Candia News : Board of Selectmen

Citizens ask for no tax increase

Hooksett Editor — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:33:00 GMT

By Ginger Kozlowski

It may not hold any legal power, but 78 citizens are asking the Candia Board of Selectmen and School Board to help them pay their taxes by keeping the property tax rate from increasing.

A petition-like form was sent around town in early November and was available in several businesses. It said:
“To:
“Candia Selectmen
“Candia Budget Comm.
“Candia School Board

“This letter to inform the three boards that we do not want any increase in our property taxes. We do not want any increase in any of the town or school budgets.”

Ingrid Byrd, a member of the Candia School Board, said the letter and signatures were presented to the selectmen at their Nov. 9 meeting and to the business manager at SAU 53 the same week.

Byrd said the School Board has already finished its budget for the coming year and kept it level-funded. While she spoke as a single member of the board, she said the other members of the School Board were unanimous in their support of keeping costs down.

“We made cuts across the board,” said Byrd. We went literally line by line, meeting all the things we’re supposed to meet.

School Board Chairman Ed Caito agreed, saying the board worked hard to keep costs down.

“This year, the School Board and the Candia School District administration made a concerted effort to communicate more effectively with the Candia Budget Committee in order to try to work together to present a reasonable budget in these challenging economic times,” said Caito.

The budget is driven by a number of factors, he said.

“Our health insurance provider provides the district with a guaranteed maximum health insurance premium increase for the following school year. This year, that maximum has been set at a 21.5 percent increase,” said Caito.

“Second, the state of New Hampshire, in order to meet their budget obligations, reduced their share of retirement contributions, reneging on their promise to school districts, and pushing those increases to local districts.

“Third,” he said, “the issue of special education needs continues to weigh heavily on school districts. In order to offset some of those drivers, we decided to defer or seek alternative funding sources for some expenses. For example, certain building repairs may be funded out of our building maintenance expendable trust fund.”

Caito said there will be some losses.

“Due to projected enrollments,” he said, “we are reducing two teaching positions. Class sizes will remain within Candia School District policy and state of New Hampshire guidelines.”

Caito also said the Spanish curriculum was eliminated in order to increase time for math and language arts. Candia Selectman Richard “Dick” Snow had not seen the letter, but said he is always open to input from residents.

“I have, in those areas of the operating budget that I am responsible for, reduced expenditures without reducing the services that the voters voted for in March” he said. “My operating budget requests for next year were, in the Parks & Recreation area, just under level funding. The operating budget requested for the cemeteries was higher, based on my desire to more properly maintain them. That number will actually also be close to level funded, based on warrant articles that I will be proposing that will more efficiently manage the cemeteries. None of these efforts, however, will affect this year’s taxes.”

“I really hope the selectmen will level-fund the budget because the citizens are so hard up for money,” said Byrd.

“We have more citizens asking for help from the Welfare Department. People simply cannot continue the increase in taxes that we’ve had.”

Byrd noted that some of her friends have property tax bills of $8,000 or $9,000. “So we need to do something to help citizens,” she said. “People should not be driven out of their homes.”

Candia’s property tax rate for the current year was just set at $19.90 per $1,000 of property value, $1 lower than last year’s rate of $20.90. For the owner of a home valued at $300,000, that means a tax bill of $5,970, $300 lower than last year.

Candia completed a full revaluation this year with the valuation coming in roughly 5 percent higher than last year. Snow pointed out that the tax rate was recently set by the Department of Revenue at a figure roughly 5 percent lower than last year.

“The actual impact on this year’s taxes for the 78 residents would depend on what happened to their individual assessments, based on the revaluation and any changes that they made on their individual properties prior to April 1,” said Snow.

Tax collector Candice Stamatelos said bills were expected to be mailed by Nov. 20, and would be due by Dec. 21.

Petition to downsize Candia Board of Selectmen is handed in past deadline

Hooksett Editor — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:54:00 GMT

BY TOBY HENRY

A divided Board of Selectmen nixed a citizen petition to reduce their number from five to three during a Jan. 16 meeting after a majority of officials said the proposale had been submitted the day after the deadline.

Candia’s final deadline for submitting warrant articles was Jan. 13, but board members said the petition was not officially received until the morning of Jan. 14. During a separate interview on Jan. 15, local resident Amanda Soares, the final signer of the petition, said she brought the article in after 4 p.m. on Jan. 13, but Town Clerk Christine Dupere’s office hours ended that day at 3 p.m.

