City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to City of Keene in Focus.

Thanks so much for listening.

Hello, and welcome to our next episode of City of Keaton In Focus. My name is Asa Kramer, and I am joined today by Elizabeth Furland, our city manager, and Rebecca Landry, our deputy city manager. Hi, you two. Hi, Asa. Hi, Asa. It's been a little bit of a hiatus since our last episode, so I'm excited to chat with y'all again today. And so much to talk about. So much to talk about.

So I think we'll start with the last council meeting which Rebecca actually covered and did a fabulous job as always. It was our budget hearing night and while we didn't have really a lot of participation from the audience, the mayor did go into quite a great bit of detail about the budget and each section of the budget and talking about the highlights of every section of the budget. So it took a while.

It did. Mayor Kahn did a good job of making sure everybody knew what was in each section of the budget so that if anybody wanted to make a comment they had the opportunity to do it regardless of whether it was on something over here in the book or something over there in the book. We only had a few people in the audience come up and speak at the public hearing and both were in support of something that was included in the budget. I think it was the DeMar Marathon and also a position in community development going from part-time to full-time. Those were the comments we received from the public. We did spend an awful lot of time getting the word out to make sure people were aware of all the meetings that they could come to.

Right, and the opportunity to provide input. So the next step is for the City Council to put forward any changes in the budget that they are recommending. And they need to do that by Tuesday, June 16th, in a written format submitted to the City Clerk's Office. And the meeting to finalize the budget will be at the City Council on June 18th, which is our Thursday night meeting. So our next meeting, so many of the resolutions for project bonding, salary ordinance changes, all that has been placed on the agenda to be acted on at the next city council meeting when they act on the full budget. So there'll be a lot of votes on resolutions at the next meeting, and we'll see if there's any changes that come from the council to be considered also at the next meeting. And just to sort of explain a little bit about the public hearing process for the budget, it's for the public. You know, the council listens to the public at these public hearings, but it's not for the council. They have been hearing information presented at the finance committee, and then they will have their opportunity to discuss, again, like I said, what changes they might want to bring forward. at the next city council meeting. One item that you mentioned, Rebecca, about the part-time position going to full-time, just talk a little bit more about that. So we have a part-time planning position upstairs on the fourth floor in community development that is being proposed to go from, I think it's maybe 32 hours right now, around there to a full-time position. And And the Clean Energy Group as well as our own energy community and our energy committee as well as others in the community who are interested in seeing our sustainability efforts increased have offered to pay the difference. to change that position from part-time to full-time for the next three years and they are actually putting it in writing so there's a memorandum of i don't know if we're doing an understanding or agreement but and i think it's going to be an mou between us the city and clean energy the group as to their contribution over the next three years so this is a really low risk change for the city the thought is once the position has been in place for three years and those additional hours can be invested in sustainability efforts, tracking the work that we've been doing, that they will be able to really prove the value of those additional hours, including seeking additional grants. And so I think it's a good opportunity for us to move that initiative forward and at no additional cost to the city. As part of this budget process, we've talked also a lot about what's happening to the city's values. And right now, we are going through what's called a revaluation. And I know I said we've talked a little bit about this already with our city assessor on earlier podcasts. But in essence, we're bringing all the values of property up to 100% of market value. So It's easy to see right now if you go on the city's website, you look at the assessing site, you pull up a property, and you compare it to a Zillow listing for a property. We're nowhere near what properties are selling for, at least for residential. And so every five years, the state of New Hampshire, through the Department of Revenue Administration, require that we bring our values up to 100% of market value. So we're going through that process right now and we will be bringing some additional information to the council probably right before their break in August. The city assessor is planning to come in and then we'll be back again after the summer to finalize values because there's a period of time. where the public comes in and gets to ask questions about their new value. So everyone gets their new value in the mail. They can come in and talk to the assessing team about if something isn't right on their card or to request an explanation of how a value was calculated. So there's a period of time that that occurs before the values become final. The goal is to have all of the values final for the next tax rate setting and so right now the city assessor is thinking that's going to be probably and it can be early October or even late October because typically we set our tax rate in November. The next tax rate setting will include those values and so what has been making me very nervous IS THE MARKET FOR RESIDENTIAL HOUSING HAS BEEN INCREASING THE VALUE OF HOMES ACROSS THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE AND REALLY EVERYWHERE, NOT EVEN JUST IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, BUT HERE IN KEENE WE ARE ALSO SEEING IT AT SUCH A DRAMATIC RATE that those values are going to be a bit of sticker shock to people when they get their new property tax card. Now, on the flip side, our tax rate will go down probably somewhere in the 20s, but that doesn't mean you're going to pay less because of a couple of reasons. Whatever is approved in the budget, those expenses still need to be, taxes need to be raised for that. And then two, when a revaluation happens, it's not equal across the board. so we know that commercial values are not increasing at the same rate as residential values and what that means is more of the tax burden will be shifted to residential values because the commercial values are just not going to come up as high so it's not going to be equal across the board and i'm concerned about that i'm concerned about that for keen i'm concerned about that for new hampshire i'm concerned about just the increased pressure on the tax rate in general and really looking at what is a sustainable way to pay for the services that the city provides you know and we've talked about this before but We are a service organization, and so the majority of our costs are in our personnel, and those people are needed to provide a service, to maintain a facility, to maintain a park.

