Seven.

Yep.

Okay.

It is now seven o'clock.

And we will call this meeting to order.

I know I need I need one.

I need one at the Bownout County one the other night.

All right.

Meeting is called to order.

Councillor Hildred, would you like to lead us in a salute to the flag and pledge of allegiance?

Absolutely.

Underground individual with liberty and justice for all.

Katie Gargano is our recording secretary.

Would you like to call the role, please?

Councillor Hildreth?

Yes, here.

Councillor Susi.

President.

Councillor Hoffman.

Councillor Haynes?

Here.

Councillor Bogart.

Here.

Councillor Conan?

Here.

Mayor Boards.

I am here.

We also have Kirk Beati, the city manager, and Glenn is here.

I'm going to change things up a little bit for the moment.

Um former Mayor Paul Fitzgerald had passed away.

He did two terms as mayor in the city of Laconia from ninety-two to ninety-six.

And I'd appreciate if we could all do a brief moment of silence for him.

Do I have a second?

Councillor Hildred.

All in favor.

We have a request from Lakes Region Sled Dog Club to waive their license.

Vendor and loudspeaker fees.

This is a recurrent request with no changes from the prior year approvals.

Special events application and map of the event re Oh my God, what is going on tonight?

We're received from the Lakes Region Sled Dog Club as attached.

Special Events Review Committee approved this event at the February 4th, 2026 meeting.

If the waiver of fees request is not approved by the city council, the fees would be as follows.

Special event license and vendor fees are $700, and the loudspeaker fee is $10.

I'll make a motion that we waive the fees and let them move ahead.

All right, I move to approve the request for Lakes Region Sled Dog Club to wave license vendor and loudspeaker fees for the February 13th or 15th 2026 sled dog event.

Representative Susi already up Councillor Seussy, oh my god, I'm gotta get used to that.

Made the motion and counselor Conan seconded it.

Do we have any discussion on this?

Um I just want to make sure that is this a nonprofit yes, it is a nonprofit organization.

In fact, I think um Tony's not here, but Mark may be able to help me out.

The city manager will I believe the funds that they raise.

I think they give them the children's auction or they do something, but I haven't looked into their status nor what they do.

I just haven't done any research on that, so I'm not sure.

Okay, if I may, Mr.

Mayor.

Of course.

Is there anybody in the audience from that?

Yes, no, that's perfectly fine.

Hi.

Can you help me answer that question?

Yeah, of course.

Um, so we have given to the children's auction.

I'm Jennifer Hollows, I'm the president of the Lakes Region Sled Dog Club.

Um we've given to the children's auction in past years, um, especially years where we don't have a race.

We'll donate to them, but um, all the fundraising goes um towards putting the event on and also um helps us create the purse for the mushers to attract the mushers to our event.

Are you a you know a nonprofit organization?

Yes, we are that way.

Yes, yep.

It answers the question.

That answers my question.

Thank you for all you do.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks for the excellent event.

Thank you.

Glad you have a lot of snow this year.

Me too.

Yes, thank you.

Any further discussion?

All in favor.

Six zero.

Perfect.

Guys, it's too easy with this.

I'm I'm used to like some division.

All right, next up.

Um, we have citizens' comments for Matt is not on the agenda, Mr.

Mayor, Counselors, Patrick Wood, Ward One.

Uh, I happened to read the minutes of the last city council meeting, and I learned something that really caused me to be very concerned, and that is that the Liberty uh utilities as indicated they're not going to issue any more permits for connections, apparently in Laconia.

Um, because for decades they've known they didn't have adequate capacity, and now they're saying we're gonna stop.

That's going to cause serious irreparable damage to the city of Laconia.

Just think of all the projects that are in the pipeline right now.

One that is huge is the Laconia Village.

Without natural gas, those projects aren't going to happen.

All the housing projects that have been proposed, they're not going to happen.

Laconia is going to come to a standstill.

This is not the time for a letter to the governor.

This is a time for all hands on deck.

We need to seriously take action to keep this from happening.

I can't imagine that a company who's a public utility, overseen by the state of New Hampshire, would allow this situation to arise without at least letting the city of Laconia know decades ago when they found out about the problem that there's something that needs to be done.

I'm not sure what the answer is.

But a letter to the governor is not going to solve this.

We need to do something substantially more powerful than that.

So I'm absolutely frightened for the future of Laconia to hear this.

That one company can shut us down.

That's not right.

So that's my concern.

And I as I say I'm not sure what the answer is, but I know we need to do something, and we need to do it quickly.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I'd like to stop.

I apologizing.

I know this is uh probably just a little blurp on the big picture of Laconia for all of you, but this is like a huge part of my life, and it's a huge problem.

I don't sleep at night thinking about this.

Um I was here a month ago asking about uh a house.

Did you identify yourself for the record?

Richard Mason.

Um I was here a month ago asking about this, whatever, and outside of uh a letter from the fire department and me filling on an appeals thing, which town doesn't really even know how the appeals process works, neither do I, but it hasn't been used in seven years, I'm told.

And I asked if I appeal it, and you know, it goes through.

Does it stop production of the house or stop the build of the house until it's straightened out, and nobody has any answers?

Um very concerned, but may I pass that?

Yeah.

I think there's just four of them here.

Um this is the the fire code, which um some of you might know what it is, some of it, some of you don't.

It it states crystal clear what the the laws are for minimum distances between properties.

One story, two-story, combustible, non-combustible.

It it says crystal clear here, and which I'm understood non-combustible is concrete, steel, uh stuff along those lines.

Combustible is wood, fiberglass, plastic, stuff like that.

I consider it a combustible.

The house to build it in front of me.

Um minimum distance is 15 feet for single story.

They're gonna build two stories in front of me.

It only has six feet.

Why would they issue a permit to build a new house when it doesn't meet fire code to begin with, two stories high.

Take a one-story house, build a two-story high.

It's not even a house, it's a shed slash office.

Who would allow that?

Who you know pushed it through, who said, okay, you know, hey, hey, let's stop, hit the brakes.

You only have six feet here.

What are we gonna do?

And then not only it's a remodel or rebuild or whatever, it's they give them a new permit.

So he tore the whole place down, foundation, everything started from scratch.

Does that not indicate that it needs to meet all building and fire codes?

I would think so.

It's it's a brand new house.

Gonna meet brand new all codes.

It was there before, so let's just let them build it.

Make sense.

Um thank you.

And again, I I was here a month ago.

I've asked questions, can't really seem to get any rock solid answers.

Maybe this has never been, you know, addressed before.

If if I might, I might just say I might just say that you know, when you and I have had multiple conversations over this, and he's been great.

Thank you.

And you have been two to work with, but you know, we are it is under we have the city's lawyers working on it.

So building code board of appeals has their own attorney that they're working with, had to get a different one, so that's being dragged us out of a few days.

Um just because the city city's lawyer can't represent the building code, you know, it's of course be conflict there.

So um we're working on them.

It's taking a few extra days.

So that that's kind of where that stands.

I mean, it's been there's been a lot worked on on this project.

Um it's just hasn't resolved yet, either way, either for or against it.

I'm reading this letter from Chief Jubert, and it says it has been determined that the fire prevention regulation 4007 does not apply in this situation as the intent of the of our regulation.

Has that been looked through by an attorney or yeah, our attorney's looking at all that stuff?

Okay, because I'm a little I it's almost like an opinion.

It's our opinion, it doesn't meet that, but I I'm confused about and to go back to the lawyers.

I I've got multiple answers so far.

My first answer, I forget if it was from the chief of the whoever it was, it was oh, they determined this is a civil matter.

Okay, so I went a little bit further.

Then it came back to, oh no, it's um I think I wrote it down right here.

Well, from a civil matter to it didn't apply in this situation.

I mean, I got multiple answers that went through legal, the city's legal.

Yes, you can, Council Susie.

And this is to the city manager thing.

The city council has no real authority at this point, do we?

I I think the process in which it's playing out right now is its correct process.

Let it let it go to the building code board of appeals.

Um like I said, both sets of attorneys are working on it.

Well, one right now and then one will be.

Um let it go down that path.

As far as like a stop work, a thing like that.

That's up to him and his that's that's there's uh you know, our our city agencies that that rule on, you know, that um sorry, not rule on it, that's poor terminology.

That make these determinations as far as codes.

Um, they'd be the one that would be stopped work on it, but they've approved it.

So it's there's at this point it's in the process where it should be.

Okay.

I'm hoping it's uh I'm hoping as early as um I was hoping as early as today.

Um, but uh the the attorney, the addition the new attorney for the billing code board of appeals who we sent them to um is unable to work with them.

So that was determined on Friday.

So it's gonna be a few extra days before we can get one uh established for them, but it shouldn't take long.

In the meantime, though, the process is still moving forward.

I mean the bill.

Yeah, as of right now.

Yep.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council Bogart.

Are we still allowing work to continue or are there are they working at their own risk or yeah, there's nothing we have not they're very well aware of what's going on, the the builders and and we have not stopped any work.

Okay.

Are they currently building?

Uh I haven't been up the last time I was you may have driven by sooner, they weren't um to let this sort of play out, but uh that was just in conversation that you know so he doesn't get too far ahead uh with what he said perfectly not only is it fire danger now, he'd come back with a new plan where it slopes back toward my house.

Six feet off, snow comes off a roof from 25 feet in the air and cascades off right into my basement.

Maybe a water problem, you know, I don't know, possible you know, danger walking by snow coming off a roof coming out of my basement.

There's there's lots of safety issues.

It's not safe.

I think that takes precedence.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate you.

We will continue to look into it.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Hey guys, how are you doing?

Doug Robinson, Ward 5.

Um, I've got something to hand out.

But I don't it's okay.

Um apologize for the lines on them.

Umtown Laconia has a pretty good opportunity right now with the social districts.

Um my concern is that we're all putting our money on the colonial theater.

I've heard it a couple of times.

It's doing what it's supposed to do, it's driving economic development.

Um so I did a small survey of a 10 question survey, and I went down and I talked to 15 different um storefronts, owners, and operators.

I think some of you under uh bad information if you think that it's driving the economic development that you think it's driving.

Um four out of the five customers that actually sent one back to me, and more that I actually talked to said it doesn't drive foot traffic.

The shows don't align with their business hours.

Um it doesn't do what you think it does, but we do have an opportunity with this um social district.

But they also agreed that the social district isn't gonna work if it's just grab a beer and walk around downtown.

We have to do something different.

Um be that food trucks, um caricature artists, mimes, um different events, uh like the block party that is put on by the record store.

We should be actively looking to make an events department or events committee or something else that can put together these things that coincide with these shows Friday night, Saturday night.

Um, but we're gonna do it, or we should be doing it Saturday day, Friday day.

Something that coincides that brings people in earlier to get that foot traffic that you're actually looking for.

I also um included some comments from our local businesses on these same forms.

Um, and if you go through and read those, um it's pretty interesting.

They they think that the block party was a great idea.

They loved um pumpkin fest.

I know that put a lot of money out.

I know that put a lot of money out, so I'm not asking for anything that big, but we need to start thinking differently if we're gonna make Laconia a district where people actually want to come walk, shop, and hang out.

