It’s probably not overstating it to say that the relationship between Nashua Mayor Donnalee Lozeau and the city’s police department is frosty, at best.

Give Lozeau credit for this much, though: When it comes to the police department, she’s been consistent in expressing her displeasure over proposed contracts with the city’s police unions, generally because she believes they’re overly generous.

The most recent example of that came last week, when she sent a letter to the Board of Aldermen, urging them to reject the latest contract proposal for police supervisors.

Lozeau said the contract lacked any meaningful concessions from police, and she criticized the fact that it allowed the department’s lieutenants and sergeants to use accumulated sick time to pay off the difference between new, higher health care premiums included in the contract and the lower premiums they’ve paid in the past.

On Monday, the Board of Aldermen’s Budget Review Committee unanimously approved the contract, despite the mayor’s opposition, and the full Board of Aldermen – which rejected the contract five months ago – approved it by a vote of 14-1 on Tuesday.

The contract is far from perfect and the mayor may have a point in her argument that allowing employees to cash in their banked sick time sets a bad precedent for Nashua, although the city will have to eventually pay out a percentage of that accumulated sick time to employees when they retire, anyway.

But the pay increases themselves – raises of 6.7 percent for sergeants and 7.7 percent for lieutenants over four years – don’t seem particularly out of line with those of some other city employees.

In fact, Lozeau’s objections about the contract being too generous would probably be more credible had the mayor not been criticized herself earlier this year for handing out what some aldermen perceived as excessive raises to high-level employees with whom she works closely, while those at or near the bottom of the pay scale had to settle for more parsimonious raises. The size of the increases seemed to depend more on who the person was and their relationship with Lozeau than the jobs they were in, her critics said. Fair or not – and the mayor argued vociferously at the time that the criticism was false – the perception it created may have undermined Lozeau’s own position when it came to holding the line on a salary agreement she thought was a bad deal for taxpayers.

We haven’t seen much evidence that a majority of aldermen cast much of a critical eye when it comes to the administration of government in the city. Most seem to approve whatever the mayor puts in front of them, creating the appearance that Lozeau, in effect, runs both branches of city government. Going against the mayor’s strong recommendations as they did on Tuesday is unusual for this particular board, and the proximity of the upcoming election raises the question of whether some of those votes were politically motivated by aldermen seeking to put a little distance between themselves and the mayor. Or perhaps it was just coincidence that a group that backed the mayor on this issue five months ago bucked her this time.

Whatever their rationale, the city would be well served if aldermen kept those reasons in mind come budget time, since that’s where the board’s greatest opportunity to shape the city resides.

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