Is he playing with that Katie?

Yeah, we're having some streaming issues.

I'm stunned.

Are we going on that time?

We can shall we start without it?

Just give it a second, see if they can on your way.

Is it recording?

Katie does not streaming.

Someone said that right.

I do, Charlie, right?

Oh, there might.

Mark Mark Mark's got to be.

You did this morning.

That's not when I left you though.

Tech people to uh give us the okay.

Because we are controlled by the other.

Okay.

Is it recording though?

We should just have them here all the time.

Get a chair form.

Well, second, we're good to go.

Okay, we'll start tonight's uh city council meeting at 702 for December 8th, and we'll uh jump up for a salute to the flag.

Councillor Cheney, would you uh uh lead us?

Be happy to.

Thank you.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Under God, liberty and justice for all the thank you, counselor.

Uh we do a roll call.

Councillor Cheney?

Here.

Counselor Susie?

Here.

Counselor Hoffman.

Present.

Councillor Haynes?

Here.

Counselor Bogart?

Here.

Counselor Felch?

Here.

Mayor St.

Clair.

Here.

Thank you.

For staff and attendance, we have uh City Manager Kurt Piotti and uh Finance Director Glenn Smith and our wonderful clerk, Katie Garnell.

Close, a little closer out of time.

I got fine.

Something's something's wrong, but we may thank you.

Thank you all.

Um we have a proclamation tonight.

That's not it.

Oh, what's underneath here?

Thank you.

That's why I say Katie.

Is this is Pat here?

Topri here?

No.

Yeah, I don't.

Yeah, I'll just read it.

Uh this is a uh pretty cool thing.

This is whereas Lake Winnipesaki stands as one of New Hampshire's most treasured natural resources providing beauty, recreation, and economic vitality and environmental significance to communities throughout the lakes region and whereas Pat Tarpee, I hope I'm pronouncing her name right, as President of the Lakes Region, Winnipeg Saukee Alliance has built a technical and informational resource capacity of Lake Witabasaki Alliance to engage the Laconia Conservation Commission and Laconia's public on water quality and whereas this engagement has helped to promote and coordinate activities among city departments, numerous state and county agencies, business and nonprofits, and whereas over four over 14 years in the Pat's leadership, the Lake Winnipeg Alliance has led the effort to identify threats to Lake Witabasaki water quality and development and implement action plans to mitigate the impacts of invasive species.

She has also identified deep water sampling locations in both water parties along with the field and laboratory diagnostic uh parameters, and where as Lake Winnipesaki Alliance, along with a consultant identified areas on Langley Brook where erosion was impacting Langley Cove and whereas Pat's environmental expertise will surely be missed.

But she has developed a strong team to carry on her vision for the Lake Winnipeg watershed.

Therefore, I Charlie St.

Clair, mayor of the City of Laconia, on behalf of the City Council and the people of Laconia recognize and honor Pat Tarpey for her outstanding service and lasting cooperations as president of the Lakes Region Alliance.

We greatly appreciate her leadership.

It has made a positive enduring and enduring impact on Lake Winnipeg and the entire Lakes region.

It's given on the okay.

That's uh given under my hand in the seal of the city of Laconia, New Hampshire this eighth day of December in the year of our Lord 2025.

She's not here, which is too bad because uh from what everything I've heard about her in the past, she's done a lot of work, and we are all affected by the lake, especially when the quality of it goes down, and that affects our tourism and just makes it kind of lousy for everybody.

So a hand for Pat.

Thank you.

Well, we've got this here for her.

We'll get this to her.

Okay.

I look for a motion uh without exception to accept accepting of the minutes from the previous meetings.

So moved by uh counselor felch, seconded by Mark Haynes.

All in favor?

We're good.

Yep.

Thank you.

Okay.

We have anything on the consent and action calendar.

Yes, you do.

8A.

8A, okay.

Ah, yes.

And just as a note for these, these are all three-year terms expiring in 2028.

Second here, here we go.

So are you gonna go over those, Kirk, or am I gonna read the names off?

Or do we these were uh I I'll let the appointments committee do that?

Uh okay.

We we we met late last week, early last week, and we brought all the people that you see here on the thing in front of us, spent time with each one of them, vetting them, making sure they're you know they have the right background as citizens and what they plan on doing with each of the boards that they're attending.

They're either maybe a permanent member or an alternate member.

So we presented we have given to the council earlier a list of or I have them today or the earlier, all the um obligations that they came with each person, you know they come from the backgrounds, all that kind of stuff.

So the council has all that, and these these here have been our request is uh our recommendation to appoint these people to the various boards on here for the terms that are listed, either an alternate or permanent member.

Does anybody have any comments about the Mr.

Mayor?

If you um even though they're listed on here, if you agree to do what they are for the record, it's it's part of the agenda, but okay.

Do you want to do that, Bob?

Since you go ahead.

I'll make the motion.

No, that she he you want to read.

Should read off the names of the code.

I'm gonna read off the names okay.

To approve the appointment of candidates for the city boards and commissions as presented, and I'll list them off right now.

Peter Nagel, Conservation Commission as a full member.

Brad Fitzgerald, reappointment to the building code board of appeals as a full member.

Tim Whitney appointed to the zoning board of adjustment as an alternate member.

Daniel Huberman appointed the conservation commission as a full member.

Jacob Roy, appointment to the planning board as an alternate member.

Tara Sorrell, appointment to the zoning board of adjustment as an alternate member.

Roger Cameron, appointment to the conservation commission as an alternate member.

Jane Whitehead appointed to the Historic Commission as a full member.

Marjorie Wilkinson appointed to the Historic District Commission as a full member.

And Rebecca Greg Wile, reappointment to Lake Port TIFF Advisory Board as a full member.

I'll second.

Seconded by Councillor Felch.

Any discussion?

All in favor.

Six in the affirmative.

Thank you.

Okay, now we're on uh agenda number nine.

This is for citizen comments for matters not on the agenda.

I repeat, not on the agenda tonight.

Is there anybody who would like to uh have a moment to discuss?

Come on up.

Just let us know your uh name and address, please.

Hi, my name is Sue Higgins, and I live in Ward 2 in Laconia.

Um Highland Street.

That's good.

I would like to address um the issue of transparency with this board.

Um at the last city council meeting, it was mentioned several times by you.

That's correct.

And laughed at by you.

Um that uh transparency was an issue, not really an issue in this city.

And um, as I'm new to coming to these meetings and trying to figure out what's going on in these meetings, I can tell you that I've been having incredible problems trying to figure out when committees are meeting.

Um the minutes are supposed to be posted by law within five days after a committee meets, and it almost never happens.

And then when they are posted on the website, there is no date next to those minutes, so that you can't even go back and see how long it's been that they have been posted, whether they were posted in the right time frame, or or if you want to go back for the last year and say when were these minutes done?

There's a was a meeting for meeting for the master plan in October, and there's still no minutes, and it's December.

So as a member of this community that wants to um make sure that what the city council is doing and that it's transparent.

I resent that you um talk about it and like it's a joke, and that um we deserve to um be able to um hold our councilman accountable.

Well that that that's well put, and I would say that when I uh mention transparency a lot, uh I'm being dead serious about it.

But um why why I don't think we should leave this on uh answered uh about these minutes.

Are they not available?

No, I mean it's something I don't go back.

I haven't been back and checked to see if they all go on online, but I I mean it um Sue and I have actually spoken ahead of this meeting.

You know, and it it's a point if they're if they're looking for them, they're not always up on time.

We'll make it a point of order to be making sure that we're doing it.

It's not that I haven't for any reason other than just don't generally look on it to see, but you know, absolutely a good point made.

Okay.

Well, I'll continue to mention transparency because uh I want to make sure that we are being very transparent, so I will mention that uh probably several times tonight, too.

After after we talk about things.

Thank you though.

Anyone else?

Okay, thank you.

No interviews tonight, I take it.

No.

Okay.

Just uh Mr.

Mayor, if I'll just mention that we are we're recording.

We are having a little bit of trouble with streaming.

They're working on that now, but it is recording, and so okay.

So we'll go to 13.

This is public hearings.

We're gonna do 13A.

This is ordinance 2025-235-22 amendment amending chapter 235, article for a impact fees in attachment six-impact fees schedule.

We want uh this is a public hearing.

We'll open that up at 713.

I'm sorry, oh, for is it posted.

Under the discussion, just for each one, just for the record.

They're all the same, but yeah, this was uh notice of this public hearing was made available in the November 13th, 2025 edition of Laconia Daily Sunday posted at Laconia City Hall, Laconia Community Center, Laconia Public Library, and the offices of the SAU.

And I would imagine this would be on on our website too, the city website, Kirk.

Uh it's um it is on there when it when this gets added as the agenda, but it's posted out front when it was city hall is posted out front.

Okay.

Okay, so do you want to discuss that now?

Uh is anybody here that would like to discuss this uh impact fee?

Yeah, come on up.

No, see somebody maybe.

Yep, beautiful.

Come on up.

Hi, Diana Sack, Gale Avenue.

Umce the legislature chose to cut 80 percent of the affordable housing budget.

We need to be doing everything we can at the local level, given that we don't have that tool anymore to encourage affordable housing, and maybe you could examine the impact fees for some way to encourage developers to develop more affordable housing.

That's all.

Okay.

Um go ahead, Steve.

You were going to say something or I forgot this public hearing.

Okay, yeah.

Okay, I thought it's all right.

All right, thank you very much.

Anyone else?

I can bring that up later.

Steve.

Okay, so go ahead.

Would you close this one?

Yeah.

I'm just gonna have you pause for a second so we could reset the streaming and the recording, so I don't want to miss anything.

Okay.

So it'll just be a quick you don't need to reset.

It's just the public hearing on this at 7.15.

Okay, go ahead.

We're good to go.

I believe so.

Excellent.

Yep.

Okay, you got it on yours?

Hijacked by the tech world.

Thanks next.

Okay, we'll move on down now to uh 13b.

This is a public hearing.

This ordinance 2025-5-25-32, 5-3, amending Chapter 5 administrative administration of government, Article 3, Boards of Commission, Commission's Human Relations Committee, establishing the Human Relations Committee as a City Committee.

And this was also uh notice of this public hearing was made available in the November 13th, 2025 edition of Laconius Daily Sun and posted at Laconia City Hall, Laconi Community College, Laconia Public Library, and the offices of the SAU.

We'll open this public hearing at 7 18.

Is there anybody here who would like to discuss this?

Mr.

Mayor, City Councilors, Patrick Wood, Ward 1.

Uh I am the uh chairperson of the uh Lacony Human Relations Committee, and I do have some comments that I would like to make.

Um I think first of all, uh there's been some misinformation uh in the newspapers about this process, and I think it's it's fair that we um sort of clear up some of those misunderstandings.

Uh the human relations committee did not make this presentation or request this.

This came up as you all know from the city council itself.

Uh Councillor Bogart raised some questions.

Councilor Susi asked uh Mr.

Bogert, Councillor Bogart, if the committee were appointed by the city council.

Uh would that address some of the concerns that he had?

He said, yes, it probably would.

Not all of them, he didn't say everything, but at that point in time, the city manager was asked to put something together, which he did for the next city council meeting.

Uh there was a proposed ordinance that was presented to the city council.

Uh this was not something done behind closed doors.

It was not something done in any sneaky or manipulative manner.

This was done in the ordinary course of the business of the city council.

You received a copy of the proposed ordinance, and as the standard procedure that you followed, it was sent to the government operations committee for review.

In addition, in addition, you scheduled a public hearing for tonight.

What's a little unusual is that it was clear that in setting up the public hearing, there would not be any discussion or decisions made, I should say, concerning the ordinance at tonight's meeting.

And as you know, often when you have a public hearing, you do later on in the meeting make a decision on the matter that's in the public hearing.

What you voted upon at that meeting when you sent it to the public hearing is that after the public hearing, it would come back to the government operations committee for further discussion and review.

And then it would come back to the city council for a vote.

So that being the case, the scenario would be if there is a public hearing tonight, which we're in the midst of right now, it would go back to government operations probably sometime next week, maybe the end of this week, and then it would come back before the city council on the 22nd of December.

So the earliest the city council would ever be able to vote on this proposed ordinance would be the 22nd of December.

If it is passed at that point in time, the city then has a committee known as the Human Relations Committee.

And as we just heard moments ago, there's an appointments committee of the City Council.

Nine of the members of this proposed committee have to be appointed by the City Council.

So people would have to submit their application.

They would be reviewed by the appropriate appropriate committee, the appointments committee of the city council, and they would then make a recommendation to the city council for appointment of those members.

And that will be the inauguration meeting.

And as you know, the level of business being conducted at that meeting is generally fairly light.

So the next regular full business meeting of the city council will be the second meeting in January.

So the earliest anyone could be appointed to this committee would be the latter part of January 2026.

There's nothing hidden in this process.

It is all very transparent.

It's a standard operating procedure.

And for people to say without any basis that this is somewhere sneaky or manipulative, are being pushed by one group or another, it's just not true.

And as far as a whiff of illegitimacy of this committee, it's been in place for 25 years.

Different police chiefs have been involved in it.

Different mayors have been involved in it.

The city council has been involved in it.

I think if there's a whiff of anything, it may be a whiff of some burned bridges.

And part of that oath is that I swore to support the Constitution of the United States and of New Hampshire.

Now that oath means a lot to me.

And I spent almost 50 years practicing law, working very hard to make sure that my clients had their rights protected under the Constitution and the laws of the state of New Hampshire.

Shadowy behind closed doors without public information or public input is frankly not true.

All of our meetings are posted, they're held publicly.

So now we meet at 4 30 rather than 3 30.

So we're doing everything we can to make sure that people have an opportunity to participate and to know what's happening.

The Human Relations Committee is not a human rights committee.

We have a human rights commission in the state of New Hampshire, and their duties and jobs are to often adjudicate claims of violation of human rights.

The Human Relations Committee has a primary purpose of educating, teaching, bringing to the fore issues of concern of our relations with one another.

It began twenty-five years ago when we had a number of immigrants coming to our community, and the police chief was having some difficulty getting those people to understand how life is in the United States of America and in Laconia in particular.

And so he asked for help.

And the mayor at that time, Mayor Leigh appointed the Human Relations Committee to help with these immigrants.

And from that process came the Multicultural Day, which has developed into the multicultural folk and festival that has been a statewide banner of acceptance and enjoyment.

But we've also done many other things over the years.

We've had movies, international movies, we've had programs that allow an imam from Dover to come and speak to people to explain a little bit about what Islam is and what it isn't.

We have the Martin Luther King Jr.

commemoration every year.

We have done many different things.

And when we had the anti-Semitic and hate-filled words painted on buildings, we had a vigil and a program at the high school.

Most recently, we've had a program, an open discussion on the issue of homelessness.

Our values are the values that are in our constitution.

Equal protection under the law for everybody, regardless of where they're from, what they believe, what they look like.

That's what the Human Relations Committee is about.

It's helping all of us recognize the value in each other.

A society is known for its greatest strength by the way it treats the least of us.

That's what makes a society strong.

