To the Editor:

It is important for the beleaguered taxpayers of Goffstown to re-elect Ivan Beliveau to the Budget Committee for another 3 years. This would give me the opportunity to finish the job of controlling spending in Goffstown. I feel that I have shown that I have the experience to be financially responsible with taxpayer dollars.

I’m an “up through the ranks” kind of person having been a platoon sergeant in the USMCR.

I then had a 30-year career in the corporate world ascending from technical specialist, supervisor and manager for a large publicly traded company. I knew what it meant when my boss told me that sales and revenues were off and that the expenses had to be controlled. If I didn’t control expenses, I knew that I could be easily replaced with someone who would control them.

I have been a Goffstown resident for 40 years, have raised my family here and have owned Belnek Kennels, a local business, during that period of time. 

I have spearheaded a local organization (Goffstown Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility – GCFRonline.org) dedicated to “operate sensibly and without undue financial burden to taxpayers.” I have been elected to be chairman of that organization.

As a member of the budget committee for the last 2 years, I have been consistent in requesting that there be “no new spending” in Goffstown. I have pointed out to the taxpayers that the time has arrived for budgets to be essentially “level funded” until there is a significant improvement in the general economy.

In my opinion, it is not the time to raise property taxes when people are losing their raises, pensions, jobs, and personal savings and are “underwater” in their mortgages.

Raising property taxes substantially is very difficult on people on fixed or diminished incomes at any age for whatever reason.

I have consistently pointed out that it is unsustainable to continue to pay higher taxes on budgets that double every decade for many decades. Goffstown is now at the point where there will be a $100 million+ budget in this decade if there isn’t a significant reduction in spending increases. Now is the time for those reductions.

I pledge that I will continue to be an advocate of “no new spending” in Goffstown if re-elected to the budget committee.

I ask that you vote for Ivan Beliveau for another 3 years on the budget committee.

Ivan Beliveau
Goffstown