City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to City of Keen in Focus. Thanks so much for listening. Hello and welcome back to our next episode of City of Keen in Focus. My name is Asa Kramer and I am joined by a little bit of a crowd. Today we have some great guests. I'm joined by Elizabeth Ferland, our city manager. I'm joined by Mary Brunner, our senior planner. and I'm joined by Gordon Levery who is the chair of our energy and climate committee. Hi everyone. Hi. Great. Yeah, we have a good discussion coming up. We've asked Mary and Gordon to join us today to talk about the sepacer program.

Yeah, sepacer. So, tell us all about it and why the energy and climate committee recommended the city council move forward and what you're hoping will accomplish. CPACE. It stands for clean energy property assessed clean energy and resiliency. C-Pacer. This was just enabled by the state legislature in 2025. They passed Senate Bill 4. And it's administered by the New Hampshire Business and Finance Authority. And this is a little bit different. Some people may be familiar with the CPACE program that was the predecessor to this that put a a really large administrative burden on municipalities.

And so that program was never really adopted or used. A great thing about the CPACER program is that the administration and all of that oversight burden is taken on by the New Hampshire Business and Finance Authority. Wow. We like that. We like that a lot. Yes. It is a program that utilizes private financing and doesn't cost any tax dollars.

That is amazing. It's rare when the state is agreeing to take on the burden of a program to be honest. So, it is really a benefit when they are willing to do that. City of Ke's a relatively larger community, especially when you look around our region. There are a lot of smaller towns around us and they don't have a lot of administrative help. So by the state taking on the administrative burden, hopefully it provides an opportunity for everyone.

Yeah. And it's also even though the name is focused on clean energy and resiliency, this is really an economic development program. So it helps commercial property owners and developers access private sector financing on fairly advantageous terms for any improvement that will decrease water use, energy use, demand for water energy projects that will be providing clean energy or anything that will increase the resiliency of the property which what they mean by that is it includes a whole variety of things. So projects that will improve air quality, flood mitigation, snow mitigation, energy storage, and micro grids. So think, you know, if the power goes out, will your facility still be able to operate? They include alternative vehicle charging infrastructure, fire and wind resistance. So really, there's a wide variety of projects that are eligible for this. How do we get that out to the people doing the projects, right? because it sounds like it really could be a variety of things that a developer might be already doing as part of their project.

Yeah, this proposal first came to the climate committee back in November, I believe, and we had a lot of questions about what the program was and how it would be implemented and what the impact might be on the city and city staff. We had representatives in touch from New Hampshire business finance authority and clean energy New Hampshire who came and made it clear this is for commercial properties and it's for including multif family units five greater number of units and the property owners can either be building new or can be improving an existing property but the goal is that the loan which is through a private financer with administration through the New Hampshire business finance authority they are going to save money in the long term so the project work that's done should be a cost savings that exceed the cost of the loan. And the other thing that's important is that the loan the lean stays with the property for say up to 30 years. If uh the owner sells the property after 10 years, the lean stays with the property. The new owner can get the benefits of the energy savings and cost savings that's inherent in the property at that point. But it really is designed to save money, to sort of do good things and and save money at the same time. I think that in terms of how it's going to get out there, I really think the banks are going to get it out there. The loan officers are aware of this program. If you're coming in to try to finance a commercial project, I'm sure the loan officer is going to look at the work to be done and if it falls within this umbrella is going to encourage people to look into the CPACER program. contractors as well. I think it would be a really smart move on their part to know about this program and be able to let their clients know about it because it could increase the value of the projects that they are doing.

Should we be letting the banks know, letting the contractors know once we have an ordinance in place to authorize this program? Yes.

Yeah. So, right now the city council has heard this presentation. They liked the idea, they approved it. And so the next step is to actually do an ordinance and put that ordinance in place and then I would assume get out the word because if not all communities have adopted this, not all banks are able to use it. That's right. I think we're very fortunate here in Keen. We have a lot of local banks that are very active in the community and do educational seminars. So, I'm hoping that it'll be a pretty light lift on our part to get the word out at least to the lending and financial institutions.

Yeah, I would also say MEEDC as well um and Nanak Economic Development Corporation because, you know, when I'm thinking about projects, I'm thinking about all the different pots of money that come in to make a project work. And this is just an opportunity to bring in another funding source. This sounds like, you know, really a good resource for somebody who is coming in planning to do a project to just incorporate something like it could be EV charging. It could be really a variety of things as long as it's related to energy and energy reduction using less energy. Yeah. Or even like lead pipe remediation. That's great.