By the same token, democracy is strengthened when we listen to the smallest voice and the least powerful.

That's what the Human Relations Committee is all about.

Letting people be heard, letting them know that their interests, their lives are important to us, and to help bridge the gap of misunderstanding and lack of communication.

So, in my perspective, having this committee being a full committee of the city of Laconia is a step forward and a positive move for the entire community, because it is the entire community that the Human Relations Committee is concerned about.

Somebody raised the question of equity.

And in a recent op-ed, they sort of poked fun at the idea of having a discussion of human relations and anti-racism, anti-Semitism.

In the law, if you break the law, you damage somebody else's property, you have the right to sue them for damages.

But if somebody takes your car, suing them for the loss of the vehicle doesn't get you a ride to where you need to go.

You want to have the car back.

The law doesn't allow that per se.

So what we have to look at is equity.

Equity is something that is fair and just and what equity does under those circumstances is it allows you to get your car back.

But if the government takes away your vote or restricts your right to vote, what's your right?

You don't have damages.

That's what equity is about when it comes to human relations, making sure that every voice, every vote, every person has a right to express their opinions and to be heard.

So I'm in very much in support of continuing this process.

Um I hope that we end up with a human relations committee that is a permanent body of the city of Laconia.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pat.

Kirk, if I could just uh clarification here.

Um the inauguration is on the fifth, correct?

It's going to be the fifth, yeah.

We're working on all the final details now, but the twelfth will be the twelfth.

That's correct.

Will be the first regular meeting.

So there'll be two meetings in the middle of the year.

So I don't know, uh Pat if you heard that, but there will be two city count city council meetings, the 12th and the I think it's a 28th or something.

You might have to look at the second.

Yeah.

So there will be two council meetings after the inauguration, which is on the inaugurations on the fifth.

That's correct.

That's not a council meeting.

We're still finalizing all the details as why it hasn't been put out yet, other than to the council.

Then in the next meeting.

But this council is two weeks from tonight.

Right.

And then there will be two.

That's correct.

And then the twelfth will be on the new council.

That's correct.

All right, thank you.

We have a new speaker.

How are you doing?

My name's Greg Huff, Ward Two.

Um, Highland Street and Laconia.

Is there a time limit on this?

Go ahead.

We've made pretty lax tonight.

Thank you.

Um I'm just gonna make uh a few points here and then wrap it up uh pretty quick when it comes to the the Human Relations Committee.

Um the first is uh city government exists to perform functions delegated by statute or charter, chiefly budgeting, planning, infrastructure, code enforcement, public safety, service delivery, and statutory compliance.

Second point, a human relations committee does not directly execute statutory functions, enforce ordinances, manage city property, or deliver municipal services.

My third point activities associated with human relations, awareness campaigns, education, dialogue or advocacy can legally and effectively be carried out by community nonprofits, private associations, churches, service agencies, or ad hoc citizens groups without requiring government structure or taxpayer funding.

Number four, any municipal kit committee must justify its existence by producing outcomes unachievable by outside actors or other city bodies.

If its function overlaps the nonprofits, schools, police outreach units, or civic organizations, the committee duplicates capacity rather than filling a gap.

Number five, duplicative committees generate inefficiency requiring staff support, meeting times, administrative oversight, and risk compliance burdens, i.e.

RSA 91As, minutes, agendas, appointment rules, um, even ADA accessibility without directly advancing municipal duties.

Number six, the city includes public attention, um, city resources include public attention and committee structures are finite.

Allocating government bandwidth to functions achievable privately diverts focus from statutory responsibilities like infrastructure, taxation, land use, emergency response, and fiscal management.

The conclusion of this is if the human relations committee performs functions that do not execute municipal duties, duplicate activities available through private actors, and consume finite government capacity, then retaining the human relations committee is irrational from a governance standpoint.

Therefore, the city should not maintain the human relations committee.

Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

Anyone else.

Recently it's been said that the Laconia Human Relations Committee has no value and should cease to exist after 25 years.

I'm not going to malign the people who disagree with my opinion.

Instead, I'm going to just tell you what I see in the Human Relations Committee and my colleagues.

No matter what the differences have been in my almost three years on the committee, every interaction has been cordial, personable, and what I would call good business.

It's very hard to find 13 member committees or any committees for that matter that are dedicated to educating the community, solving problems, and bringing a dose of humanity to the table.

With that being said, I am asking counselors to make the human relations committee a counselor's committee and preserve the LHRC.

This long-standing group of dedicated public servants is and will continue to put on MLK Junior events, see that there are multicultural events in the city of Laconia, and put forward the time and energy to advocate for those in need and those who want it.

I see nothing but value in the Laconia Human Relations Committee.

And here's to another 25 years.

Thank you for your attention to the matter.

Thank you, Richard.

Well, I was going to announce that you were here, Mayor's comments, but uh Michael Boards.

Mike Boards, Laconia, 20 Christian Drive.

I want to set the record straight on one thing.

There's been false allegations going around that I just want to disband and get rid of the human relations committee completely.

That started from a rogue member of the Human Relations Committee spreading misinformation and lies.

What I do want to see with the Human Relations Committee is accountability, transparency.

I want to see them posting their meeting minutes on time, which they have never done.

There's no broadcast of their meetings anywhere to be found.

We need them recorded.

And I think this really needs to wait until the new mayor and city council are in place.

Rushing this through is a big mistake.

We need to give this committee a chance to be reformatted and accountability put in place.

If we force them to be a full-time counsel's committee, we're basically handing over the keys to a stolen vehicle.

I'm using that analogy because if your child goes and steals a vehicle, are you gonna go buy them a new one two weeks later?

No.

You want to punish that person.

You don't you want accountability?

They did not follow the rules.

They're making subcommittees under who's whose authority, who authorized these subcommittees, homelessness subcommittee, previous Mayor Hasma already had a homeless committee that eventually got disbanded or fell under.

They went and made one on their own with no authority.

Who authorized that?

Anybody have the answer here?

I know certain city councillors didn't even know this existed.

We need accountability.

Their meeting minutes were not posted in a timely manner.

Are we gonna are we gonna hand over the keys to the stolen vehicle and allow them to have a full-time committee?

Or are we gonna hold them accountable and reformat this committee and make them accountable and transparent and give us the opportunity to maybe eventually down the road make them a full-time committee, but they need to prove themselves.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

Next.

Good evening, everybody.

Paul Lang Belmont.

Contrary to popular belief, the Human Relations Committee does a lot of good things.

We they put on a forum that was fantastic.

They had the majority of the stakeholders involved that were there.

There were many that weren't, though.

I have to step back a little bit to talk about the word of the night transparency.

When I tried to research everything that was going on with the homeless population in Laconia and the surrounding towns, the mayor's task force on housing or homelessness didn't post their last five meeting minutes.

Nobody knows.

When I asked a counselor on this city council where I would go to find it, I was told to quote unquote shind it yourself, asshole.

Well, if we could That's the only one I've got in that one.

Well, I'm really happy to hear that, but if if anything else comes to mind with you or anybody else, perhaps you could just say explicit, you know, explicitly, you know, just some clear.

He's comfortable with the work, so I am.

So anyway, the other thing I found is I couldn't find any of the last meetings or minutes on the old North Main Street property.

I looked, I couldn't find them anywhere.

So there is a gap.

So as far as a home uh human resour uh relations committee.

I started attending meetings because what really started was they added the homeless subcommittee.

There was a lot of misinformation, miscommunication, a lot of false asertations, um, and quite honestly, it was a failure.

All I saw was we're handing out water and we're trying to push God pods.

So I started looking into that even more, and they were not holding their meetings on site.

Their minutes were lacking.

I came to the Human Relations Committee meeting, and in speaking with Pat Wood, Dave Osman, Matt Seusa, I commended them for their MLK Day celebrations or remembrance.

I commended them for their multicultural day, although I am concerned that they don't have a deep enough bench that they can't put somebody up to pull that task off.

However, I was very critical of the human relations, uh, the uh homeless committee, subcommittee, because they were pushing the false narrative out into the community that made them scared.

It made them worried that this was gonna show up in their backyard.

We all know it's never gonna happen, but the phone calls, the emails, the letters, and it escalated from there, and it did not need to happen.

As far as as far as tonight goes, I reviewed the the policies and procedures, and whether it exists or it doesn't exist as a committee or a task force.

The problem that Pat Wood outlined was that yes, I was the one that complained that people could not attend those meetings because they were in the middle of the day.

I've heard people we want you to become part of the community.

We want you to take part in these meetings.

People can't come during the middle of the day.

So that you can view them live or recorded.

So nobody knew what was going on, and the secretary was having a hard time with the minutes when they identify four locations in the city to put God pods on city property, and that gets published in a set of meet uh meeting minutes.

Where are they?

Nobody knows.

When I asked the question, nobody knew.

And then I'm told the pro bono lawyer told him not to.

I have no idea what that means.

So we bring up the word transparency.

You can see there's a lack of transparency, or there was, and I will commend Pat Wood for bringing that back.

So when I started looking at your new policies and procedures, I didn't see anything in there about meeting times, like they had in the prior uh prior policies and procedures.

It was nothing.

I also didn't understand how you're laying out the members, because to me that doesn't make sense.

You're looking for a large turnover.

I looked at some of the other committees, such as the conservation committee, were they phased in the members.

So some got one-year term, some got two-year terms, some got three-year terms.

That eliminates a massive void if you're going to turn over a whole committee in three years.

That'll all come out in the wash.

What if if this goes through?

You know, that this is not the first committee that the council has worked with, so I'm sure they've got all that planned out.

Right.

Well, I but it wasn't in the policies and procedures that are out there now.

That's my point.

Okay.

It's in the previous ones.

But thank you for your time.

I appreciate it, and thank you for all you've done.

Thank you.

And who's next?

Try not to repeat what other people have said, if possible.

Mr.

Mayor, Councilman, my name is Archie Kelts.

This evening, oh, I'm in Ward 3.

This evening I'm here as a fellow Laconian.

We elect a mayor and a council, and they do appoint committees.

Sometimes the mission of that committee is not fulfilled.

The mayoral human relations committee is comprised of people who are well-intentioned, but whose work product seems largely ineffectual.

Tonight, they are asking us for a promotion.

The HRC has recently taken on homelessness as part of their mission.

I am fine with this in principle.

It seems like a logical step from welcoming refugees to welcoming the homeless.

But there are times when it seems the members of the committee harbor more concern for the stranger than for their own neighbors.

When a Laconian business owner has a window broken into by a homeless person, or another shop owner had a vagrant sleeping in his storefront, the human relations committee, with their ideology of equity, which is not in the Constitution, would dismiss their righteous anger and personal discomfort over these intrusions as unkind and seek restorative justice on behalf of the trespasser, even when $10,000 of damage has been done and their money is stolen.

Do you know how long it takes a working man to save 10,000 dollars?

When no effective policy is acted upon to protect the local business owner, we can't but conclude the current system is favoring the perpetrators rather than the victims, which is what equity gets you.

Most of us believe criminal behavior should be punished.

Broken windows, vagrancy, and indecent exposure do nothing but degrade the living standards of our community.

I signed this petition to defer action, and this is why.

People want to avoid unpleasant situations, and complicating the matter with the homelessness as a matter of dignity and respect, does nothing but degrade the value of people who live here and support us, support the city with their taxes.

It also impacts not just Laconians, but visitors who come to events supported by our city.

Perhaps the Human Relations Committee would do better to contact Governor Ayod and make sure that our police and community are protected from judges who refuse to follow the law when sentencing these criminals.

If that does not work, we can take cognizance of the policy that was instituted overnight in Martha's Vineyard back in 2022.

It does not appear that the current Human Relations Committee has the impetus to protect Laconians and our interest in 2025 or our quality of life.

Therefore, this appears to require a few new sets of eyes looking at our situation.

We cannot allow what is happening currently to become a permanent composition, even for three years.

We need fresh perspectives appointed by the new city council and mayor.

Can only be interpreted as a partisan maneuver.

I know it's not clear if the vote will take place before that transfer of power or not, but I would like to know.

If you care about human relations, you should want the support of all of us Laconians.

This will pose a definite concern to at least half of us Laconians.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else, Mr.

Robertson?

How are you doing, Charlie?

Nice to see you.

I won't ask you to take your hat off because I know you won't, so thank you.

You're welcome.

So I just want to begin by recognizing the Human Relations Committee and the meaningful work it's done organizing the annual Martin Luther King ceremony.

It brings music speakers, food, education to our community, honoring Dr.

Luth Dr.

Martin Luther King's legacy is the dignity of inclusion.

The committee has also supported multicultural festivals, a downtown tradition that celebrates Laconia's diversity through food, music, arts.

These efforts are the committee's mission to educate against prejudice and promote unity, and that they deserve our full support.

And I truly do believe that, right?

I think that's a great things, right?

We can do some great things in this city.

But lately, the committee has struggled to reach all of its citizens.

These once impactful efforts are suffering.

The committee's attempt to hire an outside manager for the multicultural festival collapsed.

The event was canceled, costing the city valuable time, resources, credibility, and hurting the event's public reputation.

Instead of refocusing on its core goals, the committee has drifted to political activism, opposing federal enforcement like ICE, and attacking our Sheriff's Department for carrying out its duty to protect the public.

Why are we even asking the sheriff?

You know, why did you sign that that petition, right?

He did it for the right reasons, because his job is to protect us.

Why would the committee try to stop that?

I found that to be kind of crappy.

Um the committee subcommittee is also taken on issues such as homeless policy, introducing Godpod Village that lies far outside the mission, often with missing or incomplete minutes.

These distractions have created growing diversity, diverting attention and resources from the core purpose.

Sorry.

Trying to say to my thing, because it's easier.

Not really.

Instead, the committee has chosen to focus on polarizing political agendas, putting neighbors against neighbors, and prioritizing short-term activism over long-term unity.

Um said 50% of us.

50%.

That's half of your city.

And how many of you are gonna actually listen to that?

Bruce, you're gonna listen?

I don't know.

Maybe.

Eric, positive.

Mark, maybe.

I don't know.

That's 50% of you guys up there.

Pop it right out, right?

You guys represent half.

What about the rest of us?

While homelessness is a serial local concern, illegal immigration is pressing national issues.

These are not responsibilities of the human rights commission.

Local law enforcement officers have to take an oath to protect the citizens, and the HRC should be supporting that mission, not undermining it.

Leadership means transparency, accountability, and measurable outcomes.

Not miss minutes, missed mid-afternoon meetings.

By the way, 4 30.

I didn't get out of work until 5 30 tonight.

Almost missed this meeting.

The HRC must return to its founding purpose: protecting dignity, preventing prejudice, and promoting inclusion.

Homelessness policies belong under elected oversight where accountability and public input guide the decisions not within a committee working behind beyond its charge.

It's time to refocus the HRC on its essential work, uniting our community, not dividing it.

At this time, I urge that no structural changes be made to the committee until a new city mayor might have a chance to be sworn in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Hi, my name is Taylor Huff.

I'm from Laconia of Highland Street, Ward 2.

