Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Charter Questions

Before we get into any questions, I want to take an opportunity to share some common ground with the charter commissioners.
1.) We are all on the same page in saying that we all want lower taxes. I have never heard one person say to me that they wanted taxes to go up. My taxes went up and I don't like the fact that they increased by about 30%

2.) I give credit, where credit is due. The Commissioners want more people to be involved and to participate in our local goverment. The first thing that i said which was quoted in the papers last year is that I wanted people to feel that they could come to their town councilors and feel like they have a responsive goverment.

My personal feelings are that I would much rather have participation with someone who disagrees with my opinions than for an apathitic citizen, whom may complain later but has not particiapted in the process. You have heard people complain and someone says " did you vote'? and many times the answer is "no, I have no time" or any other excuses... you get what I'm saying here.

So, we find common ground on these important topics. Thank you charter commissioners for keeping that to the forefront.

Now, after I read the Derry News Letters to the editor on 1/30 I would like to thank Councilor Coyle for pointing out a fact in his words "The town administrator and the council continue to be responsible for preparing the budget within the limitations imposed by the tax cap, but the voters get the final say on approval.

Ok, Lets look at the proposal the commissoners worked at and are proposing for us.

Bonding-Any bonding proposal over 2.5% of previous budget-the voters will decide and as Kevin pointed out this year that number would be $970,000.

I could of been in favor of voters input on any bonding that was outside of the tax cap. (which by the way has never happened. In fact any bonding previouly approved by past councils was always still under the tax cap.)

The TIF vote ( approved but not yet issued) if under their proposal would of had to wait until May for a vote on, and depending on timing issues-could be a future problem if time is not on our side in attracting businesses. ( we lose being able to be pro-active ) But all and all I think we should be ok in this area.

The changing of the May date is not the end of the world. Although, I'm not happy about spending an additional $8000./year and I'm concerned the split voting days could have a negative effect in people not wanting to come out every two months to vote. I hope if the proposal passes that I'm proved wrong on this one.

And last, Voting on the budget is where most of my questions are. The proposal as we know right now is talked about in simple terms. If the voters do turn down the budget, the budget then defaults to last years budget. Ok, most people understand that pretty easily,
however if we take this upcoming budget as an example and pretend that the charter proposal has passed and the voters voted down the budget. What happens next.

we all know, that this year, under the tax cap the council can increase town spending by 23 cents and in fact if we go right up to the cap and propose to spend 23 cents, we still are short on the budget by $330,000. ( I have not seen a council yet, spend upto the cap. always making sure we scutinize every dollar)

Now, if the budget were to default to last year. we would not be able to raise the 23 cents, which represents obligations by contract and we would still be short the $330,000

The 23 cents represents about $880,000 in real numbers

Budget would need to be cut by 1.21 million. Question: What happens next in the process?

Who makes the cuts?
What gets cut?

Both Kevin and Paul Hopfgarten would be able to best answer these questions as both are/were councilors and are familiar with the towns budget.

These are some of my questions for the commissioners that I would like to know about. I will have more, but until they answer these. I have a problem with thier proposal.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Numbers don't lie

The charter commission wants you to believe that by voting for their proposal, you the taxpayer will save lots of money and they don't tell you the loss of services that comes with those savings. Lets look at some numbers here and find out how much you can expect to save and at what cost. Lets only talk about the portion of possible change as it relates to the voting on budget. If the charter revision passes and the voters vote down the budget, the budget then defaults to previous years budget with no increase at all.

Remember the charter change can only effect town portion of your taxes

Town Portion of taxes = $7.50/per $1000 of value of your home

Average Derry home is valued at =$280,000

Average town portion taxes paid =$2100 per year

12 mos per year $2100/12 = $175 per month

$175 per month gets you these town services:

Police protection: 24 hours day/ 7 days week
Fire Protection: 24/7
EMT/Ambulance service: 24/7
Road maintenance/snow removal/public works
Transfer station services
Use of parks & recreation fields/ open space
Needed infrastructure improvements
Two Libraries
Planning, zoning, code enforcement, and all other services at town hall.

Folks, compare this $175/month to some common other bills you may have. Whats your families total cell phone bill monthly? How about cable, Internet and phone service? How about the cost of eating out 1 time a week per family? Whats your Dunkin Donut coffee fix each morning cost you per year? All of the above items are not must have items mind you.

Is this putting things into proper perspective for you??

OK lets continue, Lets say we get really mad at the town and cut 1/3rd of every town portion services.. Cut 1/3 police, Cut 1/3 Fireman 1/3 Public works, You get the picture 1/3 of everything in the town budget.

You were paying $2100 Now you pay $1400 Savings= $700 year

$700/12 = $58.00 per month =or $1.91 per day ( enough to get you another Dunkin Donut coffee)

You say hey, that's better than nothing at all right?
remember you have 1/3 less police protection
1/3 less fire protection, heck 1/3 less public work crews plowing the roads. Will the crime rate drop by a third? How about ambulance calls, do you think we will have 1/3 less, maybe we'll luck out and it snows only on 1/3rd of our roads to be plowed.

Seriously folks, we have a tax cap on the towns portion of tax bill that works, tied into the CPI and over the last 5 years the budget increases have been around 2.6%.

Why this charter commission wants you to believe that town taxes and town council spending is out of control is ridiculous! Numbers don't lie

If you feel that you would rather have a cup of DD coffee vs. town services, then go ahead and vote for their charter revision.

