Budgets Archives - Page 14 of 24

Tales from the BudComm – Policy trumps appropriations?

October 26, 2018 Skip

Yep, now ’tis the season – budget season for the town and school district in my little hamlet. Per normal, the school district is the larger by twice even as enrollment is going down – that percentage never seems to change. However, we do the town budget first calendar wise and we’ve already started doing our subcommittee investigations.

My first one was “chaired” by another BudComm member and the town department (e.g., Administration et al) was handled by the Town Administrator. Now, I really do wish that I had brought my camera (have been doing the “real” meetings but not the subs, as this season I backed off compared to last year). Why?

Nashua’s Property Revaluation Lowers Tax Rate But Not Taxes

September 27, 2018September 15, 2018 Op-Ed

Nashua Mayor Donchess is quick to point out that the city had to do its recent property revaluation. It’s state law. And that’s true.

He was not ‘unhappy’ to report that as a result, the tax rate will go down. But that’s not good news because the dance is between the tax base and the budget. Juggling numbers don’t change the actual problem. Yes, some folks will see their tax bill decline slightly but most will see it rise. Not because of a forced revaluation but because no effort is made to cut spending.

SDGA Improving Governance Seminar Series – What is your statutory Authority & Where does it comes from?

September 26, 2018August 31, 2018 Skip

Improving Governance Seminar Series Legal Basis: Fact or Fiction As a School Board or Budget Committee member, do you often wonder what your statutory authority is and where it comes from? How can you reconcile what your Superintendent tells you versus what the NH RSAs command you to do? Come join us for a discussion of … Read more

Tales from the BudComm – Another Budcomm Member’s Memories of Dealing with their School Board. It ain’t pretty

September 26, 2018August 28, 2018 Skip

…from Steve’s ‘New Hampshire Needs an Income Tax” as it is SO true in my dealings with them and the same thing appears to be the same State wide. It’s almost, like, well, er…they’ve formed a group and they all collude together to screw the taxpayers (oh WAIT, there IS such a group!):

I served on my town’s Budget Committee for several years, and a couple of years as Chairman. While we struggled with individual departments in the town over their practices and requests, the town itself — even under some bad leadership — was still pretty even keeled, budget wise. But the struggles we had with the town were nothing compared to the annual struggle with the school district.

Nashua Mayor Asks For 4 Million From Surplus None of it For Commuter Rail

September 26, 2018August 14, 2018 Steve MacDonald

I guess there are bigger priorities in Nashua than “Choo Choo.” Capital equipment. Playgrounds. Sidewalks. A few ‘plants’ to spiffy up the joint. Work on a community center. Repurposing technology and updating an online dashboard so residents can access information from about city projects and initiatives. Like choo choo?

Nashua has four million dollars (leftover) and not a penny of it earmarked for another rail study.

They did earmark some to remove invasive species. No, not out-of-state Massachusetts voters living in Dem. Rep. Cindy Rosenwald’s house; plants by the river, or something.

An Open Letter to Members of the Franklin, NH School Board

September 26, 2018July 31, 2018 Op-Ed

By Karen Testerman

Once again the taxpayers of Franklin are confronted with a request for an increase in funds. Oddly with a declining population of students, there is still a need for an increase in cost.

What concerns me is that the discussion regarding budgets centers around teacher pay or the number of personnel required or facility needs. There is no discussion about job performance. The results demonstrate to the taxpayer the return on their invested tax dollar.

About that “Free Money” From Washington…

September 26, 2018July 31, 2018 Steve MacDonald

You’ve heard it time and again. Some state or local official promotes a project or a legisaltive initiative because there’s a federal grant available. These sorts of “thinkers” will often implement long-term programs at great expense based on promises of “free money.” The Federal government is paying X percent of costs for Y number of years.

How can we pass that up?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-ism and stances

September 26, 2018July 29, 2018 Skip

OK, from my previous post, you know a bit about her political philosophy/campaign stances from this 28-year-old barista with a Boston University double major in International Relations and Economics that is now the Democrat candidate for Congress in NY-14 (Queens)

Free healthcare: “Medicare for all” – a cost between $14 and $28 trillion over 10 years. Our current Fed Budget is only $4T/year
Free college tuition
Minimum living wage
Housing as a human right

Sidenote: oh dear, how low has my alma mater dropped in rigor. They ought to be disavowing her forthwith but I guess the Howard Zinn-sim, Noam Chomskyesque, and the other hard core radical professors have gotten worse over the years. As I continue with her here, I am gratified by my decisions over the years not to give my hard earned monies to this spawning den of everything I find wrong.

Anyways, I digress – let me unpack my pile of stuff here. Just remember that no less a luminary than Tom Perez, Chair of the National Democrat Committee, says “she is the future of the Party”. Go ahead, keep shoveling that out there!

