NASHUA, NH – The Board of Aldermen voted Tuesday to increase compensation for seven city boards – Aldermen, Education, Public Works, Registrars, Health, Assessors and Fire Commissioners – effective July 1.
The total cost associated with the change for fiscal year 2025 will be $105,800. The ordinance was recommended for final passage by the Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee meeting on March 4.
It is the first increase in board compensation since 2000, said Alderman Patricia Klee, a co-endorser of the ordinance.
As a result of the vote, the annual stipend for aldermen will go from $5,000 to $9,000. Each member of the Board of Education will receive an increase from $4,000 to $7,200; Public Works will go from $2,000 to $3,600; Board of Health from $1,070 to $2,000; Board of Assessors from $1,500 to $2,700; Board of Voter Registrars from $400 to $800 for the clerk and from $300 to $600 for other the members; and City Fire Commissioners, from $1,500 to $2,700.
The FY2025 proposed compensation was calculated by putting the existing compensation into a CPI Inflation Calculator adjusted from the year 2000, and rounding up to the next $100 increment. Language was added to the ordinance to annually change the compensation for the board members by a factor equal to the average of the changes in the Consumer Price Index Urban (CPI-U) of the preceding three calendar years as published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same language used for adjusting the mayor’s compensation.
The motion carried with 10 aldermen in favor – Klee, co-endorser Ben Clemons, Michael O’Brien, Gloria Timmons, Melbourne Moran Jr., Thomas Lopez, Tim Sennott, Richard Dowd, Shoshanna Kelly and Lori Wilshire – and five opposed – including Aldermen Chris Thibodeau, Tyler Gouveia, John Sullivan, Ernest Jette and Derek Thibeault.
Some members of the community spoke out in opposition to the board voting to pass legislation that would benefit themselves.
“This is a conflict [that] should really go to the voters,” said former elected official Paula Johnson. “I feel it’s very self-serving when you vote yourself a stipend.”
Ward 8 Alderman Thibeault said, “Could I use more money? I’m going to say yes, but in all honesty, I can’t support this. I just don’t feel it’s my conscience to vote myself a raise,” he said.
Ward 5 Alderman Jette felt that $9,000 is hardly equitable compensation, but acknowledged the argument that the aldermen do what they do out of a sense of civic duty, not for money. While he felt it was not something that required voters to vote on, he made a motion to refer the ordinance back to the committee of Personnel/Administrative Affairs.
“It’s amending several different provisions which if we’re going to get into doing any amendments, I really think it ought to be done at the committee level and probably needs to be checked by the legal department to make sure whatever we’re doing is correct,” he said.
Alderman At-Large Ben Clemons spoke out against this motion made by Jette.
“From a purely economical, mathematical standpoint, that $5,000 back in the year 2000 today is worth [about] $9,000. … That’s the first thing that this ordinance does. The second thing that this ordinance does is it takes this uncomfortable conversation and the politics out of it by tying that to the CPI-U going forward.”
Ward 4 Alderman Thomas Lopez felt similarly, adding, “The idea of adjusting this isn’t to give us a raise, it’s to adjust the compensation … based on inflation.”