Um, I just wanted to bring a petition that I had the help of getting some other people in the city, taxpayers to sign that ask that we respectfully urge you guys to defer any action to make the Human Relations Committee permanent until the newly elected mayor and city council have been sworn in.

Um I have it here for you to consider.

Over a hundred people signed this petition.

So we're hoping that this can show that there is an overwhelming amount of people in Laconia that want this to be halted.

Um at least until the newly elected um a mayor and city council members are sworn in.

So I don't know who I can give this to, but you hello, I'm Carol Pierce.

Um I live in Laconia in the Taylor community.

I have been with the committee for a long time.

And one of the things that has been great to help us do our work is to be a mayor's committee.

Under mayor's committee, you are not under the laws or the regulations of a regular committee of the council.

And in that way, the how you work and where you find your goals, your uh focus and what you do, is that you try things, and you have things that you try and they don't work, or they're not quite right.

You look at what the city allows people to do in any committee.

We have tried at times to keep our uh minutes up to date.

Uh they're quite up to date, but we have not been under the strict strictness of a mayor's of a regular committee.

We had a wider place that we could work.

We could try things, and I think we've tried a lot of things, and I'm really proud of all the things we've been successful about, and that it happened here in Laconia.

I find that people uh hear about us, and as I said in the letter I wrote in the letter to the editor, that they say, I can't believe that a city has taken the energy and the foresight to say you could have a human relations committee.

It's not typical of committees that doesn't go by all the rules in many ways, but it's there as something we've tried, and for 25 years, I think we've done a very good job.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Uh good evening, Mr.

Mayor and Council.

Um point I think we get your name in the Doug Lambert and Guilford.

Thank you.

Um, one point on the previous speaker.

I I would suggest that the committee is subject to all the rules governing political committees.

Um I was asked to uh read a document, uh article that was written by uh Patrick Hines, who can't be here tonight.

Um, so I'd like to read it into the record and then I'll present a copy.

Um this appeared in the Sunday Union Leader this past Sunday.

So he writes, ask Chat GPT to name the New Hampshire municipalities with a human relations committee, and it turns up only one, my beloved hometown of Laconia.

That begs the question.

What the heck is a human relations committee anyway?

If your employer has ever forced you to sit through one of those dreary, unconscious, biased training sessions at which the conclusion was drawn that you are congenitally and incurably racist before the seminar even began.

You've got a pretty good sense of what Laconia's Human Relations Committee, the HRC, is all about.

Its mission includes supporting, quote, the changing face of our community by quote, educating ourselves in our children about the presence and dehumanizing impact of prejudicial attitudes, end quote, in pursuing, quote, the prevention of prejudice, intolerance, harassment, and discrimination in our community, and quote.

There's also plenty of talk about equity, which we've also heard earlier tonight.

You get the idea.

Yet, as interested in tolerance as the HRC claims to be, it's willing to draw the line somewhere.

It's hard to find more than one registered Republican on the 14-member committee.

For context, the Republican candidate for governor received around 60% of the vote here last year.

That makes you wonder, does the HRC really quote, support the changing face and quote of Laconia, or is it just trying to mold Laconia in its own image?

The HRC is a mayor's committee, meaning it isn't a permanent fixture of local government and serves at the mayor's discretion.

And this poses a problem for the politicians who currently run the city.

The immediate past occupant of the mayor's office, a Democrat, resigned.

He was replaced by an interim mayor, a Democrat, who still serves in that role.

Then Mr.

Mike Boards, the Republican state representative, upset the carefully constructed succession plan by unexpectedly winning the election for mayor last month.

Suddenly the in-house partisan face changes, prejudice preventers, and dehumanizing impact educators on the HRC thought their days might be numbered.

This kicked off a panicky effort to make the HRC permanent and remove it from the mayor's discretion during this lame duck period before Boards takes office.

Boards is an unlikely villain.

He's a moderate Republican who has never endorsed the idea of dissolving the HRC, but he has called for greater transparency from this opaque committee.

That threat of transparency appears to ignited the backroom caper to cement the HRC within city government and alter its structure.

The Laconia City Council recently charged its government operations committee with making a recommendation to the HRC's future.

To no one's surprise, it recommended the HRC become permanent, pointing to the fact that no one even showed up to the hearing to speak against the measure.

This ignores the inconvenient fact that the hearing was held at 3 30 p.m.

on a weekday when most people in town were working or picking up their kids from school.

Incidentally, two of the government operation committees, three members, counselors Bruce Cheney and Anthony Felch lost in November and will no longer serve on the council.

I, Patrick, contacted Cheney and Felch for this column, but neither responded to my request for comment.

Give them this.

It's a sophisticated political caper, the city fathers have cooked up in a stunning use of raw if fleeting power.

But at what cost?

The irony is that if the lame duck council gets its way, it will undermine any claims of legitimacy the HRC might have in the future.

Its works, whether good or controversial, will carry the stench of partisan intrigue.

They will have sown distrust in the very public they seek to educate.

The Laconia City Council would be wise to defer action on making the Human Relations Committee permanent and removing it from the mayor's discretion until the new mayor and city council take office in January.

So that's the end of Patrick's What's his name again?

I'm sorry.

Patrick Hines.

Hines Hines, yes.

H I H Y N E S.

He's a city of Laconia resident.

Right, I get that.

Okay.

And it's always nice to have a historian go over the recent history.

I like that.

Yes.

Yes.

It was very well written.

I wish I could claim that I had written it, but I didn't.

So uh to now we get into my some of my thoughts and observations.

Um this article was the number one red piece on the union leader yesterday and today.

So what that means uh is many eyes around the city of Laconia.

And people are interested in this, obviously.

Most likely where the union leader really isn't the city's paper of record.

That means that there's a lot of interest beyond just the citizens of Laconia.

And you know, people are wary of the shenanigans that we find at all levels of government these days.

The underhanding going on in the notion that elections don't matter is causing people nationwide to lose faith in our institutions.

Now, uh Pat Wood earlier mentioned that um democracy is strengthened through the works of that committee.

And uh my answer to that is really uh this almost smacks of democracy as being weakened, okay.

There was an election held in this city, okay, and Mike Boards won the election.

Now, we all know that the mayor's uh powers uh uh not that much.

You probably if I can just interrupt and I apologize, but if try to not go over the stuff we've already heard tonight, because it's getting late.

And I and I appreciate the fact that you're standing there, don't get me wrong, but we know who won the election, we know who's here now, we know who's coming.

If he can just try to cut right to the chase.

Okay, please.

So in order to strengthen democracy, we we really shouldn't be destroying it.

Okay, it's like destroying the village to save the village.

I don't see in a lot of other people don't understand why this has to happen at this particular point.

Let the democracy, the vote of the people stand, let the new mayor take his position.

I believe he said earlier that he had no intention of eliminating the committee.

So to turn around and take a 25-year tradition, legacy, and somehow change it at this juncture is just not something that is doing the work of the people.

And my question, my final thought is why don't you, this current council, take a stand, do what's right, don't make the change, do the right thing.

And I think that some of you that are leaving can go out as heroes, as having been able to say to the public with a straight face that I heard the people, we respect the democratic process, and we're going to allow the people that were duly elected to make the decisions that the voters have tasked them to do.

Thank you for the time.

Thank you, Doug.

And he has the somebody else.

We'd love to get out of here before midnight.

Come on up, John.

John Hildreth, Board 1.

Um, the makeup of the council, number one.

Um previous speaker spoke of uh an opinion piece from the Manchester Union leader, the very biased uh anyway.

The makeup of the council is not going to change.

We have an independent that is being replaced by a Republican.

We have a Republican that's being replaced by a former independent Democrat.

So this is not something that is going to be some massive change.

Number two, making this a permanent committee overseen by the city council will address a lot of the issues that a lot of people have brought up today.

It will be a formal committee that will be overseen by the city council.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hold on, Pat.

Is there anybody else that has not spoken would like to speak?

All right, Pat Pat, we'll give you that shot.

Thank you, uh, Mr.

Mayor Counselor.

I just need to clarify a couple of points that were raised.

Uh the Human Relations Committee does not run the Multicultural Festival.

That's a separate entity that runs the multicultural festival.

Uh we are not responsible for that event.

We support it.

Most of our members work uh at the multicultural festival, but we do not uh run the committee.

We're not that event, we're not responsible for it.

Uh secondly, the human relations committee has taken no stand whatsoever on the sheriff's agreement uh with the uh homeland securities.

The chairperson of the committee, as a retired lawyer, independent of the committee, without any involvement of the committee, has taken a position on that, and I have made that known here to the city council as well.

Um the uh the god pods have never been uh proposed, sponsored, pushed uh forward by the human relations committee.

What we have done is we have allowed the uh people who proposed the idea of the god pods to make a presentation to the human relations committee.

Uh we have not taken a stand or a position on that issue.

These are uh independent uh individuals, our homelessness subcommittee, if you will, uh was there to meet with them to get more information, to bring that information back to the full committee.

But we, as a human relations committee, have not taken any stand on the issue of the god pods.

Um as far as the 430 uh meeting time because we are a mayor's committee, uh we are not uh given keys to the uh city hall.

So we'd have to meet at times when there are people here in City Hall who can lock up the doors, make sure the building is secure.

Um that's not our responsibility.

If we become a permanent committee of the city, that will change because now there will be uh somebody from the city to take the minutes to keep the records to be here to make sure the doors are locked uh when we uh end our meeting.

We've agreed to the 4 30 on Mondays, the third Monday of the month, because right after that is the zoning board.

So we start at 4 30, we're done at 6.

The zoning board starts at 6 30, there's a continuity of operation.

We don't need to worry about being responsible for locking the doors.

So there are practical reasons for doing that, but if it's a full city committee, that issue gets resolved.

So I've I think those are the major concerns that have been uh raised.

Uh one final comment.

Um the author of that op-ed and of an earlier letter to the son uh Patrick Hines happens to be my son-in-law, and I have heard nothing from him, nor my daughter on this issue.

So when we talk about um the importance of communication, I guess that's something that perhaps my family needs to learn a little bit more about.

And I'm more than happy to do that.

Um, but I will tell you that the language in his letters and his op-eds are really painful because that's not who I am.

That's not how I lead a committee, that's not how I deal with people.

So I think it's important that we do this and do it right.

So thank you.

Thank you, Pat.

I got so many questions, but we're gonna wait until it's discussed by the council now right now.

Yeah, I don't know if you uh wouldn't you close the public hearing?

I don't know anybody else.

Mayor oh, come on up.

Good evening, all nice to see you.

Uh having sat in a few meetings with the human relations committee, I can say without equivocation that those who presently serve on it represent the best of what the city has to offer.

I have listened carefully tonight to the remarks prior to me approaching.

I will say it is my hope and expectation that the future iteration of this human relations committee should fall under the new administration in January for the reasons stated earlier.

And I'm confident you'll make the right decision.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

Do you want to move the discussion up to now?

Charlie?

We can, but that's the last speaker's name and oh, that's Peter Spanos.

Well, I knew that, but apologies.

Yeah, Peter Spanos who lives in Ward 1.

Okay, thank you.

And has many other titles I might add.

There's several of us, but if you could just tell us again who you are, please.

So I'm Sue Higgins, Highland Street Ward 2.

And um I have been tasked with um transparency.

Thank you so much.

I bet you I bet you like that, right?

I do, I love it.

So um there's a couple of things because you asked me not to go over what has already been gone over, so I just I just want to go over a couple of things with you that um first of all, any I I printed um the 91A.

Anyone who wants to read it, I'll be glad to share it with you.

And there's nothing in this 91A that says a mayor's committee does not fall under the same committee guidelines as any other committee, and they should be posting minutes and doing things in a transparent manner, and has nothing to do with whether a mayor's committee or not.

It's certainly been covered already, thank you.

Um then what I will say is I said to you earlier today that I'm trying to get up to speed as to how that this city operates, and one of the things that I did was I um on Wednesday, November 12th, I sent an email to Patrick Wood, and it was a very simple two-sentence email, which I asked him that his meeting, I said, you mentioned that you have a meeting on Monday.

Um, what time is the meeting and where will it be held?

And is this information posted someplace so that I can find it for myself in the future?

And his response to me was the meeting will be at the city council chambers on Monday the 17th at 4:30.

So you can see it was a very short email to him, and I asked him how I could find this information for myself in the future, and he did not respond to that at all.

And um, so for somebody that is trying to be transparent, whether it was inadvertent or not, when you're trying to figure out how things are being operated, it it should be covered, especially it shouldn't get lost in a an email that's two sentences long.

Um Mr.

Littlefield, when he was working on behalf of um the homeless subcommittee, was um asked again, somebody had said um where are these locations going to be, and he first said he couldn't remember where they were gonna be, and then he said that under advice for counsel he couldn't share that information.

That's certainly not something that is transparent.

Um again, 330 meetings is not good.

Posting meetings properly is not okay.

I read at the last um meeting that they had, they had a one-page outline of how the homeless forum went, and on that one-page outline, which I consider to be the formal document of how they perceived the homeless forum to go, they said that um the homeless could not be um arrested out that they didn't want him to be arrested out that that they needed that they needed public help to get out of their situation, and that was not what came out of the forum.

It was very clear that the citizens of Laconia want the homeless people to be accountable in the same way that citizens are.

If we are defecating in the middle of downtown, if I can just stop here, you're going over the forum.

And this is the no, I'm going over the legal record that they had of the forum where they said.

Okay, but we don't need to hear all the particulars of that forum.

If you don't have to be able to do that, that's not transparency.

Wait a minute.

We've already but everybody that's not what we're discussing right now.

Please.

So we're discussing the human relations committee.

Absolutely, which is the forum and what's the of the human relations committee.

Yeah, okay.

We're just trying to move it along.

Please.

Well, you tell me what you want me to cover.

Well, I I I just don't need to hear about people defecating and all that because it's already been discussed.

We had two or three speakers ago, somebody talked about that.

So you said you were going to cover stuff that's not already been discussed.

No, I what I'm covering the stuff.

What I'm telling you is that there's a formal record of what happened at that forum, and it's inaccurate.

Okay, that's all I'm gonna say.

Okay, thank you.

That's it.

Thank you very much.

All right, thank you.

Anyone else?

We've got one more.

Yeah, sorry.

Uh hi, I'm Matt Souza.

I live in Ward 2 uh Bowman Street.

A lot of people here know me because I'm have the ability and the privilege of doing some volunteering in this area.

And I'm associated with a lot of different organizations and agencies, and one of them is I'm a member of the Lacone Human Relations Committee.

So I can say from my experience, it's been a very positive experience, I think, both from what's been accomplished and the experience of it.

Um I think there have also been issues like everything else, some things work and some things don't, some things fizzle out.

So, and I think there have been some problems that I think are related to the fact that this has an unusual kind of unusual status compared to the other committees.

The reforms that are being discussed aren't new, they've been discussed on and off for some years now.

I started when Ed Engler was mayor, that's when I first got involved with the committee.

So I I know a little bit of history about it.

Uh I'm happy whether they whether it's kept the way it is or whether it's changed in the way that's been described or in some other way.