Emergency services. Yes, emergency services.

It's a big one. Yes, it is a big one. One of the largest increases in the budget this year is, again, an increase in the fire department wages. And that is about a half a million dollars, and that's huge. And it's to add four more firefighters, one per shift. We are on 24-hour shifts. And I think that that brings us above the minimum number that's required to operate all three ambulances in the city. We'll be just one above that number. But the pressure on services like fire and police... I just don't see it going away. And there's not a really good answer to it.

We see that also happening not only in Keene, but across the state and even across the country as well. It's another thing that is affecting every community is the increased demand for emergency services, and those services are not free, as we all know. I share your concern, Elizabeth. I think that the sticker shock is going to be hard for people when they see their value. It's easy to think, oh, no, my tax bill is going to more than double, right? But that's not necessarily the case, because the amount that the value increases does not represent what the change in the taxes are going to be. The tax rate will come down because the values are going up more than the budget is going up. That's right.

We're talking about the city's portion of the rate right now, but there are other portions of the rate. There's the county rate, and then there's the school portion of the rate, and city council has no control over those. County has kept their budget relatively stable over the last several years. The school has been struggling, struggling with revenues from the state of New Hampshire as population declines in our schools, and that's the formula that we use to fund them. So over the next year, I think that this is something that we're going to have to continue to talk about. And recently, we had a session moderated by Senator Fenton at the library that talked about what's happened in the state of New Hampshire in terms of revenues and how when the budget got tough at the state, many of those revenues that were filtering down to towns and cities have been either reduced or eliminated. And what does that mean to the local taxpayer? I mean, we call it downshifting. It is downshifting. And many of those revenues were in statute. There's a lot of history of why they were there. But Needless to say, it's happened. I don't know how much more is going to happen because honestly there's not a ton more in terms of revenues, but we do still get a lot of grants and we need to preserve our meals and rooms allocation, our highway block grant for maintaining our roads, and the grants that we receive, especially in areas like water and sewer. Those things are really important. But the school relies primarily on the revenues they receive as part of the state education funding formula. And if we're not getting it from the state education funding formula, we're getting it from property taxes. And so I just feel like all those things are going to come together after we go through this re-evaluation process. And we're just going to have to continue to have conversations about what does that mean for how we do business here today. not only in the city, but in the state of New Hampshire.

One of the things that happened at the city council meeting last week was the public works director brought a copy of the downtown project binders. So these binders are going to downtown businesses and property owners to have a quick reference for them to look at information like who do I call if I'm planning to adjust my hours that I'm open and when I'm closed and I want to see if they can adjust when they are working on my water and sewer infrastructure that comes into my building and how do I know where the detours are for my customers? How do I know where parking is for my customers on any given day or week? And so These binders have some basic information for the downtown businesses. They also have the opportunity to add information as we go. As things evolve, the schedule will change on a weekly, monthly basis. The detours will probably change. But it's important to understand, and the Public Works Director has been saying this loud and clear, that downtown will remain open during the project. Pedestrians will be able to walk around Central Square, which is what's going to happen this summer, the Central Square piece of the project. Vehicles will still be able to navigate to Roxbury Street, Washington Street, Court Street, Winter Street, West Street, up and down Main Street. They'll just be limited traffic allowed through the construction areas. Right.

And those binders aren't just for the downtown businesses. Dawn was here at our staff meeting Monday morning, handed them out to all the department heads as well. And the reason for that is because even if you're not involved in the project, if you work for the city, people think you know. They think you know about all these things. And so it's helpful to have some basic knowledge across the organization. And Dawn gave me a binder and I provided it to Megan in my office because she answers the phone. And in that binder, it talks about who to call for different things or different reasons. And so I do think that was a good first step. It's going to be filled up over the course of this project. They have a list of everyone who has a binder because now you have to go around with all the updates to everyone who has a binder so you can keep those documents current and relevant. That's going to be a job, I think, for George Downing, our downtown project ombudsman.

