Mr. Mayor, 5-minute rule at public hearings insulting to those who foot bill
Cliff Newton 9:54 a.m.
State Law RSA 32.5 and the Rochester City Charter both require public hearings before a budget can be adopted. This hearing was held May 17. The proposed budget, close to $150 million, requires $73.2 million to be raised by taxes and $3.2 million from the emergency slush fund to be tax cap compliant. Really? The city manager had to take 3.2 million of our money, and add it to the proposed budget to cover overspending to make the proposed budget tax cap compliant! Why do we have public hearings? A public hearing is obligatory when due process is required. Taxpaying citizens took the time to show up to address the City Council with their budget concerns. We all spent a lot of time preparing our questions and statements as you can imagine because there are a lot of items in a $150 million dollar budget. Why have public hearings at all? Because a public hearing on the budget is obligatory when due process is required, The purpose of a public hearing is to receive citizen input and feedback, for us to give instruction and let our elected council know of our concerns of how we want OUR money spent. Yet, Mayor Callaghan took it upon himself to restrict our due process to 5 minutes and cut off citizens from being fully heard. Again, where did he get this authority to do this? It's not in state law. It's not in City Council Rules of Order Section 1.7 Public Hearings. He took it upon himself to stifle WE THE PEOPLE who were there to testify on the budget, Are we starting to see a pattern here with his type of "strongarm" governing, which was first witnessed at the Rice "mock trial" and now at the budget hearing. Cliff Newton is a Rochester resident and State Rep of Strafford District 9
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