And as far as my own standing on it, I'd be glad to go through any process that anybody wants to go through.

And if they want me back, fine, and if they don't, that's fine too.

I think if you want to keep the committee going, if you do want it restaffed but still continuing, I would suggest that you make sure you have people lined up to take the place of the people that you want to leave simply because it's I I know from experience how tough it is to get people to to volunteer for anything.

They don't have the time, especially nowadays.

And I guess the only other thing I'm gonna say, because again, I want to not just mirror or repeat things, is I hope anybody hearing all of this isn't turned off who's interested in maybe volunteering somewhere in some capacity to some degree isn't turned off by this conversation.

It's the kind of conversation that can happen uh during difficult times and about controversial matters.

Uh for the most part, volunteering is neither partisan nor controversial.

And most of the stuff, including that the committee has done, has been neither I at the places that I volunteer, I work with people across the political spectrum, and we work very well together.

And I would earnestly recommend volunteering to anybody who wants to do it.

I found it enormously rewarding in ways that have nothing to do with money, class, power, status, career.

That's one of the reasons it's so rewarding.

And I would very earnestly recommend people to consider it as a general rule.

Thank you.

Thank you, Matt.

Okay.

We're gonna close the public hearing.

Wow, at 8 20 on this.

You want to say something, Kirk?

Well, just obviously some people are going to stay, but I think most people are here for this.

I don't know if you want to move the agenda item up to now so you guys can have your discussion.

That's up to you guys.

It lists 21 B in your agenda packet, but it's 22B.

Just if you're looking for it.

Um it's up to you guys, but is there a motion on the is that somebody want to make a motion to that?

Uh okay.

Uh made by uh councillor Felch, seconded by second seconded by uh councillor Susi.

Any discussion?

All in favor.

All in favor, raise your hands, please so I can see them.

Okay, it's six in the affirmative.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh go ahead, Eric.

Council Hoffman.

Yeah, a few things.

I guess I want to address one thing right off the bat is that this entire discussion was not initiated by the the human relations committee at all.

This discussion was initiated by us because the the appointments like they do every year came before us, and some of these concerns about accountability and uh the legitimacy of the of the committee and and uh oversight came up, and we we decided to initiate this discussion and to explore making this committee a permanent committee and not just a mayor's committee.

So it's not really like the human relations committee is trying to steer some kind of political whatters to legitimize themselves.

This this is us trying to address concerns about the committee.

Some of the concerns we heard tonight.

Yes.

So I if it's a good idea tonight, it's a good idea next month.

I have I have no issue if we kick this to it being reviewed by the next council's government operations and ordinance committee.

I mean, I think that's a good question.

Well, my I get I guess what I'm curious about, uh Counselor, is that if this council goes ahead and says you want to do that, the members won't be approved until the new council is seated.

It's true.

It'll be so if the new council says everyone on the human relations committee is terrible people, we got to get them out of there.

That that's up to the council.

Am I wrong?

And and if the new council and the new mayor decide that, well, this whole thing is just craziness.

We want nothing to do with them, then they could vote the that committee right off the face of the earth.

Am I wrong?

You're not wrong.

So I guess I just think in the interest of uh transparency, and maybe given some of the comments tonight that that there is a little more work to be done on on the exact text of of the of the human relations committee that we might want to take a little more time with us.

I have a few more things.

People keep mentioning the minutes, and this is frustrating because I do think it's ridiculous that we can't get minutes posted.

You know, it was mentioned the the committee about old North Maine.

We never actually, I never even received.

I was the chair of that committee and have not received the minutes for the last meeting.

Um we have to do better with this.

This is it's just not professional, right?

Um meeting times, I I totally agree.

4 30 is it's not late enough.

And if it's if that is really because we can't get that committee a key to get in here, I think that's I mean that's just crazy.

Well, that would be again answered by it would a legitimate, not legitimate, but a city uh run committee.

Also, it came up, you know.

We list almost every time we discuss something where these things are posted, right?

Everything that we do is posted in four places.

We really need to have that on the website better because you shouldn't have to park here and walk up to the door to see when we're gonna have a public hearing about something.

A lot of people don't read the paper.

You need to be able to get on a computer and type it in and have it come up like this is the next meeting, this is where it is.

Um yeah, that's all I have up.

Thanks.

Council Susi.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I think I might also bring forth is if we look at what it we're being asked to take a look at.

I have 21 on item 21b.

The ordinance is right there that covers the human relations committee.

It's in the ordinance, and it's that's available to all the public as they wish.

Human relations made up of 13 people, three-year terms, two members by the city manager, and one member by the city manager, two members by the mayor, and nine members appointed by the city council.

Now to do that process, we had the city council created two years ago, maybe three years ago, an appointments committee.

So that anybody who wanted to go on all these boards that listen into the ordinance would have to come in front of that committee made up of three city councillors and go through a vetting process.

Okay, it gives us more time because as I've said, when we've had those committees, and some people here have been there.

It used to be in the past, somebody wanted to volunteer to be on a committee, come up in front of the city council, say my name's in a hand, fine, we found a warm body, let's put them on.

Can't say that wasn't done.

That's the way it was done.

Today, we have this process that we go through.

And that was initiated by this council, put in place, and what we do is we and those of you who have been there, we discuss, we learn a lot of things that are not really uh brought in front of the council that we can then bring to the council so the council is aware of it, and we come up with some very good things out of that.

I'm I totally agree that we needed the human relations committee.

I think it's awesome.

I think we should do it.

Also, there's probably no time for this council to get it done before the this council is relieved and a new council comes on.

I I just don't see it because we have to go out and get all these people vetted, you might say, brought in front of appointments, take time to do that.

This is a very busy time of the season, everything else like that.

I don't understand what the issue is that the new city council or some people here want to push for that if they think it's because this this body right here is non-partisan.

Let's get that straight.

Okay.

I'm very proud of that.

And I get really upset when people start throwing things around like they're gonna be a part of the situation.

That's just not here.

Okay, if that's the way you feel you don't belong here.

Okay.

This is a nonpartisan situation.

We want to keep it that way, and it's better for the citizens of Laconia, not for just a certain few.

Lastly, on the on this board, we should have it.

And and I agree with I think it was Pat, okay, or um Matt, when he just last up speaking, okay.

If uh the council as a whole, when we get all those appointments ready and go and bring them in front of the council, if the council votes for some of them not on or on or off or anything else like that, or for one year or three years, whatever it is, that's fine.

We're going through the normal process.

There's no time to do it now.

Okay.

It's in the ordinance.

There's an ordinance right here that people can read it already exists.

It's right here.

Okay, and we've erred.

This council has erred because we haven't gone through that formal process, okay, prior to coming up to us right now.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Anyone else?

Council.

Oh, Councilor Cheney.

Thank you.

Uh, for the last eight years, I've sat here and tried to do what was best for the city of Laconia.

And I'm more than unhappy with the tone of all of this.

Whether you agree with the human relations committee or disagree, you don't have to be uh unkind in your words.

I I am hurt to hear someone suggest that there's shenanigans here.

I've been here eight years and watched this and other groups, work very hard for the city of Laconia and try to keep the tax rate down, meet the tax cap and all that other stuff, and to suggest that this one issue is somehow a political ploy to deal with the incoming mayor, it enrages me.

I I'm tired of listening to people who don't have any clue what they're talking about when they stand up here.

That includes someone who doesn't have the social graces or the intellect to even remove his hat while he's standing here.

That ought to give you some idea of what we're dealing with, listening to this.

I don't know whether I'm going to vote for this committee or not.

I I honestly don't.

But I can tell you this from my perspective, they don't pay me enough to take too much more of that stuff.

Fortunately, that's not an option I have to worry about.

But I Mr.

Mayor, look, I I just want the citizens of Laconia.

I think the vast majority of them know I've tried very hard over the last uh eight years.

Um in all fairness, there's some discussion about the new mayor uh as opposed to me.

Um let's understand he he won by 40 or 50 votes.

That's not a landslide.

So, you know, listen to all of us and ask all of us our opinion our opinions on this and whatever may come up between now and the end of the year.

I am somewhat enraged to think that we somehow can't do this properly now.

I I I just don't know that how I uh I gotta tell you I try to pay attention to everything uh that goes on in Laconia because I have to watch everything because of my regular job, I have to some of how things affect other things in the city when stuff goes on.

And I never realized maybe I'm just really totally oblivious that the Human Relations Committee was such a huge deal in this city.

I I think that if uh I mean I just can't believe it people must go home and wake up at three o'clock in the morning.

But if I mayor, someone sits there and says they've been trying to get up to speed.

Apparently they haven't done it up yet to figure out where we're at.

Um so it it hasn't been a major concern until a small group decided to make it an issue.

Four of the counselors sitting here, four of the counselors sitting here today will be here after the first of the year.

Excuse me.

One or or another may not support this, but the fact remains there's enough counselors here right now who will be here next year, who, if they support this, are going to be able to pass it.

Uh with or without the mayor's support.

I apologize for this rant.

I've listened about all I can stand.

You ain't paying me enough to keep putting up with this.

Okay.

Thank you, Councillor Cheney.

Counselor Felch.

Yeah, I feel that making this a city committee is pretty much going to alleviate most of the questions and problems of minutes and with you know transparency and all that stuff, and that's why we want to make it a city committee.

So it has the guidance of the city council, it has the oversight of the city council.

So with that said, I would like to move this to back to government operations for another look at, see if there needs to be any tweaking, and then back to a public and second public hearing for anybody that hasn't been able to speak at our next meeting and a possible vote.

There are a second order I'd second that.

Okay.

Uh we'll still open for discussion now.

Uh councillor Bogart.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I've sat here and listened and um well.

Oh, okay.

Go ahead.

Go ahead, counselor.

Counselor Boggs, go ahead.

I don't know when Bruce seconded it.

That's right.

It was seconded.

Okay.

So I can discuss it.

All right.

No one, I do not believe, I do not believe anybody had an issue with the human relations committee until they came up with the homeless issue.

The homeless issue has been dividing this city for over two years.

People have had their houses vandall.

Can I can I don't think with the it's divided, Steve.

I don't think most I think most people agree with what you talk about all the time.

I understand.

Okay, thank you.

So then it's not divided equally, it's more people are upset about the situation in our city.

So when the human relations committee decided to take on God pods, that's when people became fearful.

We've already had two committees on homelessness.

Okay, two mayor committees on homelessness, and both of them came up with the same in result.

Now the Human Relations Committee on their own without direction, because I've asked for this information in a public meeting.

Has anybody from this council gave them directions to do this?

No.

No one has.

So this committee on their own decided to take up palette communities.

And then they started throwing around where they want to put them.

Well, what did you expect from the public?

They're gonna come unglued, like I would.

I dealt with this situation for three years.

Three years.

Okay.

I've had prop personal property stolen along with a lot of the other members out here.

So they are outraged, not necessarily at human relations.

They are outraged at the fact that they just on their own decided to do something.

And it was not a very popular thing they did.

So that is the backlas you get from the public when something like this happens.

Now, do I think a human relations committee is?

How that even got brought up was a discussion between uh Councillor Hoffman and myself, where he brought up the actual comment.

Do I think it would be helpful?

And I said, I think it would solve a lot of problems.

I didn't say it'd solve all, but the direction to the city manager was to come up with solutions, different options available.

At the next meeting, the only option presented to us was a committee.

So that's what the record was.

All right, so let's set that straight.

And now we're here today.

I still have problems with the interpretation of the ordinance itself.

I brought them up at the last meeting.

I have not seen the discussions made at the last government ordinance meeting.

I don't see them posted when I went looking for them, so I had no idea what it was discussed at the last government ordinance meeting, then reported at the last meeting that it's all fine.

We like it, go forward.

We support it.

So none of the issues were discussed that were brought up.

So my curiosity is if we send it back to this current government ordinance, we're not going to get any other answer than what was already provided for us, in my belief.

So that's where you start to see this situation implode.

Why do they want it to move to the next?

Because they don't see anything's going to change in all these discussions, because the support is we're not going to do nothing.

Statement, I don't want the city of Laconia educating anybody.

That is not their function in life, is to educate people on what is diversity and what's inclusion and stuff like that.

That ain't no city committee's job.

But yet that was said to be, it's okay.

And I I'm so whether we send it back to government ordinance or not at this time.

I can only support we need to look at this freshly, or government ordinance needs to look at it with a fresh set of eyes, taking the inputs from all these people and talking about it, and then having minutes that are published so that everybody can see.

It's all a big black void, and so you end up with their mission statement, which I can't support this mission statement.

So I wish I could ask you questions when you're stating all this stuff because I forget some of the stuff you made you said there, but um doesn't this committee being appointed by the council, doesn't that fix a lot of those issues that you can you're worried about or complaining about?

Doesn't that doesn't it you mentioned minutes again?

We've already hammered that one into the ground that that'll be taken care of just like all the other committees are.

But this mission statement you keep talking about, isn't that that's the message mission statement from the current the current group?

Yes, right.

And they want to take it over to the new group.

Okay, but that's what they want, but this council is gonna make the decision on that.

Won't the co by appointing members may like I said earlier, maybe they won't appoint any of those people.

Maybe they should have a whole new mission statement out of that.

Well, I didn't even know if does I don't even know if go ahead, Kirk.

If I can just speak on the uh the mission values vision, I think that's the three things that they use in there in their statement.

One of the things that I was tasked to do was to speak to legal about it, and I haven't even had chance to it's on my notes for tonight, but I haven't had a chance to do it yet.

Um legal, you know, looking at strictly just a legal standpoint as far as the way we laid out the ordinance, they had no issues with that, and that they're not saying right or wrong for you guys, but just the structural piece of it.

But the mission values vision, they have a lot of issues with.

Um a lot of the language in there they didn't like.

Um and again, I haven't this was part of the multiple steps of the of the government operations and ordinance committee.

Um they want to rewrite a lot of that.

You know, they want you to work on that uh because they didn't like a lot of the language in there.

Both for some new RSAs that came out.

If you hadn't had a chance to see those, it's 21 something, um, which talks a lot about DEI initiatives within the state, um, as well as just some general language that they they they that they didn't like.

So what's was presented um would require quite a bit of changes and probably a lot and a lot of work with our legal team.

And who presented that?

That was that came from the current group?

It was given and it was given at um yes, current group given to the subcommittee.

I took that to legal just to start the conversation, and you know, we s we ended with it's not ready by any means.

All right.

So it sounds like if it if in fact it does go back to government operations, there will in fact have to be some changes made.

Yes.

Yeah, it'd be quite a bit.

There's gonna be a lot of work involved in that.

So in some horizon, it's not ready for government operations yet until the city manager from the attorney can get verbiage that they like, then present it to this the government ordinance.

There's no sense in sending this anywhere other than possibly tabling it until we can get that resolved.

Couple years, Steve.

We can our attorneys work faster than no, it has to go back to government operations than then and then back to legal.

So the recommendation from attorneys is that they would like they would rather work with the human relations.

I mean, sorry, government operations, government operations to help that as opposed to them writing it or going back and forth too many times.