Uh we're not doing that, um, even with a social district, unless there's something to tie to that.

I think I think we're all in for a major shock.

Um, I heard Charlie, and you know, Charlie and I, we don't get along politically, but he was absolutely right two weeks ago when he said we need to have the least amount of regulations on this with the most amount of benefit.

Um so I'm asking you guys to go on that road as well.

Um so a lot of that regulation you're speaking about is actually written into the RSA, so there's nothing we could do about that.

That's fine.

But whatever you're gonna add on to it, tackle onto it, put on top of it, ice cream con it, whatever term you want to use.

We need to rethink that.

As little as possible, is my is my answer as well, along with adding that extra oomph to it.

Some of you guys may have gone to other small mill towns.

There's one in Pennsylvania called uh Jim Thorpe.

They do a great job with this.

It's the exact same town that we have, an old mill town along a river.

But every weekend I was there three or four different times over the course of the summer on my motorcycle.

Um they do something every weekend when you're down there shopping.

They have mimes, um, statues, uh, live statues, um, character artists, people playing guitars.

Um, you know.

And you know, they do it with the donation hat just like they do down in Boston.

Um, but it keeps people walking around, it keeps people shopping.

I just ask that we look at something different and not just make it a social district.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Anyone else?

You have Tony On?

Uh Charlie St.

Clair Ward 3.

No, I do not.

But my zipper's up.

Um I don't take issue with what Doug just said, except for uh I never saw this survey, or nobody asked me anything, but I will say this, and I've said that in front of this council before, that the Colonial Theater.

My business may not be open for those night shows, but I've had people come back the next day, maybe they stayed overnight, maybe not, or maybe they just came back to Laconia because they like what they saw, and they've come in my business because I talked to as many people as I can in there, and they've said, yeah, I saw your window.

I looked through the window the other night when I was here for the show.

We decided to come back and check it out.

And I know I'm not the only uh business that's benefiting from that.

So I I just want to be make sure you realize that might not be open during those hours, but we're getting at least my store is definitely getting the benefit from that.

Um as far as the RSA's on the social district, uh the mayor is right about that, but there are ways to work with them and make them more user-friendly.

Let's put it that way.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

With that being said, we are going to move on to a public hearing.

Um public hearing is resolution 202 uh 26-02.

It's about a request for funding for mill foil treatment of Porgus Bay and Lake Opeachy.

Notices public hearing was made available in the January 29th, 2026 issue of the Laconia Daily Sun and posted at Laconia City Hall.

Laconia Community Center, Laconia Public Library, and the offices of the SAU.

I am now going to open the public hearing at 7.21 p.m.

Would anybody like to speak?

Going once.

Going twice.

With no discussion, I will close the public hearing at 7.21 as well.

Next up, we have another public hearing.

Uh the termination of the intermunicipal agreement between the city of Laconia and the town of Guildford governing the development of the Lakes Biz uh business park.

Notice of this public hearing was made available in the January 14th, 2026 issue of the Laconia Daily Sun and posted at the Laconia City Hall.

Lacony, Laconia Community Center, Laconia Public Library, and the offices of the SAU.

It is now 7.22 p.m.

And I would like to open the public hearing.

Would anybody like to speak?

Yes, we have one individual.

My name is Eliza Ledbeater.

I'm from the town of Guildford, but I served Belknap County for 15 years.

I was the first executive director of the Belknap County Economic Development Council.

I'd like tonight to thank both Laconier and Guilford for working together on the launch of the park.

We needed a site back in those days in the late 90s to accommodate Freudenburg and also stamping technology.

Freudenburg, of course, is now occupied by Scotia Technology, and I'm thrilled to see that that business has expanded so because we worked a lot with them.

What is very unique, and I want to congratulate both you and uh the town of Guilford is the two communities working together on a business park.

It's very unusual.

And uh I know during my time, many of my colleagues across the state would say, how did you pull that one off?

You know, I'd like to thank you all, those who served on the both the municipal from both miss municipalities on the board.

Um we've lost a few of those people.

But also going forward, what I would hope for is that the occupants of the park form a group.

We had one for the O'Shea Industrial Park, and then they came together to make sure the park was well maintained and collectively kept could keep the city and uh the town of Guilford informed of particular needs and stuff, you know, if there were concerns about uh something going on.

So with that, I say thank you.

I also like to add that I'm very saddened to hear of the death of Paul.

Um we worked very closely together.

In fact, um I have a long history.

I've been retired unfortunately, what 18 years, but uh Paul drafted the first proposal um for the use of the old state school.

I worked with him on that.

We had a very interesting proposal at the time, unfortunately.

The state decided to house uh prisoners there.

But again, thank you both both towns uh for uh the business park.

Thank you.

Anyone else seeing none, I will close the public hearing at 7 25 p.m.

Next up we have a presentation from Kerry Howe, Office of Extended Learning Administrator.

Thank you, Kerry.

Mr.

Mayor, just while she's getting set up, I think I just want to speak.

I asked her to come in um Kerry to come in.

As members, there's a few of us that are on the uh learning and career advisory board.

Uh, and it it's trying to expand what they do in working with us.

They've been working uh with a number of our departments to try to get kids into our different departments and kind of grow their interest in municipal work.

So um, as those discussions went on, Carrie said it you know it'd be great to come into a presentation.

So thank you for having her tonight.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, city officials, and staff.

We thank you for having us present this evening.

I'd like to introduce my co-presenters, uh, Miss Lisa Hines, who is our interim super assistant superintendent of Laconia School District, and Miss Candice Hyde, who is our extended learning coordinator in the Office of Extended Learning.

Our present tonight focuses on a simple but powerful goal making the City of Laconia a classroom for our students.

Um, through the Office of Extended Learning, we are building a network where academics meet real world service and career exploration.

We want to share the progress we've made, the federal and state grants we've secured for the upcoming year, and the essential resources our department requires to sustain these vital community-wide connections.

I do have a slideshow presentation.

Okay, and I'm I've given you a copy of the packet as we'll go through, and if you have any other questions, please feel free to interrupt.

So the mission and purpose of the Office of Extended Learning is basically in a nutshell to provide high quality experiences out of classroom time.

Um we do this through homework help, targeted supports, after-school programs, summer programs.

In addition, we've been working to ensure that every student has the opportunity to participate in career connected learning.

Um the New Hampshire Learning Initiative showed that students who participate in at least one career connected learning opportunity has increased hope about their future and their engagement.

Um so what you'll see on your next slide, the Lasconia School District FLP definition.

FLP is our future learning pathways.

It's one of what we would consider the four pillars of our strategic plan, along with our mission, our vision, and the portrait of the graduate.

It allows us to operationalize the mission, gives us the opportunity to provide available opportunities for kids to develop confidence, to learn how to lead, how to follow, how to grow, and how to really become responsible citizens, both in and out of Laconia, and to develop rewarding experiences that will lead them to a successful future.

So on the next slide, what you'll see is portrait of the graduate.

Everything started with the portrait of the graduate.

We came together in 2018 or so, brought the community together and asked them what is really important for a Laconia graduate to know and be able to do when they leave our schools.

And in July of 2019, the community, about 200 community members, came together and voted on the six most important, and you see them there: communication, collaboration, creativity, perseverance, problem solving, and self-direction.

What's really important about our portrait of the graduate or portrait of the learner is that Laconia is one of the few districts in the state that actually operationalizes their portrait, not just for high school students or made it a brand to hang it on the wall.

Our portrait of the graduate is active from pre-K through 12, and it's embedded and assessed in all of our teaching and learning activities in and out of the classroom.

So teachers in their curriculum teach our students these attributes and actually check in with them and are able to show how they are learning them.

And again, that's usually something you focus on.

A lot of districts focus on 9 through 12.

We actually do that pre-K through 12, and we've become a model district in the state and regularly have other districts coming to visit us to see how we do that.

So as we move on, what are the future learning pathways?

What you can see here is it tells us that we can learn anywhere.

A big part of our strategic plan is differentiation and personalization and learning.

We know that if we can differentiate and personalize a learning experience for a child, they'll be more engaged in that activity, and the learning will escalate.

They want to learn because they are fully engaged in those activities, and we do that by connecting them to the community.

It's very interesting that the opportunities that we're able to provide through through future learning pathways actually develop those ideas that students do need to understand career exploration later on.

It's not just taking a field trip to the fire department or visiting the police station.

We are actively engaging our students in a number of different activities in Laconia and regionally as much as we possibly can.

And what this is doing for our students, we learned through some work that we did with the search institute, is that it will develop a higher threshold for hope and belonging for our students, letting them be able to recognize the successful future.

So we've been very fortunate to really be able to strengthen those outcomes for our students.

And so this is where the Office of Extended Learning comes in.

How do we support our schools with these initiatives?

One of the ways we do this is by offering our summer programming and our after-school program, kind of what our Office of Extended Learning is known for.

I have included in your packet the need for after school programming in this little flyer in the state of New Hampshire, and how it supports our families, our communities, and most importantly, our students.

This just gives you a quick overview of our summer programming this past summer with 251 students involved K through 12 and the community partners that we partnered with.

Oops.

I can share with you we had well over 300 applicants for only 150 elementary spots.

The focus is on increasing academic proficiency, career explanation exploration, and real world readiness.

These are some of the groups that we are involved with, starting with youth and government at the high school, STEAM, e-gaming, lifetime fitness.

We also have healthy living and cooking at the middle school as far as STEM and board games, and most importantly, we brought in career play for our younger learners to get them thinking about their futures as well.

So I'm gonna say, and I apologize, I have a cold because I work K through 12.

You know, I'm looking at the youth that I work with, and how can they give back to the community?

So this year I worked with eighth graders all the way through twelfth grade because where are they gonna get their first jobs?

Probably in the hospitality industry, right?

So they are leaving with the Serve Safe Food Handler after they finish this year, and they're gonna help support all of our local businesses.

But then I'm also gonna say that I never had trips like these pictures when I was a kid.

I was never able to operate equipment, climate tree, learn about all these different career opportunities.

The students in Laconia are doing this.

And the most touching thing to me was last year, one student said, Thank you, Miss Hyde.

I now know what I want to do for a job.

You know, and he wants to fight fires in the forests.

Oh, yeah.

Yep.

And so our office has worked really hard.

I am a resident of Laconia.

I raise my children here.

Um, and I since taking this position in August 2024, have made a conscious effort with Candace by my side to make these community connections.

Um through our office, we support our community events such as Earth Day, the Pumpkin Festival, the tree lighting festival.

We encourage our groups to get involved with that.

We work closely with the Laconia Parks and Rec.

We're offering lifeguard training for our students to help staff our city beaches.

Um we are working with the Laconia Fire Department for LHS job shadows.

Um we had the Laconia Police Department and the SWAT team come and visit our elementary school over the summer, and actually even just recently.

We've had the STEM mobile come down from UNH to talk to some of our students.

We are currently working on with the Laconia Fire Department and the Laconia Police Department to begin a drone program where we hope that our high schools will receive remote pilot certification and use that to help with safety in our city.

Other community, we've had multiple guest speakers come and talk to our students, the liquor commissioner, insurance.

