folks. And as part of this, we worked with Public Works to be able to recognize that we could probably have a little bit of overlap between departments. and that we could assist Public Works with their administration and training on the commercial driver's license for their folks too. A lot of the challenges that they face is getting folks in front of the classroom because they don't have enough two or three at a time. and being able to absorb that. And it was felt that we could probably do that with this position. So that's the history behind it and where we're going with it. Again, that position we brought forward last year as an initiative, and it did not pass. And again, the thought was that this year the direction was pretty clear with respect to if we were going to come up with a new position, we'd have to be able to show how we were going to be able to fund it. My thought was to take these savings from the workers' comp premiums and apply it to this position. Does that answer the question sufficiently, Your Honor?

So I still have, I understand the $40,000 in savings in training. I guess what programs for the training to meet new standards were explored before, because of the $177,000, $34,000 and change or so goes to benefits. Benefits are very volatile as we know at this time. What programs were investigated to understand whether or not that training that you're looking to achieve for the new hires could be done either through a contractor or another not in a deputy chief position?

So we did look at some of the other training areas that we're doing in-house. We looked at bringing in contractors and we tried to identify what would work and what the numbers were. some of the numbers that that that i have here which are a little stale admittedly um i haven't i have they have not been refreshed right in more than a year but we looked we looked at trying to figure out what it would take to bring somebody in for uh you know a contractor in for ems continuing education for our our staff and and that words uh upwards of forty thousand dollars a year to bring somebody in from the outside uh to hire a contractor uh similarly um the the the you know the Right now we have a program where we have our folks getting their annual continuing education to recertify for the EMT and paramedic licenses online using a video platform to get their continuing ed hours that came out of COVID. And the thought was to go back to an in-person where we had a real instructor up in front of our staff being able to interact with them. um right and uh and then trying to get again that fire training and get our crews standardized um trying to put a number on it right whatever whatever that that sort of number could be whether it was through a uh through an overtime arrangement or through trying to bring in a contractor uh we had that at about uh 300 a day so we're just looking to do that twice a week right to to throw some numbers out

And so it seems that part of the issue that you identified is greener. a greener force, a younger force that needs more training. If in five years, I guess the hard part for me is that we're gonna expect to train all these folks and keep them here. We might not have the same need and level of training at that point. Would it not be easier to have a contracted position that we can assess given the fact that there are given that there is an acute need potentially now that won't be as acute in the future because those folks will have been trained?

Well, I believe that this issue that we have now is going to continue as we hire people and want to make sure that we bring them up to speed. and that the current staff that we have that that we're you know making sure that these skills are being used and practiced and that they're not perishing right from from not being used right so repetition and and doing those types of refreshers and you know training okay and then maybe just

I still don't understand the succession portion of this. How is it, we have chief, we have deputy chief, what would this be?

So we have a chief and an assistant chief now, right? Previously we'd had another deputy chief in charge of fire prevention. We have an acting deputy in that role now. We're trying to restructure it. The thought was to bring along another deputy so that we'd have a chief, an assistant chief, and a deputy like we've had previously.

just why you think about that can I make a motion to go past 1030 so there's a deputy chief so

When you say restructure the position, what does that entail?

So the thought was to not have the person in charge of fire prevention not be a deputy chief, right, that we wanted that person perhaps at a different rank structure, right, that we could not have required for residency or, you know, pay, right, and to try and change that. is that it but that's not in this budget it's not in this budget presently no we're still in negotiations okay could it be that when we figure that out we have this one that that back fills it so we're replacing kind of line for line the deputy chief position it would still be a a new position that i'd be creating somewhere right i mean

well we would risk we would take the we would take the deputy we would take the deputy chief for fire prevention and change the responsibilities of deputy chief for training and we would move the uh fire prevention officer to a fire prevention officer is that something that could be considered if we're gonna if we view that this is needed and we're looking at restructuring in the future to to wait until that restructure is complete and simply change the responsibilities of the kind of what i'm doing here

but we haven't reached so we'll have two deputy chiefs though with this so we're gonna we're going to we're reducing a position now I don't I guess I'm not following that it's a new position there will be one new position an added position right that position is the deputy would be a deputy chief under this proposal a deputy chief that I now have in this current budget year right is going away to a different position once we negotiate that

that person in charge of fire prevention would have a different rank okay and what is that included in the budget in terms of that new but it's not in terms of the the new is there any salary savings in that again because i haven't negotiated it with you and we're still in we're still in contract negotiations that's the intent as i stand here okay i guess i Why would the order of operations not be that when we negotiate a new position for that we reclassify the deputy chief position as being in charge of Training and go to hire that and we're not adding any position in that case for the deputy chief I'm not entirely sure

This was the direction that I went in with the commission and in speaking with HR and the city's labor negotiator, so. Okay.

Councilor Moran. Most of my questions were answered, but if I'm correct in doing the math, between the 40K and the 300, which works out to be approximately 32K, it's like a 72K approximately annual savings in reclassifying or creating this position. Is that correct?

I believe your math. I don't have it here in front of me.

Thank you, Councilor Flynn. Yeah, I think that this is the sort of move where, particularly related to the demographic of the people working right now, that it's an investment into ourselves. We can pour money into this. It is, thinking about succession, I don't know, I'm in support of this role being added. I think it makes sense to invest into ourselves in this way.

Thank you.

Counselor Cook. Thank you, Your Honor. So my spouse works in medicine and has to do retraining every year in CPR, lifesaving. What kind of recertification do firefighters have to do that you have to have training, regular training on? This is something I'm just not aware of.

So again, it's on the EMS side of the house, where for licensure we have to re-register and re-certify with the National Registry. We have a group that goes through every year, and every other year on CPR as well, and ACLS protocols.

I also understand some of the challenges around emergency rooms and currently shortages of beds and some of the challenges with getting people in and seen in a timely manner. So I can understand when you're saying that people are going to have to be picking up additional services in the field. How much time? Well, I know that there's a considerable amount of time from the moment you're on scene until you get to the hospital. But how much time does your staff have to spend then in the hospital also before somebody is taken on by hospital staff?

So typically, our turnaround times at the hospital are not that long. However, when we get into hospitals going into diversion and increased acuity and then unavailable beds for our folks to be able to transfer somebody to from their stretcher, then there's some wait times. Sometimes it can be significant, 30 to 45 minutes, but certainly we work with the hospitals to try and make sure that we're not slamming them all with the sickest of the sick and try and move it around the system, so to speak, to the different area hospitals.

Thank you. I have a particular concern about making sure that our residents are receiving the best care that they can when the fire department is called to an emergency, a medical emergency in the community. And I do understand some of the challenges right now in our hospital settings as far as treating people in a timely manner, mostly just because of shortages of beds and staffing. And so I appreciate the need for additional training and future additional training and additional services.

Councilor Bagley?

Thank you, Your Honor. So I'm just going to review what I understand about the fire department and correct me if I'm wrong. One of the advantages of being councilor is you get to do a ride-along, which I did with Brian Real's team out of Station 1 a number of years ago. We have four shifts, A, B, C, and D. On each shift, there's three teams of five. and because we have three firehouses, and what we have is two on the ambulance, three on the engine or tower, and that team is led, two of the teams are led by a lieutenant, one of the teams is led by a captain, so it stands to reason that we have four captains and eight lieutenants. What we used to have is a deputy chief of fire prevention, and due to retirement, that position is sort of unfilled at the moment. Looking at how much fire service has shifted from fighting fires and prevention to EMS response, it makes sense to me that we would have a deputy chief of training. When I did the ride along, it was pretty busy. Brian was the captain. The idea that he would be training a class or doing all of the training stuff while responding to calls is... It doesn't seem feasible. So it seems to me that makes sense to create a deputy chief of training Because that's a primary need and function of the fire department in today's day and age You are you are correct I can I can't Tell you that you were wrong at anything.

You said thanks chief.

Thank you So, you know I have I served as a volunteer firefighter in rural Montana for five years and And I've directly experienced you are only as good as your training. You are only as good as your team. And in the rural setting, I got to see those differences in where training was prioritized in the district that I was in versus others that were a little bit more haphazard. And there's a difference in the quality of care out there. So I absolutely support this position. for that reason and also to the point that uh counselor bagley just made in that you know it's it's just not right to ask people to do more with less and that's what it would be it's it's our captains and our our senior um you know staff in the fire department training while doing this while doing that while doing that while keeping it all documented and i just that that again to me, affects quality. And it's just not fair. It's also a recruitment and retention thing. If you want to recruit quality individuals and retain them, you need to support them. And this is across all industries. You need to support them with training. You need to support them as they move up through the ranks. So while I am curious, Mayor, to your point of the order of operations and is this does this need to be a new something or is it just somewhere else that could go, you know, those I would be curious about, but when it comes down to it, absolutely in support of this um i do have some questions though so with the deputy chief training position would that entirely be training would that would it be divided amongst other things you know what what does that look like and also um it doesn't seem to me that taking the deputy chief of fire prevention is an apples to apples position of the deputy chief of training that seems like two different skill sets i don't know that you could just swap them out

so thank you for the question and and yes at the end of the day we have uh you know we've had three people in in the fire prevention division and at at the end of the day we hope to still have three one of them will be the the one in charge what the rank structure is and what it looks like we're in the process with respect to what the the job is doing it's the deputy chief of fire and ems yeah there is also going to be some other responsibilities to to you know lighten the load so to speak in the front office and make sure that we have the bandwidth to do everything that we're we're trying to get done now as well and then as as part of that right bringing somebody up to the deputy level also gives an opportunity in that succession planning where we're bringing somebody up who's now not thinking about shift level things but rather higher level planning training and and budgeting right so that uh when we start to have these retirements somebody's there and then another person to put in the rotation for uh for folks that are on call and available for uh for emergencies and after-hour incidents

Thank you, Councillor Blaylock, and then Councillor Tabor.