Selectman Tom Giffen moved to accept the article “despite its tardiness,” and the board acknowledged that Soares had at least made an attempt to serve the article by the Jan 13 deadline. Giffen said that the article itself was a sign that some citizens are “disgruntled with the specific board” and that acceptance of the complete yet late article would demonstrate that the board is ultimately “not as bad as it seems.”

Candia voters approved the change from a three- to a fivemember Board of Selectmen in 2005.

Giffen also summarized the issue as a “minor technicality,“ and said two attorneys consulted on the matter indicated that the “doctrine of substantial compliance” appeared to be a supporting factor for the acceptance of the article. But Selectman Rick Lazott, who participated in the meeting via telephone, was among those who maintained that both the spirit and letter of local statutes indicated that the board should not accept a late article.

“Rules are there to be followed,” he said.

Selectmen said that Dupere’s closed office did not in fact represent an obstacle to the article, and Soares could have lawfully submitted the article that day by seeking out a selectman to hand the petition to in person. Kelley noted that the petition had “plenty of signatures on it beforehand” and could have been submitted at any time prior to 3 p.m. on Jan. 13.

As the board neared a vote, Giffen warned that the issue could open up litigation for the town in the event the board rejects the article, but Lazott said an attorney had stated that the town would still have a good position for defending such a decision. The board voted 4-1 against the article, and it will not appear on this year’s warrant.

Candia faces 10 percent budget increase for town

Hooksett Editor — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:18:00 GMT

BY TOBY HENRY

Candia Budget Committee members say they’re bracing for some tough choices as they eye a potential increase of as much as 10 percent for next year.

“Our comment to (department heads) was ‘if we have to cut the budget, where should we cut?’ even though it’s a bottom-line budget,” said committee member Judith Szot on Saturday, Nov. 1. “There’s no easy way. It’s going to be pretty difficult.”

Committee Chairman
Carla Penfield said the Board of Selectmen recently handed in 2009 budget requests that total $2,337,227, an amount that was reduced slightly from the roughly $2,353,000 that Selectman Joe Duarte was working with on Sept. 13. But Penfield said the budget will be increased by an unknown amount because insurance rates -- typically one of the highest areas of increase that faces Candia -- will not be known until mid-December.

As it now stands, Penfield said the addition of the current year’s insurance costs – $146,182 – and some $6,000 for ambulance service brings the preliminary request to $2,489,409, an increase of 7.23 percent. When the final insurance rates are received next month, Penfield said the committee expects a potential final-budget increase of as much as 10 percent.

Penfield said some of the highest areas of increase are for fuel, heating oil, asphalt and salt, a circumstance that drove the requests up for the Highway Department, as well as fire protection. The Candia Fire Department budget is up about 10 percent, with fuel costs escalating from $3,600 to $6,000, and the heating oil allocation went up by $1,000 to $5,000.

The department’s expenses also include a $12,000 water-supply request for new ponds and hydrant replacement, she said.

On the Highway Department, Penfield said the budget request reflects an increase of about 25 percent, and road salt is also a significant cost. Budgeted at some $38,724 for this year, she said the actual 2008 expenditures came to about $66,000, and $57,500 has been requested for next year. The single largest area of budget increase for highway is asphalt maintenance, which swelled to $77,400, an increase of nearly $50,000.

Although town summer recreation programs were dispensed with this year as a cost-saving measure, Penfield said they are included in the preliminary recreation budget request, which totals about $32,000 so far. While Penfield said the budget challenges this year “are huge,” Szot said the situation was alleviated somewhat by minor cuts in a few departments.

Szot said building inspector Bill Hallock reduced some of his own hours, and recycling center head Chuck Whitcher has offered to drop one employee position. She said her committee hopes to reduce costs further by evaluating all expenditures line by line.

“We are going to go through every line and say, ‘OK, can we cut postage from $750 to $600?’” she said. “It’s going to take a lot of time, but we’re trying to give the town the level of service it needs ... while keeping costs down.”

Committee members said on Nov. 1 they expect to begin a review of the school budget requests soon.

Candia town budget criticized

Hooksett Editor — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:07:00 GMT

BY JENN McDOWELL

The 100 or so Candia voters who showed up for the deliberative session of Town Meeting on Saturday, Feb. 2, at the Moore School struck a compromise between the proposed town operating budgets proposed by the Board of Selectmen and the Budget Committee.

On Tuesday, March 11, voters will decide whether to pass the amended proposed 2008- 09 town operating budget of $2,321,660 or accept a default budget of $2,265,781.