Correct. The city opened an office for George in the transportation center where he'll be for at least a couple of months. So that's a nice space that's relatively accessible to everybody downtown and easy to get to and from. So I was in there with him the other day. It's a great space. He has a nice office area, a nice conference table, an opportunity for people to look at plans, have discussions, look at what's going to impact their individual business, have conversations, share concerns with George. George is really well equipped to help people downtown.

The other great thing about that space is it's saving us a lot of money. By using the transportation center, which is owned by the city and currently vacant, we are saving about $75,000 for a field office in the downtown. That's good. That's always good.

I think one of the things we might want to talk about, Elizabeth, is that we will have a new emergency management director in just a couple weeks. Yes, yes. That was made final and approved by the council last week. Rick Wood, who's been with us for a few years now, is going to be transitioning into that permanent employment role here at the city, and we're excited.

Yeah, so Court Blomquist, our retired public works director, had been wearing the hat of emergency management director for quite some time. He'd been filling that temporarily through a contract, and now we are moving back to where it was, which is an additional duty to an employee of the city instead of having a separate contract. This will be an additional duty for Rick Wood. And Rick came to us about two and a half years ago through a contract for a very unique reason. So there's not many people, I think, in the state of New Hampshire that both have the fire experience that he does as well as the building experience as he does. So he was able to come to the city and be both the fire marshal and also the building official, which really helped us create and solidify a team across both community development of code inspectors and the fire department of fire inspectors that all work together and then have one person who is making the final decisions and coordinating some of the strategies to address some of the problematic properties in the city. So That's been great. I've gotten a ton of really positive feedback that both departments have been doing great. They've really stepped up to the challenge. And so we wanted to move Rick from a contract onto the salary schedule as a full-time employee. So that's happening over the next fiscal year. This first change with the emergency management director duties is the first step. That happens July 1st. And then later in the year, when his contract ends, a few months later in the year, he moves on to the salary schedule. So I'm very excited that he's agreed to stay on. This has been working really well. I think it's a good model, really, for other communities to think about following, just having that cross between the two departments and creating more of that one-stop shop to be able to get your answers to projects and things that you're doing.

it's always good to bring in a new perspective yeah right and and that that helps okay so something that is fun to talk about more fun than property taxes um the design services for ash wheel at river park green space playground the city is moving forward with working with a consultant to start the design services for the ash willett river park green space playgrounds that would be nice

Yeah, and actually we are doing this in a partnership with Southwest Regional Planning Commission who got a grant, a technical assistance grant to help us design the space and work with this project. And so really this is one of those projects where land has been donated to us. The services are being donated to us. I think we're even going to get some money for the playground structure. So just really generous people and projects and programs that are coming together to make this happen. And you're right, it's going to be much more fun to talk about than the budget.

So a couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity to attend a grand opening of the Keene Housing Roosevelt East housing development. So they will soon be opening up 30 new apartments. Yes, amazing. The old Roosevelt School, which is something that I think people remember fondly. People who have been around here for a long time remember when Roosevelt School was a school, when there were children walking to and from school and children, you know, coming every day with their lunchboxes and going to class and remembering their favorite teachers and who were their buddies back in those days. We see a lot of comments online about that. But the shell of the school building still looks like Roosevelt School. And it's pretty neat to see that they preserved that, but they also... Keen Housing has also done such a fantastic job of building really nice apartments in there that are affordable apartments for people who need it.

Yeah, and there's a couple things I really love about that project. One is five units of that 30 will be used for people experiencing homelessness or homelessness in threat of being homeless and moving them into stable housing and providing wraparound services to them to help them be successful. And I love that idea. I think it's much more productive than just building more shelter space because they're actually moving from homelessness into their own space and getting the services that they need to help them to be successful. And I think we need that type of effort everywhere across the state of New Hampshire, not just here in Keene. And I love the fact that it's mixed in with the other affordable housing units. So you're not necessarily going to know who moved in who might have been homeless a month before that. It's just going to be part of the overall program. And I just think that's a great way to do it. And I'm hoping this idea catches on across New Hampshire.

Can you elaborate a little bit on what wraparound services is? I'm not familiar with that term. Oh, yeah.

Wraparound services just mean providing all of the services that you need. It could be mental health. It could be financial. It could be financial literacy. It could be education. It's identifying the needs of the individual, and then they call it wraparound just because they're supporting the individual with whatever services they're they require. Keene Housing does a great job. All of their buildings in Keene are wonderful, they're well maintained, and they've been transitioning to solar projects on all of their facilities as well, which is saving them money and also moving us closer to the city's energy goals.