Thank you, Assistant Mayor. Thank you, Chief. I'm going to be supportive of this position. You know, as someone that grew up here, I'm used to living next to a firefighter, right? I'm used to Butch Francois being in my backyard, you know, and Rich Duddy around the corner. We don't live in a Portsmouth like that anymore. Chief, I know you live in Portsmouth because your contract requires you to. I know a couple others that do, but it's not common. And I've seen how much experience has left that apartment just in the five years I've been up here. I remember when I first did my ride along, I recognized a bunch of the guys from when I was young, and now there's a bunch of new faces. But to that, I do think this position is an investment. You mentioned the online training for EMT certification. i yeah i you know i trained my staff down the fair landing um we could train them you know how to cut romaine lettuce you know using a video and everything but um if i was training them how to save someone's life i don't want to rely on a video i want them to have an instructor in person i want them to be able to ask questions i want them to have you know be personal one-on-one um and i i just want to remind you know not they just fight fire the emergency medical services they provide um and just you know when no one knows what to do they call the fire department and if this is what the chief is asking for i'll be supportive of it that's their favor

um thanks assistant mayor um thanks for taking my call today chief i just wanted to touch on ask questions that we developed information we developed you had talked about handing the commercial drivers licenses not just for your department but for the dpw which i applaud cross-departmental cooperation like that what were the savings you foresaw from that

we identified that at about $4,500 an employee and that would be ongoing throughout throughout the year right I think we have an initial cash of about 20 or so that we wanted to get through this year I know that I have 25 folks that I need to get through that program so that's that's where we're headed so

20 folks in a first pass at $4,500 piece that we don't have to spend that's $90,000 And then we talked a little bit about the comp the complexion of the force of that you're hiring now and 20 out of our 65 folks are our new hires right correct and we've seen a drop in the amount of people who apply for these kind of jobs we used to be able to hire from smaller departments or other cities but now we really are hiring green recruits and to my way of thinking anytime you can grow your own, it's cheaper and better in the long run. Any thoughts on that?

Yes. Thank you for the question. But the old model for the Portsmouth Fire Department used to be that people would come to Portsmouth after getting their foot in the door, working for a smaller department for a number of years, getting some experience and training, and then coming here. That model doesn't exist anymore and instead the applicants that we're seeing are more and more of the fresh recruits that are just out of the different rookie schools and academies that they have coming to us with no experience. Again, the idea here that we have somebody who's focused on these folks, we're focused on recurring training to make sure that we're bringing these folks along and that they're meeting the standard and that they'll continue to do so. Again, some of these skills are perishable. We want to make sure that there's a regular and consistent rotation on these different training objectives and goals to make sure that we hit them.

Thank you, Chief. Councillor Hopkins?

Correct me if I'm wrong, Chief, but I feel like you are underselling the amount of training that goes into being a firefighter. So for me, in my volunteer experience, it was every Monday night. We would do truck checks. We would do training on different things, different motor vehicle accidents, gas leaks, all of these different things. Training is rigorous. And what he's talking about are the annual things that you need to pay for and certify and keep on the books. but the actual training of we got this new saw or we got this new thing or we just learned this new protocol or when we were in rural Montana we brought in folks from bigger cities like Denver and stuff to train on new, you know, um, strategies and techniques and whatnot. So it's, I think, you know, what the chief is talking about are the, the budget items and the, and that, but like to, to maintain training, especially when folks are so green as someone who never thought about being a firefighter in her entire life to actually spending five years on a department. I was there because they trained me thoroughly and kept me confident in my team. and not in this willy nilly type way. And like I said, I saw it at other departments and it's different and we want

qualified responders there quickly so thank you thank you counselor and that that's part of it too right in addition to the the training and the normal maintenance and uh station activities that they have to do they're also responding to more than six thousand 911 calls for help every year so it's also a challenge for us to try and navigate around that in the time away you know handling the emergency thank you chief your honor

quick question um so counselor hopkins you were in a volunteer uh firefighting outfit actually didn't know that pretty cool who was in charge of that training so our department had four paid staff members the chief assistant chief and then someone who was in charge of training and keeping that up and going and then someone who was kind of had a had a hand in a couple of search and rescue and EMS and fire. So kind of a cross collaborator. So we had four paid staff and about 60 or 65 volunteers. Um, and we responded to city and rural. So wildland fire and city fires, which there aren't many city fires, but I have walked into a burning building before, um, and extinguished the fire. And only the only reason I was confident in that is because I was trained like wrote, you just, I put on my gear and I was like, Had this moment like oh my god, I'm walking into a burning building and then I was like, well, there's my there's my commander And this is my crew and we're doing it and it was done. So again, I can't Over emphasize how crucial I think training is training on your own equipment getting to know things because in an emergency it has to be automatic So again, I'm in no way saying that my little town of 2,500 people, a volunteer fire department, is anywhere near what Portsmouth is doing. But we did have a dedicated training, and it was a rigorous training. And that was the difference between our community and the other communities in our county.

Thank you, Councilor Hopkins. Chief McClellan, the state of New Hampshire recognized that we have a professional firefighting force enough to change our workman's comp. Can you, I guess, help me understand the training as it stands right now? You had mentioned video training versus that you'd like to go back to in-person training, but what are things that we are

guess um ill-prepared for at the moment that will be prepared for in the future because of this hire well i i would i would take exceptions of the ill-prepared and say i think we can be better prepared right i think we're we're doing our best to hit our marks with respect to making sure that our our folks can do what what is expected of them but a lot of this stuff again is is repetition and making sure that we're doing it over and over again so that it's it's muscle memory and that we're able to to perform seamlessly and that's where that's where I'm trying to go with this position and at the same time I've laid out for you a couple of ideas with respect to where we're going with EMS in the in the you know in the larger world right and that at some point it's gonna have to come here and that we need to start looking at these things and be prepared

So who is in charge of, are individual fire officers in charge of their own training at the moment? Correct. Who creates that curriculum?

At the moment, the captains are in charge of training their crews, and if necessary, then their lieutenants are doing it for them as well, depending on the crew, depending on the day of the week, depending on the subject matter, and who's fit for that.

There's a fair amount of training that goes on at the moment. Absolutely, correct. and so I guess every day is it every day yeah that's I guess in terms of creating a curriculum or a overseer of of training what is there any documented gap that you've seen in the department level that you would like to correct with a more rigid and structurized training that's not as a responsibility of the captains and their tenants in their own divisions that you would be able to point to and say, this is something that we will receive as a result of this investment.

Oh, absolutely. I think EMS, certainly the recertification, the annual recertification, being able to put our folks in the classroom and have somebody provide that curriculum and that outline.

And that's a one-time annual that we now do through video conference?

It's correct. It's 48 hours annually.

Okay, I guess, you know, that's the I mean, it sounds like we got the votes to support this. The hard part for me is that we're creating another position that will potentially be the chief will come off. It seems like some of these things are finite trainings that we could spend through contractor and we're not uh you know health trust you know we talked about school care a lot health trust went up 11 percent uh this year anyway wiping out the savings of the workman's comp uh re-adjustment and so it's an annual training for 48 hours seems like something that we could be investing more in an on-person training than actually hiring an additional command staff to be in charge of this training before we have readjusted the other deputy chief position.

I understand your position. I prefer to go in a different direction I think here and I think the position is warranted right and that we've we've tried before this isn't a new idea that I came up with tonight right or said hey I found these the savings in the budget right this was something that we've talked about previously we brought forward and it hadn't passed so yes I understand so well

I it sounds like uh there's the votes here um I think that the um the spirit uh or at least as I understood the spirit in terms of uh Councillor Tabor's direction in terms of if they're self-funded through positions uh themselves to reclassify uh them I would like to have seen this as a larger uh restructuring instead of seeing this as something that is going to potentially add to restructuring in the event that the collective bargaining works out. not saying that there's not a a need to have training but i haven't seen the cost breakdown in terms of being able to map out where one-time fees could be paid or contracted service could be paid given the fact that the largest thing that we are going to face as municipalities is the increase in health insurance costs and that's going to be tied directly to all employees I would love to be able to see every stone uncovered before we add any additional employees because the there's nobody coming in terms of the health care costs that will continue to rise and every employee we add to that will be a budget driver in the future and I just did not see as a part of the justification what the one-time cost that would be you know for getting the department up in terms of the readiness that we would expect out of Portsmouth and

if that readiness does not exist right now i'd appreciate that this is a difference of opinion thank you your honor counselor bagley uh thanks assistant mayor i moved to call the question perfect second okay um we will call the question where are we um just start with me

can we just clarify exactly what we're voting on yes yes so the motion on the floor is to remove one hundred and seventy four thousand seven hundred and forty dollars that would represent the amount of the cost associated with the deputy chief training position as proposed so if you are

against it you will if you want it to remain in the budget you'd vote no okay all in favor yes all opposed opposed

so the second item under or the third item under second item under my name is many adopted FY 27 to FY 32 CIP to decrease the amount the fire boat replacement from nine hundred thousand to 150,000 while I was sitting here I came up with a better idea since this is going to be somewhat messy I would like to I will read a different motion in a line with this but speaking to a different a given the fact that we have a The CIP process where we adopt the CIP, we have a budget where we pass the CIP, and then we have the actual going out for the bond authorization. Knowing that there is what's known as a FEMA port security grant program, that was something that was available to us last year. We didn't apply for that. It will open up again this year. and I would make the following motion move that the City Council direct the city manager and the fire chief to request a letter of support from the US Coast Guard for the city's application to the FEMA port security grant program for replacement fire boat to coordinate with Coast Guard sector northern New England and engage New Hampshire's congressional delegation in support of the application with a report back to the council before any bond authorization is sought second So if I could speak to it. What's that?

