For the second consecutive year, Mayor Jay Ruais has proposed a tax increase, despite his oft made promises to not only “never raise taxes,” but also “reduce spending to finally deliver a tax cut.” Last year’s 3.82% tax hike was the largest in a generation, thanks to $16 million in new spending. This year’s more than $13 million in new spending leads to a more modest increase. Or does it?
In his budget address, the mayor said he “level funded” city departments, except for contractually required pay raises, which he did not quantify, and which cannot be determined because, for the second year in a row, he’s released budget summaries without the accompanying line-item detail. (As someone who’s developed mayoral budgets, I don’t understand how such summaries can exist without the details being input into the system that generates the summaries.) When asked by Ward 6 Alderman Crissy Kantor about the cost of those pay increases, he didn’t know.
In addition to those raises, and in response to another question from Kantor, Ruais clarified that he added another $7 million for the massive pay raises recommended in the recently completed personnel compensation study. In his budget address, he justified this spending, saying there was a “consensus on the board” to implement the study. Where this consensus comes from is a mystery because the Board of Mayor and Aldermen has taken no action on the study’s recommendations. It hasn’t even discussed them.
At this point, it’s worth recalling that Ruais speciously claimed he was unable to honor his pledge to cut taxes last year because he inherited a budget that had a “$10.7 million hole,” due mostly to $6.5 million in contractual pay raises owed city union employees. His budget now includes raises that dwarf that number.
Ruais also claimed, “We do not spend a single city dollar on hiring new employees.” Since he went on to say that his budget transferred three positions funded by ARPA (COVID) grant dollars to the property taxpayer, it would seem fair, if not prudent, to conclude there may be other “not new” grant positions that are now being paid for by local taxes. Is the $80,000 (36%) increase in the Economic Development Office another of those positions? Without the line-item detail, it’s impossible to know.
Ruais’ budget includes other concerning items. For example, a more than $2 million increase, an eye popping 59%, in planning department revenues comes from the permit fees associated with the needless construction of the new Beech St. School. Because that revenue is essentially one-time-revenue, using it to increase operating expenses will leave taxpayers with a $2 million hole to fill in the next budget. Ruais is also $867,000 in unbudgeted permit revenue from the similarly unnecessary expansion of the middle schools as part of this year’s budget surplus to buy down the tax rate. Everybody knew that revenue was coming so why wasn’t it used to help taxpayers last year?
There’s also an undefined increase of $822,937 in revenue from the Department of Public Works. That’s a bump of more than 5%. What is it and will it continue?
Why is there a 21% increase in the subsidy the city pays to the Manchester Transit Authority? In the mayor’s budget, the MTA gets two million taxpayer dollars. With the unrelenting and precipitous decline in ridership over several years, hard questions need to be asked about continuing that operation. We’re subsidizing lots of empty buses.
To his credit, Ruais reduced the requested increase in school spending from $11.5 million to $2 million. Other than to say he’s given the schools a “record level of funding” for a second year in a row, he gave no rationale for the $2 million increase. If it passes, Ruais will have increased school spending by more than $9.5 million, despite there being no increase in student population. Maybe it’s time to review the dozens of positions they’ve added to the taxpayers’ tab in the last year.
Once again, taxpayers are looking at a budget from Mayor Ruais that contains a questionable set of numbers, misleading, if not contradictory, statements, a very big spending increase and another tax hike. With his past criticism of the spending and tax increases of Mayor Joyce Craig and accusations that Alderman Kevin Cavanaugh, his opponent in the last election, “allowed property taxes to skyrocket,” one has to wonder what candidate Jay Ruais would say about the budgeting of Mayor Jay Ruais. It is, after all, an election year.
Rich Girard was Budget Director for Mayor Raymond J. Wieczorek. As an alderman at-Large, he proposed two city budgets. As a school committee member at-Large, he spent four years on the Finance Committee, including two as its chair. He lives in Manchester and is a registered investment advisor.