Settling on a budget
After approving wording of the first 13 articles regarding zoning amendments and contributions to social services as a lump, discussion shifted to Budget Committee cuts, which shaved the selectmen’s budget from an 8.5 percent increase over the current year’s default budget to a 2.5 percent overall increase by cutting about 5.5 percent from each line item, said Budget Committee Chairman Carla Penfield.

The heated debate over how to compromise on the budget stemmed from Selectman Tom Giffen’s motion to restore $5,063 the Budget Committee cut from the health and welfare line, a cost which increased from last year along with many other lines in the budget, and amend the overall budget proposal to $2,266,318 instead of the Budget Committee’s $2,261,255.

Selectmen expressed frustration with the way the Budget Committee handled the cuts this year, saying the bottom-line cuts left them in the cold on costs they can’t control, including health and welfare, heating oil, transportation and health insurance.

“A chimpanzee with a dart board could have done just as well,” Giffen said.

Resident Ken Goekjian suggested they take the increases further, saying he didn’t feel Giffen’s amendment went far enough. Twenty-four people voted in favor of Giffen’s amendment and 38 opposed it.

Some residents asked for specifics on what the Budget Committee felt the town could do without. Penfield said while there were line items the committee felt were not necessary, such as new employees, it was not the Budget Committee’s charge to determine how money should be spent.

“The only decision we have to make is how much money the taxpayer can afford this year,” Penfield said, adding that with the transfer station bond payment, presented as a warrant article, would account for a 10 percent increase to the overall budget on its own.

Lazott’s motion, seconded by Giffen, to amend the article and increase the budget back to the selectmen’s original proposed budget of $2,380,064 also failed in a tied vote.

“We have two groups who did a terrific job, and I think the answer is somewhere in the middle,” said resident Ernie Lefavre.

Betsy Kruse, vice chairman of the Candia Conservation Commission proposed an amendment to increase the proposed budget in the article by half of the difference between the Budget Committee’s and Selectmen’s numbers, or $60,405, for a final figure of $2,321,660.

Keep the Budget Committee? The tension over the budget hung in the air until the end of the meeting when Article 35, which asked to disband the Budget Committee, came up for debate.

“If there’s no Budget Committee, then where are the checks and balances?” asked resident Stacey Beauchamp.

Giffen said discontent with prior selectmen fed the Budget Committee’s establishment.

“The creation of the Budget Committee failed to address the perceived problem,” he said.

Brennan said the extra time and effort department heads put in to present their budgets to the two separate panels was not measurable in terms of cost, but guessed it to be worth around $20,000 in addition to the committee’s $1,900 budget.

School Board member Ingrid Byrd said she has gone back and forth on her feelings about the Budget Committee, but now supports it as the taxpayers’ advocate.

Beauchamp’s motion to amend the article’s wording to ask whether voters were in favor of “retaining” the Budget Committee instead of “rescinding” it passed. While it is basically the same question, the article had to be replaced with something if the voters did not want to put it on the official ballot as is, Town Moderator Richard Mitchell said.

Zeroed out
An amendment to change the $75,000 warrant article to zero for a water cistern to be installed at the new transfer station passed after lengthy discussion, many residents saying they didn’t see a need for the cistern when others were in close proximity to the transfer station.

Voters also zeroed out a warrant article asking for $79,000 for a metal canopy over the transfer station, making the vote on March 11 null for Article 29.

Another transfer station amendment asking for $38,000 to construct a metal swap shop structure will stay on the official ballot, but Fire Chief Rudy Cartier’s motion to amend the article to remove the word “metal” from the article passed. Removing that word would allow the Solid Waste Committee to seek out cheaper materials for the shed, he argued.

Conservation money The vote for Article 33 was also nullified when voters decided not to decrease the percentage of land use change tax going into the Conservation Commission’s fund from 100 percent to 25 percent.

Those in attendance passed an amendment to change the article’s wording to include the word “not,” making a “no” vote result in a double negative.

Lazott argued more money going into the general fund would do more to offset the tax rate, and his sentiments were backed by several residents. “This is a clever way to effectively kill this article,” said Budget Committee member Kim Byrd.

Exit 3
The petitioned warrant article asking if voters are in favor of the proposed sale of land by Exit 3 off of Route 101 will go to the official ballot as is.

Kruse, one of the residents who signed the petition, asked whether the Exit 3 Committee and Board of Selectmen would cease the search for a developer of the land if voters defeat the article.

Selectmen Chairman Fred Kelley said they would stop their search until at least the next Town Meeting, adding, “If it fails in March, then we have a piece of land that we can’t do anything with.”

Voting on the warrant articles and candidates will take place Tuesday, March 11, from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., at Moore School.