She may have to watch that again. Unless he has it written down.

Thank you. So it's... it's uh it's difficult to uh you know win grants um and uh you know i i know that it will be hard to win grants so reducing the amount of money um you know if this is uh still a need uh is uh difficult uh to do and i applaud the chief for reducing it from 900 000 to 600 000 but throughout the public comment there's and folks that have reached out to me outside of public comment um there is a strong desire to have coordination along the piscataqua and an understanding of how that coordination fits in i think being able to you know request a letter uh from the coast guard uh and to be able to have them you know uh support us in terms of our our marine protection plan would be critical in terms of identifying the need that we see but also having it recognized with others you know it might not be successful application but i think having the support of the coast guard ones that we support at the dock now given the fact that they've been moving through repair of their facilities in Newcastle would be one way to document that this is in service of the larger initiatives that are coming and you know certainly the congressional delegation being able to support this given the fact that we're next to the Navy Yard would be a way you know this is not actually removing it from this but certainly giving us the opportunity before a bond authorization final to have the opportunity to say hey you know we've gotten this letter of support this is something that we feel strongly about putting forward I don't think that you move to suspend the rules to bring this we so we but we did them all under my name thank you this is councilor Blalock and then councilor Blalock

Thank you, Your Honor. I'm supportive of this concept for sure. I just have a question for the chief. It does appear that we have an opportunity to buy a boat at a reduced rate. I just want to make sure we're not foregoing a $600,000 boat for a grant and then we end up having to buy a $900,000 boat two years later.

So I'm not sure either. We haven't signed anything. Whatever you voted on tonight would have to go through the procurement process, right? Certainly we identified one vendor. I can tell you that this has gotten a little bit of a buzz, and now suddenly there's a few more vendors that are suddenly interested. So there are other vendors out there. So I'd be somewhat out of order, I suppose, to say whether or not it's going to impact

a boat that i don't know if i'm ordering it right or who the vendor may be thank you thank you thank you um and obviously when this was the 900 000 boat in the cip i was against it um i know we had you know planned on a much um cheaper boat um originally in the sap um And the chief has been very good at explaining why this is, I believe this is needed. I do agree with the mayor. I think the mayor has a great idea. I think us talking with the Coast Guard, talking with the surrounding communities that share the water and figure out who, you know, we can be the leader on that communication. But I don't think we necessarily need to be the leader on purchasing the boat and saving everybody And I've been on I've been a boater in Portsmouth since this is my whole life I've been out in the water by myself since I was 12 I would like the coordination between all the entities, the harbor master, the shipyard, the coast guard, our fire department, Kittery's fire department. I think that is a very, very good idea. I don't want to think, oh, they're not going to do their job, so let's take the lead and spend a bunch of taxpayer money. I'm hesitant to do that. So I will be supportive of your idea, Mayor.

could just add one thing on timing so um the expectation is that we bond in july uh for that and so um you know talking to nathan it's potentially we could even push that to you know august 1st the goal would be to have these this reach out and this letter of support happen before uh that time period so that we could have that as a part of the bond authorization now i'm not saying that's the only way that we're going to get this and again i understand that you know simply applying for a grant one where there's much larger ports uh than us um would be it's it's difficult um to win but i think it would be in and of itself a positive step direction a positive a step in the right direction to engage uh the coast guard in this uh to have a plan of where this could enhance our posture in the pascataqua and to have them you know, as partners in certainly we've been welcoming them on to the to the dock while they repair their facility to understand how this would improve our readiness in the region and to start that conversation and again it's not you know pulling it out it is reflective of the fact that we do have three bites of the apple when we come to the cip where we do it and we pass the cip we adopt the cip as part of our budget and then we have bond authorization where we have you know a further discussion on anything in there so this will come back Regardless and I would love it to be able to come back with a letter that has been you know that we've orchestrated with The Coast Guard to be able to say this is something that is going to improve the the security of the port Quick question do we know when these grants are awarded?

Is there a time it does that factor into the timeline at all? like if we missed the deadline by waiting for a letter or or what have you, does that kick it out a year, or what's the time, how does that factor into the timeline?

So the grants have not, the grants are typically available in early spring. They have not been, there was a delay in the funding. That has been corrected on the congressional level, as I understand. They were, they came open, and it wasn't by accident that we missed it last year. It was just a two-week turnaround period there, and again, part of the goal is to be able to have the conversation with the Coast Guard as a part of receiving the letter or intentions to receive the letter. And again, excited to hear that there is more competition to be able to build a boat. And I've certainly been swayed by the idea that know the bimini top boat right now in terms of longer you know times is not the uh the best um environment to be able to doing this but i want to make sure that we're coordinated in our response especially given the fact that you know we're trying to work with maine on suicide uh prevention on the bridges that's proving to be you know there's a lot of money that's that's gone into that that has not happened you know hasn't got past the the grant study or the study phase of that and so I think being able to use this opportunity as a way to reach out and coordinate around different departments and governmental agencies will put us in a better position regardless of whether or not we get the grant to be able to fund this because it will define the need hopefully is something that the Coast Guard you know that we have a plan of engagement with them

Council Flynn, then Council Cook. Thank you, Assistant Mayor. Just to clarify, Mayor, you're not, the language.

I've restated the language and I can restate it again.

So we're not naming the, adding the price, the fee, the pricing. It's just the language around pursuing this.

correct yeah so move that the city council direct so again um and this is worth just repeating one more time because we do this a lot and it takes a little while to remember we have the cip we had the cip and we adopted it in the fall of last year and in that process the city manager did a good job of pointing out although I forget it a lot too that you first adopt the CIP you then adopt the CIP as a part of the budget then you again adopt the you know through the bond authorization and so sometimes it feels like the city of Portsmouth that we're spending you know we're spending it three times but we're only spending it once there's just three times of us to be able to question and have a conversation on that. That seems like it's great news because the chief is getting more bidders there at this time. But this will come up again in the bond authorization. And I want to make sure that we have, since the last conversation and seeing that there's the port security grant out there, and that the FEMA funding that had been funded, it seems like an opportune time to reach out to the Coast Guard to get a potential letter of support along with congressional representation that would support this on behalf of the fact that we're next to the shipyard and the ideas of what's going on with the the the body or the the rescues uh that you know happened at the bridge you know and then fortunately it was a body recovery um so i think that there's there's ways to position this and would like to be able to reach out to the agencies that can be in a position to help us win a grant

thank you thank you assistant mayor um so i think it's wonderful that our fire department is already doing a lot of this coordination on a regular basis with all the agencies that work in our region and do water rescue but we're the ones that provide ems service and i think that that's one of the things that i'm i'm always thinking about because my biggest fear is that a kid falls off a boat in the piscataqua and the ems can't get there fast enough and so i want them providing services on the boat before they get to the shore and i worry that the current boat is probably challenging as far as providing those services before you get to shore so i do think it's really important that we the that we do provide that service for our residents we have a lot of residents that spend time on the water um One of the concerns I have is making sure that we are not somehow putting ourselves in a position that we delay funding for an extended period of time. So because we have a lot of coordination with the Coast Guard, is it feasible that we could get a letter by the end of June, potentially, if we coordinate with the Coast Guard?

I think there's some concern on the part of the chief that they follow within FEMA, so it may be a conflict for them to provide a letter of support. So what we can do as part of the larger report back is get you that information. And if they're not an appropriate letter of support writer, we could identify alternative letter of support folks on our behalf.

so this motion wouldn't preclude funding the boat if we i've asked for a report back and to reach out for a letter both to the coast guard and to the congressional delegation knowing that they might not be able to deliver any of those but again this is not the last time we will discuss the boat the boat will come up on the bond authorization and want to be able to be in a position to make sure that we have done all we can in terms of securing federal grant money for this

as a follow-on to that i think it's um i think it's commendable that you've found a possibility as far as finding grant funds and that's something that we do a really good job at in the city is whenever we find grant funds even things that we've approved in the cip budget we can reduce our costs so a lot of times we return funds back to back before they're bonded so we rescind

the authorization because we found grant funds so i think this falls in line with our general practice so i appreciate that any more comments or questions okay i'll call the vote all in favor aye any opposed thank you and now um item g under the mayor's name one more um amend the uh

This is on the amendment to the proposed FY27 budget to decrease the capital outlay by $50,000, that amount representing the cost of electrification of the city fleet. I would move to amend FY27 budget to increase the capital outlay by $50,000, that amount representing the cost of electrification of the city fleet development plan. And I'd wait a second and discuss.

Second.

so um this is something that i um i have when this was in the cip i was excited that there would be an opportunity to reduce our carbon footprint and our uh you know the cost of gas i don't feel at this time that we are that there is enough uh there is enough um of a market to be able to make any real impact in that. And while I think it's commendable as a city that we continue to focus on these efforts, this seems like a study that would end up being a study that we put on a shelf until the market really moves us to be able to deliver electrified vehicles. That could be happening. I don't necessarily think that that's happening under the current federal administration. and i also you know have noticed in terms of the you know the f-150 lightning um you know they're changing potentially you know moving to an electric generator and so there's a lot of things that we could be doing i just don't know if the for the heavy um the heavy trucks that we're doing or the dump trucks that we could be talking about i think it would be probably worth more of an effort to explore some grants that are talking about replacing diesel-powered trucks that are available on the state level to get some of our diesel trucks off and convert maybe to other cleaner burning fuels than spend the money on something that I just simply don't think the federal government is backing enough to be able to make it worth the while. disappointing but i just don't want to i want to be able to use that money for something you know in the future that is going to have a more immediate impact on the tax rate as well as the environment

Thank you, Your Honor. Councillor Cook and Councillor Badly. Thank you, Your Honor.

