On December 7, 2022, Fred Teeboom, a former alderman and self-represented, took the City of Nashua to NH Superior Court for violating Nashua’s spending cap. I had the pleasure of attending part of the hearing.
The City brought an entourage from the legal office and finance office. Attorney Bolton presented for the City.
Mr. Teeboom articulately presented Nashua’s spending cap history. Currently, Nashua has not a single alderman who fully comprehends the budget and can respond to citizens’ questions about the spending cap in a clear and precise manner. This failure of our elected officials, coupled with the demise of the local daily newspaper, opened, for Mayor Donchess and CFO Griffin, the opportunity to misrepresent the calculation of the spending cap.
Bringing a pro se case against the city is difficult and stressful. It was apparent Mr. Teeboom put a lot of time and effort, and experience into his presentation and exhibits.
Soon after taking office in 2016, Mayor Donchess attempted to bypass the city’s spending cap by claiming all “mandated” funding was exempt from the cap. In 2017 the city removed wastewater expenditures from the cap, leading to a court challenge by Mr. Teeboom and then-alderman Dan Moriarty. In 2022, under a new financial creation by CFO Griffin titled “gross budgeting,” the city added grant funding and the full value of authorized but unsold bonds to the spending cap calculation.
The mayor presented the 2023 budget, astonishingly, at $113 million dollars under the cap. This financial manipulation was created by allowing the $348 million budget introduced in FY2022 to rise to $506 million by adding a combination of grant funding and unsold bonds to the budget, thereby producing a calculation that presented the FY2023 budget to be $113 million under the cap when in fact it was $8.5 million above the cap.
Incredibly, the aldermen accepted this deception without question, without examining past practice for calculating the cap, and without examining SB52 adopted into state law in 2021, which intended to further regulate and clarify the tax and spending caps that had been adopted in 2011. The budget committee chairman even refused to consider the spending cap, stating this was of no concern to the committee.
Citizens who believe their tax bills are too high should be justifiably concerned. This city has free reign to spend hundreds of millions of dollars without concern for the constraint on spending imposed by the spending cap ordained in the city’s charter…..until Mr. Teeboom filed his lawsuit.
The aldermen frequently state that the government “has needs” without concern for “the needs” of taxpayers who pay the bills. The mayor has promoted a group-think government that ostracizes and attacks individuals expressing viewpoints that differ from the appointed and elected body.
Mr. Teeboom should have a Court order in early March 2023. Thank you, Mr. Teeboom, for your efforts in addressing this important financial issue that affects all taxpayers.
