Last December, with 63 officers filling an authorized 70 positions, he said Portsmouth’s wages were “way below market value” and the department was “not competitive with other police departments.”⁴
Portsmouth can build a better station and still lose the bidding war for the people inside it. The building, the officers, the dispatchers and the health insurance arrive in different sections of the budget. Residents finance all of them.
Fire has its own place in line. The current capital plan lists a replacement for Rescue 7, new cardiac monitors and defibrillators, and a roof for Fire Station 3. The same plan includes school pavement and roofing, police interview-room equipment, library archive costs, well treatment, sewer separation, Maplewood Avenue reconstruction, recycling equipment and the municipal complex.⁵ [Appendix A]
Buried in the city’s presentation is the most honest sentence in the entire spending debate: “The movement or addition of one project may affect the timeline or ability to complete another.”⁵
There is the story in 15 words.
The queue is crowded because the claims are mostly legitimate. Pumps fail. Roofs leak. Cardiac monitors age. Wells need treatment. Police vacancies create overtime and service pressures. Sewer separation and climate work carry legal and practical deadlines. Portsmouth has no convenient villain whose removal would make the arithmetic work.
Meanwhile, the operating budget keeps moving. The proposed FY2027 budget totals nearly $158 million, an increase of 5.1 percent. Health insurance alone rose $3.3 million, or 21.4 percent. The city estimated another $435 a year for the median single-family home before the final tax rate is set. Sewer charges are rising too, partly in anticipation of work that includes Mechanic Street.⁶ [Appendix A]
City accounting separates these obligations. The municipal complex would draw on general-fund debt. The pump station belongs to the sewer enterprise fund, where users pay through rates after grants and other aid. Water projects have another ledger. A household eventually meets them in one place: the checking account.
Portsmouth can shoulder more than its population suggests. The city has roughly 23,000 residents and more than $10 billion in taxable property. New construction genuinely helps. Portsmouth says nearly $200 million in added development reduced the projected FY2026 tax increase by 41 percent.⁷ [Appendix B]
That is why the cranes matter. Hotels, apartments, offices, shops, utilities and medical buildings add value to the tax roll. Several of Portsmouth’s largest taxpayers are apartment or mixed-use properties, a useful correction to the easy claim that developers contribute nothing.⁸ [Appendix B]
Growth carries a second ledger, however, and the public rarely sees it clearly.
Large rental complexes are valued as income-producing businesses.