Okay, just be easier for them.

Council of SUSE and us.

So they're says right in the in this in the ordinance that was presented to us from government relations, ordinance and relations.

Which will include a mission values and purpose statement and should be approved by the city council.

Until that's done, gone through the committee and brought to the council, it's right.

It's you know, it's gonna happen.

Okay, I hope they don't wait two years.

I'll let you see it done expediently, but we get it to next election and we go through that whole thing.

No I want it done.

Go go again, go again uh again, Council Hoffman.

Something else I wanted to clarify.

What is the budget of the human relations committee?

We do two thousand dollars a year from the city.

Okay, thank you.

Do they say what they use that for?

We can certainly get that.

I don't have it, you know, broken.

I we do, but I don't have it with me.

Okay.

One more question, Mr.

Council Seussy.

Um, the question I have for you, Mr.

Mayor, and maybe for the city manager, is it best for us to table this or is it best for us to send it back to committee?

I'm not gonna jump in the middle of the political side of this discussion.

I want to make sure we get this done because I want the committee.

But I will say if I can if if I may, I will just make the comment that the ordinance that was presented in front of you is the same way we represent any new ordinance.

It's a draft version that comes out.

Here you go.

What do you guys think?

And I know there was a comment in there from last time.

Um that as opposed to the human, I don't know if it's B or C on there.

Instead of the Human Relations Commission writing the or committee writing the uh mission values and vision statement, Council Bogart said no, we should drive the bus on that.

Um so that was kind of where that came over.

So that would be adjusted anyhow.

That document that you have there, the proposed ordinance is pretty benign.

As far as it just really lays out the very basics of the committee, it does not get into the the minute details.

That's the other stuff that we're talking about with the other half of the document.

This is more how you put people on.

If you notice most of the committees that are in there, I mean there's 15 committees and 16 committees in there, and it's only four pages because it just lays out who puts the people on the committee and and that everything else comes more in depth in other documents or two more.

I I don't see any harm.

I mean, I'm not gonna vote on it, but I don't see any harm with this going back to government.

Right uh government.

So because it just keeps the keeps the thing moving along.

It doesn't mean anything's gonna happen the next council meeting, or like I said, two years from now.

But potentially uh it just keeps the ball rolling and and to keep the work going.

Uh whether anything happens or not, Councilor Bogart.

Uh like you said, a lot of work needs to be done, but at least it keeps it moving.

And I don't see any harm in that.

I wouldn't move on.

Well, Councillor Susi.

If it goes back to government operations committee, and I'd like to ask the chairman, Councillor Haynes.

Uh and I'm not sure if it works that way or not, but to uh also allow some other uh not counselor, but see people from the outside, whether it's uh Patwood or Carol Pierce or anybody that's here or wants to get involved, present to you, help write that mission statement and policies and stuff like that.

Because I'm not sure if we know all of it to do.

They appeared at the last meeting.

They did and if you want, if you want me, can I make a comment?

Absolutely.

I was in the middle of the motion here and the whole work.

Uh as far as meeting times go to concern uh concern, I think we need to back off from this a little bit.

Okay.

There are two meeting rooms in this building.

Okay.

I think the city manager said there was 15 or 16 different committees.

And that doesn't include the planning board, the conservation commission, and the whole works, okay.

Uh the meetings are scheduled when the meeting rooms are available, and when the committee meeting members are available.

You could have a planning uh a meeting on Monday night at seven o'clock of government operations.

One of the committee members can't be here because he's on the planning board.

And the planning board meets in this meet in this meeting room.

So 3 30, 4 30, maybe not acceptable to some people, but it's when the meeting room and the people are available.

Okay.

So I think that's a very unfair comment.

Okay.

And it's not scheduled so that nobody can come.

It's when it's available and when the committee members are available.

Well, as many of you, as many of you know, including a lot of citizens in the city, there are meetings that are held all day long, different times.

Uh I mean, I've been irritated when uh tenure plan was here a couple times, and it was held at two o'clock in the afternoon.

I had to take time off from work to get here.

But it just depends, I guess, I guess, on how important something is for you.

But you're absolutely right, counselor uh, with regards to uh rooms.

I've been up against that before.

Counselor Felch.

Yes.

So with that said, if there's a meeting scheduled, people can reach out to their counselor, people can email the entire council ahead of the meeting, and those notes or those email will be included in that meeting.

And with all that said, there's been a motion and a second.

I'd like to call the question.

Okay, the question's been called.

Uh all in favor of uh the motion, which we want to repeat the motion.

The motion was to move the move it to committee.

Go back to the government operations committee.

If we have everything figured out, move it back to another public meeting, but it doesn't sound like we will.

But no, a couple of things.

I think that would be up to the committee, right?

Okay, how do we want to do that?

Go go ahead.

Could you check the minute the wording of the motion?

Is that seemed like it was for the one you just made?

Yeah, so Councillor Felch made a motion to send this back to the government operations and ordinances committee.

And then um sorry, I didn't have a my my microphone on.

So councillor Felch made a motion to send this back to the government operations and ordinances commit subcommittee.

It was seconded.

Um I have to go back and listen to who seconded it.

Counselor Cheney.

And then there is the discussion brought forth by Councillor Bogart.

Amongst others, okay.

How's that?

Yeah, I would I would uh uh if it's gonna go back to the government operations in the next two weeks.

Certainly I can you know I'm on the timetable of the attorneys, and there's gonna be a lot of work that goes involved in this.

I think the question also needs to be put in there as to um is there an expectation that's gonna be on the 22nd meeting for potential vote, and that's up to you guys.

You asked me to weigh in that I'm gonna make it harder on you, but that's one of the things I would say to you.

Yeah, you did.

No, that was a good idea.

I need direction on that piece because we'll know we'll I would think you're gonna schedule a meet.

Well, let's vote on the motion first.

Okay, and then I mean how soon do you need to know if it's gonna be on the next agenda?

Well for another public hearing, and no, I think.

Well, I mean, we if we're gonna have another public hearing, we're gonna have to post it soon.

Right we're gonna have to get it on, you know.

And that was the intention for anybody to speak that hasn't spoken to uh that's up to and a possible vote if we're ready to be able to do that.

There's always a possible vote.

It doesn't mean that it's a good thing.

It doesn't be but that's up to you, so that was my motion.

Okay, all right.

Yes, enough.

All in favor, raise your hands, please.

That's and all opposed.

Okay, it's five to one, so motion carries.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, everybody in the audience, Mr.

Mayor.

Yes.

When this committee meeting is is with all committee meetings.

Can all counselors be advised at what time and location and provided with the agenda so that we can uh you know be present and thank you.

Doug so we can discuss that.

Doug, yeah, for you no talk, don't leave, don't leave.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was just gonna say, I look forward to a lot of Laconia citizens showing up at Guilford uh at the at the Board of Select Min's meeting.

We're gonna all have to start watching the news over there, and then the Gunstock Commission, of course.

Right.

So we'll we'll maybe we'll see you there, kid.

Good involvement and distraction is uh universal I know I know.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I know there's a delegation meeting tomorrow night, too.

With the budget with the budget's gonna be proposed.

That budget goes down about $600,000.

I know Council of Susi is gonna be there.

Is it tomorrow night?

Okay, we're gonna move on now.

Excuse me here.

13 C.

Thank you.

13C.

This is resolution 2025-35 relative to acceptance of an award in the amount of eighty-seven thousand dollars from the Department of Safety Homeland Security Grant Program for the purchase of SWAT SOU equipment for the Laconia Police Department.

We'll open the public hearing at 854.

Is there anybody here that would like to come in?

Uh we we do have the PD here if we need to.

Yeah, I I see him back there.

We've got a new person on this topic.

My name is Sue Higgins.

Thank you, sir.

So um I spoke to um Mr.

Biotti about this, and I would just like some clarification on this equipment, because it is my understanding that the city of Laconia does not have a SWAT team.

The SWAT team is a Belknap County SWAT team.

And so um I'm I'm just looking for some clarification as to where this equipment is going and who it's actually working on.

And I do have the update since we've since we've talked.

So they have a um it is it is Bellknop County, but it's an executive board made up of the police departments within Bellknap County.

They have an executive board that they do.

Um so it is a shared resource.

Um what they end up doing is uh you'll see that other municipalities within Bellknop County will apply for these grants as well.

We seem to do a uh a lion share of them probably, but we have a lot of experience with writing grants, so that's why it generally gets uh pushed to us.

And um so that that's how it's it's Bellknap County, but it's but it's this is part of an executive team, um, an executive committee rather made up of the other municipalities.

So when the equipment is when the equipment finally arrives, you're saying it's for the use of Belknap County, but um New Hampshire.

I mean Laconia is the fiscal agent for that.

Is that correct, Matt?

Chief?

That's correct.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Transparency at its best.

Okay, um chief, or this is back there.

You have anything you'd like to add to this?

Yes, sir.

No, okay.

Anybody else for the public hearing?

Okay, we'll close the public hearing at 8 56.

Um any discussion on this or just move.

I guess we'll just move it right along.

Okay, we're gonna go to by the way.

That public hearing was uh posted everywhere else the other ones were.

We'll we'll repeat that again.

The next one is uh 13D.

This is resolution 2025-36 request to use impact fee funds to replace the damaged garage door motor and provide maintenance on the remaining motors on the fire department central station.

We'll open that public hearing at 856.

Is there anybody here that would like to uh discuss that?

Sue Higgins.

Um it's my understanding at the last meeting that we talked about using impact fees for this, but um that there were not enough monies in the impact fees to cover that, and that um some money was going to have to become from someplace else.

And I'm just curious if we figured out where that's coming from.

Yeah, so the um this one and the next fire department one will kind of wrap them all in together.

Uh they have uh just over 40,000.

They're just over 40,000 in their um impact fees.

They're gonna take this off of it, the two the 15,000 dollars to fit these two motors.

When they take the remainder for the ambulance, as long as that's all approved tonight.

It will put them below what they have in impact fees.

The remaining will come out of the internal service fund, which the internal service fund is the where we uh where we have money in for repair replacement of vehicles.

Um, so it's already budgeted money.

Um, when that's used.

Um what I've said what I've talked to the chief about is um as his impact fees builds up, which it certainly will before the end of this fiscal year.

That money will have to be returned into the internal service fund.

So it's it's it's budgeted money that we already have.

It'll just be moved around once impact fees come in, uh, is as long as you approve that to do that.

So it it keeps the internal service fund whole um and is used uh as expected.

This money anybody else?

Okay, we'll close the public hearing at 858.

We'll now move on to 13E.

This is resolution 2025-37 request to use impact fees and internal service funds to purchase a used ambulance for the Laconia Fire Department.

We'll open this uh public hearing up at 858.

By the way, this notice of this public hearing was made available in the November 28, 2025 edition of Lacone Daily Sun and posted Laconia City Hall, Laconia Community Center, Laconia Public Library, and the offices of the SAU.

So anybody would like to discuss this okay.

Seeing that we'll close the public hearing at 8 59.

For resolution 2025-38 request to expend funds from the downtown TIFF for conceptual design and the cost estimate for lighting.

Now we'll open this up at 859, and by the way, again, notice of this public hearing was made available in the November 28th, 2025 edition of the Laconia Daily Center posted at Laconia City Hall, Laconia Community Center, Laconia Public Library, and the offices of the SAU.

This again we'll we may take this up later.

Is there anybody who would like to uh well the public hearing is open at 9 o'clock now?

Anybody like to discuss this okay?

We will close the public hearing at 9 01.

Now we're at 13G.

This is uh resolution 2025-31 relative to relative to authorizing acceptance of a New Hampshire Department of Safety 2025, excuse me, Homeland Security Competitive Grant in the amount of 55,000 to fund the Laconia Police Department's utilities side-by-side vehicle project.

Again, that was posted at all the usual places, which I've already uh covered tonight.

We'll open that public hearing up at 9.

Is that clock ever going to change?

901.

Is there anybody here who would like to discuss that?

I'll say your name for you, Sue Higgins.

That's me.

Welcome, Sue.

So the question that I have about this grant is that um it seems to be for the purchase of two, I think is what we talked.

You guys talked about at the last um city council meeting um side by sides.

Um so my question is once these vehicles are purchased, where does where do we um come up with how they're gonna be maintained?

Um we have you know we've been talking about ambulances that are you know falling apart, and and how are we gonna get these side by sides from one place to another?

Do they have trailers like how are we handling these vehicles once we get them so that we can maintain them and use them?

Well, I I would just I would jump ahead of the city manager.

You know, they do have a trailer because they move those level electronic signs all around the city.

The department does.

So I reckon that they're gonna probably use the same trailer if they need to use a trailer to move those around.

Kirk, do you have anything you want to add to that?

Um they would um street legal so they'll so they'll be they'll be able to be driven.

Okay.

Uh they'll be street legal.

Um there was a what was the first question she asked because I had an answer to that one.

The maintenance maintained.

Oh maintenance.

Um so uh yeah, so anything that they have like this, it's going to be I talked about that internal service fund.

That any new monies that would be needed would be added in there as far as maintenance.

I did talk to our chief mechanic um prior to the first time we went through this this process there.

Um because the fire department has a as a uh it's a little bit older now, but a side by side.

Um he didn't give me exact numbers, but he said it's you know fuel and very, very basic maintenance um to little very little cost.

Um even the fuel is not a lot of money.

So uh as far as uh annual upkeep, it was uh minimal.

Okay, thank you.

Um and one thing I just want to make a quick note too on a couple things on this one.

Um if you look at the agenda item at the back of the packet, uh it says 22b, it should be 22 G.

I'm just doing this for for the record.

And if you look at this agenda I you have the four-page, five-page one that you have, it still says the 51,000.

Um if you remember this was original, the reason you're doing this again is it was 51,000 at one point now, it was an incorrect number, it's 55, but everything in the resolution, your motion, the staff report, everything else is the correct is the correct 55,000.

All right, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing now at 9.03.

Okay, so now we're gonna move on to 14 presentations.

This is uh NF-24 annual comprehensive financial statement.

Uh this one.

I don't think so.

Tell me what to do.

No, I thought we'd have lighting.

I thought we did it, Tiff.

Yeah, we did.

Yeah, we did that.

I followed that.

Yeah.

Wow.

You're probably looking at something else.

Counselor.

Did I vote?

Oh, I didn't have to.

No, we didn't have to go vote you have.

Not only that, you senior moment.

Earth calling council.

Okay, we're good.

All right.

Uh Glenn, if you would be so kind.

Yes, Mr.

Mayer.

You said it would only take them two hours too.

I I narrowed it down to one hour and fifty.

Three minutes.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh actually tonight I'm going to be uh very brief for for a couple of reasons.

One is that it's been a long meeting already.

Second is that the information I'm presenting is not how shall we say um timely.

Um so I'll start off by saying that uh what I'm presenting tonight is just a very broad overview of our 2024 um comprehensive financial report.

The uh and then after the report, we'll have uh copies follow the uh mayor and council um available.

Um key word here being 2024.

This is a report that should have been presented to you back in February March window.