Yeah. I believe there about 30 other states that have programs under the old CPACE program. And what's a little different in terms of the goals of this program, I think, is the energy and resilience component does expand the umbrella to include water management projects and and other elements of a project that are good in terms of sustainability, but don't necessarily fall under the energy umbrella. So, I I heard we're not the first to adopt it, Mary. What happened? Well, I was told it wasn't our top priority. Oh no. We had something else to do at the time. I don't know. Is it called a master plan? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, this is great. And actually, you know, we may not be the first to adopt this, but we are among the first few communities in New Hampshire to get this going. And I think once more people learn about it, once more communities learn about it and realize it's not going to be a big lift for them, it just enables this program to take place within their community and help projects happen. It will really start to take hold. I agree. I don't see the downside to this, especially looking through what the municipality's role is. We can basically outsource everything. So yeah, that's great. It's great. Yeah.

Yeah. I think whenever we implement it, it's what you do with it, have it, how you move it forward. And I do think Keen has some challenges when we look at resilience around storm water management and some other things that is really going to be a nice fit for this kind of a program. So I'm optimistic that we'll put it to good use.

That's great. If you have to develop in the flood plane, check out this program. Yeah, good point. Anything else that the energy committee is working on that you want to highlight? We just had our annual retreat. So we are looking at how the past year went. We have some working groups and we've been rethinking how those groups work and whether they're the right groups for the right tasks. Looking ahead, I've been chair since I guess January. This is my third year on the committee. I've really been impressed. You know, when look back uh in the long term, we had the sustainable energy plan. There were two goals in that plan. One was establishing a community power program. We've done that. Another was some sort of sustainability staff support. That's in in discussion. So, we're feeling good about that. We now have the new master plan. So, that was the other important part of our conversation, which is to say, so how do we fit into the new master plan? So, trying to breathe some life into the master plan in terms of the work we do is what we're going to be about this next year.

We're really fortunate to have volunteers on that committee cuz a lot of work. That committee has been very active for Wow. It's gotten a couple of different names, but it's been around since 2001, I believe. Yeah. It's got some good people. Always looking for more. So, every every time we say if you're interested, you go on to our web page, come to a meeting. These are public meetings, so we encourage people to stop in and watch us at work and they might be a future committee member down the road.

Yeah, great reminder if you're listening, we have lots of committees and volunteer opportunities. Green up Kees this weekend. I know there's a big push right now to get more groups. I'm impressed every single year with the number of people that come out and clean up the sides of our streets along the river on the trails. It's just amazing the work that they do. Yeah. And speaking of city committees, I know our bicycle pedestrian advisory committee has a cleanup scheduled for Sunday. So, if you're busy on Saturday, there's another cleanup on Sunday. Should check that out as well.

If there's nothing else, thank you both for joining us this afternoon. really appreciate it. Really appreciate the work that you're doing to move the city forward. We've made a lot of progress over the last several years trying to achieve the goals of the city council and of the community and the work that you do is a big part of that. So, thank you. So, last Thursday council, there were a few items on there. We have the usual licenses. This time of year, we see lots of licenses. licenses for activities, licenses for use of the city rightaway, the city sidewalks, for cafes, for retail. We see a lot of like temporary signs. I'm signing a lot of permits this time of year, licenses. So, we saw some of those come in. Oh, by the way, we had a new temporary chair. If you missed that meeting, that's right.

Yeah, Councelor Powers. Great job. Yes, he did a wonderful job moving us through the agenda. And there was really only a couple of other action items on there from committee. There was an engineering agreement for Robin Hood Park and we talked a little bit about what's happening next with the Robin Hood Park project. We've already spent some time looking at a conceptual design for Robin Hood, but there's more work to be done. I think most of the work that has been done to date was really looking at the pool.

What do we do about the pool? Do we fix the pool? Do we replace the pool? Should we have a pool? All of that. And the end decision there was to fix the pool, to rehab the pool. And we didn't think initially that that was going to be possible. So, that was great news. And then now there's going to be really getting down to what does the community want the park to look like and then designing that so that we're ready to go out to bid for construction. So, this engineering contract will help us get there. There was also a project related to construction services for the wastewater treatment plant, tank repair, and a change order contract for city hall, which by the way, if you are coming to city hall and planning to use the garage,

could be a little bit of a challenge for a month or so. They're doing work on both the upper and the lower deck of the city hall garage parking facility. And really, there's not a lot of room to park right now. No. Even though our parking team did a really, really good job letting everyone know. I completely forgot this morning. And I pulled in, I said, "Hey, I know." Oh gosh.

And the parking office, they did a great job. They said, you know, it's there will be limited spaces. There'll be first come, first serve. So, I pulled in and there was a spot. And I was like, "All right, this is great." So, I pulled into the spot and then I go out for lunch and I see next to my car there's now cones. Oh, no. Yeah. Right. Like, I think they wanted to block this off, too. So, I came back from lunch and it was blocked off. Yeah.

