After months of negotiations with attorneys and opining at meetings, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen this week may finally make a decision about how to handle the faltering agreement between the city and developer Richard Danais.

Danais last year agreed to build a new fire station on Hackett Hill in exchange for a 123-acre portion of undeveloped land in the Northwest Business Park off of Hackett Hill Road. Since then, Danais has struggled to find financing for the more than $2 million station. The situation worsened when plans to build a shipping and warehousing hub stalled, then morphed into a largely disliked proposal for a private prison.

An amendment to the purchase-and-sales agreement is going before the Committee on Administration on Tuesday, then onto the full board. The aldermen are being asked to release Danais from his responsibility to build the station. In return, he would pay $2.6 million for the land, with an interest rate of 6 percent. No payments would be required for the first two years, but interest would accrue. Danais would have until 2018 to pay it off. The city would also no longer have to pay Danais the previously agreed upon $225,000 for road repairs the developer made in the park.

If the aldermen sign onto the changes, the city would be free to build a new fire station on Hackett Hill on its own. The question is, where would the city get the money?

Mayor Ted Gatsas said one-time funds from the city's economic development fund, which includes money from the sale of Jac-Pac and other land sales, could be used.

“Certainly building a new fire station will help the economic development of Hackett Hill,” said Gatsas.

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UNDERSTANDING A SCHOOL district budget is never easy, but when a numbers guy like David Wihby struggles with a budget, there might be a problem.

“I worked on eight city budgets and I still can't figure out how we do the budget on the school side,” said Wihby, school committee member at-large.

To make the budget easier to understand, for the public and its own members, the school board last week formed the Subcommittee on Budget Transparency and Surpluses.

“The idea is not to spend more money. It's to make things more transparent,” said Wihby, who proposed the idea for the committee.

Members include Chairman Christopher Stewart, Wihby and Finance Committee Chairman Donna Soucy. Also serving on the committee will be District Business Administrator Karen DeFrancis, city Finance Director Bill Sanders — who used to hold DeFrancis' post — and district auditor Sheryl Pratt of Plodzik and Sanderson.

It will immediately address accounting methods for the district's five expendable trusts — accounts made up of past surpluses used to fund things such as school construction, special education and health care. Wihby said he disliked the current procedure of underfunding an item such as health insurance to use the money elsewhere in the budget, then taking money from the health care trust to cover the shortfall. It looks like the schools “are pulling a fast one” with taxpayer money, and it is harder for the public to follow, he said.

The accounting process also fails to show how much taxpayer money is spent each year. The school budget under the tax cap is based on what the city gives the school district and doesn't include money used from the expendable trusts, Wihby said. Instead, it should include all money spent from local taxpayer dollars.

“In the past, we could get away with it, but with the tax cap, it's a bigger problem,” Wihby said.

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JOE BRIGGS may be 1,500 miles away, but his actions are still the subject of school board debate. Last week, school committee Vice Chairman Dave Gelinas asked the board attorney to determine whether the district is still responsible for helping the former Ward 2 committee member battle a lawsuit filed by the Conways, parents of the Central High School track student who accused coach Kelly Fox of bullying last year.

The judge dismissed the case against the district, but is allowing the Briggs case to continue. Because the court ruled Briggs “acted alone,” the district may no longer be responsible for footing the legal bills, Gelinas said.

Briggs' attorney, Joe Kelly Levasseur, shot back at Gelinas on Wednesday, saying the judge did not rule Briggs acted alone and that Gelinas owed Briggs an apology for misrepresenting the facts. Levasseur said it's now up to the Conways to prove Briggs intended to slander their daughter.

Briggs stepped down from the school board last fall when he moved his family to Georgia. Although the lawsuit is controversial, the board agreed to support Briggs in the matter because he was acting in his capacity as a board member. Current Ward 2 Committeeman Debra Gagnon Langton said the board should continue to stand by Briggs.

“I don't think it's fair we don't stand by the man who was just trying to stand up for the people in his district,” she said.

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THE ORDINANCE TO RESTRICT private prisons to a small area near the airport will go before the Board of Aldermen for final approval on Tuesday. To make sure his constituents knew about the meeting, Ward 8 Alderman Tom Katsiantonis sent postcards to all 5,000 registered voters in the ward with an attention grabbing message. The top of the postcard reads “URGENT” and asks residents to “help me protect our neighborhood.”

Katsiantonis said not enough people knew about this final vote, and he wanted them to have a chance to speak before the aldermen.

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TWENTY-SIX MANCHESTER residents are slated to line up in Hopkinton, Mass., for the 2012 Boston Marathon on Monday, including Alderman Joyce Craig and her husband, Michael, former Hillsborough County Treasurer Chris Pappas and former Hillsborough County Attorney Peter McDonough, who will be running the route at the age of 70.

Read Beth LaMontagne Hall's coverage of Manchester City Hall in the New Hampshire Union Leader. Email her at bhall@unionleader.com.