It was not presented to you then, and it was because we did not get it here in the city until October 31st.

It was delivered to the auditors to us by the auditors on October 31st.

The timing and the delay in timing, and both parties agree with us is 100% on the backs of the auditors.

They had some internal staffing issues that hit them late winter, early spring.

Took them many months to recover from that.

And so the audit was delayed to what I in my opinion is an unacceptable level, but it is what it is.

And that's partially why I am here and not a representative of what is now called CBIS, formerly known as Markham, formerly known as Melanson.

And we're not their only customer who is in this this case.

My understanding is actually that the county also just received its audit from the same company.

So it's it's not just Laconia.

And moving forward, just to introduce the name, we're now contracting with Clifton, Larson, and Allen, CLA for our audit, and they're the ones who will be presenting this for 2025.

Just touch on three items here in really broad terms.

The items that we really tend to focus on and seem to get the most attention when we present the financials, the fund balance, long-term debt, and the findings in the um in the document.

And before we get to that, I'll just say the what you will receive is the annual comprehensive financial report, which has three sections to it.

The meat of the document is the audit prepared by the professional auditors.

That's sandwiched in between introductory summary information where most of what I'm about to go over comes from, but that is all information extracted from the audit.

Then there's some statistical information that we're required to put in there.

That is all is a kind of a combination of information extracted from the audit and put into historical perspective.

And statistics, operational statistics from various departments.

How many miles of streets we we have, how many street lights, how many fire hydrants, that kind of information.

So all that comes together into what we call the AC for the annual comprehensive financial report.

You'll also be receiving a representation letter, which is just agreement between the auditor and the city as to who does what, who's responsible for what, and actually that's where the auditor says, hey, we goofed, we should have gotten this to you in March, but we got you in October, and it's odd us.

You'll be getting that.

Fund balance.

Unassigned fund balance went up by 1.3 million dollars last year.

Um I think that's kind of the typical things that you would expect.

Revenues came in over what was expected, and expenses came in under what was expected, resulting in in a change in that.

You'll see here the various uh different uh types of of fund balances.

The one we're focusing on is the unassigned.

The other segments of that relate to money that we we have, it's in our account, but for various reasons, it's just not available for general use.

Either it's committed because it's grant money and we have to spend it on a certain item, it's committed by vote of this council.

You set the money aside for capital reserves, for example, that is not unassigned money, or it's money that we're uh having to restrict for other uses uh for other reasons.

Come June 30th, there's bills that we've received that haven't been paid yet.

That money is restricted.

Um there's money we're holding in escrow.

That money is restricted.

So all that is backed out to get to what is now the unassigned fund balance.

Uh long-term debt increased by 2.8 million dollars in FY24, um to about 40 million dollars per capita debt increased up uh by 150 dollars the the fiscal year.

As of the end of June of 24, so a year ago last June, which is what this period uh uh covers, the city carried debt equal to about 19% of what we're allowed to carry under under the state law.

The school had debt equal to about 3% of what it was allowed to carry.

I know that question comes up often, so that provides kind of a context of where we are in relation to where we could be if you vote if you so vote.

And last thing is just the findings.

Uh findings are the areas where the where the auditors say you really need to improve these things.

Um nine separate findings.

Eight of those relate to something that's new for this audit, which is the auditors for the first time this year looked at our um IT structure and came back with many recommendations as to what they feel we should do to improve that.

Um we take all the findings seriously, okay.

Um so we're not ignoring any of these.

But that said, I will say there's m uh several of these findings, for example, where the finding is that we don't have written procedures for doing what we're doing.

So they talk about uh we don't have uh written procedures that we follow consistently for how projects get done in IT.

Okay.

And what I mean by that is that we have a ticketing system in IT.

If you if your computer goes down, you put in a ticket to IT and they come fix it.

Um we bypass that frequently.

My computer goes down, I stick my head into ITs into the IT office, or the YouTube goes down, and we we don't put in a ticket.

We call IT and say get down here and fix it.

Those are the kind of things that that we do that I think makes the function a lot easier to use, but gets written up here because it bypasses the written system.

So there's several things um uh like that in here that we're gonna we're gonna address.

We're gonna take this all seriously, but I don't think we need to panic too much.

I think we actually have a very good IT and a very good cybersecurity uh function uh for that.

Um so just wanted to bring that up.

And this and anything else I talk about tonight, of course, if you want to go into more depth, be happy to do either outside this meeting or in a future meeting.

You're always available.

Um you know where to find me.

Yes.

Um, just in closing, uh we have copies of the we call the ACFAR uh for mayor and council uh tonight.

Uh we also have copies available in the city manager's office for the mayor elect and the council is elect.

That can be uh will be uh available tomorrow morning.

Public copies will be available tomorrow at the library and on the city website.

Uh IT already has the ACFRA, they're gonna upload it after uh tomorrow first thing tomorrow morning after this presentation.

Okay, so if somebody from the public, and I suspect it'll be somebody, wants a copy of this, they can go to the library, or they can view it.

Uh they'll be able to go to the library for a paper copy.

Okay, paper copy.

Um, probably sometime tomorrow.

I mean, it physically has to get from my office to the library.

Um, or they can go on to the web the website and view not only this ACFAR, but also the ones going back five or six years.

It's on the website along with the city budgets and and such.

And is that something they can get downstairs at the clerk's office or not?

Okay.

What do you do with your copy?

We give her one.

Is that available for the public?

Or there we go.

So it's you make them a copy, or is that well they'd be charged for a copy, but they had it at the counter.

Like look at the county or take pictures with their phone.

Sure.

Okay.

Or they can download it off the internet and it out at home, but that kind of thing.

Yeah.

All right.

Counselor Susi, you had a question.

I have two questions.

I have two questions.

Sure.

Go back to bonding for a second.

Okay, so you said right now that the city, not the school, I'm more concerned with the city.

90 minutes 19% of its legal limit.

So as of this is now today, we're about a year later, correct?

Right.

Okay, that's right.

Yeah.

Okay, so about a year later.

Is that number gone up or down?

Do you think?

No, it's gone up.

It's gone up.

So this does not count any bond that you've done since the close of fiscal year 2025.

Um, and I know, and there's also bonds in in practice.

But um saying it went up to by for about 2.8 million.

I'd say there's probably another five that's going to be added on after the close of fiscal year 24.

Uh so it's it's going up there, but it's still not anywhere near the limit.

That's you said this is fiscal year 24.

So is this 2324?

That's correct.

This is 2324.

So sometime in February, March, we should get fiscal year 2425.

March.

March.

From the new auditors, and they'll be making the presentation at that time.

That is correct.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Councillor.

Council Bogart.

You're all set down.

I'm all set now.

Okay.

Thank you, Claude.

I was just going to ask the same thing.

Thank you.

Just to make a moment when you look at that in there.

Um that 19.2%.

The year before was 19.1.

Every year after that has been in the 20s to there's a 30 in there.

So there's been a lot of work to bring that down.

Yeah, we use it, but it but there has been work to and that goes ten years.

10 years of doubt in there.

I will say you'll see that in there.

Yeah, and we've discussed this before.

It kind of runs in cycles.

Yeah.

And we're coming off a cycle where a lot of bonds dropped off because they were paid off within the last two or three years.

We're now entering a part of the cycle for the next two or three years, not too many bonds drop off.

And then we're gonna go be in another part of the cycle where you'll see bonds be paid off and and that number will go down.

But in round numbers, about 20% of the total legal limit.

That is correct.

Round numbers, okay.

So at 20%, I couldn't remember, can't remember what the total bond number was.

Uh the that's uh 40 million, but that does include the school also.

Okay, for this overview, we didn't we didn't break that up.

Okay, so we're probably somewhere around 200 million total legal limit between us and the school.

Uh if we were to borrow up to the limit, yeah.

Yeah, how about that?

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay, again, thank you, Glenn.

You're welcome.

Okay.

Um I think we can move on now.

Let's see.

Okay.

Oh, it's the mayor's report.

So I want to report quickly that I had the honor of going to uh the Christmas village here this past Thursday.

And uh counselor Bulgart was there and counselor Haynes was there, and uh they gave me the key to the city, which I'm gonna hang on to a little bit, but I'm actually gonna give this to the city at some point because it's actually it's made up to the city of Laconia.

And what a great job they did there again.

Um just just a really really a good thing there, and with all the kids and a 50th anniversary, and uh turns out that the fire department was there doing their thing and got the rush over there to Guilford Ave and knocked down that fire.

So very busy night.

A great thing.

Um that's pretty much all I have to do.

Uh say I wanted I do want to uh compliment the uh public works department for a great job uh with the snow removal on our miserable snowstorm we just had.

A very good job.

And I would like to remind citizens if you have to walk on a road if you feel a necessity to do that.

Please walk against traffic, not not with traffic, especially in your dark clothes.

I saw a lot of that the other day, and it just blows me away.

So unsafe, especially at night.

Okay, any council comments?

Councillor Cheney.

Well uh two things.

I wanted to know about the uh the bridge on Elm Street and the curbing use that do we know if that's good question.

Hi Good evening.

Um yes, we have some answers on that.

So the bridge was constructed per plan.

Um there's there's four inches of curb reveal.

Okay.

Um the original intent was to have um a rail on there, much like you would see over in in Plymouth.

Uh we had that priced out.

Um it was about two thousand dollars a linear foot for that.

So we decided to pull that off the project because it was gonna be three quarters of a million dollars.

So what would you think you say that again?

How much?

About three quarters of a million dollars.

Thank you for the barrier.

Yeah.

So we're using um kind of those flexible bollards, right?

That are maybe two inches in diameter.

Uh they're high visibility, they're white with little red reflectors, they have some flex to them.

Uh they can either bolt them in place or or glue them in place, given the fact that they're probably gonna get knocked off with plows and things like that occasionally.

We're gonna be gluing them in place due to the time of year.

We're gonna be doing that in the spring.

Okay.

We'll be putting those down every 25 feet, so there'll be a very clear visual delineator between traffic.

Um there's not going to be any additional pavement over the bridge.

I heard that mentioned.

Uh the bridge has final pavement.

Okay, there is going to be milling and additional curb work and paving outside the bridge limits.

Um, you know, typically new construction on curbing is six to seven inches of reveal.

And so that's you so that you can you know put pavement over time.

The main purpose though for curbing is not to contain vehicles, but it's actually a drainage feature.

Okay.

Uh and the Ashdow standards uh for a fixed object are are four inches and up.

And that's something that is um something that's large enough that a vehicle can feel that may adjust the wheel, but also you start to get into um when you get too high on curbs, um, and they get up on the curb, you can actually engage the vehicle's suspension.

So at some point that gets a little bit dangerous.

So it's it's it is safe the way it is, it works the way it's intended.

Uh the reason why it's not constructed to a six-inch reveal is because when we um brought the sidewalks profile down from the bridge rail towards the towards the center of the bridge, we continued that slope.

If we'd increase the reveal, we would have had to raise that whole section, and so we would have had a jackhammer out four inches of the entire sidewalk, and you know, we we couldn't afford that.

So uh, you know, we did have a traffic engineer work on the design, stamped by the traffic engineer, um, is being you know a safe and approved method within Ashdo um, you know, parameters.

Um other questions on that?

Yes, Council Cheney?

Can you name another place in the city where we have these barriers that you're intending to put up?

I'm not sure if we have any.

We do uh down nearby Vista, and we have one on Weirs Boulevard.

Okay, so there's one someplace.

There's I guess a few a couple probably a couple near the sidewalk by Vista.

Yeah, one of the sideways.

Where the where the rapid flashing beacon is by Vista Foods.

Yeah, um, you see them down in Boston and everywhere else, pretty pretty ready.

How high is there curbing there?

Um whereabouts by Vista.

That would be well, we just milled and filled that, so that one's probably six inches.

Can you name any other place in the city where the curbing is four inches?

Uh not by design, no, but there's places on Union Ave where it's far less than that.

Yeah, uh I'm really worried about it.

I I guess there's nothing we can do about it at this point, but I wish somebody had given us an indication ahead of time that that curb was going to be unusual.

And it is unusual.

I hope you will agree.

I was down there um Sunday, and I watched somebody climb the curb car climb the curb.

They were on their phone.

Um I I really wish there was some way we could get up to six inches, but I'm presuming that's not possible.

No, okay.

Consular Felsch.

Yeah, have you spoke with the Wild Trail about that?

And how do they feel about it?

Seeing you got bison bullets flowing by that might hit their handlebars on those.

Yeah, um I speak to Alan pretty often from the Wow Trail.

I'm a member of the board on the Wow Trail.

Um, I meet with them regularly.

They were very involved in the design of the project.

Um, they're funding part of the project.

No, I I get all that.

I talk to Alan myself all the time.

I'm talking about the the reflectors that you're planning on putting up.

Yeah, they're they're in the design.

They're they're in the design that everyone okayed and went forward with.

Umrigin, we had them spaced every 50 feet.

Um pricing came back good, so we're doing them every 25 feet.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Any other uh counsel?

Go ahead, Councillor Hoffman.

Yeah, once again, I want to point out uh Holman Street, Lynnwood, Pleasant Street, Shore Drive.

These roads make up a significant portion of Port 3.

Um I've been bringing this up for at least six months now.

We've had several meetings about it.

I'd like to once again request that we have a public works to committee meeting to try to get some resolution to residents' concerns on these streets.

Thanks.

Who's the chair of that billet?

I just I just keep rubbing my head because you know that so on Holman Street it's a speed, right?

Uh-huh.

And you put and you've put the uh and you've put the the black boxes as they might be called up there that to measure the speed, and the result of that was well it was the advice of uh West with public works that we not reduce the speed limit, which given the data I think makes sense, but I think also looking at the data, it is true that there are people that drive through that street at in excess of 50 miles an hour.

So they've had that recorded in excess of 50 miles an hour.

So that would, I mean, rather than putting, I think one of the counselors mentioned um speed ramps and stuff like that.

Which which are for people at uh even at a slow speed, uh they can hurt, they can hurt your if you've got a uh bad bones, bad back or whatever, you feel that.

So I would hope that perhaps just more knowledge of when the speeding takes place, I suspect it's during those rush hours.

Yes.

Uh so perhaps we can get uh maybe more of a police presence down there and I'd like to propose additional stop signs on some of those roads to maybe make it a less attractive shortcut through.

Yeah, Mr.

Mayor, I I thought I heard him say he'd like it right uh referred to the committee.

Right.

I'm just I'm just bringing this up, counselor, because um this is like a deja vu thing.

Uh many many of our we heard about it at Beacon Street West at one time, we heard about it on Beacon Street East.

Um it just seems like to be a regular thing.

I'm sorry, Court Street.

Um, and we've spent so much time spinning our wheels because of the infractions of a few.

Um and that's what you know, we we sent it to committee, we've got stuff listed again for the infractions of a few.

Uh so I'm just pointing it out.

People come to me with a concern, it's you know, it's my job to push it forward.

So I've heard this concern a lot from many people.

So if you're not list of concerns.

I agree, I agree.

So is that that's the committee need to schedule it?