Um we've had health care management, breakaway management, helping these students realize what's waiting for them when they graduate.

I just want to add that the community is fabulous.

I have never had somebody say nope, I won't come talk to your students about car insurance.

Cross insurance comes and does that.

I've never had an employer say, no, I'll never give, I will never let a student not have a glimpse of what it is that I do every day and help students find their career path.

Um, everybody has been totally supportive of all of these students.

And this is why we wanted to come with you because the Office of Extended Learning is much more than the after-school program and the summer programs.

We're doing all this community and career work that City Manager Biotti felt we should come and share.

So all of this leads to what we like to call from participation to purpose with our extended learning opportunities in our high school.

By introducing our community students to these programs and these community businesses, we are hoping that by the time they get to high school, they begin their own future learning pathway and choose their own classes with an extended learning opportunity experience.

And what that means is that they take a semester or a year-long course in some of you might consider it kind of like a job shadow, kind of like an internship, but it's researched base within our community.

And what we've spent a lot of time doing in the short time since we've been there, and I have connected this to our website, which I've also included in our packet.

This is our website.

Highly encourage you in your time to take a look at it.

Um, if you go to our extended learning page, you can see that we have gone out to businesses in the community and found partners for kids to work with.

We are creating a database.

We have Laconia Country Club offering us.

I met recently with the city manager, and we talked about what opportunities we have just within City Hall.

And if you click, and I'll click on one of them, you can see for the municipal operations, they can go through and look at all of the career potential opportunities and ELO opportunities that we've had.

It even gives them a sample ELO plan that they can follow and gives an overview to what they have to accomplish to, and this is a credit-bearing course.

So it gets them out of the school and into the community.

What we've done is we've set our our 9th through 12 students up with every year an objective for the year.

So when they're freshmen, we help them understand and learn more about themselves.

When they're sophomores, they connect to their civic responsibility.

When they're juniors, they start to explore internally in the in the high school the options that are available to them when they graduate.

And then as seniors, we want them experiencing those opportunities.

So this is one of the ways that we connect our students with their community and business partners and teachers.

What's the impact for the community?

Well, Office of Extended Learning through these initiatives is hoping obviously to improve the academic outcomes for our students and increase student engagement, but we're also trying to strengthen workforce readiness, in particular in the Laconia and surrounding communities to foster strong community partnerships that not only benefit our students, but I think City Manager Biatti can tell you that I often will say to the community members and our learning career advisory board what can we do for you?

How can we help you?

And to create that give and take relationship.

And all this is done through grant funding and sustainability.

Our biggest grant that funds my our our office, sorry, is the 21st century grant.

That is a federally funded grant.

And we also have the NHLI grant, the out of school time career pathways grant.

I have a little bit of a breakdown just to show you how much we are funded by a grant.

So as you can see, our biggest contributor at almost 79% is that 21st century grant.

That allowed us to do a lot of the field trips during the day, like Manufacturing Day or the Forest New Hampshire Forestry, New Hampshire Construction Days.

Correct.

The 21st Century Grant, although it's a great grant, it is very, very specific about when you can utilize that money.

It has to be out of school time.

That doesn't always benefit our high school students, which is why we supplemented with the NHLI grant.

We recently applied for and got a grant for farm to school, which allowed two flex farms that are currently in our elementary schools to work on to help grow and work with our farmers in the region.

We also received a get outside grant, which we use to purchase for the middle school summer program paddle boards and life jackets to explore Opechi, Lake Opeachy.

And then you can see the Laconia School District really only funds us 3%.

So we are a heavily grant-funded program.

Looking ahead, what we're going to try to do is we want to expand our community partnerships.

One of the reasons we wanted to come here today is we're hoping people see this and reach out.

We want to have an even bigger database for our students.

We want to increase career pathways and enhance our access, um, enhance the access for our students K through 12, but we really need to ensure long-term sustainability.

In the current climate of federal grants, we never know what's coming.

And even so, if that grant gets pulled, our office we're we're in a lot of trouble.

I can tell you that we are in our fourth year of that five-year grant.

Um, and after next year, when we reapply, they are changing that grant where we have to apply per school, and there are some schools that may not qualify.

So you may have some of these programs at maybe two elementary schools, but then not another.

So we're looking for ways to overcome that.

We have been applying for private grants, it's been very difficult because we are not uh 5013.

Yep.

So it makes it very difficult for us to do that.

But that's really what we wanted to come and share with you.

How we are funded, what we do, and really just get any feedback from the council from the city about how we can do our job better.

Well, I'm going to say everything I see here is absolutely excellent.

Thank you.

Um I I love the career paths.

I love I love the engagement with the community.

I think there's a very well worthwhile program.

Um I think we do need to be a little concerned about the grant funding for it and how we can continue forward.

But I think do you have any state grants in there?

I didn't see any state grants.

It was all fair.

I mean, families of Laconia have relied on Office of Extended Learning for probably about 20 years.

And to know that the grant funding is changing and will be maybe only eligible for some schools and not all, is it could be catastrophic for some of the families and what they rely on the programming for, whether it be after school or summer programming maybe.

I can say as a parent of three students who went through Laconia School District.

Fortunately, all of them went to school, but I am saddened at the cost of higher education.

And I am saddened that some of our students that might not be the path for them.

And if Laconia High School is one of the schools that isn't funded in the future, all that career work, all that ELO, all those IRCs, we won't be able to provide those opportunities.

Do you know how many students are coming out of this program that are going into like the trades and work like that or the fire service or so?

Like I said, I just took over the the position in August of 2024, but we are in the process of putting all that data together right now.

Um we do have a list of how many students did ELOs, the success stories.

I I can tell you we had an ELO on um communications from one of our students who went out to college who actually did the Paris Olympics, and he was a communicator.

Um so we have all that data and all that stories.

I didn't bring them today.

I would be happy to come back and share and bring some students.

I was I would love to see that, and actually hear from the students that was successful in the program.

I think that would be key.

Or I could just jump in.

We had a student last year that they identified.

Um was interested in the construction world, you know.

That that sort of um that that sort of job track.

Uh he graduated high school, was still 17, was hired by the city at DPW.

We had to wait about a month before we could do any real training with him because he hadn't even turned 18 yet.

Um, but now he's working with us, you know, and it was graduation start working and go.

And those I I'd love to see those kind of growing.

Me too.

I think that I think that's a huge assess to the community and and to the children.

Councilor Susie.

Thank you very much for saying hi.

I think this is great, fantastic.

Everything else like that.

But I'm wondering about just one question.

Sure.

I didn't see I didn't see anything in here in reference to the services, you know, like Navy, Army, those kinds of things.

Do those people get involved with you?

Because I know they do a lot of recruiting at the high school age.

And a lot of kids, and somebody here said it.

I'm gonna grandson right now who's not a college kid, so he went into the marine corps, and uh he's gonna make a career out of it.

And you know, I've seen so many good things come out of kids that do that.

Okay, and I'm just wondering if if there's if those industries or whatever you want to call it, okay, are part of this, or they've been part of this or can they not be.

Absolutely.

They are in the high school, it's just that the guidance department at the high school works very much to bring those bring in they they are regularly scheduled almost on a weekly basis.

Different certain different branches of the service are um on a regular basis.

We have them all the time when we bring in colleges.

We also have the services come in and and meet with students during those college fairs and and even our business fairs that we have and job fairs, they're always there for that.

So I'm very much the state national guard and stuff like that.

They probably have programs for kids, our kids, you know, high school kids to do things.

I don't know, I'd have to ask Rob, he's the expert.

Yeah, we do.

We would the Office of Extended War Learning works very closely in conjunction with the high school guidance department and also the Hewitt Learning Center, the Hewitt Tech Center.

It's just that our office doesn't do that, so I didn't mention it tonight.

But they do today.

I wouldn't I would encourage every kid to go trades.

Yeah, me too.

Okay.

And to that, I'll say we are working really closely with New Hampshire JAG in my turn that provide funding and support for our students to explore these trades and come out with credentials and certificates to then go and work in.

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Um you talked about the success stories and putting that data together, not only would get everyone here and the community much more substance, but could help you with your grant funding.

Yeah, we'd be happy to definitely.

We wanted to give a quick overview tonight, but I would love the opportunity to come back and present that data and bring um some students with us.

Anyone else?

Councilor Conan.

I'd just like to thank you very much for the work that you do.

Thank you.

You're molding the future of our city with these young folks.

And it's extremely important.

Uh those of us that are parents and have been through it, can't can relate.

And um, I just thank you very much for what you do.

Thank you.

We love it.

We love Laconia.

We do.

No, thank thank you.

I mean, I know you guys don't hear it enough, but you do a lot for our children and our future, and we all appreciate it.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Next.

Oh, Mayor's report.

Uh so tomorrow I have a meeting with the CEO of Concord Hospital Laconia, or Concord Hospital as a whole.

So I will be filling everybody in on how that goes.

Uh City Manager Biotti and I also had a meeting with the CEO of Spectacle.

Um things are moving along very, very well with that, and we'll keep you posted on where that goes.

Um I also met with Senator Shaheen's team this week.

Um, looking at possibilities for some federal funding to help us out with infrastructure and other needs.

Um so we're gonna be looking into that as well.

And that's pretty much all I've had so far.

Uh we're on to council comments.

Does any counselor have a comment?

Councilor Wogett.

Uh thank you.

Usually they start this way and gives me a minute, but that's okay.

Um the first thing, when you meet with the hospital, could you remind them that moving snow at three in the morning and dumping it in that extra parking lot?

It's probably not part of their agreement.

And and I've had just about every resident on Lockheed Street calling me and sending me uh interesting emails and stuff because they were woke up at 3 o'clock, 3 30, 3 45.

Uh they specifically from dump trucks rattling around in that back parking lot and stuff.

So if you could please do me that favor in the all the residents of Lafayette would appreciate that.

Um, uh with the uh uh infrastructure, the uh gas infrastructure, natural gas and stuff.

I've uh been working with BIA to uh kind of ask questions from their perspective to Liberty who runs the natural gas lines and stuff.

And uh I'm having him clarify our price because he came up, they came up with a price it would take to run the line all the way up to Laconia from where it stopped just outside of uh Loudon.

So uh we are working on that actively, uh trying to solve that problem.

Just wanted to let everybody know it's not going on death ears.

And uh that's pretty much it.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilor Susi.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um this past week, I think maybe I think most of us and not all of us know the legislature passed the uh bill that was I think initiated by representative uh Sinclair and supported and co-signed by Representative Gabargardson re boards on naming the new 911 center after our former chief and who is the director of 911 for 24 years who started it.

So that's gone through the legislature, now it's headed to the Senate, and you hear all kinds of different rumors, okay.

But I would like to ask the council to support maybe the city manager and staff to put together a letter of Senate to the all the senators in the state, including the president of the Senate supporting the naming of the 911 Center after Chief Cheney, okay, as as maybe not everybody knows.

He's he was the only one that I could find in the research that ever built the center like that or built the whole program, turned it on and came in for politician really, or for department head on the budget and uh ahead of schedule.

So I mean that alone is worth the gold medal.

Okay.

But I I really like to see uh support that okay.

That would be my request, Mr.