So, they've already started the work. In the memo, I saw it was going to be at least a month before that project was finished. So, yeah. We'll be moving employees around for a month and also limiting some of the public parking upstairs on the top of the garage. And then there was an item and really I think the most of the time was spent on an item that had gotten a vote from committee to put it on more time and that was related to a land development code change. It was ordinance 02025-15A and that ordinance has a bunch of different pieces to it but a lot of the conversation at least at the committee level was about the number of units that would be allowed by right in the medium density district. Now there's always a lot of confusion when you talk about these things because there was confusion about oh we're only you know zoning it for one neighborhood. No, it's for the whole medium density district. And then there was confusion about sort of thinking that everything was going to be turned into six units. And the reality of it is even since this has been adopted and put in place, we haven't seen a project yet. And so it really depends on the property. It depends on the house that's there or the property that's there and how it might be used and whether or not it would be and up to six units, which doesn't mean everything would be changed to six units if it had the ability it might go to four or five or it's up to six. And so there was a lot of conversation about that and what would that do to a neighborhood. And there are some concerns from some of our neighborhoods that that might create too much density for them which would impact parking and other quality of life issues. And so there was conversation about that and at the committee they voted to put it on more time but even that vote was split,

right? Yeah. I think it was 3 to2. Yeah, it was pretty close. Yeah.

So 3 to2 to put it on more time and then when it got to full counsel, we knew it was going to be brought forward because council Williams had said at the committee he was going to challenge putting it on more time. And so the decision was just to go ahead and put that out there and have that conversation. So the motion was to grant them more time. And then that didn't initially get passed. And so then there was a little bit of back and forth. And then ultimately the council has tabled this item for two meetings. So not the next council meeting, but the one after that, which I think is, if I remember right, it's May 21st. One of the challenges last Thursday is that we were missing a city councelor and the mayor. And so that's why we had a tie vote. the council after a couple of tries they felt that they really weren't going to be able to make any progress and decided to put it on the table until that meeting and now with an extra counselor chances of having if you have all 15 you shouldn't have a tie. So if we do have all 15 that night there will be some sort of decision and then there's been confusion about what is the decision is the decision on the ordinance? No, because really all that's before them is a letter that was submitted to reconsider whether or not to reddraft or bring back up the ordinance. So, they're just talking right now about that. Do they want to talk about this anymore? Do they want to have more input before deciding whether or not they bring forward a change to the ordinance that was adopted? So right now it's just this letter and whether or not to keep continuing having this conversation and then if the council decides that they want to do something the staff needs to have clear direction and even out of the committee we weren't really sure what the direction was going to be. It seems like the issue had narrowed down to maybe just the setbacks and the number of units and that's what they wanted to talk about more. But we'll see. So, it's going to depend what the council does at that May meeting and then hopefully from

that we'll get some direction. Either they'll decide they don't want to reopen this or it'll go back to committee for more conversation. So, then there was an ordinance related to emergency management which really just was an update. There has been some law changes since that ordinance was put into place. And then there's an ordinance related to buyback for health insurance. So, a quick explanation of what that means. So, we have six union contracts and non-union employees. And so, the six union contracts have in them a buyout amount. If an employee has a spouse or maybe they're on a military plan or whatever the case may be, if they have health insurance another way and they can provide the proof of that, they have the option of getting a buyout for the policy. And so it's not based on if it's a single plan, twoerson plan, family plan. The savings for the city is based on that, but the buyout is a flat amount. And so our contracts range in terms of the buyout amount, but the lower amount is 5,000. And so the HR department brought forward a change for the non-UN to move them from 3 to 5 and basically trying to keep the non-union and the union close to the same. And there's always a little bit of difference in contracts, but we try not to let the non-UN employees get too far behind from the union contracts. and keep some equality across the organization as best we can.

Yeah, they do a really good job keeping that pretty equitable. Of course, there's going to be a little variation.

You know what I found interesting? So, at the FOP committee meeting when this is being discussed, Council Roberts, who also sits on the school board, said, "Oh, yeah, that's fine. The school just went to 7,000." And and I was thinking, "Oh, man." be, you know, it's like you don't want to be in competition with the school, but if you have an employee that has a spouse that works at the school, then that employee is going to compare with their spouse as to which plan they want to be on in terms of health insurance coverage. And then also which buyout plan makes the most sense for them. The insurance buyout saves the city so much money. So, it always financially makes sense for us to have an employee take the buyout because the city saves funds. And same with the school, which is why I'm sure they just increased theirs to seven. It's sort of like when we look at our wages, we're all competing with each other. You know, the towns around us, other cities in New Hampshire, just like private organizations, they're competing with their equals in in the industry. The same for us. We're competing with the other municipalities in terms of recruitment and retention of employees. And that also includes benefit packages. And so there's this balancing act that happens. You don't want to be at the top. We can't afford to be paying the highest or the most of something, but we also can't afford to be at the bottom,