After you're finished drinking that coffee, don't go whining about lack of services and look to someone else to blame.

Oh, I almost forgot, At least we get to vote in May and the weather will be nice. ( at an extra cost of $8000 dollars every year more)

What your opinion? share! by clicking on comments section below

Monday, January 22, 2007

Medical Choices

Reading Sunday's 1/21/07 Union leader had made me happy to see progress in the area of medical expense knowledge for our citizens. The state will be the first in the nation to post on website, hospital fees for all kinds of surgeries and compare them with other area hospitals costs for the same procudures.Here is the link that will be up soon http://www.nhhealthcost.org This gives us the power to hopefully drive medical costs down! Yes- very smart thinking. Also the article used a graph and used this exercise with arthroscopic knee surgery costs and made the comparisons and guess which hospital came in with the best pricing- Parkland Medical Center-Derry. Could this website information benefit Derry by bringing in people using Parkland to also use our downtown businesses to shop in our community? we will see.

Knowledge is Power and clearly this will benefit our citizens.Many times the un-insured pay the highest fees. ( people with the least amount of money have to pay the highest medical costs. something is wrong here)

The second article which peaked my curiosity was that President Bush is proposing tax breaks for buying health insurance. For the first time workers could get a tax break if they bought thier own health insurance.
This has its critics, but it does have merit and empowers the individuals and not the big companies. ( shift of tax liability from un-insured to businesses)

President Bush's proposal will be previewed in his state of the Union address this month and as a self-employeed small business owner, I'm really excited about this proposal but will wait to hear more.

More shifts from goverment dependency to individual choices on health issues( and many other issues ) will drop costs and save us all lots of money. Comments anyone????

Thursday, January 18, 2007

More economic data

A resident has written a letter to a local paper on his thoughts on Economic Development and as always this author always backs his info with rich data. The author had pointed out the mix of residential/commercial of towns/cities with highest employment figures. Portsmouth 55/45, Concord and Nashua 65/35, Manchester 73/27, Salem 74/26 Londonderry 76/24 and then Derry at 87/13. The very first thing that struck me looking at this data was the fact that the top 4 all have airports. We all have seen businesses that want to be near an airport. Next, I noticed Salem, A town in which I grew up in from 1968-1985. It's success story is that it is a border town with Massachussettes. In Salem,( like most border towns) its mostly retail stores all lined up down Rte 28 and on weekends you will see tons of "out of state" license plates taking advantage of our 0% sales tax. My point here is we in Derry must compete with these other towns for business and in some cases as pointed out above we are at a dis-advantage. Some communities also have major roadways that run both East/West and North/South, in our town we do have Rte 93 but we share that with Londonderry ( which also has the airport). We need to think "outside the box", we need to be different than everyone else, we need uniqueness so that we are not competing with every other town for the same businesses. It will not be easy and it will take lots of work on many levels. I do feel that we have many residents in town that have expertise that could be shared, I think we should engage in plugging in our youth who without them we could be in trouble ( tap into Pinkertons FBLA clubs ) How about retired business owners, They have lots to offer and may have some great ideas-Like I said in a previous post we need lots of people to help out and its not as easy as just hiring a $45,000/yr coordinator- Its going to take much more of a commitment than a possible new employee, whom should by the way be discussed at budget time and by whomever seats in the council seats ( after all they will be representing the people who vote them in) I'm interested in your thoughts!

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Charter Minutes now posted.

Finally the Charter Commission recorded minutes are now up on the towns web site. Some of these minutes are from June and only until today 1/10/07 were they posted on the towns web page. Please take the time to go over both the Prelimary docs and final docs as well as all the minutes so that you may make an informed decision when it comes time to vote. Agree or Disagree, it is important to understand all aspects of the proposal to change our form of goverment, your goverment. Here is where to get those meeting documents. www.derry.nh.us then go to Charter Commission Info. There you should see all the documents and discussions. Also, if you have questions, you should ask them of people in favor and not in favor so that you can hear all discussion and different view points. ASK QUESTIONS, BE INFORMED, MAKE YOUR DECISION, but most of all, Please Vote!

Friday, January 05, 2007

Not the end but just the beginning.

Here is what I think the next steps should be on Economic Development. I voted on option 4 which was to get everyone on board with economic development. Why everyone thinks that the decision to fund DEDC is the end of discussion is beyond me. First we need to look at the facts. #1 money in this years budget was already raised to fund DEDC. To not fund would put that money into the general fund and to do nothing would be the worst mistake we could possibly make. #2 Yes, we have a tough budget coming up and we should let the new council make the tough decision to fund a new positon. My idea is simple and i believe has merit. We as a town should create a "blue ribbon" ad-hoc group of business savy Derry residents ( we have a lot of very talented people living in Derry) and appoint them to sit and discuss ways we as a town should focus on Economic Development, how we could market and attract new business, what direction and how to engage the public to see what thier wants and needs are, compile demographics and to find ways of the town being proactive. This group could be appointed by the council and meets in public just like planning board, or zoning board and meetings are televised. lets remember that we need to have many many ideas and we need all residents to come up with ideas, not just one group. By the way, these "business experts would be volunteers, that does not cost us money, that lets more people have input into the process and can focus on a non-political way of bringing businesses into town and lowering our taxes. Just my thoughts-interested in hearing what you think!