DPW Director Rice is going to be thrilled to hear me say, because I ask him every single year about electrification of the fleet, that I'm going to support this motion. And the reason I'm supporting it is the funds that the federal government for electrification have gone away. And that's just our sad reality that we're living in right now. I've been the first one to ask the question every single year about when we are going to electrify our fleet. Not only does that require significant infrastructure on the part of the Department of Public Works as far as charging stations, but it also requires the equipment to actually be made. so that we can purchase it and a lot of the heavy equipment that we need to be electrified just isn't made in a way that we need that for what we need as a city we need heavy duty trucks and at the moment that's not available to us so so it's it's really a challenge that i would like to see addressed in the future and if it's not going to happen this year anyway it's it doesn't make sense to have a 50 000 placeholder essentially in the budget to study something that we can't do i would rather be in a position to study it next year or the following year when we think that we can get federal funds and state funds and matching funds to help us actually engage in some electrification thank you counselor bagley

I agree with the mayor on this and thank him for bringing it forward. We don't need to do a study for equipment that doesn't exist. Five years ago it was optimistic that there would be electrification like the Ford Lightning and numerous other vehicles. It just hasn't happened. So it doesn't make sense for us to study something that's not out there in the market yet.

Thank you. Any more discussion? Okay. If not, I will call the vote. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

all right um we now have resolutions in front of us um the no other um there seem to be no other amendments Your Honor, I move to adopt.

was there an amendment to the municipal fees we we did that one we did general fund expenditures we're going to need another um as amended well i think we've made we've made two amendments to reduce it by 65 for the oh both in the capital for the work study and 50 for the electrification so i'm looking to confirm that 115 000 comes out of the general government appropriation nathan nope 115 comes out of non-operating

non-operated and abby will be back in just a moment with revised resolution number eight for you so that you'll have in front of you and be voting on the amended language so we could we could take the others out of turn and come back you could move ahead with the next and we'll come back to it if you'd like

resolution number nine 2026 water fund expenditures a resolution making appropriations of suns the money for all necessary water fund expenses for the operation of the water system of the city of portsmouth new hampshire for the fiscal year ending june 30th 2027. i move to adopt resolution number nine 2026 water fund expenditures second second second any discussion to that that are now in here.

additional tier uh that we have as a part of uh the rate study um for a lower uh consumption alan oh we need a roll call vote um so we take the role assistant mayor kelly yes counselor cook yes counselor tabor yes counselor laylock yes counselor bagley yes counselor moreau yes counselor flynn yes counselor hopkins yes mayor mckechern yes

Next is Resolution 10-2026, Sewer Fund Expenditures, a resolution making appropriation of sums of money for all necessary sewer fund expenses for the operation of the sewer system of the City of Ports of New Hampshire for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2027.

Your Honor, I move to adopt the Resolution 10-2026, Sewer Fund Expenditures. Second.

Any discussion? We'll take a roll call vote.

Okay. Assistant Mayor Kelly? Yes. Councillor Cook? Yes. Councillor Tabor?

Yes.

Councillor Blaylock?

Yes.

Councillor Bagley? Yes. Councillor Moreau? Yes. Councillor Flynn? Yes. Councillor Hopkins? Yes. Mayor McEachern?

Yes. Next is Resolution 11, 2026, Special Revenues Portsmouth Housing Endowment Trust and Committed Unbalances for Necessary Expenditures. resolution making appropriation of sums of money for the special revenues portsmouth housing endowment trust and committed fund balance for necessary expenditures for the fiscal year ending june 30th 2027. your honor i move to adopt resolution 11-2026 special revenues portsmouth housing endowment trust and committed fund balance for necessary expenditures second

He'll do the roll call. Assistant Mayor Kelly. Yes. Councilor Cook. Yes. Councilor Tabor. Yes. Councilor Blaylock. Yes. Councilor Bagley. Yes. Councilor Moreau. Yes. Councilor Flynn. Yes. Councilor Hopkins. Yes. Mayor McEachern.

Yes. resolution 12 2026 investment policy a resolution approving investment policy for the fiscal year ending june 30th 2027 i move to adopt resolution 12-2026 investment policy second

Okay, another roll call. Assistant Mayor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Cook? Yes. Councilor Tabor? Yes. Councilor Blaylock? Yes. Councilor Bagley? Yes. Councilor Moreau? Yes. Councilor Flynn? Yes. Councilor Hopkins? Yes. Mayor McEachern?

Yes. Mayor, may I just insert for 30 seconds, there was a question or a comment made at public comment. or public hearing tonight the investment policy you've just voted is unchanged from last year it was changed last year to reflect statutes that had been repealed and rewritten and it had probably been misleading or wrong for two or three cycles so we just amended last year to make sure that we matched all current statutes and it's unchanged this year yes it looked exactly the same um

councilor cook or counselor yeah council cook i just have a question on the general fund expenditures changes before we vote um because the motion on the artist live workspace was to remove it from the budget after the trustees of trust funds voted to expend the funds from the trust so the trustees of trust funds haven't voted yet so i just want to make sure that we are not putting ourselves in a position that the funds wouldn't be here if they don't vote to release the funds then what's in front of you is too low by 65 000. so if you intend actually to keep it in the budget i intend for it to come out but i the trustees of trust funds need to vote that was the motion so that the trustees have to release the funds okay

How would they not vote to... I don't know. Well, how do we do it? I guess say that we keep it this way, like how do we redo the... Could we modify Councillor Cook's motion to say contingent on a vote by the trustees?

that's the second that's what the second motion did do i believe i can read the second motion so everybody knows what it was again um yeah put it down um move to amend the proposed fiscal year 27 budget to decrease capital outlay by 65 000 that amount representing the cost for the artist live works studio study upon authorization by the trustees of trust funds to release 65 000 from the city of portsmouth below market rate housing trust fund for the artist live works studio study

your honor you authorized yes yes the trust the ordinance says that the council directs the trustees to release the money right so it's automatic

It is automatic. I can say that. Yes, in theory it's automatic, assuming the trustees agree that the expenditure is consistent with the terms of the trust. And I think that's the councilor's hesitation just to be safe.

So can we get a number of this with the additional $65,000 just to make sure it's covered?

How does it come out of the general fund after we adopt the budget?

You'd have to amend it.

um parliamentary inquiry can we amend counselor cook's motion so that we pass the budget tonight because i think that's important and if the trustees have a problem we could always amend the budget after the fact to put the 65 000 back in no no no But can I make that motion and see it?

I just yeah, I guess parliamentary great. I don't know can we even pass a budget that is Reliant on actions by that, you know another entity other than us I don't I don't see how we're saying like we're passing this budget as long as the trustees of the trust do that I don't that just seems wrong to me but spent money on that and spent money on the from a trust fund in a general budget before though, I

i feel like it's it's it's lined in there that money will be transferred from the prescott park trust from pure silence right so i guess that's the question uh turn um would we so um we have uh um are there any other examples of moving money from out of the trust that we've taken a voted on that's an assumption before it's that it goes to the the trust i have not we've not moved to move any money out of this particular trust and i'm i'm not sure that we have um that i've listened to any motions maybe judy can shed some light judy can we put you on the spot

good evening good evening um I think it will be fine they meet on the 16th and usually what happens is is the council makes their vote the city manager will write a memo requesting that per the vote that the trust trustees release the funds and then at that point as long as all the documentation is there they usually release the funds as long as it meets the criteria of the trust, which it sounds like it does.

So when is our next meeting?

Six seconds.

20 seconds. So, um, I guess the, um, will we can approve, uh, we can vote on the budget as, cause I don't, I don't think we're going to, uh want to hold up the entire budget on this until the 22nd i would if this is not adopted by uh i would just one thing we can just um wait to sign uh the budget until the 22nd so um

i'm not asking that at all i'm just asking that the 65 000 stay in the budget until the trustees vote for it not to be in the budget we've already passed the motion to make that happen and if we adopt the budget with the extra 65 000 in it as soon as the trustees approve to take the money out we passed a motion already tonight that'll take it out of the take it out of the past budget so that's what i'm asking for nathan

I guess I'm not sure that that's how that's going to work.

Would that affect setting the tax rate?

Well, we don't set the tax rate until the fall. That's a separate conversation. We could spend an hour talking about it.

My concern now is if you vote a budget tonight, you have a voted budget. Anything subsequent to that is an amendment to that budget, and it has its own notice procedures, public hearing. so i guess i've just prepared another version with 65 000 more put back in and instead of taking out and so you can just vote it but you won't change it you won't take it out i mean it'll just be in there it'll be an extra 65 000 in the budget in the budget because you don't have the time between now and june 30th I guess you could do it all fall. I guess you could really, if you do the public hearings, you do the postings, you do the public notices in the newspaper and all that stuff, you can amend the budget anytime you want. It's like doing a supplemental. You'll just do a supplemental to put it back in if you need to or a supplemental to take it out if you want, I guess.

Nice parliamentary inquiry or historical inquiry. Is there any word on the top of mind? Is there been a time when the Council has authorized a release of funds from the trustees or the trustees have been not released those?