right? You don't want to be the lowest,

right? So you got to sort of find that happy medium somewhere in the middle where you're attracting and retaining employees. And you know, we have such great employees that we want to try to do the best that we can to do that. And that also brings me to the point of the pay and comp study, which we've been talking about for a couple of years now. We haven't really had time to really get into that, but the new HR director is taking that on. Great. Um, yeah, I know she did I think she just did a request for proposals. There's some money that was held over in the budget for this project and that will look at the other municipalities in the state of New Hampshire and look at the compensation package as a whole. So, not just their wages, but everything. So, the HR department is going to be taking on that effort. You know, this health insurance buyout program, all of those things will be part of this bigger project to compare across the industry.

Great. Great. I also mentioned at the council meeting that we've set a date. Yes, we have.

Community night is currently scheduled for August 18th and typically it runs from 400 p.m. to around 7. It's always a good time. We have trucks and equipment from all the different departments and we have free food. Public works, they do a fabulous job at making burgers and hot dogs for everyone. Usually fires handing out ice cream. police is usually handing out something as well and so there's lots of free goodies for everyone who attends. The last couple of years it's been very very popular. So much so that we had to move the event just a little bit down the parking lot closer towards the public works department because we did interrupt the activities at Keen Ice last year. we had it pretty much blocked off and people were making their way through and so we did get some feedback about that and so we're trying to be respectful of their use of the facility and not take over the entire place. So we'll move down just a little bit and just be a little closer to public works but still plenty of room for us to have all that we've had in the past. Usually they have the ladder truck. And

last year we had the new crime scene van which was really cool. Really cool to look at and check out. And you know the kids always enjoy getting in police cruisers and in fire trucks. I know the library always has fun games for kids and just a lot of really cool stuff for not just the kids to enjoy but the parents as well. and hoping we have a great turnout again this year. Definitely. And one other thing I'll mention about this year's community night, some of the feedback that we got from last year's was that even though it was like so much fun for the kiddos to jump up in the trucks and honk the horns. I know where you're going with this.

It was a little loud. And so our first hour from 400 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. is going to be a sensory hour, which means that they will take all the air out of the air horns so that if kiddos honk on it, it won't make any noise. So for kids that have sensory concerns or or people that just don't want the noise, that first hour is going to be quiet. And then after that, they'll they'll put the air in the air horns and kids can honk and have fun. But if you do have concerns about that, that first hour would be a great time to come. Yeah, that's great. It it did get pretty loud. It was a little loud.

Yeah. And that can be tough. Yeah. I'm glad that we are making that change this year. We are in the crunch time for the budget right now. Finance is working as quickly as they possibly can because we're meeting and we're going back and forth and saying, "Okay, we need to make some more cuts. We need to make some more changes. We're not within fiscal policy." And it's really tough because the majority of the increases are tied to two things. it's wage and benefits because we're a service organization. There's very little change in the actual operational items of a budget or projects. And so we met this morning. We're meeting again tomorrow trying to shift things around to make adjustments as necessary to comply with the city council's fiscal policy. And that's not easy. And it gets harder and harder every year. You can imagine if if we're not making a lot of changes to our operational budget, there's not a lot of things to remove. And during the presentation from the departments to myself and the finance director, very very few requests this year, the biggest really is the fire department and determining what we're going to to do with the fire department this year. And then just the contracts, all of the union contracts. Once you calculate all of that and what those numbers are, there's really not a lot of room to do much else. And so it will definitely be a challenge this year in the human services budget. One of the big changes we have is an additional $50,000. You'll remember we assisted with a warming shelter,

right? Y

and it was needed. There really weren't a lot of other options, but a $50,000 increase in that budget, it's a lot of money. And I mean it's just the beginning of the conversation because once I do my part and put together the budget for proposal to the city council, we start all over again going page by page, department by department, reviewing the budget and the council will ask questions and then at you know end of that process it's in their hands to make the final decision as to what moves forward to the public hearing process. And then after the public hearing, it's the full city council that will decide what is ultimately adopted and they will be looking at the operational budget, but they will also be adopting the capital items that are in this upcoming year. We've talked about it multiple times, but we also have the reevaluation of our assessments this year as well. So, there's a lot happening.

Yeah, a lot of moving pieces. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about today? That covers it. as is tradition at this point. I'll encourage people to go to keenh.gov/job. We were just talking about city benefits and how city jobs are really great and I will just agree with that. I think it's a great place to work. So, yep. keenh.gov/job. And I think if that is it, we will wrap up for today and we will see you next time. Come out and clean the trails. Yeah. Green of Keen. Green of Keen. Thanks for listening to City of Keen and Focus. We'll see you next time.