Mayor.

No, no problem.

You know, I'm a co-sponsor, so I have no objection.

Yeah, if you guys just give me consensus, I can write a letter and get it sent off to him.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think that if I'm not mistaken, that went through the House unanimously.

Oh, yeah, it was a voice vote.

Yeah.

So it was a good question.

That's not very supportive.

Well, let's not discuss that.

Anybody else?

Council Corning.

Yes, I would just like to um to give a shout out to the Water Department, who handled a uh significant water main break.

Uh it was a six-inch cast iron pipe that was installed in 1964.

But with the technology they have in place, they were able to identify they had a problem at midnight on the fourth of uh February.

And by identifying it that early, they were able to tackle it starting, I think they discovered exactly where it was roughly at 6 a.m.

And they worked throughout the day to uh rectify that situation as it did affect a lot of our uh people that use water from Laconia but are actually in Belmont.

Um but they worked diligently to get it done, and they did, and I just want to make sure that um they get the recognition they deserve.

They did an excellent job, so I I agree with you.

Anyone else?

Can I add on to that?

Go ahead, Council Susie.

Sure.

Excuse me, Councillor Carnett.

Uh one thing I'd like to do is if the if there's a way for the council to support the water department to put in the bypass that we talked about a few minutes ago that goes up over through Academy.

And I think Council Haynes is also aware of it because I think that's um because that service is such a large area, including St.

Francis and into Belmont and everything else like that.

We should push that.

And if the council needs to support it in some way, I think that would be a good idea.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Nobody else.

All right.

Do we have any committee reports?

This we do.

I've got a few.

Oh.

So we're going to cut you off of one now.

I'm kidding.

Go ahead, Councillor Susie.

Within the last couple of weeks, the finance committee got together, and we had a few topics, but the two I think that are the relevant just to give you an update.

And I know that you met yes this past week, last week, with the uh president spectacle.

We also had a discussion about that.

And uh one of the things is that we want to just move forward with with your approval, Mr.

Mayor, is I like to uh have the city council put forth that we will form as a as a part of the city council committees, a new advisory board for the Colonial Theater.

Okay.

So I know it's in the I know it's in the in the in the contract, but I'd like to do it as like we do all of our other committees come through the appointments board, they come to the city council for approval.

So it becomes part of the city council, and we have the uh with the oversight, okay.

Um not to go not to go too deep, okay.

And the our goal is to reserve our goal coming out of our meeting was we want to reserve more nights for the city.

And I know you've had that discussion with them.

And you know, and we want to our committee also wish that we could find more nights that are available so we could use maybe promoters or shows that us or some of our citizens or anybody who's got experience and wants to bring forth to that, okay.

And we know the manager is finalizing an agreement that will prepare for the whole council to take a look at over the next couple of meetings and uh and uh address things like the maintenance and stuff like that, okay.

So I mean, we just from the finance department, from the finance committee, if we just want to support you and the mayor, the manager and what you guys are doing and and work with us and we'll try to help you also.

Let me just ask the city manager what he just discussed as far as the council goes, the uh for the colonial I know that's in the agreement.

Isn't that already a council committee?

It is uh it's appointed by the council.

Uh it was named, it was a five-year contract, five and a half years, it was named about two and a half years into it.

Um they report it the way of words both reports to the count, it advises the council and myself on on making decisions moving forward.

Um I I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be um now that you guys have sat adjusting that to fit this council's uh request for who would they want on there?

Okay, perfect.

Right.

The reason I asked Mr.

Mayor is I I had this discussion with the previous mayor at uh some length.

Okay.

Okay, and the the board that's there now is was appointed by him.

I'd rather see that go through the our normal committee appointment situation process.

I am perfectly fine with that.

And and we can take it up at one of our future uh council meetings about as far as how many people, etc.

etc.

Okay, and do something like that, because um the last one was not done that way.

Is that in the contract we're working on?

Is that still part of it?

So it is, and in the proposal that I'm kind of working through the final draft on, I've included that it would go through the appointments committee as uh as a regular committee.

So perfect.

We uh I actually added that sentence into that for that reason.

Okay.

Thank you.

I appreciate you have that next one.

The next item.

Yep, you said you had a few.

I've been busy, so the next time is under the finance committee.

Also, we'll be starting working with the city manager, probably sometime in early March and all, on workshops for looking towards the 2026 budget, 2027 budget, okay.

We're gonna be tackling things like the tax cap and a few other area things that we want to dive into and and we'll bring them to the full council, okay, and uh you know, for more discussion and the determination and all, okay.

So that's the the next thing on finance committee.

Uh I can keep going if you don't mind.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Just to give everybody an idea on public safety and on public safety, uh, which is includes the police department.

I want to focus on that one for a second.

We uh this the chief and this and the uh police commission hired two more officers uh a couple weeks ago, okay.

Two ladies, okay.

One of them has got some significant experience and only has to go through the law section of the of the academy, which is uh saves us money.

Saves us quite a bit of money, time and etc.

etc.

And haven't been there and done that.

I think it's great, okay.

And the the other thing is is that I'm just looking for to read it, but we've had significant significant uh reduction in the amount of might say opioid uh related.

I've seen the statistics for that, yeah.

And it's it's oh and I'm gonna give you the exact numbers as soon as I can find my page that I had uh printed out, I hope.

But it's been significant.

I've departments done very well with that, okay.

I I mean it was a regular almost like weekly thing for a while, and they worked very, very hard to bring that down to uh I mean almost negligible.

I think there was only two real um bad say results over the last year.

So I I think it's great, and I want to commend the commend the police department for that.

My next one would be uh have to do with uh the uh appointments committee.

We met last week, we'll be meeting again this week.

We we interviewed a few people earlier this week, and we'll have some more.

I mean, last week we'll have some more this week.

We'll probably come to you maybe from the next council meeting, if not the one afterwards, with some recommendations, okay.

Uh and then the last one is so you'll know is Pumpkin Fest.

We got uh our uh finance report as as Mr.

Smith would say, there might be a couple of stragglers behind, but I don't think there's any more.

So Pumpkin Confess in 2025, we had a loss, or you might say a contribution we have to cover about three thousand dollars, which I think for the amount of people that came to the city, the good time that was represented and all was awesome.

Okay.

Um and talking with the city managers later today, and uh, we we're looking forward to next year because there's a couple of things that we're doing.

Naturally, it's gonna be uh Friday, late Friday afternoon, Friday evening, and Saturday on the 24th, 25th of October.

And we're gonna add some other things to that.

We want to hopefully work with uh lighting, the social districting, all kinds of different things.

But we're meeting on a regular basis.

We've already started it off.

We've contacted a lot of our vendors that were here last year.

Um we have a lot more people that want to get involved.

We have uh one large company that wants to take over the sponsorship of a big big thing, which would be very very thing.

And we know we've had some crazy discussions.

We know that next year, next fall is gonna be a big uh political electoral opportunity.

So we're talking about the uh the area going down Main Street between the parking garage and the stores we'll call that political alley.

Just have all the candidates out there.

Okay, and uh things like that, but we know we're we're thinking about multiple different things.

So thank you.

That's it for me for now.

Anybody else, Councillor Bogart?

Yes, thank you, the mayor.

Uh public work subcommittee did meet, and some of the items that were discussed were uh review of the winter parking ban, and uh what was being recommended was the request was to kind of not have a permanent parking ban, but just winter weather parking ban called, and what was agreed upon, and I guess they're gonna be working on it from the city manager's office is changing the date.

I do believe it was discussed November 15th.

No, no, not uh it was the date and the time, I believe.

Oh, we the dates from November 15th to April 15th.

April 15th, right.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

And uh then we discussed the vehicle strikes over in uh Lexington, that's ongoing because that's part of a bigger issue, we think.

Uh, and we've requested that the city manager's office look into uh what the cost in the uh uh implications would be on adding speed tables.

Uh we're not sure exactly locations and if that's even feasible.

We're in the looking stage now uh to look at that.

Uh we did have several uh residents come to speak uh with their concerns about uh uh Holmanav and Shore Drive.

Uh and so we're looking at all the different options, uh, some signs, I guess, on one of the roads approach in Lexington is on a hill, and the stop signs on the other side of the hill, and and it creates some issues.

Uh so we're looking at uh different ways, maybe a flashing warning sign, not so bright that it's gonna ignore uh it's gonna blind the neighborhood, but enough so that if you're approaching it, you you might have a solution.

Uh so that's ongoing, but I did want the everybody to know that it's being looked at, and we're waiting for feedback when they have it from public works and the city manager's office.

Perfect, thank you.

Anyone else?

Yeah, well, Councillor Haynes to add to the uh public works meeting.

Um there was a discussion about Old Pruscott Road and Belmont Road, and I'll give you uh for counselors that aren't uh the new councillors.

Um I'm sorry, you're the chair.

I apologize.

Yeah, I do the uh residents of Briar Crest initially were allowed to turn left onto Old Pruscott Road in Laconia.

When the lilac um condominiums or housing proposal came in, there was an agreement that no one could find when it was or who signed it or whatever, but city manager said it did exist.

Okay, they cannot make a left-hand turn onto Old Prescott Road now, and it's closed to one way, which causes a lot of problems not only with public works, but with uh fire and um emergency services, and the residents are now forced to go into Belmont and make a left-hand turn on Old Prescott Road, and at the same time there is an entrance and an exit for the gas station on top of um Prescott Hill.

Okay, and that has caused major accidents.

We lost the police, we lost the police cruiser there, excuse me.

Um it's been ongoing conversation.

So uh I asked the city manager to uh um have a discussion with the state, which they have agreed to, and the agreement, if we go forward with it, uh the city will have to pay for uh the engineering study.

Am I correct?

Correct.

They said they're they're willing to look at it, they haven't agreed to do anything, but they said they're not gonna do the engineering study if that was something that we want to do that at least look at look at the results.

I can't guarantee anything after the results, uh, but we do have an engineering firm that we use for this type of work, and we'll we'll be able to uh at least get something pulled up to say, you know, is it feasible to change back to the old way?

Yeah, and I think that would be acceptable.

Okay.

Um, there was a discussion of making Clay Street a one-way street.

Uh Clay Street runs parallel with uh Court Street and Academy.

It's a very extremely narrow street.

Uh the engineer was looking into what the actual width was, but it's so narrow that it's very difficult to get a fire apparatus in there.

And it's also um uh the residents have to put their trash containers on one side.

Cannot do both sides of the street, doesn't allow that for the for the uh trash disposal trucks.

Uh again, this is just a recommendation.

It'll come to before the council.

Okay.

So the one way would be from Bowman Street onto Fair, and if you remember right, Fair Street's one way anyways, so it wouldn't interfere with traffic there.

So uh that again was a recommendation.

The other recommendation was um the uh there was concern about uh the crosswalk in front of the uh courthouse, and there's a crosswalk that's right next to the next crosswalk that goes across Academy Street.

That was referred to public works because they uh we had a great discussion about that, but we didn't come to any um conclusion on what could be done because we're also uh looking at the uh three lanes that uh come to the traffic light, and people really don't slow down there, you know.