Yes, there's one where we had. We needed to come back and make a correct motion. not whether or not they questioned our ability but is this motion do we believe that we've corrected that issue with the motion that is that we had made the motion is appropriate yes yep and so there was an issue that we did not correctly motion something but you know i don't think that this is it counselor bagley yeah thanks aaron i understand counselor cook's concern it's a legitimate one because if these funds don't get approved this project may end up dying on the vine however

sometimes you got to operate on trust and one of the bullet points on the trust fund for below make market rate housing trust fund is funding studies analysis planning and consulting efforts i mean it doesn't seem to be feasible that this would get rejected by the trustees i don't know how it would um

I mean, it's part of the motion, right? So we can't go tell the trustees what to do.

We did. We told them that this is something that we want them.

Yeah.

And I think as a council, it's our due diligence to vote on the budget, not to vote on a, you know, we need to do our job.

So your honor, I guess, speaking for myself, I misunderstood Councillor Cook's motion that it would affect, it would cause the budget to be delayed. i would support the leap of faith that the trust fundees will release the fees and in order to do that i think i need an amendment so that we the we need to amend it so we can pass the budget nathan just passed out to us does that sound correct

no i i think we're mixing many motions here so um counselor cook's original motion that you already voted on can you repeat that

um besides the motion to release the funds the second motion was to move to amend the proposed fifth school year 27 budget to decrease capital outlay by sixty five thousand dollars that amount amount representing the cost for the artists live works to studio study upon authorization by the trustees of trust funds to release sixty five thousand dollars from the city of portsmouth below market rate housing trust fund for the artists live work studio study

So what I'm hearing is we can't pass the budget tonight with the contingency that you articulated in your motion, but if you were to amend your motion just to strictly take that money out under the faith and belief that the trustees will in fact release the money pursuant to the terms of the trust and the authorization from the city council, then the budget could pass tonight.

with the revised revision as just handed out by nathan in new resolution number eight

alternatively it just lives in the budget we can use it out the we can use it out of the um the trust fund um but it would stay in the budget as well so it would be a hundred and thirty thousand dollars so i have a question on that in particular because this is what we do all the time we fund things and then we get a grant suddenly that pays for it so it's in the budget but we get a grant that pays for it and then we resend it or we never actually bond it um is there a reason why it coming out of the trust doesn't put us in the same situation where we can resend the funding later um so then and we could resend it before october before the tax rate is issued it's not a bonded item it would uh would be returned to fund balance correct nathan so if you keep the money the 65 000 in the budget right

and then we and but also direct the trustees to pay that 65 000 the question is how that money will be absorbed or redirected that's right or we can just resend it later resend the funding for that item later before we even set the tax rate that's a nathan question so that would have to be like you would be amending the budget

to take the money out to reduce your budget by 65 000. this isn't like it's not like it's not like bonding where it can simply be rescinded later this is a this is cash appropriation so is the budget 157 million even or is it 157 157 million and 65 grand and in this case um the amendment that's the amended version in front of you took out the 65 along with the 50 the two motions that we documented that we had approved two amendments

i just sent abby up to get a revised version again which includes puts the 65 back in and then the net change tonight would just be the 50 000 to the budget your honor can i just finish with a point of order i'm sorry um so if you leave the motion as is um and it's contingent then you'd have to take further action to take the money out of the budget once the trustees authorize the expenditure that's what i'm hearing and that requires process requires the public hearing and notice counselor bagley you know i moved to reconsider

the move to amend the proposed fiscal year 27 budget to decrease capital outlay by $65,000, that amount representing the costs for the artist live work studio study, and authorize the trustee of trust funds to expend $65,000 from the City of Portsmouth below market rate housing trust fund for the artist live work studio study for below market rate housing. Is there a second?

Second.

and what i'm if if this motion passes what i would then do is move to remove 65 000 from the proposed 27 budget and direct the direct and authorize the trustees of trust funds to expend 65 000 from the city of portsmouth below market rate housing trust fund for the artist live work studio study for below market rate housing that one already passed

No, it didn't pass because it was a contingency.

No, there were two of them. We haven't voted on it yet. There were two motions. That one already passed. That one already passed, yeah.

Right, so we're reconsidering the motion that passed.

No, there were two motions that passed. The first one was to authorize the trustees of trust funds to expend. So I already made that motion, and it passed. Then I made a second motion to remove the money from the budget once the trustees released the funds.

She amended it on the fly. That's why we don't have it.

vote the amended budget that's in front of you which does not include the 65,000 if the trustees failed to deliver in a reasonable time then you will engage the process you're familiar with which is a supplemental appropriation for another 65,000 and that you will do either way amending the budget to reduce it or amending the budget to increase it your process will look the same And then if you do it before we set the tax rate, you'll have made whatever adjustment you need to.

Do you want to rescind your motion?

I'll rescind my motion.

so in order to do that we need to take out the contingent language we don't need to do any of that we need to pass the budget that we have and the language um we would have to add it back in if the trustees in their wisdom would uh not uh extend the lines that we're directing so the action is to pass the budget correct to adopt this resolution your honor handed out resolution number eight

i move to adopt resolution number eight dash 2026 general fund expenditures as amended second any discussion counselor cook

Thank you, Your Honor. I'd really hope to vote for the budget tonight because I do support the budget, but I can't vote for it without the $65,000 in there. This is two years of work for the Arts and Cultural Commission, and I worry that coming back to this council and asking for a supplemental appropriation will make it very difficult to get that funding if the trustees don't release the funds. So I'm going to have to vote no. Sorry.

Any other discussion? I'll trust the process with the trustees it is clear as day and in fact the the argument made to deliver this in response to those counselor Tabor that said that this wasn't that this had to go directly to subsidizing housing it says clearly in this developmental development studies and allow analysis planning and consultant efforts related to below market rate housing this is specifically that and I believe that we will have the authority of the trustees and you know a part of the the process of government is to be able to trust that the people that are here or on the trustees trust fund are going to follow the law that we have in front of us and that is the direction of that if it's not I will bring the motion under my name to replace the funding as I appreciate council cooks effort given everything that she's worked on with the with the artists lives workspace and then to be able to recognize there was an opportunity to do that and reduce the tax burden for our residents I'll pull that under my name if the trustees don't read the playing language of the below-market-rate housing trust fund. So we have a motion to pass the budget as amended, $157,856,390. It will be a roll call vote.

Assistant Mayor Kelly. Yes. Councilor Cook. No. Councilor Tabor. Yes. Councilor Blaylock. Yes. Councilor Bagley. Yes. Councilor Morrell. Yes. Councilor Flynn. Yes. Councilor Hopkins. Yes. Mayor McEachern.

Yes.

all right well thank you everyone yeah you can leave yeah not all of you we still have a full agenda really on page three

we're moving on to the third and final reading of ordinance amending chapter 7 parking article 1 parking meters section 7.1 0 to parking meter rates to establish parking rates for resident access parking program wrap pilot move to pass the third reading and adopt as presented second any discussion Council Boyle.

Thank you, Your Honor. As before, I'm not supportive of this. I think we've used too many resources. I don't think this will accomplish its goals. I presented this to my staff at the fair landing and wanted to get their input. Their immediate input was laughter. and they asked what they expect us to park at two in the morning um so just to give you some sort of real perception um you know i've been parking downtown working downtown for 30 years this isn't going to help i think we're wasting a lot of time a lot of staff staff time a lot of staff resources you know there's other goals that have not been mentioned like camper vans and stuff but we haven't had any problem with camper vans i know that's not listed in the goals of this um but i don't my only question i guess um they won't be able to tell it'll just be resident versus non-resident cars when they're when they're not like when they're tallying up how many cars in each parking right they won't be able to tell if they lived on that street or if they live on the other end of town it'll just be resident versus non-resident am i correct on that i don't know but uh that's correct okay uh before i just gotta close the public hearing on the budget Yeah, so it's just gonna be hard to tell like, you know, you can have You know five cars from Ellen Park five cars from Panaway Manor And you won't be able to tell if they live on Gate Street or not, you know, so it's just like I don't see the benefit You know, it's for all of Portsmouth or nothing I think These streets are actually just advertising free parking for the rest of town I don't think that's what they wanted

i've also had other residents reach out like is there going to be a guest pass is it going to be this um so and yeah there isn't um so again yeah i'm just not supportive of this thank you councilman thank you um i share some of the um hesitation uh that counselor um blaylock has about about moving and extending some of the staff program i think that those when we talk about um that road, it's a highly utilized road. I don't think you see as many openings in there or higher turnover. I also, well, I understand that we have to look at long-term revenues and projections um i really worry about the creep of what this says a lot of people ask me well what is next pair app um and that feels like well if this pilot's successful why would we not do pirate uh parrot app um and i while i know that some people feel that that's okay um i think we are we are slowly um whittling away at some of the free parking which is necessary for some people um so i just well i will vote to go ahead and do this um i am hesitant of what this means long term um for for parking programs i know that it's well established that we need a third garage and kind of what that looks like in the future. I will say I think that as a person who doesn't live downtown and doesn't have the ability right now to bike downtown or hop on a scooter, I park on these streets because I also pay taxes for these streets. And people that are visiting Dondero when there's a huge event or other things, um park when i've lived in other neighborhoods park on the streets in front of my house and so i think that i mean that's to me okay um but i do think that you know i want to make sure that we're careful in the way that we view parking revenues i understand that they save homeowners and taxpayers money and that you know 95 plus percent of the revenues are from out of town but i just think we do have to um be careful of how far we push people especially when we talk about the increase that will be coming from the street parking and uh the increase of um the metered rates and now we're expanding um some of that metered parking so i just think that um carl and his staff have done a really good job and parking have done a really good job of listening to the feedback and adjusting the program and i just want to make sure that we are really cognizant of getting feedback during this pilot and that the pilot isn't just about the numbers but about the people and the impact that it has on downtown residents uh residents as a whole downtown workers downtown shoppers um because i just think it's important to make sure that we don't just look at this as a strictly revenue line item councilor bagley thank you um

It's been a lot of time with parking. It's been quite as much as I used to. I'm going to support this. I think we've learned a lot of lessons with the original parking pilot study. This addresses all of those problems. And to Counselor Blaylock's point, the thing I like best about this, if you're a Portsmouth resident, you get to park anywhere in portsmouth period and in the resident parking places you get to park for free as long as you register your car here um it's the original pilot it was like for neighborhoods could park on certain streets and if you were outside that neighborhood you can park in that street and i thought that was unfair because we all collectively as a city pay taxes for all the streets and collectively as a city we should be able to park in any neighborhood as a resident and this um the plan which even looks out for our downtown workers with reduced rates addresses a problem but it's you know making changes to parking it's never made anybody happy that I've ever seen even when you make it free like we used to at Christmas on the streets we got a lot of complaints about people not being able to find spots to go sharp shopping because the long-term parkers were parked in front of the shops so there's really no parking adjustment we're ever gonna make that everybody's gonna like I

Councillor Cook, then Councillor Tabor.