So Elizabeth, did you license your dog before the deadline in April? That's funny. I license my dog the moment the notice comes out. I never want to be on this list. Right, so the city council got the list last week of everybody who missed the deadline and has an unlicensed dog. So it's nice that our names are not on that list when it comes out.

Yes, yes. Zoe is not on the list. She's a good girl. She's all registered. And you know, people ask, why do we do that? First of all, it's a state law. It's an old state law that's been in place for a long time. But it was really put in place to make sure that people were vaccinating their dogs for rabies. And so you have to have proof of rabies vaccination before you can register your dog.

Okay, well, it's that time of year where we start seeing a lot of downtown events. We just had the Taste of Keene event. I saw that they did amazing work for local businesses who participated and were able to raise funds to support their missions, which is fantastic. We have a lot more events coming. I know. And it's going to be a great summer. I think the public works team did a great job of coming up with an alternate footprint for the downtown events. We're not going to be able to have events in Central Square because the roads and the sidewalks are going to be getting dug up, but there's a great footprint that was supported by Public Works for these events to be able to continue. And I know that there are efforts underway to make sure that the businesses around Central Square still get visited and still have an opportunity to participate with these events. can't encourage people enough to come downtown this summer. There is so much to do and there's so much to see and the businesses are really doing a good job teaming up to make it a great destination as it always has been and will continue to be. These events, we're doing the event protocol process so for the public's benefit we have a number of meetings leading up to each event with organization that's running each event so that we can make sure that we have enough public safety services, that we have all the barricades that we need and we understand what roads are open and what roads are closed so It takes some coordination to make that happen but we are very busy right now because there are so many events that are going to be here and that's encouraging and I hope we can get as many people downtown as possible.

Right, so everyone listening, for the next three years, you need to come to downtown Keene and support all of the local businesses that we have here. That's right.

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but Gilbo Ave Parking and Commercial Parking Lot are right downtown. We'll do more videos.

That video that you did, you and Asa did, about walking from Gilbo and how quick it was to get to the downtown businesses from the Gilbo Ave lot.

I loved it. Well, I was driving downtown not too long ago, a couple weeks ago, looking for a parking spot, and I spent more time going around looking for the right spot than I would have spent if I had just parked in Commercial Lot and walked a few steps to get to Main Street. So we are hoping that people will really take advantage of that. longer term parking. You can park for four hours, not just two. So if you have your hair appointment, or if you want to go to a restaurant and you want to spend more time than that, whatever it might be, the lots are better. It's cheaper by the hour, you can park for a longer time, and it's literally steps from Main Street. We know there are people who have mobility challenges, and we know that they're probably not going to park in the lots, but that's why we have spaces reserved. Some people also don't know that if you have a handicap placard or a handicap plate, you can park anywhere for free. Those time limits still apply, but if you want to park right in front of the business you're going to and there's no handicap space, you can park in the space that you find right in front of that business for The time limit plus an hour. Good tip.

The other late breaking news that came out today, I think it came out at the Coffee and Hard Hats meeting held by Don Lucier, our public works director, to talk about the downtown infrastructure project. They announced that right now they're looking to break ground on July 6th.

Yep, Monday, July 6th. And that will be a time where people will start adjusting and we'll start seeing some of the work that's going on and how extensive it is. They do see still that people are surprised that we're not just digging a trench, replacing a pipe, repaving and moving on. And so people will start to see when we start digging up just how extensive the underground utilities are. We have posted an image that shows the extent of all of the underground utilities and it's shocking to see how much there is and how extensive it is.

And it really goes from building face to building face. It's not just down the center of the road. These connections are building face to building face.

Yep. And then those coffee and hard hat meetings, Public Works is trying really hard to give everybody who is impacted, all of our stakeholders, an opportunity to come and share their concerns, ask questions, talk about impacts that will potentially affect scheduling. Some folks cannot come to a 6 p.m. meeting on a Wednesday night. Especially if you think about restaurants, they're not going to be able to leave on a Wednesday at 6 o'clock. But this is an attempt also to give people an opportunity to participate. All right.

Is there anything else that either of you would like to talk about today?

I don't think so. I think we covered a lot.

Yeah. In that case, I will encourage everyone to go to KenanH.gov slash jobs and check out the open positions there. I've done this the last couple of episodes, but I will mention that community night is coming up on August 18th on a Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The first hour is going to be a sensory hour, which means it's not going to have lots of horn honking. So if you have sensory concerns or kiddos that don't want to have the loud noise from four to five, it would be a great time to come. And I think if that is it, we will wrap up for today and we will see you next time. Thanks for listening to City of Keen and Focus. We'll see you next time.