Uh so and the other thing that we looked at um was um pleasant street in Haven, would uh that section uh it seems the industrial park traffic decides to get on Pleasant Street past the elementary school as a shortcut, and we really have it.

We've met with the neighbors uh back, I believe it was in the summer of morning.

And we still so that has been referred still back to committee.

So I think that just about sums up the uh public works committee.

Thank you.

Council Bogart.

I would just like to apologize.

I misspoke uh I do apologize.

I've been very I'm very busy, but I misspoke.

Uh Mark uh counselor Haynes is the chair of that committee, and he should have spoken on behalf about that.

So I do want to apologize for for that.

We appreciate that.

Does anybody else have anything?

Councilor Hilger.

Yeah, um, with the Lexington Ave stop sign where there was the vehicle strike.

Um have you looked?

I know Councillor Bogart made uh a comment of uh uh or made mention of uh a flashing light.

Um could there be a sign that just says road ends 150 feet or either that or a sign, either that counselor Hill a sign that shows that Lexington doesn't go through the house.

It goes it goes around the house.

To the right.

Yeah, the the crossing house ahead.

The problem is that uh, and I've been there several times and spoken with the owners, and the end of uh what is it um that hits Lexington?

Lynnwood is a certain width, and almost directly across the street is this person's property that has a two-car garage and then another garage, another car space to the right, so it's almost identically the same size of the um of the road.

It it and it matches perfectly.

I will say that the chief of police looked back and with Kirk, and there hasn't been a strike there in five years.

They had heard there had been multiple strikes there.

Um this was I think a rather just a uh rarity.

Yeah.

All right.

Next up we have the liaison reports.

Do we have any report for that?

Seeing none.

We're going to move on to citizens' requests to comment on current agenda items.

I'd like to keep this to a minimum uh maximum of two minutes of speaker.

If anybody has a request about items currently on the agenda, nobody has anything to say.

Wow.

Seeing none, we're gonna move on to the city manager's report.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

A couple of things before I get into my normal report.

Um Court Street, the the where the work was done the other day.

Uh we'll have a uh paving done tomorrow.

Um it'll only get us into the spring.

Uh it is a it is a winter paving, so they'll do a much better job in the spring um when the plants open back up, but uh they should be able to do a much better job keeping it through from now until then as opposed to driving on the dirt.

So that'll be tomorrow.

Signs have been put up down there for that.

Uh also related to that.

Uh we have been looking at you.

We had some concerns over uh um getting notification out.

We used our our city's website, which if you subscribe to our alerts, uh it does go out.

Um, but we're trying to do a better job.

And one of the things we're looking at is whether uh one of the uh the police department has a system uh that's not really subscribed to a lot.

It's looking to see if that's better.

Um we're hoping to have one that is customizable.

So you know, maybe if something's happening in the weirs, maybe everybody doesn't need it, you know, that type of uh um, you know, specificity, but we're not sure.

Uh but we are looking at that to try to try to uh make that a little bit better uh moving forward.

Um one of my requirements is I I do appoint a treasurer.

Um when you uh with the change that we talked about last week in the finance department that that triggered us to have to appoint a new treasurer because the person that was doing the role is moving into a finance position that doesn't allow them to also be the treasurer.

Um so I've named Wes Anderson as our treasurer um and he's a city resident um and and also city employee business city resident.

Um so he will be taking that role on within the next couple of months, uh if not sooner.

Um RFPs uh get asked this question a couple times.

The lights we're just waiting on the return for the parking lot lights that go down into Rotary Park.

They could be coming in any time now.

We're just waiting for those.

We should see them relatively shortly.

Uh and the bandstand one uh for the weirs is out.

Uh that is due back tomorrow.

So waiting to see what we get back for those.

Uh the last thing I have before I move on to my normal report.

Um, as you guys have seen, there's been a lot of subcommittees and a lot of extra work going on.

So we haven't had a chance to do the goal setting.

I will be sending out to you guys some dates, hopefully mid-March, so you guys can host your uh goal setting um uh which we do every two years with the new council.

Um love to get that done prior to budget season.

So the hope will be to get that in March.

I'll send out some dates tomorrow and uh you know see if we're able to get that worked out and then we'll get it advertised.

Uh your financial financial and operational trends report.

I'm gonna move relatively quickly through it.

Um it's it's in your packet.

There hasn't been a whole lot of changes.

Um the uh the building construction numbers are there.

Uh obviously we're looking at that high.

We do still make an adjustment to those, so it'll be coming down, but it is still a very good year for us.

Um all the other ones on that page are relatively the same.

We did see another $18,000 month.

Um general assistance for welfare.

If this stays as is, we'll probably be in the $30 to $40,000 overspend in that range, uh, which we put a lot extra into it a couple years ago.

We were much more over in the budget.

Uh we did add some to that, which certainly helped.

Um, but you know, that's we still got five months left to go to see how that actually finally plays out.

Uh police department numbers are about the same, no real big changes there.

Property tax collection is on par where we should be.

Uh the overtime line is is in there.

You can see we you know we do have a couple that are um that are pushing towards the end of what they what they normally fund at.

Um a lot of that comes in the form of um vacancies that are being filled.

So as we get towards the end of the year, we look at salaries and to how we adjust that, and and oftentimes uh as we would hope, the if you're not spending the money on salaries because you have to backfill until you can get those filled, that it will offset some of those costs.

So we keep a close eye on that, especially once we turn the corner at the first of the year.

So we are doing that.

Motor vehicle registration is and um parks and recreation are pretty standard where we are right now.

Um there is it's not in your thing.

I am working on one grievance.

Um I can't really discuss it.

It's a personnel issue, but I am working on one, but right now there's no cost on it as we stand right now.

Umpact fees, see the numbers that are in there.

Uh if you when we start talking through the budget and you start seeing capital improvement, uh you'll what you're gonna see when I present to you and any of you who sat on any of those committees, there was a lot more things on our capital improvements request this year.

That was done intentionally.

So I asked them to put more out and more in there.

Um and we we brought the school in this year, which for the first time that they you know, and as long as I can remember, they may have done it at some point uh for those same reasons.

So um we are we are working through all those.

There's no changes to your reserve balances, no change to the TIFF summary, relatively unchanged of the TIFF summary, um, other than we're spending it down.

Um, but the year-end budget it is unchanged.

General funding expenditures are right around where we would expect them at this time.

Uh we were hoping to have a uh presentation on the EMS budget, um the EMS billing.

Um the deputy chief EMS was out of state uh for this week's meeting.

We are gonna get that reschedule.

We're gonna bring uh the fire chief, the um EMS uh the deputy chief that's in charge of EMS, uh, as well as our uh community paramedic, the mobile integrated health care professional in to give a little presentation even before the budget season, just to talk specifically about the um EMS revenues.

Um until our storm last weekend, uh we were still about $30,000 to the positive in our total winter maintenance budget.

Um overtime uh was was in the negative.

Uh but overall um obviously we've spent that now the last weekend storm will be enough to take us in the um in the negative all around.

What I will say is that if we get to this point, and we've done this in the past, we don't do anything immediately to fix that.

We look at how the total budget for that department is is playing out for the course of the year.

Um if we're able to uh use other lines to fill those vape those holes, we do that.

Um if we get to a point at the end of the year where that whole budget uh is now gonna be overspent.

We do have the reserve account that um both between you and the and the um the trustees of the trust can dip into to use to help offset that, uh, but we're not in a position where we're ready to say this amount of money has to be used at this point.

Um, but we'll have that conversation um over the course of the next few months.

So e excuse me.

Go ahead.

So even the question might come up from somebody, just so we answer it.

Even if even if our if we over budget or we overspend when it's not gonna affect any services.

No, there'll be no affected service.

Thank you.

And also uh Hill Jeff.

Um is your salt back up?

Is the situation rectified with the salt?

It's it's not perfect.

We do have salt though.

Um and we'll continue to order more.

Um I don't remember if I brought this up, but there was a shipping issue.

Um so we we're not 100% where we should be, uh, but we're better.

It was weird to see the trucks driving around when it was in the issue because they were mixing salt and sand.

You haven't seen sand mounted on top of uh the trucks in a long time, except for certain roads.

So it's kind of a little went back a little bit old school there.

Council boggett.

Uh yeah, just two questions.

Uh the first question goes back up to the top to building permits.

Uh it's showing uh that we got approximately 93 million in in value there, but the comment is that that's gonna get adjusted.

Do you have a wag at what uh that might be in reality?

I'll be in the I I I wouldn't be surprised if we're up upwards around 80 when it's all done.

That's kind of the I'm not I'm not putting all my eggs into that basket, but that's if I had to take a shot in the dark, yeah, a wag at it.

Not sure if that's a southern term or not, but I'll show it could be a so yeah, that would be my and yeah, the follow-up.

And uh a follow-up, please.

And uh with the uh downtown TIFF in the 625,000, I think it was uh that's held currently for 644.

Uh and looking at the lighting RFP, are we trying to hold that or is uh how much of that is committed of the 644 and what would that leave us and then you know, so we know how we're gonna pay for that because that's the lighting.

If I don't even want to predict what that cost would be, but if I may it's the was that was that the lighting that we just talked about the river, or is that the complete downtown we talked about?

No, it's the one for the parking lots here and rotary park.

I also I think the city manager's that match was trying to get money to do for example the downtown like Canal Street.

Yep.

Okay, I know it's two separate items.

I just want to make sure that we can look at both no, it's not the canal street rights.

These are the the light the lighting for the parking lot and down into rotary park.

So the 644 is what we started at.

Um we added another 325, we budgeted out the 512.

So when you do the math out there, that's what we have remaining.

Um we don't have any major projects.

We do have some commitments just based on the long-term stuff that we that we commit to um through the downtown, um, but there's nothing new that we haven't identified yet.

Okay, I just want to keep bringing that up.

So that's it.

The whole thought behind that lighting project was we had cash already, and we didn't have to go do any special financing deal to do it.

It was available cash on hand.

And we're gonna know a lot more as soon as we get those in.

Right.

So it is actually, I believe there's two RFPs.

And one that you're talking about, and one that I'm talking about.

On canal street.

Well, not canal.

Main street all the way through, including the political throat political highway.

The rates are going up for that for the company.

You know, I support that myself.

In the facts that I think the more we can uh enhance our downtown, the better off we are in conjunction with everything else that we're doing.

I think we're showing the council has shown that it has a positive approach to our downtown.

And uh it's just a marvelous approach, refreshing for a change.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's all I have, Mr.

Mayor.

Great.

Now we're on to new business agenda item 21A, ordinance 2026, 235-41.

70.

Amending chapter 235 zoning relative to Article 7, supplementary provisions section 235-41, residential accessory uses, and Article 9, zoning board of adjustment, section 235-70, powers and duties of zoning board of adjustment.

Um the proposed amendment is intended to address conflicting and confusing language within the short-term lodging right regulations.

Um has everybody had a chance to look this over.

Yep, Mr.

Mayor, if I just can we do have the planning department here that can fill in any gaps, any questions.

Um, what I will say is there's two potential sets of motions.

Um Planning Director and I had discussions this morning.

Um tonight you guys are having your discussion.