Okay.

Are you on that committee, Eric?

I am yes.

Any other council comments?

Okay.

Any committee reports?

Did you?

I'm sorry, counselor Bower.

Okay.

Um earlier tonight we had a person speaking, and uh uh I chose to wait to my time to speak.

Um and they were talking about affordable housing, and that we should look at developers providing more affordable housing.

And the question it brings up to me is is it affordable housing by the definition, or is it lower price point housing?

Because as we keep doing what is definitioned affordable housing, you end up with income-based uh deed restrictions and stuff like that, which creates a lot of headaches for developers in cities and whatnot versus lower price point housing.

And then you you can possibly get the developer to create more lower price point housing versus trying to create affordable housing.

So when we speak of those definition, you know, words, it's it's helpful if we define affordable or lower price point in these conversations.

And and I bring up a survey that St.

Anson did where they asked people, do you want more affordable housing?

Well, everybody would say yes, I want more affordable housing.

So the question came up then is which I asked, uh, is there a definition in this survey about what affordable housing means?

And there wasn't.

So if you ask that same question, do you want income restricted versus just lower price point?

And that's all I'm trying to say.

You stood up.

Ask that question because there's a big difference between affordable housing by government definitions and lower price point.

So please ask that question.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Susi.

Yes.

Council.

Affordable housing or less price affordable.

Usually doing that too because they're looking for some federal money maybe help or tax breaks in the federal side to help.

I know that on local level for lower price point, okay.

This council plus the planning board is you get to work with them to try and make it easier for the developer to do that.

I I pushed that and it's a great thing.

The affordable side of it, there's a lot of restrictions, both on the developer and the renters.

And that creates a real problem sometimes.

I think we've seen evidence of that on Province Street.

Yes.

And that's why I continue to mention this to educate the people so that because we're really free with that word affordable housing.

Everybody wants affordable housing, but if you start breaking down the definition, now you're gonna have people go, I don't want that.

Because now you uh you lose a portion of the population due to income levels that won't get into it because the they make a dollar or two more.

So they're screwed.

So thank you, Council Cheney.

I just I mentioned I had two things.

One was the bridge.

The other was I want to remind my fellow counselors that the next meeting is the sweater meeting.

Most important questions are looking.

I of course have no sweaters, so I'll be but you've got plenty of time, Mr.

Mayor, to find one.

He's got ties.

Swing over to never mind.

Okay, Mayor, I have one.

I do have one thing, Mayor.

Okay, we're all set here.

No, I have one thing.

Sorry, Councilor Felch.

I just wanted to bring it to everybody's attention that the children's auction does start tomorrow, and they do need items.

So if you can donate an item for the auction, they're at the Bellknap Marketplace, formerly Bellknap Mill, and they'll be there all day.

Thank you, Counselor.

Okay, any committee reports.

Do you have a committee report?

I do.

All right, go ahead, counselor.

The land and building subcommittee met earlier today, um, before this meeting.

Uh we have recommended that it go out for an RFP for engineering review, design.

What?

What goes out?

The uh bandstand at the Wheels.

Um, just to find out an RFP to find out what it's gonna cost for all these different things for like I said, engineering design, construction, and all that.

So thank you.

Any counselor Felch?

I'm sorry, counselor.

Any idea what that's gonna cost?

That's why we put it out for an RFP and RFC.

What's the RFP gonna cost?

20 bucks.

It's just mailing and advertising.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else in the committee?

Just click on that.

Okay.

Uh we have no appointments.

Uh right?

We have no appointments tonight.

No.

Okay.

We already did it.

Okay.

No layers on reports for anybody.

No.

Okay.

Now we're at oh boy.

Citizens request a comment on current agenda items.

Anyone out there?

No?

No.

Okay, we'll move on to the city manager's report.

All right, thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

I'll keep this as uh short as I possibly can.

Um couple things I just want to mention real quick.

Um there is it's online, there's a post-it for a finance committee meeting Wednesday the 10th at 4.

Um all the information is on the uh the agenda site if you'd like to take a look at it.

All it uh discusses, um, as you recall when we when we approve um a bond, um, which we had to the latter truck and the OPG loop.

You guys approve it, it all goes through all that.

The finance committee is tasked with picking the best rate on that's all they're doing at their meeting is picking, they've given they're gonna be given three rates to choose from.

Um presumably choose the best rate.

Um for those two bonds.

So they're on there.

Uh if you want, if you know if anybody needs to take a look at them ahead of time, it's uh, but that that's their only business for that night.

Um I just wanted to make a mention that the tax rate was set.

This obviously people are already receiving their bills, so they know that um $12.98.

Um, I just wanted to thank uh Katie uh and the the clerk and and her team uh for getting all the the bills out.

There was a little bit of a delay when uh so when we receive, we turn in all of our information to the Department of Revenue Administration, they do their math, they send us back a document saying this is what this is what it looks like, this is how much to be raised by taxes, all those that information with the tax rate on it.

Um as we were reviewing it, um we noticed that there was a discrepancy between what we thought and what and what they had.

Uh we did find the find the issue.

They agreed that that was the issue.

It was a um revenues weren't um uh listed correctly.

So once they did the listing incorrectly, it correctly instituted the revenues, it put the tax rate or the uh amounting raised by taxes at the correct number.

That was why there was a delay in getting them out.

They had already started working on the bills, they had to start over and get them out.

So that that explained that, but it's all correct now and and where it should be.

So you said it's 1294.

Uh 98, 1298.

So compared to last year or uh 65 cents higher last year.

Last year.

Okay.

Well 2025 now.

Right.

2024.

Yeah, 65.

13 1363.

Thank you, Councillor Susi.

Go ahead, Kirk.

Yep.

Um my financial and operational trends is in there.

I'll move quickly through this.

Um the um mobile integrated health care paramedic data's in there.

You'll um what we're finding with them is uh this program is becoming even more successful than we uh assumed it was gonna be, um, and they're getting a lot more work than they than they thought they were gonna be, a lot more patient referral.

So that's a good thing and a bad thing together.

Um, but but uh um the woman that's uh running that program over there has been doing a really nice job and uh um really building a lot of connections with the community.

Uh general assistance data um is there you saw we had a couple of high months.

Um some of that October was a uh increase from the September, which didn't all hit.

Um, you know, we look at what we budget at about 14.

Uh 14,500 per month.

We're a little over 17,000 a month, so we're a little off where we'd like to be with what we budgeted, but uh you know we still have quite a few months to go.

Uh see the police department activity is up.

Uh looking at that uh second, third, and fourth lines, the park walk and talk, extra patrol community policing, all those numbers are significantly up from the year previous.

Uh if you look at the year to date, um so they're just trying to get out there and and really put a lot of emphasis in that.

Uh everything else is pretty straightforward.

Impact fee revenues on uh the fourth page, I guess, of my document.

Um the number that you see is what the fire department has as an example.

It um is uh what and what we said they have is a little bit less.

What hasn't shown up in here is if you remember we agreed to use impact fees for the facility study, so that's been taken out.

Um, so that just shows a little bit of a change.

Um TIF revenues, um no real changes there.

Uh, from what we see month to month.

Some of them will some of them very rarely change, like reserve fund balances.

Um they don't change really till the end of the year.

So and the fire department, uh the billing report is looking pretty decent for where we stand at this point.

Uh if you're uh we we increased the rates a couple six months, eight months ago, maybe a year now we increased the rates, um, and we're starting to see that pay off a little bit with with some of the increased revenue.

Um I've already talked to the chief, he'll have himself and uh his uh emergency medical services deputy will be in when the new mayor and council come in in January to give an update on this just uh um explain what they're looking at with this document.

So um I know I moved quickly, I did that on purpose, obviously, but it's all in there.

If you have any questions, I can answer them now.

Or the business has got one.

Okay, so on on thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um Kirk, on the current year on the billing permits, which is 79 million.

Yeah, which is significantly higher than the last couple of years.

We have four more months to go, correct?

Uh yeah, it goes to March 30th, right?

So four more months.

Um expect quite a bit more than so that number there.

So I'll answer it in two ways.

This is we do start to hit that time of the year where they they generally will come down a little bit, and then they we don't see as much building construction, obviously in the winter time.

That number will come down a little bit.

This is a raw number.

Okay, there is some stuff that gets pulled out of it that doesn't count towards this.

We do that at the end of the year.

Um, but so I expect that number to be it's gonna go up a little bit um just on its on its raw when we pull it back down.

We're still gonna be higher than we were last year for total building construction.

My second my second of three for the community paramedic program, yeah, which is fantastic.

I'm very happy to hear what you have to say.

But if you don't mind, I like to ask the chief that at the end of December, maybe him and uh whoever's running the program, at least the chief come in and give us a like a little presentation or report and how it's going so that my thought process is that as we get you ready for next year's budget.

I know it's been funded through that grant, but we might have to look at something more because it is so successful, and it's really helping out the rest of the operation.

Um yeah, I we'll have him do it at the same time right after the first of the year with uh when he does the budget December the uh billing update.

I think that's great.

And my last one wasn't mentioned here, and I don't know if you're gonna give us an update on the state school.

Um really nothing to update on state school.

The uh the um the traffic study uh uh it this a little bit of a repeat.

The traffic study has been done.

Uh we did hire a third party uh traffic study engineer to review it and take that 1500 page document and do a nice summary.

Um, but then also help us to answer some questions about we're trying to get all these questions answered before it before it comes in front of you guys.

So um DPW with what with Wes and Nate uh planning and myself, you know, it's it's staff level um are working with them to sort of weave through some of this right now so what gets presented to you is much more coherent and much more easy to understand as far as um what the long-term uh traffic study uh issue is up there.

You see that in January or yeah, yeah, I wouldn't say any later than that, yeah.

Other than that, nothing more other than that that they're still moving forward.

I've had uh just had a conversation with them a week ago, and it's just a continuous there, they're still shooting for closing late, probably late next summer, mid-next summer.

So we haven't set up a tax bill yet.

No, no, no, no tax bill yet.

Um so it will definitely won't be by the April 1st tax deadline.

So no, they're that it's gonna be uh warm weather before they're finalizing the the sale thing.

But it but it does continuously move forward.

There's they're not uh the holding pattern, they're not stopping talking to each other or anything like that.

It is continuing to move forward.

Yep, yep.

Thank you, Steve.

Anybody else?

Okay, thank you, Kirk.

We're gonna go to new business now.

No, yes, new business.

This is 21A proposal to purchase a wheel loader through a lease purchase agreement.

You want to take that, Kurt?

Yeah, well, and well, we can have Westcom up too.

But so this is um we we have in the already funded money um for uh DPW replacement type of equipment uh is money to replace a wheel loader, and he can explain the the specifics of it if you if you need them to.

Um we don't have enough to do all of it, um, but we do have enough to uh to begin paying for it now.

Um otherwise we're rolling this money over and starting next year, so it's it's six eight months out in hopes the price doesn't go up and hopes that uh um uh they're even available at that point.

So the the intent is to use this year's money, um pay for as much of it as we can now, take a lease purchase um for the next couple years.

We'll easily be able to pay it off with the annual money that uh public works receives for vehicle uh replacement um moving forward.

So we're not bonding anything.

Uh yes, we're paying for it over a couple of years, but it's not a bond.

Um the interest uh total interest we're paying is not terrible.

Um we're gonna do it on a short amount of time using already funded money this year, and then whatever every year we we fund towards vehicle replacement, he knows that this the payments just gonna have to come out of that um amount of money that he receives.

So we're just trying to move this up faster.

Council Susi.

And and there's one ready.

So it's it's it that's that's part of the thought on this.

Council of COSO getting a new joint deer, but we're trading it at Kamatsu.

Yep.

Am I correct?

Yeah, yeah.

And how long before we we we get the ownership?

What was the exact question?

How long before we we've paid enough that it becomes an owner?

Maybe five years is what we're looking to do.

Five year lease.

Council of Bulgaria.

Yeah, we don't want to send out that far.

Okay.

Council Burger, got a question?

Yes, I see here that under the terms there's five-year lease and a seven-year lease.

Right.

So you're gonna do the five year lease?

Five year lease.

And what is the total price of the thing we're buying?

172,723.

No, purchase price is 153,000.

153,000.

Plus the 19 in interest and that includes the the trade-in value right now.

Yeah, we're gonna get it.

Steve from P Dream Deer.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Okay.

I don't have the thing.

All right, ready to uh make a uh a motion here to move the city council approve entering into a five-year lease purchase agreement with John Deere for a 444 P tier wheel loader as equipped in the attachment and authorized the city manager to sign the agreement.

So move.

Council of so she's made the uh motion seconded by councillor Felch.

Any discussion?

All in favor six in the affirmative.

Thank you.

Thank you, Wes.

Um we'll go to unfinished business.

This is 22A.

This is ordinance 2025-235-22.

Article 4A impact fees in attachment.

Six impact fee schedule.

Kirk.

I'm gonna let uh Rob and Tyler come up with this.

Oh, good.

Before we dive into that, I have a question, Tyler.

It was brought up earlier about that first get together on the uh master uh committee.

That was uh in and and I believe the uh resident mentioned October.

That was at the mill, correct?

Correct.

And that wasn't was that a meeting where minutes were taken?

I think correct it was.

And they were posted within the five days.

In fact, I confirmed in the meeting they are online.

They are online, okay.

And there is a recording on the city's YouTube channel if anybody wants to go back and watch it as well.

Okay, thank you for answering that.

Go ahead.

Uh so basically we're just coming back before you.

Uh, you guys had your public hearing tonight.

Um, essentially nothing has changed since the last time we were here.

Um we're looking to update our impact fee schedule because it's been so long since we have actually taken a look at the the data that's out there for what's needed for the city and the fees that we need to collect in order to support what the city needs for these new developments.

And rather than then passing that cost on to the taxpayer, we think it's fair for the developer to bear that cost.

Any questions?

Councillor Susi.

Okay, so let's first talk about so the the fees are set by this document.

Yes.

Okay.

Now who can waive or reduce the fees?

The planning board?

So we've removed the waiver process.

Uh essentially in this ordinance here, there's an exemption section where basically it talks about the only times that that uh somebody would be exempt from paying impact fees.

One of those, as mentioned earlier, um, or I guess somebody had a concern about affordable housing and promoting that.

There is an exemption process if a developer wants to do a portion of uh affordable housing of their development, and only a certain portion would be exempt from that.

No more than 20 percent if I read this correctly.

Okay, correct.

So that's the planning board.

Yes, that would be at the planning board level, but uh ultimately they'll be the way it's written is that if they're coming through and meeting that criteria, then they would not have to pay for that.

So that takes all the gray area.

But if they want to appeal that process, where does that go?

If they want to peel that process, like if they want more, uh they would you guys would have to 10 o'clock?

Yeah, the city council would have to amend the ordinance to then increase the amount.

Does it go to the ZBA?

Uh somebody could try to take it to the ZBA, but I don't think there would be much standing for the ZBA to approve that.

I mean, if they did that uh I think you'd be in a legal problem.

So thank you.

Yeah, councillor Cheney.

Very quickly.

