Board of Mayor and Aldermen deadlocks on Tax Cap Override again
Thomas
Vincent
Terrio: Will he crack the cap?
MANCHESTER, NH. June 3, 2026–The Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen hit another impasse on the city budget at its meeting on June 2. Despite concessions that would have raised taxes by more than double the amount allowed by the city’s popular tax cap and caused the tax rate to jump by double digits, Manchester’s nine Democratic Aldermen pressed forward with only minor modifications to their original proposal, which raised taxes by nearly triple what’s allowed under the tax cap and a tax hike of 11.8%
Republican aldermen Ross Terrio (Ward 7), Norm Vincent (Ward 11) and Kelly Thomas, offered a proposal that increased taxes by $17.7 million and spending by $10.3 million, resulting in tax rate increase of over 10.1%. The tax cap, which is calculated by multiplying the amount of taxes collected in the prior budget by the three year average of inflation, allowed taxes to increase by $8.1 million.
Burkush the budget buster
Democratic aldermen June Trisciani (at-Large) and Jim Burkush (Ward 9), on behalf of all nine of the Democratic aldermen, proposed a budget that would have raised $22.1 million in new taxes and increased spending by $14 million. It caused the tax rate to soar by nearly 12%. Following negotiations with the three GOP aldermen, the small changes made to the Democrats’ budget, which was also presented at last night’s board meeting, lessened their spending surged by $993,318 and brought titanic tax spike down by just $1.67 million, to $20.4 million. The projected tax rate is $15.79, which is an 11.2% increase over the current tax rate, adjusted for the projected tax base.
As Democrats pressed for a vote on to override the Tax Cap, saying it needed to be overridden before the specific proposals could be adopted, Terrio tried to sideline the vote, saying the proposal “wasn’t ready for prime time” and suggesting further negotiations were necessary to come to an agreement. When the Democrats called for the vote, conservative Republican aldermen Crissy Kantor (Ward 6) and Ed Sapienza (Ward 8) joined Terrio, Vincent and Thomas in voting against the override, depriving the Democrats of the ten votes needed for an override.
Despite a push by Sapienza to vote on the school budget that was before the board, a vote that would have only required a simple majority to pass because it was within the tax cap, the board voted to retable the budget.
Kantor
Sapienza
Before those maneuvers took place, the budget proposed by Sapienza and Kantor was shot down on a vote of 2 to 12. Their budget raised taxes by half a million dollars less than allowed by the tax cap and only raised spending by $800,000.
The budget discussion came after several hours of public testimony from dozens of speakers. By our count, twenty nine speakers were opposed to an override of the tax cap and twenty-one were in favor, twenty eight if the seven students brought to the meeting by the Granite State Organizing Project’s Young Organizers United program are counted in the tally. There was one student, twelve year old Hannah Kesselring, who spoke eloquently against overriding the tax cap, giving those listening a magnificent lesson in economics and public finance along the way. If she’s counted, the pro-tax cap tally rises to thirty.
standing room only
In an odd exchange, Terrio asked Mayor Jay Ruais if he “was happy with the budget” he presented. Ruais replied “Not when it doesn’t fund our police contracts, no.” Ruais put $1.7 million for police raises in his budget, begging the question as to just how big those pay raises might be if this amount is insufficient for the first year of the contract.
Here’s the link to the meeting, where you can see the public comments and the unbelievable “debate” over the various budget options, especially the Sapienza-Kantor proposal, where members of the board seemed to go out of their way to find reasons why spending had to increase.