Um there is an option to send it back to the planning board first, but after we worked through this, um, our recommendation is that you have your discussion tonight, send it to a public hearing.

Um after your public hearing, you can make your adjustments, and it then would like to send it back to planning board.

Uh, I think we added an extra step if we don't do it that way.

This kind of makes it it's still gonna have to come back to you even after it goes back to them.

Yeah.

Land use regulations have a lot of uh does there's a lot of public hearings on these and a lot of a lot of moving parts.

So uh I don't know if you have any questions for them, but they're they're here for anybody have any questions.

And any suggestions you'd like to say.

Council Susie, smiling away.

So in other words, this is not a final decision.

It'll come back to us again.

It's going to go to a public hearing.

Um you'll have more discussion after the public hearing, then you'll send something to the planning board, they will have a public hearing and do their piece, and then they then it'll come back to you for the final approval.

Okay, and this sounds good to you both.

Yep, yeah.

Okay.

Do you counselor Hoffman?

So as the city council liaison to the zoning board, I just want to say that this has been a long time coming, and it's it is sorely needed um to give the zoning board greater power to to make judgment calls on these based on the areas that people are proposing to to use as short-term lodging.

Um there's been a lot of cases where the zoning board has did not have the the leeway to deny some that have been approved.

Um I think looking through this, this takes out a lot of the the gray area and and it it really makes it it gives the zoning board the ability to to preserve the character of neighborhoods because a lot of cities in the state have this issue where you know you get a few short-term rentals in a neighborhood and it changes the character of the neighborhood all of a sudden you're living in a different place.

Um and I think this gives us the control to actually plan the city.

You know, I mean everything's a balance between people's property rights and um our ability to plan and uphold a existing plan of a city, but I think this this restores the balance in a way that I think makes it.

Can you tell the state that please the the only suggestion I'd like to see changed is um I would like to see residential single family zones put in the list of zones where this is not allowed at all?

That's all I got.

I think we're gonna I probably move to have a public meeting on this, so we could discuss that.

Yeah, yeah.

I was just gonna ask if they got that.

Is there any feedback from the planning department on what council hoffman wants to put in?

We do understand that we're trying to preserve housing stock, and um we are very supportive of whatever direction the city council wants to drive us in.

I think that there's definitely options about areas we want to preserve and areas that we want to say it's okay in.

So it's really up to the council what they want to where they want, where what areas they want to preserve.

Um, I I can see stuff from both sides.

Um there's the property rights we want to preserve those for all the residents and give them at least the option to do short-term lodging.

Well, there's also the bit that you want to preserve the housing stock for fill-time residents.

So there's uh a delegate wanted to be uh the delicate delegate level the balance, and I'm sure that you'll make the right decision in whatever call you make.

And I'm very supportive of that.

Councilor Bogart.

I just wanted to say I do support that idea of removing that from the uh uh available and putting it into not available for uh short-term rental.

So I do support uh councillor Hoffman in that approach.

Councilor Susi.

I'd like to see that put in so when this goes to a public hearing, that's in there.

So I'm not sure if you can or not, but I'm we if you want to give us the feedback, we can make notes right on here so we can revise the language and have that right ready for the public hearing.

So if you would like to add in a specific zone that you'd like to make it not permitted in, uh we can we can draft that in right now so that way we'd do the change and then have that posted online for tomorrow, and um the public can see it, and then we'll have the public hearing on it, set it back to planning board and get their public hearing on it and send it back to you for uh final adoption.

Perfect.

I mean I don't know if we need a vote in that or I don't think we need a vote.

No, I don't think we need to.

And and also at the public hearing, we're gonna have the ability correct to make it to suggest these changes before it goes to plan.

That's right, yeah.

It's yeah.

So just to clarify, then so we can make the correct change.

You want to make um it not permitted in residential single family.

RS zone.

You got it.

Yeah.

Anything else?

That's it.

Thank you.

If I'm gonna there was I thought we were playing with some days and stuff, and then we just found out that doing the RS out solved that problem for us, right?

You're right.

There was we did have a discussion about the number of days um of what constituted short-term housing.

Um if I can add, I think that there was some feedback um in some discussion uh previously that under in the section M for dwelling units uh for a period of less than 15 consecutive days.

I I heard some feedback that perhaps it was uh a number 28 that we want to go out there.

Yeah, supposed to be.

That's exactly what it was.

Councillor Hill, you have to no, that was it.

I was just gonna say we wanted to move to 28 days.

Yes.

Thank you.

Um do I just move this to a public hearing or do we have to wave?

We have three uh series of three motions.

All right.

I'm I move to waive a reading of ordinance 2026, 235-4170 in its entirety, and to read by title only.

Councilor Hoffman made the motion seconded by Councillor Hildreth.

All in favor.

60.

Love it.

I move to conduct a first reading of ordinance 2026-235-410, amending chapter 235 zoning article 7 supplementary provisions section 235-41, residential accessory uses, and Article 9.

No Article 11 zoning board of adjustment, Section 235-70, powers and duties of zoning board of adjustment.

Councilor Hoffman, seconded by Councillor Susi.

All in favor.

And last but last not least, I move the schedule a public hearing on February 23rd, 2026.

Councilor Conan, secondly by Councillor Bogart.

No discussion.

All in favor.

Perfect.

Next, agenda item 21B.

Review list of items included on the committee reports on the City Council agenda.

Oh, this is a fun one.

Removal of any items listed on the city council agenda on the committee report section.

Requires a recommendation from the various subcommittees to remove items, followed by a vote of the city council.

I'm not gonna read all of them because we have them all in front of us.

I just have one question.

Yes, Council Susie.

If the item is taken off, but for example, time frame of demolition situation is a demolition report, or there's a question that comes up that we get from somebody in the audience or something where may where we could still bring it out.

Yeah, oh yeah.

But this is just taking it.

If you look at the agenda, I'm totally agree.

I'm skipping through here.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, this it makes perfect sense to me.

Um so I'm going to move to approve the removal of the follow following items from the committee report section of the city council agenda.

Proposed historic overlay district, time frame for demolition permits.

Um filing list, I know public works subcommittee, retaining walls policy, discussion for converting from a manual to an automatic solid waste curb side collection service, which hasn't been discussed in forever.

Wild trail funding, downtown TIFF funding.

Councilor Hoffman, seconded by Councillor Hildreth.

Any discussion?

Councilor Haynes.

Um we're gonna be uh at the point where we're gonna just uh eliminate the historic district.

If I might we had the conversation this morning, uh the planning director and I um this conversation is involved within the master plan update, and once that's completed, it should come back to the council for to continue this conversation.

So I don't think it needs to be under uh what you you know you can re-refer it to a committee, but doesn't it?

I don't think unless you see different yep, I think we're good with it.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay.

Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor.

Oh, six zero.

All right.

Next, we have agenda item 21C.

Again, a review of a list of items included under future agenda items on the city council agenda.

Removal of any items listed on the city council agenda under the future agenda items section requires approval by the city council.

Everybody sees the list on this form.

So I'm going to move to approve the removal of the following items from the future agenda items section of the city council agenda, master plan, mill for all treatment funding requests, sewer and water master plan, single stream recycling, conquered co-op, solid waste disposal cost reductions, strategic planning and goal setting, wild trail, wears beach restoration project, fair court, and quad street traffic problems and accidents.

All of these have either been uh some of them have been completed uh with what we've been trying to do, others haven't been at a committee level for a very long time.

If any of these come up for and you would like them referred to, we it's easy to send them back to a committee.

Correct.

Anybody councilor Bogart, seconded by Councilor Hildreth.

Do we have any discussion on this?

Seeing none, all in favor.

Oh agenda item 21D.

Discussion regarding repeal of ordinance 2025-5-20, 5-32, 5-33, section 5-32 relating to the Human Relations Committee.

The following motion was made.

Um it's a discussion to repeal the Human Relations Committee again.

Essentially, so if this would be uh the the vote that happened at the um government operation ordinance committee was to repeal it isn't a reconsideration because it's been to pass this time frame.

So this would be similar to if you somebody was to bring up any ordinance change.

Um it would start here to see if you wanted to move the process forward, and that's where this would stand.

Uh if you want to send it to a public hearing to have more conversations, or it can stop here or continue here.

It's up to I'm going to move to schedule a public hearing on February 23rd, 2026.

Regarding amending ordinance 5-20, 5-3-2, 5-3-3, Section 5-3-3, to strike the Human Relations Committee from the Council Committee list.

Councillor Conan.

Seconded by Councillor Bogart.

I think they have a discussion.

Okay.

Okay.

Um we're asking here is we're gonna we're gonna kill the human relations committee.

This is for a public hearing is the motion.

So the the public will be discussing a potential repeal of the ordinance that was passed by the previous city council.

Because I'm not in favor of killing the committee.

What I'm in favor of is redoing the committee from what it is today, because I think today, and this is just my perception, Mr.

Mayor, is that it's my perception is that today maybe we don't feel I don't feel that city council is the oversight of that committee.

I like to see we make a change that whatever the future human rights commission or whatever you want to call that in relations, is that we have that committee not made up of 13 people, let's say made up of five or seven, and we put that together through we select the candidates through the appointments committee process, bring it to the city council so that committee still exists under the auspices of the oversight of the of the city council.

That's that's where I'm going.

I'm not sure if this is a well it came out of the I'm trying to understand the committee recommended to repeal it, it looks like to me.

That's what looks like.

And so I'm just saying let's just go ahead and have another public hearing and then we can all vote and make a decision after at that point.

I I like this I I want to make sure that we're not putting a message out to the to the uh public that we're killing the human relations committee, because I would not be in favor of that.

If we're gonna have a public hearing to let people speak to it, I'm fine with that.

That should be our that we should do that anyway.

But is is it a is this a reason to kill it?

No.

Mr.

Mayor, if I what we're talking about here is just a motion to have the public hearing, correct.

That's that's all it is.

Yep.

It's not up or down.

No, it's not up or down, left right, sideways, crooked.

Council of Bogett Are we gonna continue discussing this at the moment?

Because I agree with uh uh uh councillor Seussy.

Uh if the current makeup that was done, that portion would have to get repealed, but there's nothing stopping to have the committee redone and allow the uh uh government ordinance committee to work out the kinks uh as you suggested.

Uh there was uh a lot of discussion uh that was moving in that direction that you were mentioning, but due to the way the ordinance is written, to make a lot of these changes, we would have to re do the whole ordinance because in order to make the way the ordinance is written with the makeup of the committee.

We would have to go through all this.

So by repealing the uh not repealing it, by taking it away, and then saying, okay, you want to have a human relations committee and blank slate and allow the government ordinance committee to finish a lot of the work, like the uh number of members, uh the the criteria and stuff like that, then that could happen also so that everybody can get a piece of the appeasement of this.

Can you may I, Mr.

Mayor?

Go ahead.

Okay.

My my question when it comes to that, Councilman Bogartz, is that once we appear or deny or cancel it, it's gonna it could be a bear to try and get it back.

So I'd like to have the motion whenever we do make the motion.

This is just a public hearing.

I understand that.

When we do make the motion, the formation of a new one as support of the council under the government operations committee be part of the same motion that we put together.

That's the way I would do it.