Tales from the BudComm – So how do you rectify those two statements, Sean?

September 26, 2018July 27, 2018 Skip

As I said in the last issue in this Tales from the BudComm series, I became real concerned when freshman Joe Wernig first said, and then Chair Sean Murphy assented, that we weren’t supposed to be changing GL accounts – the line items in the “recommendations” (verbiage from RSA 32) that the School District / Municipality give to the BudComm. The troublesome verbiage in the transcript is after the jump.

So this past meeting, I decided to pin Sean Murphy down on his assent on Wernig’s supposition that changing any amount is MicroManagement and that’s no our job. Either we do change the GL Line item amounts because we think that the recommendations are too high (or too low), or what are we doing is a farce and waste of time. And I told him that. Here’s the snippet from the hour long meeting when Sean Murphy recognized me during the meeting to raise the issue.

Tales from the Budcomm – they don’t want to do their jobs?

September 26, 2018June 8, 2018 Skip

I’m a bit late on commenting on this – the last meeting was on May 24th. While the entire 2 hour video can be seen here (and if you are concerned with openness and transparency, there’s quite a dollop of it, care of moi), I’ve clipped out the part that had my eyebrows up over my head (it starts up around 40 minutes for a better context).

The heart of what a good Budget Committee does (and is mandated to do) is to go over the budget at the General Ledger line item level (GL Account, or “line item” as it is often referred to). But rookie BudComm member Joe Wernig (a hard Progressive who ran on a platform that NOTHING should be cut from government, especially the School District budget) actually said that he isn’t going to do what he was elected to do; “I don’t want to do that!” (at 2:16, below):

Drunken Senate Binge-Spends ‘Surplus,’ Asks House to Go Along

September 26, 2018May 14, 2018 Steve MacDonald

So much for the Senate being the more tempered and ‘August’ body of any legislature. Ours just took one look at the surplus I discussed here and went on a spending spree.

CONCORD — It started as a routine bill to create the position of state demographer, but has turned into what some are calling “the Christmas tree,” an omnibus spending bill that doles out nearly $100 million in surplus revenues from a flush state budget.

Among the baubles hung on HB 1817 in a late-night session of the Senate on May 3: nearly $13 million for state employee pay raises; $20 million for red-listed bridges; $44 million to settle a dispute with hospitals over uncompensated care; and another $10 million for the state’s Rainy Day Fund.

So-Called ‘Free Money’ for Rail Study Yanked From New Hampshire Transportation Plan

September 26, 2018May 7, 2018 Steve MacDonald

In late April the NH Senate pulled a four million dollar rail study line-item out of the State’s ten-year transportation budget. The Senate passed the amended version, denying the choo-choo fetishists yet another expensive act of engineering voyeurism.

The advocates for waste, fraud, and abuse were not happy.

Omnibus in Spiritus Sanctum

July 15, 2024March 26, 2018 Steve MacDonald

(Restored) Mike Rogers joins me to discuss how Mr. Trump might be able to use the Omnibus as written to build his wall, and whether he can or will just give large sums he has no intention of spending back to the treasury – and whether Congress can do anything about that. This program has been reposted after … Read more

Major Loophole Allows NH Schools to Ignore Their Budget Committees

July 15, 2024February 9, 2018 Steve MacDonald

Skip Murphy joins me to discuss how a major loophole allows schools to ignore budget committee cuts to their spending.

The Keene State College Budget Crisis Evolution

November 26, 2018December 12, 2017 Steve MacDonald

photo c/o Boston.com – The beginning of Keene State’s Enrollment Crisis

Keene State College has an ongoing crisis. Enrollment is down. They are running a deficit.

In an article from this past September (in the KSC Equinox Student/Campus Newspaper) interim College President Dr. Melinda Treadwell said a lot of things, but this caught my eye.

“[We need to be] getting students excited to see what a life at Keene State could be [like] because they are shopping and we have a lot of competition, but I think we have a lot to offer,” Treadwell said. “I think we lost our story a little bit and we need to regain it.”

About that story.

Timberlane “Snipers” Take Aim at Jorge Mesa-Tejada

July 15, 2024January 17, 2016 Steve MacDonald

GrokTALK! Exclusive: When a budget committee opponent of a $4.5 Million dollar construction bond poked fun at the School Districts slick-infomercial–which is using fear to claim the construction is needed to protect students from a potential sniper attack–the District used his response to get a restraining order against him. This is the inside story from … Read more

America’s Pension Crisis part 2

July 15, 2024August 9, 2015 Steve MacDonald

ICYMI – part two of our interview with Lawrence J. McQuillan, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute and author of CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Lessons on How to Resolve America’s Public Pension Crisis.