Six hours into discussions about paring down the budget that ultimately yielded a 3% tax increase for next year, former Concord city councilor Bob Washburn took to the microphone. 

“I've never seen an elongated process like tonight to accomplish a 1% reduction,” he said at 11:55 p.m. “I don’t get it.”

Wringing roughly a percentage point off of the originally proposed 4% tax increase, which amounted to just under half a million dollars, the city council approved a $154.4 million budget that included a new clubhouse at city-owned Beaver Meadow Golf Course. Earlier in the night, the council had toyed with a proposal from Councilor Amanda Grady Sexton for a budget with a zero percent tax rate increase, but turned it down. Despite hours of combing through details as small as whether or not to print in black and white or in color, the approved budget will raise the city portion of residents’ tax bills by about $120 next year for a $400,000 home. 

Even though, in the end, taxes will still go up, Mayor Byron Champlin framed the back and forth as “honest” and “productive.”

“I think tonight was a very, very honest discussion about what it means to cut taxes,” Champlin said after the meeting. “I think that you saw a group of city councilors work very, very hard tonight to be responsive to their electorate and the taxpayers.” 

Roughly three-quarters of tax dollars go towards pay and benefits for city employees. With new contracts approved this winter representing — and granting four or five percent annual raises to — the vast majority of unionized city staff, much of the $3.1 million in new general fund spending over last year’s approved budget will go toward compensation.

Avoiding staff cuts, councilors combed through each other’s ideas for areas to cut. They stuck to nips and tucks — to the printer ink, to solid waste, to a light project in Eagle Square.

After hours of digging, the council trimmed just shy of $300,000 out of the $154.9 million initial proposal from City Manager Tom Aspell, and left it up to him to carve out another approximately $200,000 that would peg the tax increase at the 3% target.

Penacook resident Jessica Wheeler Russell reminded the council just how much every dollar counts for their constituents. 

“While three dollars or whatnot might seem small in isolation, these incremental increases accumulate, especially for families already struggling under the weight of rising rents, increasing mortgage, escrow payments and cuts to federal and state aid or programs that they rely on,” said Wheeler Russell, who serves on the Merrimack Valley School Board but emphasized that she spoke as an individual.

Especially when it came to the golf course clubhouse project, Wheeler Russell felt some city leaders were out of touch in framing smaller-than-expected tax bumps as no big deal. 

“In a school setting, three dollars could provide two breakfasts for their kids. That’s what some of our families are facing,” she continued. “We would never tell those children that their needs are insignificant, and I hope that future conversations around the budget are met with a little more empathy and respect.”

While councilors took it up in earnest, the proposal for a zero percent tax increase won little support.

“The one consistent message that I've heard from residents is that their income is not increasing at the same rate that their taxes are,” said at-large councilor Amanda Grady Sexton, who proposed the move. “The reality is that I think it's going to take more than small cuts around the corners to ultimately substantially reduce our tax rates.”

Because of the pay increases previously approved by the council, eliminating any tax increase would only have been possible through cuts to city services or by eliminating positions, decisions that would have been made at the discretion of Aspell and not subject to further council signoff.

Opposition came from a few angles. Several councilors worried that those cuts would have been too aggressive. Others couldn’t stomach such big changes being made by Aspell without their approval. Others argued that it was up to councilors, not the city manager, to unwind their own budget dilemmas. 

“I don’t know how we can vote to give our employees four and five percent increases and then turn around and say ‘I can’t believe the tax rate’s going to go up 4%’,” said At-large councilor Nathan Fennessy. “If we want to cut two million dollars, it's on us to figure out where those two million dollars come from. I don't think we should just be passing it to the city manager to figure it out.”

Even if the city had flat-funded its budget, taxes would still go up since the independent Concord Board of Education already approved a 4.4% tax increase in March.

Only Grady Sexton and fellow at-large councilor Fred Keach backed the flat budget idea. Notably, the two are among the longest-serving in the group, meaning they have each worked with the long-serving city manager for more than a decade. He is up for an evaluation in non-public session on Monday night. 

A move to hit pause on the Beaver Meadow Golf Course Clubhouse project flared tensions on the council, and not for the first time. 

In the end, alongside vocal public comment in favor, a supermajority upheld the $5.9 million plan put forward by Aspell that would rely on raised course fees, reserve money and donations to minimize the project’s footprint on resident tax bills. Only Ward 5 Councilor Stacey Brown and Ward 2 Councilor Michele Horne dissented.

While further design details and fundraising lay ahead, the vote marks the closing of a long chapter of intense and at times rancorous debate over the project. 

Charlotte Matherly contributed reporting to this story. Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. You can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com.