Trisciani

Burkush

Before you take a few minutes to read what’s below, know that the mayor and aldermen need to hear from you before their 7:00 PM meeting on Tuesday June 2 at City Hall.  Here’s the aldermen’s contact information.  The mayor’s contact information is here.  You can also join us at City Hall and share your thoughts during the public participation part of the meeting.  Be there and signed in by 7! ~Publius

As the June 2 meeting of the Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen looms, one thing is undeniably true:  The size of the tax hike that will wallop Manchester’s taxpayers will be determined solely by Republican Mayor Jay Ruais and at least one of the five Republican aldermen.

Here are the facts:

  • All nine Democratic aldermen signed off on a budget presented by at-Large Alderman June Trisciani and Ward 9 Aldermen Jim Burkush.  That budget:
    • Raised over $22 million in new property taxes – almost TRIPLE what’s allowed under the city’s popular tax cap.
    • Hid a 12% tax hike behind the revaluation, deceptively claiming a lower tax rate by using revaluation estimates of the tax base instead of using the current tax base so that the rates could be honestly compared.
    • Requires overrides to three separate sections of the tax cap to be enacted.  An override requires 10 of the 14 aldermen to vote yes.

  • Terrio:  Will he crack?

    All nine Democratic aldermen issued a statement faulting Republican aldermen for not supporting their budget.

    • Ruais said he was willing to work with Democrats to compromise, despite emphasizing the need to protect taxpayers when he presented his tax cap compliant budget.
    • Ward 7 Alderman Ross Terrio, who campaigned as a guardian of the tax cap, said he would vote for an override, just “not this override.”
  • All it takes is just one Republican alderman to join the Democrats in voting for an override.
  • Ward 8 Alderman Ed Sapienza and Ward 6 Alderman Crissy Kantor have proposed an alternative to the Democratic budget.
    • It starts with Ruais’ proposal, which increases the tax rate by 3%, makes a handful of changes, and comes in with a tax increase of just 2.8%.
    • It raises spending by a little more than $800,000 over the current budget.
    • Sapienza told Girard at Large he reached out to other GOP aldermen to see if they wanted to work together and was told they were working on their own budget.

Here’s why the Republicans will own whatever tax increase hits Manchester’s taxpayers:

The Democrats cannot pass any budget that breaks the tax cap without a Republican vote.

It’s that simple.  If the Republicans don’t want to pop the cap, they don’t have to.

Sapienza

Kantor

Ruais has indicated that his budget is flawed, saying he didn’t have updated numbers on health insurance, Comprehensive General Liability insurance (CGL), or the overlay account, which funds property tax abatements and are not limited by budget allocations as they shall be paid in whatever amount is necessary by state law.  Those items total $2.35 million.  Ruais has implied the budget would be in trouble if they aren’t funded and signaled his support an override to deal with them.

Candidly, there isn’t any reason why these line items can’t be handled over the course of the fiscal year, either by transferring funds from other parts of the budget, such as the contingency line item which has nearly $2 million for unforeseen expenses, not counting money included to fund police raises, or by utilizing the reserve accounts that are in place to handle shortfalls in both the health insurance and CGL line items.  This is not a reason to toss the tax cap aside.

As a practical matter, if the Republicans stand firm against overriding the tax cap and the Democrats remain committed to overriding it, then the mayor’s proposed budget will become the city’s next budget by default at Midnight on June 9.  From the standpoint of the taxpayer, this is about as good as the taxpayers can hope for.

Bonilla: From “defund the police” to “back the blue”

An area where the GOP might crack is over whether the budget contains enough money to fund pay raises for the city’s police unions.  Negotiations on those contracts are ongoing.  The Democrats, led by at-Large Alderman Dan O’Neil, charge that if the tax cap isn’t overridden, then the city will be unable to give any raises.  This claim, buttressed by Trisciani, Burkush, Ward 5 Alderman Jason Bonilla (“You can’t back the blue if you don’t break the ceiling.”) and Ward 10 Alderman Bill Barry, seemed to throw the Republicans on the defensive, especially Terrio, who said he’d vote to override the cap for a police contract.

It’s necessary to question if this claim is true.  

Ruais put $1.7 million into the budget to fund those contracts.  That’s a healthy sum for about two hundred employees.  In addition, Ruais fully funded the department’s salary budget, including twenty seven vacancies, which is expected to grow to thirty within the next month.  For more than a decade, the police department has averaged two dozen vacancies throughout each year.  If more money is needed to fund pay raises, then those vacancies provide ample cash as there is no realistic reason to believe that these vacancies will be miraculously filled with new contracts.  The unions have used that gambit for the past three negotiations to justify their outsized salary asks and it’s proven to not work.  If $1.7 million plus vacancy cash isn’t enough, then negotiate a different contract or find the money elsewhere in the budget, like Sapienza and Kantor did in their proposal.

Ruais: His budget will work

Kaw-uh: Deceptive posts on Ruais’ budget

Democrats have also pushed several different pressure points against the GOP aldermen, led by Ward 1 Alderman Bryce Kaw-uh, who has both tried to scare the public into thinking services would come to a screeching halt and made it look like there would be no funding for roadwork if the Democrats’ tax cap shattering budget isn’t passed.  Neither is true.  Ruais put $7 million in the budget for roadwork and the vacancies he didn’t fund are hardly “mission critical” positions.  Nobody wants city departments to go without, but when money’s tight, that’s exactly what families have to do and there’s no reason the city can’t and shouldn’t be expected to do the same.  Like the families facing a huge tax hike, they should be expected to figure out ways to do what needs to be done.  The first duty to of every elected official is to the citizens that vote for them, not the departments they’re supposed to oversee and hold accountable.

The city has a workable budget if Ruais’ budget is enacted by default, which is what will happen if the Republicans actually do what they promised they’d do and that’s uphold the tax cap to spare long-suffering taxpayers.  If anything that breaks the tax cap passes, it will be because Republicans caved to Democrats’ demands.  

Baines

Ruais worked with Democrats to cheat the cap over in the past two budgets, sabotaging GOP efforts to cut spending and taxes along the way.  As a result, taxes have grown at the fastest clip since Robert A. Baines was mayor and his budgets led to a massive citizen effort to install the tax cap into the charter.  Ruais has done nothing to unify and rally the GOP aldermen against a tax cap override, abandoning the taxpayer in the process.  Remember, this is the mayor who gave us two of the largest tax hikes in over 20 years, despite campaigning on promises to “reduce and prioritize spending to finally give us a tax cut.”

Thomas

Vincent

For their part, the GOP Aldermen have broken into two camps:  Sapienza and Kantor are opposed to a tax cap override and have produced a budget that raises less than the amount allowed by the cap.  Terrio, Ward 11’s Norm Vincent and Ward 12’s Kelly Thomas are likely in the Ruais camp, willing to work with Democrats to crush the cap so the question is how high are they willing to raise taxes and what will taxpayers get out of it other than sharply higher taxes?

They’ll claim it was a “bipartisan” budget if they override the tax cap.  Just remember, no override can happen without Republicans.  They have the power to block it.  If they don’t, they own it for abandoning their pledge to enable the Democrats to jack up taxes and spending well beyond the cap.