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"Guinta made financial mess in Manchester"
seacoastonline.com - November 25, 2009
Nov. 20 — To the Editor:
Republican congressional candidate Frank Guinta touts himself as a fiscal conservative who favors low taxes and balanced budgets. However, Guinta's record as mayor of Manchester belies his claim.
Bond payments on Manchester's Verizon Wireless Arena are funded by the state's meals and rooms revenue tax. This amount varies each year, according to the financial status of the state. In 2009, due to the current recession, rooms and meals revenues dropped and, as a result, the amount of money given to municipalities was frozen at 2008 levels.
In 2008, the bond-rating agency Moodys warned Manchester that the amount of money available through the rooms and meals tax would not be sufficient in 2010 to make the bond payments on the Verizon Arena. Guinta did nothing to solve this problem, causing Moodys to subsequently downgrade these securities to junk bond status.
Now, a year later, Guinta wants the state to come to his rescue.
Conservative columnist Charles Arlinghaus, certainly no ally of Democrats, took Republican Guinta to task for failing to plan ahead. "To be fair, paying for the arena is going to be difficult for Manchester, but every city and town in the state faced similar struggles and similar budget uncertainty .... My own town of Canterbury is a good example of the common sense of citizen selectmen ... But selectmen knew that state aid was going to be cut, so they didn't count on getting it. Instead, they cut the town budget by 6 percent, and the school budget declined as well. The end result was that our property taxes went down by 8 percent, which was needed relief to people fighting a recession."
Unfortunately, Guinta did not display similar foresight, causing the financial mess that Manchester now faces.
Bill Duncan
New Castle, NH
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