City Hall: Ruais notes 'difficult decisions' made in budget process

Jun. 21—Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais says he is proud of the "difficult decisions" aldermen made ahead of passing a municipal budget June 18.

After a contentious marathon session earlier this month, city aldermen passed a $189.7 million city spending plan. Board members previously passed a $227.9 million Manchester School District budget and $300,000 in capital improvement projects, triggering a 3.43% increase in the city's tax rate.

Ruais said when he took office in January, "we were staring down the barrel of some pretty significant budget challenges."

"We had a historically high 4% cost-of-living adjustment — only three times in the last 25 years have we had a 3% cost-of-living adjustment," Ruais said. "The typical number we see is one or two percent."

Ruais said the city also was facing a $2 million increase in health care costs.

"That represents about $10.6 million in spending that we had to cover before we even did anything that we wanted to afford any of our own priorities," Ruais said. "So what did we do to protect the taxpayers? We made some fairly significant changes to the budget, we made some significant cuts that were responsible."

Those changes and cuts include:

—Reducing the Manchester School District's request by $4.2 million;

—Not funding $1,839,748 in department requests;

—Transferring $1.532 million in surplus and cutting $955,000 from Community Improvement Plan cash to reduce the tax rate;

—Eliminiating $600,000 in funded vacancies;

—Transferring $403,000 from compensation study to the overlay account;

—Keeping most departments' budgets level with the previous year;

—Reducing borrowing by 15%.

Ruais said, ""We took a couple of additional steps," including implementation of a hiring that will save money.

"I believe that this a good compromise," Ruais said, with the final budget coming in well under the 5.63% tax cap, despite "the $10.6 million hole that we started with."

"We made several significant responsible cuts while not impacting city services," Ruais said. "That's another great thing that I think we can take to heart with this city budget — we did not impact city services in this.

"In fact, if you run through the list, we provided millions of dollars for roads, were able to hire some additional police officers while protecting 10 police officers that were transferring off of a federal grant. We have millions of dollars in park renovations," he said.

"We made some really good progress on this budget while protecting taxpayers in a difficult environment."

Cell companies rebuffed

Aldermen have rejected a request from mobile telecommunication companies T-Mobile and AT&T to restructure their lease agreements with the city for space on the water tank at Hackett Hill, after both companies sought to lower their monthly rate.

According to Jodie Nazaka, the city's economic development director, an initial 10-year lease was signed with T-Mobile in August 1997.

Before that lease expired, the city and T-Mobile restructured the agreement for a new five-year term, with automatic renewals for three additional five-year terms. The renegotiated monthly rate was $2,600, subject to an annual increase equal to 104% of the monthly rent in effect immediately before the annual commencement date.

The current monthly rate is about $3,290.

The initial lease with AT&T was executed in May 1998 for a five-year term, renewable for three additional terms of five years each. The rate was set at $2,000 per month adjusted by the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The current monthly rate is $ 2,783.

AT&T made a similar request in 2020, with the Committee on Lands and Buildings opting to maintain the current lease agreement terms.

In addition to T-Mobile and AT&T, three other carriers have leases at the Hackett Hill site, including:

—Dish, $2,275 (beginning in 2022);

—US Cellular, $2,940 (1997);

—Verizon, $3,524 (2009).

AT&T offered to pay $2,400 a month beginning July 1, with an 8% rent increase every five years beginning June 1, 2028, and the lease extended through May 31, 2068 — or a one-time, lump-sum payment of $380,000 in exchange for a 99-year easement on the property.

T-Mobile was hoping to reset the base monthly rate to $2,350, with an increase of 12% per term in exchange for a long-term commitment

Following Nazaka's recommendation, aldermen rejected both requests.

Schools help keep FIT

Teams from Manchester High School West and Northwest Elementary School received awards for raising funds to benefit Families in Transition (FIT) as part of the Walk Against Hunger.

Many schools in Manchester, as well as the district office, have teams that participate.

In total, district staff raised almost $9,500 this year, bringing the overall total raised over the past seven years to more than $84,000.

At a recent Board of School Committee meeting, Families in Transition's Michelle Casale joined Committee Member Leslie Want to present awards from this year's Walk, including the top fundraising team, top individual fundraiser and the team with the highest percentage of employees participating.

The winners were:

—Top fundraising team — West High School (Captain Josh Wilson);

—Top individual fundraiser — Josh Wilson, West High School;

—Team with highest participation percentage — Northwest Elementary School.

Paul Feely is the City Hall reporter for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. Reach him at pfeely@unionleader.com.