Thank you, Your Honor. While this is not a perfect program, I think it is a huge improvement over where we are today, and it's definitely worth a pilot study. And that's really what this is. This is a pilot to examine whether or not a program like this can work in our residential neighborhoods. i live in one of the neighborhoods that's impacted and recently we lost 17 public parking spaces just last week around the south end meeting house it's having a significant impact on our neighborhood because there are a lot of residents our neighborhood without off street parking the reason they don't have off street parking is their houses were built before people had cars and that neighborhood was a tight neighborhood people didn't even have barns and very few actually had horses that a lot of them worked at the shipyard back when the shipyards were multiple shipyards and they walked to work so people didn't we didn't plan for cars in that neighborhood in fact it's hard to even transit some of the streets because they're not very wide So we're seeing the impact of what it means to lose parking already. And the residents on Gate Street are the most heavily impacted and those on Hancock Street, although there are more driveways on Hancock Street. but i i'm hoping that this pilot program will provide them with a little bit of relief it's not going to provide it's not going to solve the problem of limited parking but it may mean that when they leave in the morning to go drop a kid off at school that when they come back they might have a parking spot still on their own street or on the street next door

so that's my hope is that we're providing residents with parking and we're providing them with better access to parking thanks your honor this is a simple demand demand management managing our inventory if you go back to our Desmond parking study there's steadily increasing demand for parking that will eventually will require a third garage in the meantime you know we've we've metered everything with you stay and pay to create turnover but that's driven people out into these streets and into Parrot Ave and cars are not turning over on those streets simple demand so we have to look at a way to manage our inventory in a way to create turnover and the spaces imperative and the spaces that these in these neighborhoods it was all foreseen and advised that the city do this in the Desmond study and we're not doing a very big residential parking program we're doing a mini program and it's only a pilot so i think i can't remember the last time i've gone down to parrot avenue and found a parking space i did friday night i did i did on sunday but during the day no so hopefully this would achieve the goal and you might be able to find a space on paradise or the folks over on rock street might not have downtown workers parking on their street all the time any other questions

um just two questions uh maybe carl could answer them again that the the the downtown worker parking program is limited to paired f not the other um not the other things um you know i um think the only thing that is going to change parking is probably you know driverless cars or something like that i don't think there's anything that we're going to do and it's always going to be a pain the the pilot itself in terms of the worker parker program it's i hear councilor blaylock and i certainly understand and i would trust him in terms of the downtown workers and i think that trust is shared by the assistant mayor That being said, it is a very successful program in the garage, wildly successful. one of the comments that i've heard around that is that it's very difficult to get to that part of town at night and so extending that into paradigm and being able to park say if you found a spot at five o'clock for a shift at six you're only gonna pay three or you're gonna pay 90 cents to park until you know because we stop enforcement there that seems like a reasonable thing to investigate now it's probably not going to work and I understand and recognize that but it's worth trying to see if there's an opportunity to give some of the workers that are staying a little later that weren't served by the foundry because it was a big haul all the way back to the foundry at 11 or 1230 at night. It's worth testing, even though I think everybody's going to, when they get the notice around it, they're going to be a little less than excited. The reason to do that, and I would say it's related back to some of the projects that we've seen and will see. One of those projects was the Treadwall Mansion that started off as micro units. the entire neighborhood we can always we should probably put a heat map of people that emailed us from like where we're changing this parking to um in terms of being able to say like hey we don't want this because the parking is just going to happen in our neighborhood i feel like we would have had that housing and if we had had a way to enforce parking in a way but can't know it um until uh we try it we're going to have micro or we're going to have shared living and co-living come to the downtown there's going to be a lot more pressure on parking and there's going to be a need to be able to enforce what residents are there because we're going to have to have people register their cars if they come move here and not simply say hey i don't want to pay the registration fee because that's all going to be invested back in the city so This is far from perfect and Councilor Bobak has done a good job convincing me that it is going to be a very painful process. I will support it simply because the alternative is to look at this situation where we're going to continue to be a place where more and more people push back against what is happening in the downtown because they don't want to lose any quality of life. And we have a requirement, I believe, uh to continue to make sure the downtown is vibrant and full of people and not just people buying houses for tax investments but actual people that live there those people live there with cars as much as our friend mr garza would like to believe that everybody is as committed to biking as him it's not where we are at the moment and so i'll support this there's a lot of work and i hope that when we learn from it we'll learn from those members of the community that don't live here that make our community great and look to make it so that when they are coaching little league or going to coach you know or go you know uh to a rec game that we offer that there's ways to incorporate them into the long term because ultimately i don't want to be in a position where we're we're closing off parking spaces to the other parts of our community those folks that help us make this place great are the folks that we should be encouraging to come to our town and removing any barriers to do so and i'd want to make sure that if this is moving out of the pilot it would have those parts as those constituents that might not pay taxes here as a part of being considered with that we'll have a roll call vote

Assistant Mayor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Cook? Yes. Councilor Tabor? Yes. Councilor Blaylock? No. Councilor Bagley? Yes. Councilor Morrell? Yes. Councilor Flynn? Yes. Councilor Hopkins? Yes. Mayor McEachern?

Yes. Next up is public hearing and second reading regarding ordinance amended to chapter 5 fire department and prevention regulations article 9 adopted fire codes. We have a presentation.

Well, we have Acting Deputy Fire Chief Chad Putney here. He's available. He's ready to speak to this, and he's ready to answer any questions. But I will also point out the hour of the evening. Chad, is there anything you want to kick off with, or do you want to wait for questions? Good morning.

Five more minutes.

No, I can offer you 60 seconds worth of commentary. If that, I'll be brief. The state legislature has changed the way that fire codes are allowed to be locally adopted. They're not allowing any technical amendments. Our existing ordinances won't follow that. and this language which has been informally vetted by the fire marshal's office says that this will pass the muster all ordinances need to be the local ordinances need to be sent to the fire marshal's office for approval to make sure that there is no um no issue with it conflicting with the state fire code this is a good thing overall because it's going to allow consistent application of the fire code throughout the state any questions thank you

seeing no questions any uh we will open the public hearing um right we need a public hearing on this or am i yes we do okay yes jesus all right all right public hearing opening the public hearing two four against uh the changes to uh chapter five fire department and prevention regulations article nine adopt fire codes

seeing none good picture of an empty city hall chamber we will close the public hearing your honor i move to pass second reading and hold third and final reading regarding permanent amendment to chapter 5 fire department and prevention regulations article Was that five? Nine. Nine. I don't want to read that stuff. Adopted fire goes at the June 22nd, 2026 City Council meeting.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Your Honor.

Council Cook.

I move just to suspend the rules and pass third and final reading. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. We need to take a motion.

Your Honor, I move to pass third and final reading. Second.

Any discussion? Great work, guys. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. We did that one. Let's see.

Resolution supporting House Bill 1491 relative to pooled risk management programs.

That is under 15A. Councilor Cook.

Your Honor, I'll be quick. You've seen in your packet resolution supporting House Bill 1491. This was a response to a request from the New Hampshire Municipal Association to support this bill because it authorizes non-assessment risk pools. Health Trust is a non-assessment risk pool and is one of our health insurance providers. I ask that the council consider passing the attached resolution so that we may send it to Governor Ayotte's desk to let her know that we support continuing non-assessed risk pools like Health Trust because we would frankly prefer them to assessed risk pools. And we want to show our support for this House bill in hopes that she will sign it.

and the motion on the floor is uh to move to pass the resolution as presented any further discussion thank you council cook for putting this together and again this would be a monumental shift in terms of uh you know what uh um the landscape of uh It would destroy health trust, I guess. Shorter way to say it is 1130. Or is this mid-date yet? Yeah, call the vote. Yeah, all of it. All right. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Next up.

I have one item, Your Honor. Given that the RAP was successfully adopted this evening, I would bring for approval the policy that supports the RAP pilot. And worth noting is that, and in response to Councillor Blaylock's concern about needing a cell phone or a smartphone, the ParkMobile app is not required to pay for parking in the RAP zone or throughout the city. There's a telephone number on all signs that advises visitors on how to pay for a parking session without the ParkMobile app. And as Carl and others may have mentioned previously, the council will be receiving quarterly reports

on the program your honor i had moved to adopt city council policy number 202601 resident access parking program the wrap pilot as presented any discussion kind of just had it but all in favor aye any opposed opposed thank you city manager um consent agenda

Your Honor, I move to adopt the consent agenda as presented.

