Portsmouth council adopts six-year CIP after correcting out-year spreadsheet errors, moves $900,000 fireboat purchase to later year

Portsmouth—9s City Council voted Dec. 8 to adopt a six-year Capital Improvement Plan after amending several line items highlighted during public comment and by staff.

At the public hearing, resident Pietra Huda asked the council to postpone a final vote, saying the November CIP packet misreported combined funding totals for fiscal years 2028 and 2029 by $11,075,000 and urging the council to wait for corrected figures before approving a long-range multiyear plan. City finance staff acknowledged the error in the formulas that roll up combined project totals on the summary page, apologized and said the underlying element sheets and the FY27 figures used for near-term planning were correct. "We clearly didn—9t carry the cell formulas correctly across the totals," a staff member told the council; staff said they would incorporate edits into the budget documents.

The council debated several substantive policy questions tied to the CIP. Parents, teachers and school-board representatives urged full funding for a $10 million New Franklin School renovation, citing cramped, unsafe learning and program spaces. Teachers described a gym with hazardous tiles, lack of storage for staging school concerts and multiple shared intervention spaces that impair instruction. "None of the things I—9ve just mentioned exist in any other school library in Portsmouth, and they shouldn't exist at New Franklin," Tammy Truax, a New Franklin library media specialist, said.

Councilors repeatedly said they supported addressing school inequities and that the New Franklin project is included in the adopted element sheets for FY27; they noted final budget and bonding decisions come later in the annual budget process.

Fire Department funding was a focal point of debate. Fire Chief Bill McClellan described the operational case for replacing the city—9s marine rescue craft with a larger, enclosed vessel that would allow patient care on board and protect crews in winter conditions, noting Portsmouth responded on 15 marine incidents this year and that inflation and design changes have raised estimates. "The thought was that we would get a boat similar in size to what we have now or perhaps a little larger, where we would be able to accommodate the larger cabin where we could put stretchers or backboards and be able to transport people once we pulled them from the water in an enclosed setting," the chief said.

Several councilors raised fiscal and mission questions, including whether the Coast Guard or neighboring municipalities provide sufficient winter coverage and whether federal grant opportunities had been exhausted. In response to those concerns, the council voted 6–3 to move the $900,000 marine-vehicle line item out of FY27 and into a later out year (amended to FY28) to allow further review and to continue pursuit of outside funding.

On parking and transit, the council accepted the planning board—9s recommendation to add $3,000,000 as a parking-garage placeholder (to be funded from parking revenues, not the general fund) to support design and initial planning. After extended debate about alternatives, the council combined the previously federal-grant placeholder for a microtransit study into the parking-garage element and renamed that element "Parking garage and public transportation" so design work can explicitly include alternative-transit options such as shuttle loops or microtransit pilots.

Councilors and staff stressed that the CIP itself does not obligate spending; any bond authorization, grant acceptance or capital appropriation must return to council in a separate budget or bonding resolution. The motion to adopt the CIP as amended passed on a roll-call vote at the Dec. 8 meeting; staff said corrections to the out-year summary will be made before budget adoption activities next year.

What—9s next: the CIP adoption authorizes planning and sets priorities; project-specific funding and bond authorizations will be considered in the FY27 budget process and through subsequent votes required for borrowing or grant acceptance.