REGULAR CITY COUNCIL MEETING – FEBRUARY 7, 2011
Mayor Grenier called the regular City Council Meeting to order at approximately 7:29 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall.~ The pledge of allegiance to the flag preceded roll call. Present: Councilors Remillard, Landry, McCue, Danderson, Evans, Rozek and Poulin. Also present: Pat MacQueen, Linda and Dick Lafleur, Jonathan Edwards, FCCLA Class members, Jake Hallgren, Bobby Haggart and the press. Mayor Grenier welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming to the meeting tonight.
Minutes, Previous Meetings
Councilor Rozek stated that his comments were incorrect on page five, eleventh paragraph of the January 17 Work Session minutes. He had asked questions and they were turned into statements. He would like the following amendments to be made: “Councilor Rozek stated the big problem is with people plowing snow into sidewalks and is the City going to start fining them? Is this discussion to notify all that this will not be tolerated? Some plow trucks don’t have the power to windrow snow and is that part of the issue?” Councilor Rozek moved with a second by Councilor Danderson to amend the minutes of the January 17 Work Session as stated above. So moved, the motion carried.
Councilor Danderson then moved with a second by Councilor Remillard to accept the amended minutes of the January 17 Work Session, minutes of the January 17 Regular Meeting and January 24 Work Session. So moved, the motion carried.
Disbursements: It was recommended by the Committee on Accounts/Claims to pay all bills dated 1/20/11–2/09/2011 for a total cash disbursement of $2,252,109.35 Draft #1633.~ Councilor Remillard moved with a second by Councilor McCue Landry * to accept the disbursement summary and pay all bills as recommended by the Committee on Accounts/Claims. So moved, the motion carried. * Minutes corrected per Councilor McCue request at the 2/22/2011 City Council Meeting.
PUBLIC COMMENTS:
Jake Hallgren, 349 High Street, BHS student thanked Council for the work they do. At the School Budget Meeting he heard there was a significant budget cut to the schools. He is not here to say we need more money or to tell Council what to do but would like to work together to solve the issue without cutting teachers and classes. According to Jake, BHS has four Spanish One classes but is slated to lose Calculus and Statistics with this budget. Some Colleges require four years of a language and students will not be accepted there if they don’t have the required classes. He is going for engineering and Calculus has been taken away. With budget cuts he cannot have the required classes needed to apply to many colleges. He asked if there is any way to shift money over toward education from
this past years’ budget that can be used to reinstate those classes. Jake’s observation is that maybe things could have been shifted around.
Mayor Grenier thanked Jake for coming to the meeting tonight to voice his concern about his future. It takes courage to come in front of an older group of people and speak your mind.
Councilor Landry told Jake he struck a chord with him about what he said since he just spoke to Tom Sweeney about the same things. Councilor Landry asked Jake if he could not take Statistics and Calculus what other option would he have? He also thanked Jake for coming tonight.
Jake replied that some teachers are doing pre-studies on their own time and prepping students for the AP test in May. There is nothing else for statistics so there is no other option. About his comments regarding the consolidation of classes, he wanted to make it clear that he in no way implied to free up classes was a way to get rid of more teachers. It would just be a way to get rid of unnecessary lower end classes. Since they seem to have a higher amount of those with fewer students, they could combine those classes. The higher end classes are filled up. They could push lower end classes together since they have fewer students and add more higher end level classes since more kids are going to higher end colleges.
Jake concluded that when the prison comes in there will be families looking to move to Berlin and they will seriously be looking at our education system because they want their kids to get the best education possible.
Councilor Rozek thanked Jake for expressing his opinion. His question to Jake was if he shared his observations and concerns with the Superintendent? He also asked Jake if he made these observations on his own or by doing a head count? Jake replied that you just have to look at classes and have conversations about schedules to know the numbers of people in those classes. He offered to get a head count if Council wanted to see actual figures. Councilor Rozek said it was not necessary to get an actual head count but thanked Jake very much for coming here to explain things to Council.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
- Council Committee Reports – No reports
NEW BUSINESS
- Resolution 2011-04 Supporting the Restoration of the Central and Northern Segments of the Conway Bypass to the New Hampshire Ten Year Transportation Improvement Program. (1st read)
Councilor Danderson moved with a second by Councilor Remillard to table the resolution and schedule a public hearing on February 22, 2011. So moved, the motion carried.
Housing Matters
We have submitted a Letter of Intent to compete for NSP3 (Neighborhood Stabilization Program. There is total of $4.5 million in the NSP budget and we have applied for $3.5 M of it in renovation and demolitions. This is a statewide competition in 48 tracking census tracts which can compete for the funding, and Berlin has three of those census tracts. The likelihood is that any award will get divided up into 2-4 winners. We hope our past performance as well as our readiness to move forward with NSP 3 combined with our tremendous need will serve us well in the competition. We have awarded two additional demolition contracts in the past couple of weeks. One for 241 High Street to Fortier and Associates for $9,777 and the other for 508 Champlain to Tran Bros. Construction LLC in the amount of $9700.
DRA Assessing Review
Attached is a copy of the review of DRA of assessments so that they can perform their annual equalization of local assessed values. In this review, they found that our assessments are at 100% which means that our values overall are exactly where they should be in relation to the market. It should be noted that the attached data sheets show a Coefficient of Dispersion (COD) for the City on the whole to be 9.1. Anything under 10 for the COD is considered to be very good and compares with the COD in the 14-15 range for the City before the revaluation. Generally, anything below 20 is considered acceptable.
Snow
In spite of all the snow, (February started out with 16" of snow in the first week or over 3' since mid-January) the Public Works Department reports that we have through January used only about half of our snow budget. This is better than many of the municipalities we hear in the news which have already used all of their budgets. Much of the credit for this goes to the PW crews who now see all of the cost numbers and are working very hard to try to keep those numbers down. They have found satisfactory sand which is about half the price of the sand we had been using. They also have been working to minimize fuel use. Our average cost per storm is around $25,000.
Waste District Discussions on Leachate
Another lengthy conference call between City and District staff and both party's engineers and attorney's was held this past Friday. We are still working on refining the issues that were in the draft agreement which the Council has seen. Progress is good and the draft should be completed soon. When it is finalized, it will be brought back to the Council for approval.
Wild Goose Chase
HB 293, which would phase out the pollution exemptions which the Mayor and Council have supported for a long time, was supposed to have a hearing at 2pm last Thursday. I made a point to be there to testify but as so often happens with trying to testify in Concord, the hearing is either ridiculously late or postponed altogether. In this case it was postponed altogether for a couple of weeks. Attached is a copy of the letter I would have submitted to the Municipal and County Affairs Committee which had been scheduled to hear the bill.
North Country Council Survey
To date we have received only two responses from the Council on the survey we passed out several weeks ago to complete this survey for the North Country Council on the Northern Pass project. Please try to get those in this week.
LSR 930 allowing Auto Dealerships to process motor vehicle registrations
City Clerk Patrick brought to my attention LSR 930 which the Town Clerk's Association opposes. The bill proposed by the New Hampshire Automobile Dealer's Association (NHADA) would allow dealerships to process motor vehicle registrations electronically using a 3rd party vendor. As indicated in their attached communication, the Town Clerk's Association is concerned about potential for loss of revenue, residency issues, additional costs to municipalities for auditing and reconciliation of monies; and loss of control.
NH Request for Information from Prison Contractors
Attached is a copy obtained by Mayor Grenier of an RFI put out by the State Department of Corrections in mid-January seeking information, or in effect pre-proposals, on how the State DOC might provide for the reduction in use and eventual replacement of the existing State Prison for Men in Concord and the State Women's Prison in Goffstown with one of more of the following:
- Expansion of the existing state facility in Berlin.
- Construction of one or more facilities for its adult inmate population (men and women, all classifications).
- The establishment of a multi-state correctional facility.
This is a very broad RFI from the DOC which really is asking for any all ideas anyone might have on how the DOC might best deal with its growing prison population.