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Presentations and written communications. We have email and written correspondence.

I move to accept and place on file. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Next, we have a petition on AI data centers.

Your Honor, I move to refer to the legal department for a report back.

Second.

Any discussion? Real quick, Your Honor. There was some of the local towns in New Hampshire have passed zoning prohibiting this, and I'd be supportive of that, but I know from past experience that sometimes local towns don't always get the RSAs quite right.

So that would be part of the report back for legal?

all right uh counselor cook thank you honor um one of the things that one of the reasons i think it's important legal looks at this is because we have uh permissive zoning so um it's more that it's not allowed currently and if if it's not allowed then then we shouldn't add it it's something that's allowed right you have to have permission to do it and it's not contemplated in our zoning excellent got got luck on that one but we'll hear it all in favor aye aye

all right you know people 60 years ago probably weren't thinking oh data centers so uh we have a request from attorney john bozen on behalf of property owners at 361 hanover street requesting a landscaping license and poll license over city property uh your honor i'd move to refer to the planning board for a recommended action second any discussion all in favor hi it was that oh sorry recuse Oh, because it's the Heinemann building? Yeah. And you're on the planning board.

And I recused all on the planning board for this entire thing.

All right. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any recusals?

Recuse.

all right appointments to be considered appointment of Karen DeNicola to the cemetery committee reappointment of ash chicory to the cable and broadband Commission report reappointment of Jeff Abrams it's the cable and broadband Internet Commission appointment of Jim Wilson from alternate to regular member to the cable and broadband Internet Commission and I just like to have you guys consider those and also thank you it was I think the i forget who it was maybe sally who uh asked me to start putting when we're taking an alternate and making them a regular member uh just so folks are aware of that change so instead of just them maybe it was council cook i don't know no the new forms are fantastic that was a sally and suzanna okay great thank you for that i'm going to say caitlin all right we have appointments to be voted The reappointment of Deirdre D. Forte to the Cemetery Committee, reappointment of Michael Griffin to the Cemetery Committee, reappointment of Sue Potadora to the Cemetery Committee, the reappointment of Talia Sperduto to the Conservation Commission, the reappointment of Barbara McMillan to the Conservation Commission, the appointment of Matt Dido to the Arts and Cultural Commission, and the appointment of Martha Hergen to the Sustainability Committee.

MR.

Your Honor, I move to appoint the following as presented.

Any discussion?

Thank you all for stepping up or stepping up again to serve the city. We run because you guys volunteer. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. we'll see if this one is quick if it's not I'll kick it off to another one but as a part of the budgetary discussions you saw that just looking at trend 9 analysis over the last five years we overestimate revenues or we underestimate revenues and we overestimate salaries I think that for a lot of it it washes out in terms of overtime I think that's a bad thing for us to be able to have conversations around overtime specifically when it comes to collective bargaining because we are not actually pointing out the overtime that we are incurring because they are part of salary savings that we have unfilled positions I think to get to the point where counselor Bagley rightly believes we should be in terms of accurately reflecting what we're budgeting and what we are spending and and then being able to come back and creating a culture that allows department heads to come to the council and ask for more funds or if the council is asking for a new project to not have that money kind of magically appear because we have salary savings but we have a conversation as a council around making a supplemental appropriation to that budget would be a better long-term practice now I had envisioned having this as a part of a reduction of the of the budgeted amount of six hundred fifty thousand dollars with taking a one point two five percent salary vacancy effect I considered that to be slightly not enough time when i came up with the idea uh to implementing uh the idea and rather than have that as a part of a budget conversation without full data even though i do believe that the savings are there at this moment in time uh to look at a future specifically before the tax rate if we have different opinions and i'm speaking to both of these at the moment either different understandings of where we are in terms of hiring or where we are in terms of revenues to have a in a a a public hearing and uh discussion on the budget before we set the tax rate to accurately reflect more accurately reflect what we then what we can do now in terms of the budget so the first is um uh oh man i should have passed the damn gavel and assistant mayor would have um the first is uh move to staff to provide a report back regarding a proposed refined revenue model prior to october 15th 2026 and in time for the setting of the tax rate

Second.

So basically that.

Councilor Bagley.

Thanks, your assistant mayor. I applaud the mayor's concept here. It seems like it's something worth looking into. The only concern I have, and I'm hoping maybe Nathan can answer this, is we are standing up a new ERP system in our finance department after several decades with the last one. Do we have the staff capability to do this report back on this timeline? in light of the fact that we're also assuming the ERP system changeover is kind of a big job.

I appreciate the question, thank you. I guess I would answer, my answer would be slightly different for the two proposals that you're discussing. The first is we will as a matter of course review revenues before we provide estimated revenues to the Department of Revenue Administration we do that every year so coming back to the council and updating you on what revenues look like just passed some new fees tonight which will you know bump up the fee revenue by 140 grand so revenues are included as an offsetting information item in the budget as is an estimate of what property valuation will look like for the year and what the tax rate might look like. Those are estimates that are provided so that when you're considering and deliberating on voting the appropriations authority for the next year, you have that as information to help judge where you'll land as a result of your budget. we've got to provide revenue updates to the state so that they can set the tax rate in the fall absolutely happy and it's within the it's within the plan and the staffing to do that kind of revenue work and come back we haven't spent a lot of time reviewing what that looks like and how we come about it and and explaining some of the changes that we make year over year so happy to do that in this time frame The conversation about the vacancy model approach, that's a little different. It's new to us. I don't imagine staffing up for it. I'm also not confident in the notion that the results of that vacancy modeling could be of benefit to the tax rate setting this cycle without some real reach and creativity. But I'm certainly open to any conversation. If there were more time for us to go live on the new system and work our way towards a tool that will help us to estimate and calculate some of this better, i think that would be helpful although i will say specifically that i still haven't wrapped my head around how we'll do this looking at a couple of models that we've been able to google up online to to identify how we might implement something like this what the proposal might look like and i certainly expect that we'll do that with the existing staff because anybody else brought in other than a hired consultant who does this, which I wouldn't recommend. Anything else is gonna lean on the staff who know the numbers best, so I hope that's an answer.

Thank you, Nathan. With that answer, I'll definitely support the first motion. I wasn't entirely clear about the second motion.

yeah I can speak to it Nathan maybe don't run away yet so I'm sensitive to staff capacity one if this is the report back is that we haven't learned anything fast enough to change the tax rate that's certainly something but in October is now where we're starting our budget conversations for the following year starting with a capital improvement plan I think that even if it's not something that we would resolve for a tax rate adjustment, being able to, and what I'm specifically asking for is to look at the pattern in our audited actuals over the past five years. It's not to look at guessing whether or not we're going to fill positions, but to find a vacancy rate as we grow our department and our budget is now $157 million and some change, to be able to say where have we historically been under or over budget in terms of salaries where has that been going into overtime and where can we for the future have a better allocation of both overtime existing salaries again not with future prediction of if we're gonna you know hire people but to understand going in just as we audit our revenues we do audit our expenditures and we have those as actuals you know in the month recurring you know just we know the parking fund is below the parking revenues are below but also the parking spending is below this year based on appropriations so to understand that in a forward look or a backward looking so that we can better predict and model and potentially take something that other municipalities and other state agencies across the United States have in terms of a vacancy factor that would account for the fact that we are not fully staffed at any period of time in the city and we're always we're always advertising for more um positions uh because we always have turnover in all the departments and to see if there's actual savings that we can deliver on that and then you know a lower tax rate you know potentially this year but more likely in the next year on the on the uh on the vacancy side anymore

Thanks assistant mayor I'm strongly in favor of the vacancy budgeting For two reasons it's it's a pretty common practice Nashua Manchester a lot of towns and cities throughout New England do it I Did it in our business I I actually looked it up. We did a 0.9% vacancy rate for our 200 employees, and we built that from the department heads because turnover is different in every part of the organization. And the second reason, aside from it's a common practice and a reliable practice, is that when we're assuming every position is filled and budgeting that way, and that never happens, we're appropriating more of the taxpayers' money than we use. And so it just makes sense to me to align that appropriation for payroll to what's really happening. and not take more of the taxpayers money than we have to so I'm all in favor of that and I think it's a significant savings if we can generate accurate information you know high seven figures maybe our high six figures maybe seven figures that could be applied to reduce the tax rate so good on that one but i think i will in the revenue side i think it would be helpful to have the report back tell us um large occurrences one-time occurrences for example we talked about fees in the planning department which have been on a tear for several years but we've had a lot of elephants in terms of projects and it would be helpful to know those there will be a time there will be a year or two where we don't have those no elephants will have a bag of mice and we have to i've never heard you i've said you said a lot of things and i'm just glad after seven years you still can surprise me with an analogy there so you know that if we could add that color to the report back of significant one-time big events that impacted bourbon thank you assistant mayor

I think it's important to do this analysis. I think that it would be good for the council to understand exactly where we're potentially over collecting in certain areas, employment, and what our revenues actually do look like on a regular basis. But I don't think it actually will change our budgeting. And the reason I say that is that what will happen is we will essentially have to just refine where we're putting funds. we will have to budget for fund balance rather than having funds at the end of the year that automatically go to fund balance because they're unspent. So we'll actually have to create new revenue lines in our budget or new lines in our budget that address funding things and funding different funds where we need to have funding at the end of the year that we're currently not planning for. so it's it's more shuffling and but it it also makes our budget a little more transparent in exactly where we are spending the money so i think there's great value in that but i also think that that we need to then rethink our budgeting model and other other areas any more discussion okay i will call the motion all in favor aye any opposed okay

