City Council reviews proposed budget at Monday meeting

LACONIA — City Manager Kirk Beattie told the City Council that annual city revenues increased by $1 million and he requested a bond of up to $850,000 for city technology and cybersecurity infrastructure upgrades when proposing a fiscal year 2025 budget at their regular meeting Monday.

“With our timeline that we work under, we have almost 2.5 months left before you have the obligation to vote on it,” he said. 

The heads from each department will make individual budget presentations before the City Council over the next few meetings and Beattie asked each of them to discuss the problems they are facing regarding the recruitment and retention of employees. 

Administrators of the police, fire and public works departments have expressed significant challenges in hiring and retaining their employees over recent months. Salaries and benefits work out to just under 58% of the proposed budget. Operating costs contribute to almost 31% of the proposed budget. 

“Any exemptions that we’re looking for, as I said, are geared at recruitment and retention of our employees,” he said. “We certainly know that some of our departments are struggling with recruitment. Our police department is, as well as our public works department, currently having a recruitment issue.”

If the budget is passed as is, it would require the application of one of the three limited exemptions allowed by the city charter relative to appropriations. 

“What you’re seeing in the budget book, as I said, is tax cap-compliant,” Beattie said. “But there [are] some additions in there that we’re going to have to work through to make an acceptable budget for you to pass — it’s a little different from what you’re normally used to seeing.”

City department heads and the [school administrative units] will need to discuss where exclusions benefit employees, he added. 

Beattie said that the presentations to be made by each city department head will offer up an opportunity for collaboration within the government.

“You’ll hear from all of your department heads and we’ll have discussions on what you want to see added, taken out, adjusted, and I think that’s what really makes this a great opportunity for all of us to work together over this timeframe and come up with a budget that benefits the city the way we would want it to,” Beattie said. 

The city tax cap increase for fiscal year 2025 will allow for more than $2.7 million of additional taxable monies, Beattie explained. That figure works out to about $58 million in total, according to the proposed budget. 

“The amount to be raised by taxes can be increased by two different items, the consumer price index and the new construction,” he said. “Our CPI for the year was 4.13%, as we’ve talked about, giving us just over $2.2 million in new taxable money. The building construction net value was just under $450,000, giving us a total allowable increase by standard tax cap calculations of $2.7 million.”

The proposed plan includes exemptions that are tax cap-compliant, Beattie said, noting that such increases are directly related to the city’s efforts to improve recruitment into city departments and increase employee retention. 

“When I talk about the exemptions that we’re looking to be able to implement in next year’s budget, adds an additional just shy of $1.5 million to the budget, with that money being directly attributed to wage and benefits both within the school and the city side of the budget,” he said. 

But the budgeting process isn’t cut and dry — city representatives will have to hammer out details through negotiation with the respective employee unions in order to solidify increases to wages and benefits.

“Any of the increases that we make, whether it be on the city side or the school side — union or non-union — need to go through some form of a vetting process and negotiations,” Beattie said. “For our non-union members it is more of a, 'this is what we’re looking to do,' and if they don’t object to it, your [City Council] approval. For the unions it would require negotiations.”

The need to increase employee wages and benefits is high, Beattie said, because the city is losing employees to public departments in surrounding towns and even outside of the state. Ward 1 Councilor Bruce Cheney told City Council Monday night that another police officer is applying to a higher-paying position out-of-state, bringing the recent total to nine officers. 

“Any exemptions that we’re looking for, as I said, are geared at recruitment and retention of our employees,” he said. “We certainly know that some of our departments are struggling with recruitment. Our police department currently, as well as our public works department, is having a recruitment issue.”

Notably, the proposed budget included increases to a variety of city funds. Beattie said structural improvements are overdue at Gale Memorial Library and that the special items funds should be bolstered to better respond to requests for monies from non-profit organizations. 

Beattie also requested an increase to City Relief, which is the welfare department, and an increase of funds to respond to a growing homelessness problem within the city.

“We can go out and clean, we can go out and do things that are band-aids to try and to help with some of the homelessness activity. But how do we be more proactive? And it really comes down to being able to get people out into the public and working with our homeless population on trying to make things better and work with them,” he said. “Certainly one of our departments that has a lot to do with them is our police department… Our funding would hopefully be able to allow them to have people go out and do this work consistently, very similar to how they have put people into the prevention, enforcement and treatment with the drugs work. That has been an unbelievably successful program.”

Mayor Andrew Hosmer said he appreciated Beattie’s efforts.

“Thanks for the work you put in to put this budget together," he said, "and I look forward to working with you over the next couple of meetings to hammer out a final budget.”