Council Chops $385K from Budget

Mayor Eric Spear said he and his fellow City Councilors wanted to give City Manager John Bohenko some firm direction on where to cut the proposed fiscal year 2014 budget of $93.7 million on Monday night.

Following a four hour work session, the council chopped $385,000 from the proposed spending package, which amounts to a 9-cent reduction from the originaly $18 per thousand dollars of assessed valuation. If no further budget cuts are made, this would yield a local property tax rate of $17.91 per thousand.

Councilors went over every part of the proposed fiscal year 2014 budget to find those cuts. The ones they chose to make included $100,000 from the overlay account, $100,000 from the collective bargaining contingency, $135,000 from the capital improvement plan and $50,000 from information technology.

But the cuts were not made without plenty of debate. City Councilor Esther Kennedy said, "I cannot vote for this budget," when she thought about how it will still force city residents to pay higher property taxes and sewer and water rates.

At one point, she asked Bohenko to tell her how much additional money the average city resident would pay if the $93.7 million budget was approved in June. Bohenko said a city resident who owns a home valued at $364,000 would pay an extra $163 per year in local property taxes and an extra $71 for their sewer and water bill, which he said amounted to a 3.2 percent increase over this year.

Some proposed budget cuts that did not win enough support to become a budget resolution included a reduction in the Portsmouth Police and Portsmouth Fire departments overtime accounts.

City Councilor Brad Lown said both departments have more than $1 million hours of overtime, which he said amounts to 10,000 to 14,000 hours for each department, or 500 hours per week of overtime for the departments.

"Much of the overtime may be necessary and it may be efficient, but it may not be all needed," Lown said.

Lown proposed that the police and fire departments cut $80,000 each from their budgets, or less than 1 percent. Portsmouth Police Chief Stephen DuBois said the only way he could do that would be to cut staff.

Fire Chief Chris LeClaire said that if the fire budget lost an additional $80,000 in overtime, it could have the same negative ripple effect as last year when the fire deparmtent was forced to close Fire Station 3 at Pease International Tradeport last summer until the council approved a $150,000 appropriation to reopen it.

When asked by Kennedy if there are any areas in the fire department budget where he could find the money, LeClaire replied, "There aren't any accounts in the budget that are padded."

City Councilor Anthony Coviello also proposed eliminating free holiday parking during the Christmas season to raise an additional $120,000 in parking revenue to offset the proposed budget. But that idea was vehemently opposed by City Councilor Ken Smith and Assistant Mayor Robert Lister.

Smith argued that past decisions to do away with free city parking on Sunday's were arbitrary decisions that were not based on any facts. Coviello argued that if the city eliminated the free holiday parking, the downtown would not be left with a bunch of empty parking spaces during the holiday season.

"The only thing that is arbitrary is giving away free parking," Coviello said.