The second is the same, and it will be more brief, but it's a motion for staff to provide a report back with the proposed vacancy modeling approach prior to October 15th, 2026, and in time for setting the tax rate. I'd move, sorry, I'd move that the staff provide a report back with the proposed vacancy modeling approach prior to October 15th, 2026, and in time for setting the tax rate. Knowing that, just two things, Dad. Knowing that, oh, is there a second? second so knowing that there is um this is a report back knowing that um there's a fair amount of uh leniency uh counselor tabor got away doing it with 200 in a department there are some departments that are five or ten where we're not going to be able to have any vacancy you know that would kill a department in terms of having to model for that so would love to find out what that is and address in and looking in arrears to see you know what that's possible knowing that it's not you know 100% it's certainly not 100% but it's it's unlikely that this affects us for this tax rate I think it is important to be able to do so because it will be hopefully a process that we can go through and to counselor cooks We are at 13.65%. That's right in the middle of our fund balance. That has been unchanged in terms of policy in the last decade and a half, but it's where we've been. But I do think that it's important to allocate for every dollar. be able to show that the public is this is the money that where we're spending it and not have surprises where we find money you know which is great but it then begs the question of how did we find that money and I think this would be a different approach but it would be an approach that would allow us to be a little more transparent and potentially run slightly more efficiently any questions or comments

if none i will call the motion all in favor aye any opposed and i will pass the gavel back

you assistant mayor uh counselor cook we have your first one we had your second one and then we did the third one wow look at that's you know kind of that found money surprise there we got through that page all right counselor tabor all right we're coming around the clubhouse turn here give me your power one all right um you don't want to move this to june 22nd day i think that it would be useful to do so we'll have more information on maybe potentially one of the rates that are being set and i think it was a good conversation we had mr crease to digest some of that information right i think every source is the 18th 18th okay so this would be helpful um in terms of in terms of that okay so we're gonna uh we'll bring that back at the next uh council meeting

right do i need the table to the next it's your we'll just put it right we just put it on here we'll just put it on the agenda okay counselor bagley we had that one that one counselor flynn yes i'm going to keep this very very brief we have our first meeting scheduled with the school food and security task force this wednesday thank you to the city manager and Jessica, I think they've blasted an email out. We've got people from the schools there. The City Welfare Director Jody Carnes and Health Officer Kim McNamara will be attending. And we have really cast a wide net to a number of community partners like Gather, the Portsmouth Housing Authority, Operation Blessing, Portsmouth Community Fridge, et cetera, et cetera. Red's Good Vibes, Caitlin will be there. uh so the goal is to ensure that we have a group of people that reflect um people that are the front lines of this challenge and i will continue to keep the council updated as the group begins our work thank you counselor flynn that sounds like a a great lineup yeah really good counselor hopkins

all right we're going to enter a flow state friends for parking traffic and safety i can't wait monica these all make sense um so my first is to uh move to approve and accept the action sheet in minutes of the february 5th 2026 parking traffic and safety committee meeting a second The reason that we're delayed from February 5th is because that's when parking traffic safety approved the wrap and It didn't give you guys any time to discuss it Now that we've discussed it and it's been voted Here we are. My next item is All in favor aye opposed Now I have a recommendation to remove from the parking traffic and safety committee action sheet in minutes from May 7th, the following three things. Number one, the one-way traffic and on-street parking on Fleet Street between Congress and Hanover. Number two, the license agreement to request from a resident to park on State Street. Number three, the 100 Club's request to approve the renewal of the valet license. So I move to remove these action items from the parking, traffic, and safety committee action sheet. and minutes of May 7th, 2026 to present them for the council's consideration individually. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Thank you. Moving on. So now I'd like to request a recommendation for council to request a report back from staff on its recommendations for one-way traffic and on-street parking on Fleet Street between Congress and Hanover. This presentation was given to Parking, Traffic, and Safety and I think you guys should hear it too. Second.

And this is Council Boyla.

Is this because I remember there was a public vote or something, but did the people not participate or did we not get good feedback? No, they did.

They did, and so it's been, the parking folks have come forth with their recommendation

Street to be one-way traffic with on street parking between Congress and over so this is something that we did approve I think at some point in terms of the conceptual plan in terms of master plan the market square master plan but this is something that you're asking councillor Hopkins because this is going to be a dramatic shift in the downtown in and even though it was approved in the minutes you're asking us to pull it out so that we can have further discussion so when we come back to it it's not like oh yeah we approved it and we look to a meeting at 1224 in the morning before like that's insane so we're gonna have another conversation on this with a report back on this and bring the public back up to speed on something that we have already kind of discussed but everybody would have forgotten it and so we're gonna bring that back again Councilor Bagley.

Just a quick comment to Councilor Blake. We did have the QR codes and we got a lot of feedback. There were three options. And I remember at the time we kind of took a hybrid of two options, which was like one way on the lower side and two way on the upper side. So I think it's great that it's coming for a report back because it was like we –

Combined well the best of everything into one thing, but that was not something that the community at large voted up Right, and we're only talking this is like phase one of Fleet Street, and we're only talking about from Congress to Hanover so the other half of Fleet Street You know coming towards whatever that way is state to come state to Congress is phase two so this is just talking about like where Gillies is and

again thank you counselor hopkins i mean this is you could chart this back to one of the ways that you know the first time the council me and uh counselor tabor you know approved something in you know the the bollards and then it came back and everybody was like well what do we do and so like being able to be judicious on the minutes and understand when we should bring this something back even though you know if we had approved those it would have gone forward and that would have been it because many minutes uh action sheet in the many minutes for parking traffic safety are approved once you do that so thank you very much uh for for pulling this out i think that you know wherever we land up it will be better because we're not surprising the public on something correct all so this is a for request to report back and presentation all in favor aye any opposed

And then the other item we're pulling out is the license agreement request from a resident to park on State Street I just recommend that we move to replace this request on file Any discussion all in favor aye The 100 Club request to approve renewal of their valet license I move to approve the 100 clubs request to approve the renewal of the valet license second

Any discussion? I'm going to recuse because I'm a member.

Okay.

Any other members? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any recusals? Recused. All right.

And now... And now... One more. We've talked about all of that. Remember, we're in flow. We're flowing.

You spoke it into existence, Councilor Hopkins.

The Parking, Traffic, and Safety Committee Action Sheet and minutes of May... 7th 2026 I move to approve and accept them with these items removed for further discussion the action sheet in minutes of May 7th 2026 second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed all right Thank You councillor Hopkins at the late hour approval of grants and donations

U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention, OJJDP, grant in the amount of $380,178 for the New Hampshire Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Move to accept the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention grant in the amount of $380,178 for the New Hampshire Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force as presented. Second.

any discussion good job getting the grant all in favor aye any opposed um we did take up uh the bike rack and again moved by those that presented that um the unsolicited 30 gift card to the common man roadside for the general use by the portland police department yeah i moved to accept the unsolicited 30 gift card to common man roadside virginia used by the portland police department second

all in favor aye aye any opposed all right we have the report two informational items the first one is a big one your honor and i don't know if you'd like to take it up tonight or to start talking about it and bring it back on june 22nd but god love ben and mike and peter okay um this is a report back relative to on street and lot parking fees uh to follow what you've decided to do for garage rates as part of the fee approval and resolution in the budget and the highlights that i'll touch on briefly will include no changes for the price structure for on street and parking lot rates by residents who've registered for the resident parking program and receive a discount while using the park removal app with the garage pricing changes effective july 1st the recommendation is to increase the on-street rates to follow suit and to help maintain the behavior relation uh the relationship between the three inventories of parking so jane farini was kind enough to put a memo to for your attention it gives this council three options for the adoption of any changes to fees in the sense of how you are able to make those changes i think council bagley touched on that earlier so perhaps we bring a report we we come back on the june 22nd meeting with with perhaps your preferred uh or we just bring the memo back in its entirety when we talk about it then

So it was it was me that brought forward this motion I believe us did it originally and that was because we wanted to try to pull the actual amount of parking for on street out of the ordinance and try to make it part of the committee which makes the most sense and it sounds like if my remembering of my reading at this hour is correct that we can do that so i think that you know we should you know make a motion that we ask them to come back with those ordinance changes and we can start make a motion for first reading to come back to remove it and instead of an amount it goes to fee study right but we have to change the ordinance to take the amount out yes we do that's that's what I'm thinking we should start that process and then right then we can actually change the fee i agree with councilman we should do it tonight because with the prices changing july one in the garage we don't want to leave them for too long so if we can do first reading at our next meeting then we can possibly have this done by the first of august so we can make that into a motion i thought i did as best i could oh okay is there a second i made a motion to bring back first reading to amend the ordinance to remove the fee number and to put in that it would go to fee study committee instead second oh or any more discussion

So this is to make the change that is supported legally so that we can move the parking changes to a fee study committee.

Every year versus actually having to do an ordinance change all the time. Yeah.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

The only other thing is we anticipated bringing in an update on the open enrollment policy, but as folks know by now, the House Bill 751 was killed. The legislative session is over.

I don't know if you're all aware the Portsmouth high school baseball team they needed to win their last two games to make the playoffs not only did they go to Keene beat Keene they went to Salem beat Salem number 15 team to qualify for the playoffs they went and then beat number three seed pinkerton in the playoffs then beat exeter number seven seed in the playoffs and now we're in the semi-final on wednesday um so if you're available i hope you'll support them um the boys lacrosse team it's at londonderry yeah um boys lacrosse and girls lacrosse are still going strong they're both number one seeds um but yeah and the girls tennis one girls tennis one yes they finally beat uh their rival so yes that's excellent

Anything under miscellaneous? No. I'd wait a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye.