SUNAPEE BOARD OF SELECTMEN
MEETING
7:00 PM Town Office Meeting Room
Monday
March 9, 2009
Present: Richard Leone Chairman, Stephen White Vice-Chairman, William Roach, Emma Smith, Fred Gallup, Donna Nashawaty Town Manager, Tony Bergeron, Road Agent.
Also Present: Katie Richardson Intertown Record, Ron Verblauw, Sue Gottling, Charlotte Brown, Betty Tatlock, Brian Garland, Doug Munro.
The meeting was called to order by Chairman Richard Leone at 7:00PM
Stephen White noted that this was Chairman Richard Leone last Board of Selectmen’s meeting. He thanked him for his many years of dedicated service to the Town of Sunapee.
Tony Bergeron-Used Equipment Purchase
Tony would like to purchase a used sweeper, the price is $2,500. The sweeper would be purchased for parts. Motion to let Tony purchase the sweeper by Emma Smith, seconded by Stephen White. All in Favor. Unanimously.
Public Hearing opened at 7:10PM
Ron Verblauw presented a preliminary report that will require extensive research and a building of a consensus within the community. The reason for the report is to provide information to both the Selectmen and the public, who had requested that we as a community explore the possibilty of having public TV in Sunapee. The first question would be the meaning of community television, which is normally referred to as “PEG Access Television”. “P” or public channel is used by community members to televise whatever programs they create or sponsor. “E” or education channel is usually turned over to the local school district to determine who can use it and what kinds of programs will be shown. “G” or government channel is most often used to show gavel to gavel coverage of
government meetings. Programming for PEG channels is usually produced by community volunteers. It has been found that volunteers will ultimately have to be replaced with paid personal unless a large cadre of persons interested in television will come forward. A questionnaire would be distributed to the entire community that will have both information and derive the consensus of the households within our community to support public television. A franchise fee up to 5% of the cable subscriber’s bill and the level of their TV subscription, ie basic service or various levels would be used to support the public TV. Comcast would collect those fees and turn those over to the town for handling and supporting the new public TV. Ron Verblauw has been talking with a number of organizations that would be of great help to Sunapee. When discussing personnel with active public television stations, they have indicated that when they started, they had volunteers, and as time progressed paid
staff. Ron has spoke with Jonathan Reed at the Middle-High School, to determine the viability of students participating in this program. Jonathan indicated that they have students skilled in performing the necessary screening and preparing video for production. Ron recommends the following to the Selectboard and encourage them to move in that directionas rapidly as possible.
- Form a new committee with a new Mission Statement and Directive, to accomplish as rapidly as possible information for the community to understand the various possibilities for supporting public television. This would go out in the form of a questionnaire as to whether they would support this new concept.
- Financing can be via a 5% franchise fee on all Comcast customers within the community levied on their television bill.
- Determine whether the community would have their own equipment and location for a studio or they would affiliate with Newport, NH and become a~combination of the two communities.~
- The structure of the enterprise could be under municipal guidance or a 501 C (3)~Corporation with a completely separate board of directors.~
- Depending upon what is decided on the foregoing items they will ultimately have to develop an executive director who will work on a part time basis.~ Each of the public television stations I contacted has only part-time management with the exception of White River Junction, VT.~
- The final decision would then be made by the community as to their support that would be expressed in the form of a Warrant Article that would be approved and move forward.~
Ron will do some more research and update the Board at the next Selectmen’s meeting.
Selectmen’s Action
Annual Agreement for the Mt. Sunapee. Motion to accept the annual agreement for use of dock to the Mt. Sunapee II by Emma Smith, seconded Stephen White. Unanimous.
Motion to accept the appointments of Terri White and Lisa Meehan as Alternates to the Library Board of Trustees for a term of 1 year beginning 3/9/09 to 03/24/10 by Emma Smith, seconded by Fred Gallup. Unanimous.
Town Manager’s Report
On Friday March 6th, Donna received an email from Maura Carroll, General Council NHMA, that the Governor had requested that the Rooms and Meals be put back into the Towns budget, that he rescinded his 2 year suspension,but he passed that to his committees. We don’t know what the committees response is. Fred Gallup thinks we should keep in the back of our minds that the Governor will probably come back after this money at a later date. The Rooms and Meals to Sunapee was $136,500 and it is coming back to us. But, the 31,600 in Revenue Sharing is still missing. The group agreed that they are not going to let up the pressure, they are still going forward and feel you can’t lower the expection on the taxpayer at the local level.
In addition, Donna spoke with Shaun Carroll last week to see if the School Board was aware that the Governor was taking Town revenues away and replacing with educational stimulus money. He was not aware of any of that piece. I suggested if this kept going on the same discussion that maybe the Board would be open to having a joint Board meeting to talk about the effects on our tax base. He was very agreeable to doing that. William Roach wanted to know if TRA (Town Road Aid) was included in the $31,600. Donna stated that TRA is now called Highway Block Grants and no it was not. The Block Grant money is still coming. There is a designation in the law that says that must go, they haven’t figured out a way to “tap” into that yet. William asked if the increase in the Gas Tax would mean the Towns and Cities
would get more money. The presentation Donna saw if the Gas Tax goes up that the Towns get 12% of the total amount collected. The public hearing on the Governor’s budget will be Thursday, March 12th at 6:00PM in Claremont at the River Valley Community College. Richard Leone, William Roach and Emma Smith will be attending the meeting.
Motion to adjourn: Unanimous Meeting adjourned at 8:52PM
Submitted by,
Barbara Vaughn
Administrative Assistant Approved:
Richard Leone, Chairman Stephen White, Vice-Chairman
William Roach Frederick Gallup
Emma Smith
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