Okay, I think if I was formed in that motion, I would do the same thing and wrap it together.

So I I would agree that I'd be open to amending this, especially when it comes to the number of of members of the committee and how those members are appointed.

Um but I I didn't vote for it in committee, and I'm not gonna vote for it now to uh to advance removing the human relations committee completely.

I think I'd be okay amending the ordinance as passed.

You wouldn't be voting to remove it.

This is just a motion to have a public hearing.

I understand that.

Okay.

I'm not gonna vote for that either.

But if I may, Mr.

Mayor, if we're voting for just a public hearing, is this are we saying that we're gonna we're gonna uh um kill it?

Or we're just saying we're having a public hearing.

We have a public hearing pertaining to regarding the repeal of ordinance 2025 5-25, this isn't a this isn't a vote to repeal.

No, there's a the motion on the floor right now is to have a public hearing in regards to a potential repeal.

Would you when you get your agenda pack it next month if you move this forward tonight?

It would, that's the motion would be potential motion would be to repeal.

So then I'm gonna ask another question.

Okay.

And I can't attend the next meeting on the 23rd.

I made that known to the city manager.

So I would not be here for that vote if there's a public hearing and a vote or to uh to um I can call in by phone, but I don't want to have a computer.

I'm not gonna be available to zoom in, you might say, okay.

And the I would not want to um I would hope the city council would delay any vote on a public hearing or a vote to uh put this, you know, kill it or whatever you want to call it.

Because I'd like to see it wrapped up into one motion that we get rid of one and start another.

I don't I am can we considering what you just said, Councilor Susi, can I I could change this motion to the next meeting after meeting date after the 23rd?

Which would be March.

The maker could, yeah.

Well, it would be a friendly amendment.

I I think that would be acceptable so that we have a full council here.

Uh what is that to discuss this March 9th.

March 9th.

So would you ask you?

So let's let's why don't we do it this way?

Withdraw the motion and then just change the date to March 9th.

I'll make a new motion for March 9th.

We'll do a new motion for March 9th.

Well, just modifying from February 23rd to March 9th is don't have to withdraw it.

It's just a friendly amendment to the motion.

Okay, so you made the motion.

Who seconded it?

Could you seconding my motion to change it to March 9th?

No, I'm not done the discussion yet because we still have a motion on the well, yeah.

Yep.

But we have a second amendment being offered.

No.

I would just like to, if I may.

Yes, Councillor Hill.

Um if we move for the public hearing, that public hearing will only be to repeal the human relations committee, and I would not vote for that.

Okay.

I'm all for changes.

And not to repeal it.

Okay.

Why can't we just send this back to government on the government operations and ask them to come back to us with a revised ordinance?

I'll ask that for the chairman of the committee.

I would that's fine with me, because uh if that's the will of the board, then uh I am willing to want to take it on, and and I want to make sure that we we get this past the gold line.

Councillor Conan.

Yeah, I would like the public to be involved in the discussion surrounding the Human Relations Committee.

That I believe is very important that we get the input from the public on what this committee should or should not look like.

And I think we owe it to our constituents to let them speak on this matter.

Thank you.

Counselor Haynes.

Thank you.

In reference to what Councillor Conan just said, um didn't we have a public hearing?

I mean, how many times can you have a public hearing?

I'm not against a public hearing.

Okay.

But I can tell you one thing right now, I can envision you're going to have the same cast of characters, you're going to have the same conversation, and the whole works, it's just beating a dead horse.

Okay.

If there was some new information to come forward, I'm for that.

But this is, you know, here we go again.

It's just one, it's just doing this all over again.

And I'm against sending it back to the committee.

It's obvious that the committee wants to repeal it.

They're not going to make any changes to it.

And if they're going to make changes to it, the changes are going to be what they want it to be.

And guess what?

It's going to come back to us again.

And then they're going to want another public hearing.

It's obvious where this committee is going with this whole conversation.

What committee?

Government ordinance.

Isn't that you?

No.

It's me.

Councillor Bogan.

And him.

And if I may, uh I can appreciate what Councillor Haynes is anticipating, but I must uh tell you that it's not true that everybody on the ordinance committee is looking to kill this committee.

Uh there was a lot of positive discussion going on.

This motion came up, and that kind of put the discussion on hold because that motion superseded a lot of work that was going on in a positive direction.

And just to uh uh enlighten you a little bit is the fact that any time you make a modification to the ordinance, no matter what it is, it's got to come back to the council.

It has to go back through a public hearing because any ordinance change has to follow that path.

So there is no way we can get around having a public hearing.

Whether we have it now, once it comes back out of committee, it's gonna have to go back to a public hearing anyway.

Well, currently as it is, there is no human relations committee right now.

It's it's uh there is none.

It's kind of in flux because of the way the motions were done back in December were let's get it passed, the pass it, figure out everything in the government's committee.

And I don't think anywhere in in writing or in video is gonna say anything different.

It was voted 5-1 to pass it and then let the new council do its things.

The council it's the uh government ordinance was already working on it.

They were having the discussions over each of the items, and this is uh uh in no way during that portion of the discussions did anybody say, Let's kill this thing.

A motion came up during committee.

Got seconded, and got seconded, and it brought it here for that discussion.

So I asked that the council send it back if if they so choose, send it back to us so we can finish doing the work to get this done with.

Council Susie.

If could you turn around and take the motion that we have in front of us today that's been brought to the table, take out the words to strike the human relations committee, but to review the purpose and actions or whatever we want to call it, because I don't like the idea of striking it means that we're killing it, and there'll be a beer to bring it back.

Well, they do, I think they do want to strike it in order to redo hearing the makeup, because the ordinance was written in a manner that actually has to totally be wiped out to start over anyway.

We set up a public hearing and to come back to us and we just regurgitate the same thing all over again.

Well, there's gonna get I mean it's gonna be public hearing after public hearing.

I don't know.

You know, and then come under the office guardrails.

Guardrails, guardrails and all.

I don't think we need a public hearing to do what you're asking.

Counselor Hillju.

Yes.

My problem with this moving to a public hearing is the only thing that can come out of this is to strike the human relations committee.

It's just a public hearing and there's no decision.

That's right, but that's the only if voting on it, there's only two things that can happen.

We can get rid of it or keep it.

And if the government operations and ordinance subcommittee wants to come to us with changes, I would be open to a public hearing on that, but not where the only purpose of this vote would be to eliminate it.

And and I would also add that we have had many, I attended many of the council meetings prior to being elected, where this was discussed ad nauseum.

No, it's gonna it's gonna keep going.

We know exactly who would show up and who would say the same thing as Counselor Haynes.

Counselor Haynes.

Thank you.

I'd like to make a motion that we postpone this indefinitely.

Indefinitely postpone motion well again.

Is that what you're doing?

There's already a motion on the floor, but there's already a motion you can't indefinite does supersede.

So if you do we have a second for that motion now, Council Susi has seconded.

Now we're back on to another discussion about indefinitely postponing.

No discussion on table.

It's not a table.

Oh, it's indefinitely postponed, which is of lower level than a table.

Table is a higher level.

I agree with that.

Yeah.

Um is that an indefinite postponement of the motion?

Yes.

To repeal.

Oh you indefinitely postpone a motion.

The written motion the way it is.

I'll have to go back to committee now.

That's not a good question.

I still think it needs work in the committee to come back to us.

Yeah, it's still sitting stalemate.

Well, indefinitely postponing this.

You got the correct question.

Counselor Connelly.

I think the underlying purpose of my original motion was it so we could get public input on the human relations committee as it currently exists or as it may exist.

Well, it doesn't exist right now.

And that's why we need input.

I agree with you.

I agree with you.

And I think we owe it to our constituents to let them speak on the matter.

This is a new council, it's a new mayor, and we need to iron this.

As counselor Haynes said, this has been going on for a long time.

Let's get it right, and we can do that.

If we work collectively together, we can make this right.

And that's the purpose of my amendment.

I just don't like the word strike.

We're striking it as it currently exists, and we'll have a held judge exist.

In looking at this and being witness for the past few months, or a month ago and the and the previous months, we there were many constituents, both for and against that came, as I mentioned with all due respect.

We have heard from the public ad nauseum about this, and I'm not saying we shouldn't continue to hear from them, but this proposal as it stands is solely to eliminate the committee, and I don't think it should be eliminated.

All right, we have a motion on the floor.

We've had discussion.

All in favor.

What are we voting on?

Two motions on them.

Oh no, there's only one motion.

The indefinite higher priorities are indefinite postponement.

So yeah.

All in favor.

Councillor Haynes, Councillor Hoffman, Councillor Susie.

Can I can I before we vote?

Can I just clarify that the indefinite um postponement is strictly for the motion for this hearing?

Right.

Okay.

But does that go back now to committee again to get worked on?

It's definitely postponed.

It's indefinitely postponed.

How do we get it?

I still think that's the same thing.

Well, if we're just we can't bring it back, we're just indefinitely suspending the community.

You're going to kill it doesn't, but this is the first one.

I don't know what nowhere in my all of my conversations, counselor, have I ever said the word kill the committee.

All I've ever said and fought for was to get this committee to this side of the council of 26.

That's all I've ever done.

Everything I fought for was modification to the rules.

Modifications to help make things better.

I've never once, and I wish you would stop putting that kind of word in my mouth that I said kill it.

I never have.

Council Susie.

Can we take out and just redo the wording that to strike the human relations committee and come up with something that means we wanted to go back and come back with what the human relations committee should look like, how it formed, and talked about again.

But then we shouldn't be scheduling a public hearing.

We should be referring it back to committee.

Right.

I'm okay with that too.

Okay.

Counselor Hilljith.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Has Mark moved to postpone indefinitely.

Definitely postponed.

That puts this on the shelf.

It has no bearing on the government operations committee to come up with an alternate plan to move forward.

The as long as the council says that the government ordinance committee should continue working on this, then that's fine.

But it has to come from us.

I can accept that.

I don't have a problem with that.

But uh I don't like the word striking here.

That's all it's repeal.

And you know, um if they can come back and fruitfully produce something that is substantial and moves this forward, that's fine.

But if they're going to come back with it some whatever they can come up with, okay, wasting our time.

We have priorities.

And Mayor, I would like to point out that you know, your survey, you know, we talked about taxes, housing, etc.

and so on.

Um you didn't mention that the human relations committee was on one of those surveys of the most utmost importance.

No, I th I think we are wasting a lot of time and a lot of resources on a committee that do we I like to have the question do we or don't we need to add from the committee that comes from you guys, Council Conan.

Um with that said, uh in New Hampshire, we have 234 communities.

We have 13 cities.

Laconia is the only one with a is the only city with a human relations committee.

Um there is one in Durham, and that's it.

There is a statewide committee that is supposed to handle these things, and honestly, that's where it should be left.

We do not need another layer of government to try to tell us uh how we have correct morals or what religion we should believe in.

I just don't see the effectiveness of the committee, the way it's the way it's currently comprised.

And there's there's no purpose for it other than MLK Day, which was held in the church and cost the city over $1,800.

So I just don't understand why Laconia finds it necessary to have this committee when we'd be the only city, and out of 234 people, we'd only be one of two.

