City is doing the right thing returning surplus money

When a government entity has a surplus, that’s usually good news. Suffice it to say that it’s better than running a deficit.

Having extra money often means spending has been watched carefully and/or revenues are up more than expected.

In Nashua’s case, it seems to be a little of both.

The city announced this week that it will use $4.3 million – a combination of $2.5 million dollars that was unspent in last year’s budget and nearly higher-than-expected revenues from several sources – to keep property taxes in check.

It’s especially encouraging that fees from motor vehicle registrations came in about $1 million higher than city officials had projected, because that may indicate a strengthening economy.

Government officials sometimes treat surpluses as “found” money and respond as if it’s burning a hole in their pocket. Too often, they can’t wait to throw it at their special pet projects, when, in fact, unspent money from a budget can also be an indicator of overtaxation. Not always, mind you – some of that merely reflects the difficulty of revenue projection – but sometimes.

We give the mayor and aldermen credit for resisting the temptation to go on a spending spree, and they also deserve credit for keeping the taxpayers in mind.

We would also be remiss if we failed to point out that, with a city election just around the corner, it’s probably also the politically smart thing to do.

Former Celtic Chris Herren shows he’s still got game

They still talk about Chris Herren in reverential tones down in Fall River, Mass., where there didn’t seem to be anything he couldn’t do on a basketball court as a star at Durfee High School back in the 1990s.

They talk about a player who, even with a record of drug use that cost him his spot on the basketball team at Boston College, was so hugely talented that he was taken early in the second round of the NBA draft and eventually landed with the Boston Celtics.

And they also talk about a guy who seemed to put the “fall” in Fall River after his well-documented drug addiction brought it all crashing down.

Herren is clean now, the author of a best-selling book and the subject of an ESPN documentary film.

And he was refreshingly honest about the price he paid for his choices when he spoke this week to freshmen from Nashua North, Nashua South and Bishop Guertin high schools.

If you measure only by sheer basketball talent, Herren might arguably be better than any player who has ever come out of New Hampshire, including Concord’s Matt Bonner, who also was drafted in the second round.

But the differences in the choices made by Bonner and Herren do a lot to explain why Bonner has played nine lucrative NBA seasons and has a championship ring, but Herren washed out after parts of just two seasons.

Chris Herren may be the anti-Bonner in that respect, but Herren was a star in Nashua this week – not only for the message he carried, but for the way he reached out to individual students who are, themselves, struggling to make sense of a world racked by addiction.

“You are perfect,” Herren told the Nashua kids.

And, as an impressive guy who carries a powerful message to an audience that needs to hear the unvarnished truth, so is Herren.

Program offers more than just signs of hope to people

It’s probably not your typical mental health program, but the Greater Nashua Mental Health Center has something going with Simply Signs, a workshop where clients reconnect with the workplace, gain a little confidence and develop some marketable skills by making signs that go up around the city.

The 13 employees take a Simply Signs design and turn it into something real by cleaning, sanding, laminating and lettering, among other things. They’re learning real job skills, and they get to re-experience the self-esteem that comes from doing worthwhile work.

“When we see the finished product, it’s very rewarding,” said Joseph Reis, who was homeless before he turned to the mental health center.

As an employment center, it’s not going to challenge BAE Systems, but a handful of the Simply Signs workers have already moved on to paying jobs in the labor force.

That’s a big sign that they’re on the right track.

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