Um would you tell the council the the uh thumbnail sketch of of the work you put in or had put in to see how we uh compare with other cities and towns?

Absolutely.

So we uh had uh entered into a contract with uh DTA, a for uh uh financial firm uh that does work uh in many states.

Um and they essentially uh took a year-long process interviewing city staff, um, you know, gathering all the data that we have out there from building permits, planning board approvals, um, and they also looked at other communities in the state as well to see what we compared.

Um, and when we got those comparison numbers, we are significantly lower than most other communities are when it comes to impact fees.

Um this is our opportunity to basically take a look at all that data now.

Uh, like I said, the last time we looked at this data would have been back in 2007-2008.

So obviously a lot has changed in Laconia since then.

Uh, this new data uh was then compiled into a final report, which you all have.

It is available online.

We have created a web page on the planning department's website that has all that information on there for people to look at.

Um that data is essentially before you guys now, uh, and the ordinance would incorporate uh that that data moving forward.

I will say we have spoken to developers and they are always shocked at how low our impact fees are compared to other communities.

And we're not ordin uh we are not in ordinately higher than any any other city or town or state.

No, correct.

If you guys adopted this, you'd actually be a little under what everybody else is doing, not a little over than some of the smaller communities, but uh under the bigger communities like Concord Manchester.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Councilor Bogart.

Also, it's you you've written in the clause where you can do some automatic increases.

We don't have to wait 25 years to do this again.

So it's to see CPI or something tied to the case.

Correct.

So we didn't percentages.

We didn't want a big shock uh by increasing the fees a huge amount.

Um, and so what we did was we proposed that you guys adopt it at 50 percent every year.

It increases five percent to look at that maximum number, um, and then it also increases by the CPI to account for inflation costs.

That way we're not in the same boat 15 years down the road again.

Right.

And if you guys ever want to change that, you can.

Forward thinking.

Try.

Okay.

Um I just want to make one comment on on your um, correct me if there was anything else I missed, but on page two of four of the ordinance uh letter B.

Um, we changed a word on the second sentence from can to shell.

It it was a little bit confusing on how much of the property could be um exempted.

Um it just the language it was it was poor language, it didn't change the intent of it, it just changed the language to make it clearer.

Um so we're not trying to be challenged on anything.

Yeah, I was we made the shell as it was it was a it was poor language, um so we just fixed it.

So it's clear that yeah, it was confusing as a max yeah, how many would be allowed?

So that was the only change.

Okay.

Okay, I'm gonna move to waive a reading of ordinance 2025-235-22, its entirety, and read by title only.

All in favor?

Motion.

Oh, make a motion.

Done at all.

I thought I had it right.

Okay, motion uh moved by counselor Cheney, seconded by councillor Bogart.

Um all right, now we can vote.

All in favor.

Thank you.

That's six to nothing.

Okay, so now I move to conduct a second reading of ordinance 2025-235-22, amending chapter 235 zoning article for a impact fees as presented.

Need a motion for that.

Councilor Felch, second seconded by Councillor Bogart.

Okay.

All in uh favor.

Okay, six to nothing.

Okay, so now I move to approve ordinance 2025-235-22 amending chapter 235 zoning article 4A impact fees as presented.

Move by uh councillor Cheney, seconded by Councillor Hoffman.

All in favor six to nothing.

Thank you.

And thank you, Tyler.

Yeah, the planning department put a ton of work into this.

So there was really a lot of work, and uh all the department heads were were just or um talked to by the company.

Uh it was all that was a lot of work, and you know, they just did a really nice job.

Okay, before we move on, uh, due to the time, I think we're gonna need a motion to uh yeah um let the meeting go on past the 10 p.m.

time.

Correct.

Everyone's gonna have to set a time limit.

I mean it's either gonna be 10 minutes, 20 minutes.

Well, it ain't gonna be 10 minutes, so uh I'll I'll make the motion until 1030 at the most.

You think we could get done by that?

Yeah, okay, kids.

We're gonna have to move along.

It's been motioned uh to make it 1030, seconded by that was motioned by councillor felch, seconded by councillor Bogart.

All in favor for 1030.

That's any opposed.

Okay, that's uh five to one.

Gotta pay attention.

Okay, let's move right along here.

Let's go to uh 22B.

We did that one.

We did that one ready.

That's right, we did that earlier.

Sorry, moving right along here.

Uh 22C.

This is resolution 2025-35, relative to acceptance of an award and the amount of 87,000 from the Department of Safety Homeland Security Grant program for the purchase of a SWAT.

SOU equipment for the Laconia Police Department.

Look for a motion on that.

Made by Councillor.

You gotta have over the you can that's right.

That's the same.

If you need the information, we can talk about it.

We have PD here.

And then you get your three motions.

I'm so panicked by the time.

Sorry about that.

You got an extra half an hour now.

So that's true.

Three motions.

So yeah, go ahead.

I don't have anything to say about it unless you have questions.

Everybody's good with that.

Okay.

Give me one second here to catch up my paperwork here.

Oh, we have some waives the yeah.

I'm gonna make a motion to waive a reading of resolution 2025-35 in its entirety to read by title only.

Motion by Councillor Cheney, seconded by Councillor Hoffman.

All in favor.

That's six to nothing.

Okay, a move a second reading of resolution 2025-35 relative to acceptance of an award in the amount of 87,000 from the Department of Homeland Security Grant Program for the purchase of a SWAT SOU equipment for the Laconia Police Department.

Look for a move by Councillor Felch, seconded by Councilor Bogrip.

All in favor.

That's six to nothing.

Thank you.

So now we'll move to I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2025-35 relevant to acceptance of an award in the amount of 87,000 from the Department of Homeland Security Grant program for the purchase of SWAT SOU equipment for the Laconia Police Department as presented it to the to authorize the city manager to sign all documents related to this matter.

Motion made by uh counselor Susi, seconded by Councillor Cheney.

All in favor?

That's six to nothing.

Thank you.

Okay.

Now we're gonna go to 22D.

Resolution 2025-36 is a request to use impact fee funds to replace two damaged garage door motors and provide maintenance of the remaining motors at the Laconia, excuse me, at the fire department of Central Station.

I'm just gonna say that this was this includes the addition of the motion last week to to be able to do both of them, both motors.

Well, two of the motors.

The original request was for one.

Right.

So the other one had to be able to do that.

I'm gonna do both at the same time.

Okay, the second one becomes cheaper.

That's correct.

Because we're doing it.

Okay.

All right, I'm gonna move to waiver reading of resolution 2025-36 in its entirety and to read by title only.

Made uh motion by counselor Cheney, seconded by counselor Hoffman.

All in favor.

That's six to zip.

All right, thank you.

Uh I'll move to a second reading of resolution 2025-36 and request to use impact fee funds to replace two damaged garage door motors and provide maintenance of the remaining motors at the fire department central station.

Uh motion by councilor Cheney and again seconded by Councillor Susi.

All in favor.

That's six to nothing.

Thank you.

And now I'll move to approve resolution 2025-36.

A request to use impact fee funds to replace two damaged garage door motors and provide maintenance on the remaining motors at the fire department central station as presented it.

Uh motion by counselor Felch, seconded by Council Bogart.

All in favor.

That's six to nothing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, now this is uh resolution 2025-37.

Request to use impact fees and internal service funds to purchase a used ambulance for the Laconia Fire Department.

Kirk, what do you think?

No, I I would just make the comment in talking to the chief.

I mean, certainly this is not our goal is to build is to be purchasing used vehicles.

Um we think we found the right one, and we wouldn't have done it without our chief mechanic, you know, to have been taking a look at it and and signing off on this.

So for what we need for the time right now, I I think we're we're pleased with the uh opportunity.

Councilor Cheney.

As we liaison, I've met with the chief regarding this issue.

The ambulance they're looking at has uh by our standards at least, extremely low mileage.

Uh and the price is uh has been compared.

Um the fire department has done a lot of work, and uh the price is more than right.

So I highly recommend that we we pass this uh article.

Okay, anybody else?

Okay, I'm gonna move to waiver reading of resolution 2025-37 in some entirety and to read by title only.

Uh motion by counselor Cheney and seconded by counselor Susi.

All in favor?

That's six to nothing.

Thank you.

Okay, I'll move a second reading of resolution 2025-37 relative to the request to use impact fees and internal service funds to purchase a use the amulets for the Laconia Fire Department.

Motion made by Councillor Hoffman, seconded by Councillor Cheney.

All in favor.

That's six to nothing.

Thank you.

And lastly, a move to re approve resolution 2025-37 relative to the request to use impact fees and internal service funds to purchase a used ambulance for the Laconia Fire Department as president, excuse me, as presented.

Uh motion by Councillor Felch, seconded by Councillor Bogart.

All in favor?

Thank you.

Now we're gonna go to 22F.

This is a request to expend funds from the downtown TIFF for conceptual design and cost estimate for lighting.

Kirk, anything?

You know, this was we had talked about in the past um doing this project with lighting for um a betterment of lighting in City Hall parking lot, the smaller lot here between this us and the mill, which is ours, um and also all back towards the river walk area.

Um and in keeping with the the aesthetics of the lighting that's downtown.

Uh the request was made.

Can we expand this to do Rotary Park as well and bring it down Beacon Street East further?

Um so that's what this is going to update us on.

Um when it's all said done, we're gonna be able to determine what the cost is, are we gonna be able to afford it?

How we could fund it, all that.

So that's what this does.

Okay.

Any questions?

Just one question.

Okay, Councilor Bogart.

Will it be set in such a way that if there's we can do sections without having to do the other things uh, you know, as far as pricing is concerned?

Uh West the the problem with it is, and we can we can look into it, but the problem with it is it's the power to the lighting that we had to.

If it if we had the power over here correctly, we would have been able to just do a little bit easier, but we're gonna have to upgrade the way the power comes into this area.

Um so uh we can certainly take a look at it, but I can't guarantee that.

Um, the LED lights, yes.

Yeah, it'll be the it'll be so it should take less power.

Um yeah, no, absolutely anybody else?

Okay, I'm gonna move to waiver reading of resolution 2025-38 in its entirety and to read by title only.

Uh move by counselor Felch, seconded by Councillor Susi.

All in favor that's six to nothing, thank you.

I move a second reading of resolution 2025-38.

Request to expend funds from the downtown TIFF for conceptual design and cost estimate for writing.

Um again, move by counselor Felch, seconded by Councilor Hoffman.

All in favor that's six to nothing, thank you.

And lastly, move to approve resolution 2025-38 request to expend funds from the downtown TIFF for conceptual design and cost estimate for lighting as presented.

Councilor Bogart made the motion and seconded by Councillor Susi.

All in favor, thank you.

That's six to nothing.

Thank you.

That's 55.

What did I say?

51, which is what the second sentence is changed to 51.

Yeah, I did write it down.

Okay, that is 55,000.

Thank you, Council Cheney.

Any discussion other than that?

Councilor Hoffman?

Yeah.

I had mentioned this before, but would it be possible under fiscal impact on these to get an estimate of what the ongoing annual cost for these are?

And I know you said it was minimal.

And I did, and I did try to do it.

That's when I talked to him, but we didn't have enough even data on the uh good because he said minimal, but that's not a number.

No, understood he didn't have numbers on um on what he's done.

I did try to get a number for it.

Um he says, you know, but yeah, we did try to do it on this one, but we didn't have even the data for that.

Thank you.

He's talking about tune-ups.

Just two and us?

We we approve a lot of these grant applications, and a lot of them are no fiscal impact to the city, but some of them do have ongoing costs to the taxpayer.

And a lot of them are no fiscal impact to the city, but some of them do have ongoing costs to the taxpayer.

I think tune-ups and gas and you know, in terms of transparency, it would be nice to uh to have the annual.

I was trying to suck that word out of you.

Thank you very much.

I do that's what you wanted.

Okay, counselor Bogart.

Uh would it be possible before these grants are given to us to do this that we put these kind of maintenance costs up front so we know what they are for something like this, and then we don't have to ask the question and delay.

We did on this one.

We tried to, we didn't have the data to be able to put it on here.

But yeah, we've done it on a couple of grants recently.

We've been uh trying because it's a I mean it's a great point.

We've been we've have added it on a few of these over the last couple months based on that.

For it it's good information to have on there.

Yep.

We just didn't have the data for this one.

I would submit to you, counselor, that the the maintenance of uh vehicle uh uh side uh SUV or whatever the police department's running will be probably the same sorts of co costs this thing will experience because these are road uh ready ready but my experience has been that when we take the lowest price sometimes the lowest price vehicle has l a larger maintenance cost versus when it costs a little more has less maintenance cost so that's that could be the all I would tell you is uh the department looked at quality equipment.

Uh actually, if you remember, we asked them to do this last year, and they spent all this time trying to get the right piece of equipment in fairness to them.

Well, the good thing, counselor, is if they become a real big problem, they're gonna just drive them off a bridge, right?

Because the money is coming from somebody else, right?

That's that's the curb, not the bridge.

Thank you.

Counselor Felch?

Yes, I I tell you these will be a lot less cheaper to maintain than a car.

Oh, yeah.

And we have our own mechanics that are going to be working on them that are already getting paid.

So cost of one of these maintaining is gonna be very minimal, maybe 10 20 years down the road if they need something major, but regularly grant.

It's just as a point of order, just you know, and and I if it's something new that we're getting versus something that we already hadn't just replacing, so I understand that.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm gonna move to waive or reading of resolution 2025-31 is amended in its entirety and to read by title only.

So motion motion made by councillor Cheney and seconded by Councillor Felch.

Nice try.

All in favor?

That's six to nothing.

Thank you.

I'm gonna move a second reading of resolution 2025-31 is amended relative to authorizing the acceptance of a New Hampshire Department of Safety.

2025 Homeland Security Competitive Grant in the amount of 55,000 to fund the Laconia Police Department's utilities side-by-side vehicle project.

Motion made by Councillor Felch, seconded by Councillor Cheney.

All in favor that's six in the affirmative.

Thank you.

And lastly, I move to approve resolution 2025-31 is amended relative to authorizing the acceptance of a New Hampshire Department of Safety 2025 Homeland Security Competitive Grant and the amount of 55,000 to fund the Laconia Police Department's utilities side-by-side vehicle project as presented, and to authorize the city manager to sign all documents related to this matter.

Motion made by Councillor Susi, seconded by Council Cheney.

All in favor.

Okay, not bad, guys.

We got plenty of time.

We can hang out for a while.

Motion to it.

I think we all have to work tomorrow.

Looking around the table.

Okay.

Uh any other business before the council.

There's not I I didn't mention tonight.

We had uh mayor elect boards here.

Obviously, he wasn't up to the uh podium.

We also and we had uh counselor elect uh John Hildreth here because he came up there, but also back there we have counselor elect from WOIN six Mike?

Yeah, there he is, Mike Harney.

Just like everybody know they're here, so it's it's a good thing.

All right.

Well, look for a motion to adjourn.

Counselor Susi, seconded by Councillor Bogart.

All in favor, we got all right.

Thank you all very much.

Councilor Moffey sign that number here?