And I think we owe it to our constituents, our citizens, to let us know if we really do need this.

And if the they say we do, then we do it right, and we make a proper committee.

As it's comprised now, there's 13 people, way too big.

It is not manageable, and it needs to be modified.

Well, the whole issue I see, they don't have a purpose or a mission yet.

Have you guys worked on a purpose or a mission?

They want to repeal it.

Counselor Hill Jack.

That is not true.

We have been working on the purpose.

Uh and I think uh Councillor Hoffman would agree.

We had worked on the purpose and we were took input from the public on uh additional purpose that seemed to be within the confounds of what that committee would do.

And we were working on the makeup of the committee.

We were uh uh in discussions over guardrails on what was gonna be could be discussed, uh, and all of that.

So once again, I want to repeat the committee is not sitting there trying to kill a committee.

Councillor Hilldrift.

Yes.

Um, what I would suggest is that the committee, the government operations committee, go back, put something together that's going to be acceptable to this council.

It always takes.

Now, can I clarify that?

When you say that, that means modifying the ordinance to make the adjustments that are necessary to complete that process.

That means because the ordinance says 13 people, the the ordinance says all these different things that don't function well.

So when we make these adjustments, it's gonna go to the ordinance of modifying the ordinance, and then at that point, we just can't vote to change the ordinance.

We have to have send uh those changes to the ordinance back to public hearing, and then if there's modifications again, we gotta work those and work those issues out.

This could be dragged on for no one's trying to drag it on.

We're trying to get it across, but I just want to say there's gonna be another public hearing any way you look at it.

We're gonna have now.

Is this public hearing?

It I I think it's preemptive of what's gonna do it uh to get it across the line.

Uh at some point it could uh March, probably uh we have to have another meeting, a meaningful meeting to finish our discussions and stuff, and uh hammer out some of these issues.

Uh I think we were making positive uh advances towards it.

So I do have to see if we modify the motion some that would entail us to be able to make the changes to the ordinance, because that's the next quick the the question is the ordinance itself is not good.

We are spending so much time, energy, and resources on a small committee that really has no say exactly in the code.

The only other thing I'd ask uh Mr.

Representative, okay, if there is a state committee of this, okay, uh there must be a statute or something or some kind of formation form.

I think there is a committee within the on the state level, I don't know exactly what it's called, but it kind of kind of along the lines.

If I can get a copy of whatever that is, maybe that takes care of handling this whole thing, and we don't have to.

I I don't know.

Okay.

Exactly.

That's right.

City manager be active.

Just to try to get you guys kind of back on the same on the same path here, and I'm certainly not speaking in front of you, but if his motion is to indefinitely postpone, and that's when you're gonna build on if his motion is to definitely postpone um the public hearing to strike the human relations committee.

You could all you could then add to that an amendment to that to say and refer back to the government operation ordinance committee to work on amending ordinance 5-32.

That would sort of hit what I think what he was getting at, and what I inferred from listening to you guys, if that's that makes sense to me.

I would Councillor Haynes.

I would accept that as a friendly motion.

Who seconded that Councillor Susie?

Would you accept that?

I will accept it and I'll second it.

Something I did earlier.

So we have a new motion on the floor.

It is through indef well, how are we going to wear this now?

We can't indefinitely postpone and then make a no, it can go back to committee.

If I may is maybe tabling it that's what I was saying instead of indefinitely postponing, would be more appropriate.

And that way uh it would give you the leeway to make that add-on motion that it go back to government ordinance.

If I may, but an indefinite postpone is a killer, it's a killer.

Not something we use here for terminology, so that's if this is the state of one that's the stage.

It's dead and it's gone.

Counselor Conant.

Yes.

I would like to request that we do this, what we are doing right here all over again.

It's apparent that or and uh correct me if I'm wrong.

Is there a recording of what we've been talking about?

Yes, sir, there is.

Oh, okay.

Okay, it's just not live, so people will be able to see it.

Yeah, okay.

Counselor Hildreth.

I just want to point out that if we postpone indefinitely and vote on it.

There's nothing saying that we can't come back with a motion.

Indefinitely postponement kill uh counselor bogert.

That is what you do is kill it.

Yep.

That's a killer.

All right.

So then a secondary, because you can't kill it and then go by the caveat.

You have to kill it, and then say we all do.

That's that's if you kill this, you still have an active ordinance.

Do you have an active ordinance that's that's running?

And I don't know if that was the intent of the beginning of this conversation either.

That it doesn't prevent us from making changes to this committee in the future, just like we just are looking to change.

I I think at this point a table motion would probably be the best bet, but that's just my personal opinion.

Well, I would second Councillor Haynes motion to postpone indefinitely.

I think it's already been we already have a second.

Okay, yeah, we already have a second.

We just need a vote.

You're right.

Let's go to our vote then this is what to indefinitely postpone.

Postpone.

I request a voice vote on this and not a hands.

Okay.

Roll call.

Roll counselor Hildred.

I vote yay to postpone indefinitely.

Councillor Seussy?

Nay.

Councilor Hoffman?

Yes.

Councilor Haynes?

Yes.

Counselor Bogart?

No.

Counselor Conant?

No.

So that's three yeses, three no's, and Mayor Boards, you break the tie.

So now I'll make another motion if you don't mind.

I'd like to make a motion to table this and send it back to committee for more discussion.

I second.

Council Susi.

Secondly by Councillor Bogart.

Any discussion?

That's a table.

There is no disagree.

There's no discussion on tables, you're right.

I'm sorry, I missed the second.

Counselor who uh councillor Bogart.

Councillor Hildred?

No.

Councilor Seussy.

Yes.

Councillor Hoffman?

Yes.

Councilor Haynes?

No.

Councillor Bogart?

Yes.

Councillor Conant?

No.

So that's three no's and three yeses again, Mayor Boards.

No.

So no.

You got to vote on the motion as is.

Didn't get it didn't get tabled.

It didn't get indefinitely postponed.

So the motion is what it is.

Okay.

Roll call again.

Please.

Can we just go back?

I'm not to interrupt, but can we just make sure we have a first and second and all that for that original motion then?

Well we did.

I know we do, but I just may for her so she has it.

The the original motion I had uh hold on schedule counselor Conant wanting to schedule the public hearing seconded by Councillor Bogart.

So and that will be to schedule the public hearing.

Is it still February 23rd or is it March 9th?

So Councillor Seussy can be here.

Okay.

So I corrected that.

And this will be my roll call as well.

Yes, please.

Councilor Hildred.

No.

Councilor Seussy.

No.

Councilor Hoffman?

No.

Councillor Haynes?

No.

Councillor Pogart.

Yes.

Councilor Conant?

Yes.

So that is motion fails.

Councillor Bogan.

I would like to entertain a motion that this continue to go to the government ordinance committee so that it can finish being worse done.

Second vote.

Second by Councillor Hoffman.

Discussion.

Any discussion?

Back another roll call, I guess.

All right.

Spinning around.

Counselor Hildreth.

Yes.

Counselor Susi.

Yes.

Counselor Hoffman?

Yes.

Councilor Haynes?

No.

Counselor Bogart?

Yes.

Councillor Conant.

No.

All right.

Two four to two.

Motion passes.

All right.

Back on to the next agenda item.

Mr.

Mayor, if I could just jump in.

Um they have been working on the issue.

Uh it appears that we're still not live streaming, but we are recording, so it we should be up tomorrow when you know.

Fair enough.

Hopefully there's no issues.

All right.

Agenda item 22A resolution 202602.

Request for funding for mill foil treatment of Porgus Bay and Lake Opeachy.

Um, I know we had a discussion on this last time we were here.

Uh city was it's a grant acceptance of $57,100.

I think there were two questions that you guys had, and the plan directors passing around just a note on the those.

Correct.

You can explain them if you if you if you'd like, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you.

We are going to have more.

Do we need more?

Oh, we should have what two questions did you guys.

Good evening.

Um so you asked uh at the last meeting uh the historical uh cost for the millful treatment as presented by the state.

Uh so I went back for five years.

Um I have that data on there.

Um then I also have in there that last year is when the state decided they're gonna only do the herbicide treatment every other year.

Um and I also reached out to the conservation commission, uh, the chair Dean Hanson to ask if we were appropriately funding this, and he agreed with the with the course of action we were taking to funding the the treatment for the evasive species.

So this is actually cheaper than 2024.

Yep, that's a big savings.

So I like it.

Those are always good things.

Savings is good.

Any way we can save, I'm happy.

All right, I am going to move to waiver reading of resolution 2026-02 in its entirety and read by title only.

Councillor Conant, seconded by Councillor Bogart.

Any discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor.

6-0.

I move a second reading of resolution 2026-02 relative to the acceptance of a 2026 New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, exotic aquatic plant control grant and the amount of $57,100, and appropriate $57,100 to their administration non-departmental account as presented.

Councilor Hoffman, seconded by Councillor Hildreth.

Any discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor.

6-0.

Last but not least, I move to approve resolution 2026-02 relative to the acceptance of a 2026.

New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, exotic aquatic plant control grant in the amount of $57,100, and appropriate $57,100 to their administration non-departmental account as presented, and to authorize the city managers to sign all documents related to this matter.

Councillor Conan.

Seconded by Councillor Hildreth.

Any discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor.

Six nothing.

Agenda item 22B, termination of the intermunicipal agreements between the City of Laconia and the town of Guilford governing the development of the lake's business park.

We had a lot of discussion about this earlier.

I just have a couple things to throw in when you're when you're ready for me.

Go ahead.

Okay.

So on uh so there was one clause in the original agreement that talks about returning of any monies between the two communities.

Um the only money is in the capital reserve fund, which is in which is um talked about within the amendment.

So there's we don't have that on 1.3 on the second page.

Um the end it says it terminates on 2040.

The original one said 2050.

Uh Guilford wanted to do 2036 or 2040, so we went with the 2040.

So that is something you can adjust.

Uh you know, I would have to bring that back as part of the negotiations, but if that's um acceptable, I think 2040 is fine.

I had no issues with that.

And on 2.2, that was a clause that was added.

Um, that was uh related to with the build out that they want to do with their capital stuff.

What happens if it's over the million dollars that are in there?

This releases us from any fiscal uh responsibility on anything above that amount of money.

That's how I I worked with Guilford on this, I worked with our attorneys on this.

They're fine that they're both fine of this, and and I'm fine.

So with that being said, I move to approve the successor agreement with the town of Guilford pertaining to the lakes business park intermunicipal agreement agreed upon in 2001, and to authorize the city manager to sign all related documents, councillor Hoffman, seconded by Councillor Hildreth.

Any discussion?

Councilor Voget.

Thank you.

Uh I was just curious.

There was signage for the industrial park at the corner of uh and it is along with that corner uh despicable to be the kindest words I can use.

The sign is lay in halfway crooked and stuff, and it's like so we all take a look.

I you're you're right.

I've seen it.

You we'll see what we can do about that.

Thank you.

Yep.

Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor.

6-0.

That appears to be all on the agenda for today, so I move to adjourn.

I gotta sign this for Keaton.

Time.

Oh, the time is 9 20 p.m.

I'm sorry.