RSA Booklets No Longer Available
Starting with Executive Councilor Ray Burton, we checked with the State for the little yellow and blue booklets containing the RSA 273-A laws on collective bargaining and the RSA 91-A right-to-know laws. These used to come out of the Attorney General's Offices but now are on the respective web sites of the PELRB and the AG's office.
PWD Monthly Report and Manager's Timekeeping – Available in the City Manager’s Office
Mayor Grenier asked the City Manager to explain what “Coefficient of Dispersion” (COD) means so everyone can understand. The City Manager explained that the coefficient of dispersion in assessing is a statistical tool used to measure the uniformity of assessments when looking at assessment/sales data. The more individual property assessment/sales ratios are arrayed closely around the median ratio, or the greater the central tendency, the lower the coefficient of dispersion is resulting in more uniform or usually higher quality assessments.
Councilor Rozek said the news stated that we have the lowest tax values in the state. He asked by looking at that, could we get readjusted again? Will it have an effect on that at all? The City Manager replied no and state law mandates we have a reval every five years.
Councilor Danderson moved with a second by Councilor Poulin to accept the City Manager’s Report and place it on file. So moved, the motion carried
- Mayor’s Report – Proclamation: FCCLA week February 7 through 13, 2011.
Mayor Grenier received a letter of resignation from Councilor Cayer effective immediately. Although he only worked with Councilor Cayer for a little over a year and they had some differences, Councilor Cayer cared about the City of Berlin and was passionate about the ATV trail development. Tim shall be missed. At the Work Session, Council decided to advertise and accept letters of interest until February 24 and to conduct interviews on Monday February 28. Councilor Danderson moved with a second by Councilor Poulin to accept Councilor Cayer’s resignation effective immediately. So moved, the motion carried.
Councilor Poulin moved with a second by Councilor McCue to accept the Mayor’s report and place it on file. So moved, the motion carried.
- Public Comments - No comments
- COUNCIL COMMENTS
Councilor McCue mentioned that although he was not here for the work session discussion on legal fees, his concerns would be more appropriate in a non-meeting with Council. He is pleased that the Public Works and Pollution Control Departments are running smoothly with no safety incidents and appreciates the hard work they are doing this winter. The Ward Two Councilor received a call from a constituent who was told to call his City Councilor with a complaint about snow removal. The fact of the matter is that Councilor McCue drove by the person’s house and noticed that when the person’s driveway and the driveway next door get plowed, the snow is piled onto the sidewalk.
Regarding the two pieces of legislation that the City Manager mentioned, he would like to see Council oppose LSR 930 and send written correspondence because it is not right to take work away from City and Town Clerks. On HB 293 regarding phasing out pollution exemptions, he is not sure when the new hearing is scheduled. He strongly urged Council to call or see their State Reps and make sure they understand the importance of supporting that bill.
He attended the School Board meeting last week. This is his fourth budget and he noticed that the tenor has improved greatly and he appreciates that things are getting better. The schools put together a pamphlet with interesting statistics and he encouraged Council to read it. They are grappling with sources of revenue being down and costs of benefits are up 18%. The Superintendent mentioned they negotiated with Harvard Pilgrim to bring that amount down to 10%. Last year, he was a strong advocate about holding a flat tax rate and is pleased they were able to do that and that the increase was due to assessed values. The difficulty is that revenues are down and getting tighter. He appreciates the Board of Education and Superintendent’s budget efforts.
Mayor Grenier asked Councilor McCue if he wanted to take a position by vote on LSR 930. Councilor McCue then moved with a second by Councilor Danderson to take a position on LSR 930. The Mayor supports fighting against this bill even though he works for a company that is a member of the Automobile Dealers’ Association. It is a poor piece of legislation that is not well written. All the clerks in the state and the office provide protection from having someone slip through their hands and are in line to catch someone who should not register cars. It is a good protection to have. All votes were in the affirmative with the exception of Councilor Evans who voted no. So moved, the motion carried.
- Adjournment: There being no further business before the Mayor and Council at this time, Councilor Danderson moved with a second by Councilor Poulin to adjourn the meeting. So moved, Mayor Grenier declared the Regular Meeting adjourned at approximately 8:15 p.m.
A True Record, Attest:
Debra A. Patrick, CMC
City Clerk
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