City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to City of Keen in Focus. Thanks so much for listening. Good morning and welcome to our next episode of City of Keen in Focus. My name is Asa Kramer and I am joined today by Elizabeth Verland, our city manager.

Oh gosh, I'm going to say something wrong. Oh, I can say that.

I have had lots of practice.

Med Kupchinsky. So we have med this morning because Because I wanted to talk a little bit about the work that he's been doing related to economic development, but also just maybe just in general. You've been with the city for a really long time. How many years?

In a week or so, it'll be 26. Actually, it's 26 now.

That's amazing. A long career. And you have worn many hats.

I have. And I was originally recruited to be the building and zoning official and health official. And that lasted, I think, about a month. And I was demoted to assistant city manager.

Demoted?

I got a little bit more involved in planning exercise and engineering and public works and things like that. And then through the years, I've had the pleasure of running our city facilities, managing a number of construction projects for the city, including 350 Marlborough Street and the library.

The library project, yeah.

Big project. For a little bit of time, I was the city manager.

Yes. I bet that was your highlight. Yes.

It was in many ways my highlight. And if I had been a little bit younger, I think I'd still be.

You would have stuck with that.

I would have stuck with it because I liked it.

Yeah.

It was fun.

It's different every day.

It's a lot of work. It does take an awful lot of concentration and it does take an awful lot of energy.

Yeah. And collaboration.

Got to be collaborative with everybody, collaborative with all of your employees, frankly, and city council and the public.

That's really one of your strengths. You've always done a great job with that.

Thank you.

So after that, I actually entered the picture and you decided, yeah, I'll stick around for a while. That was like nine years ago.

I know. In a way, I would say that's more the capstone than being city manager.

Really?

Yeah, because what we were able to do is work on a number of, I think, even more important projects for the city in trying to work with economic development issues for the city itself.

Yeah.

So one of the projects that we were able to do, which is, I think, always underway, is we created a land development code.

Yeah, that was a big project.

It was a big project. There's been a large amount of work done to rebuild and reorient our development processes as well as our personnel and staff.

And, Med, you have always been my secret weapon.

Thank you.

If I'm struggling with something, especially if it's code or building or any of those things or something related to a project, I would call Med in. Med, help me figure this out.

Yes. Thank you.

We've been a pretty good team.

I think a very good team.

Yeah.

And there's still a lot of exciting things on the horizon, even though I'm only with the city, I think, another week and a half or so.

Yeah. So you officially retired full-time two years ago?

Oh, three.

Really? My God, time does fly. You decided to stick around and help me with just economic development. So, I mean, I think that one of the things that the city hasn't really spent a lot of time focusing on until we really started teaming up on this has been economic development. And if you think about it, It is the only way to help stabilize the tax rate is to build more value in the city. And that requires effort, especially for the problem sites, the tricky sites.

We do have some tricky sites due to history. We do have some tricky sites due to whether or not they're impacted by wetlands and contaminated properties and things. And you're going to have that in post-industrial properties. You know, how do you deal with that? And that's one of the challenges I think that the Northeast has compared to other sections of the country. Other sections of the country don't have the same tax structure, for one thing. And their state governments usually have money available to assist in that development. You see a lot of news about businesses going to Texas or businesses going to Florida. Florida or South Carolina or North Carolina. A lot of that is those states put a lot of money on the table to bring those businesses in.

Yeah, that's true.

And we don't.

We don't. You're right. It's interesting about the state of New Hampshire is we have very few tools that we can use for economic development. And the majority of them are all at the expense of the taxpayer. So, you know, we get authorization to enable businesses. a piece of legislation. So, you know, tax increment financing, 79E, those types of tools, but it's at the expense of the local taxpayer. It's not really a contribution from the state of New Hampshire.

That's right. You know, business and economic affairs at the state, New Hampshire housing, there's a lot of good people working at the state level.

Yes.

But they don't have an awful lot of resources out there.

They don't.

I think the state really has to take a look at that. And the state has a known housing crisis and everybody's struggling on what to do with the state housing crisis. That's where I've spent a lot of my time and will probably spend a lot of my time in the next two years, even when I leave the city. Housing, though, is only one portion of what's needed for economic stability as well as economic development. And we need to do both. And I'm not saying we're not doing both of them.

I'm saying we need to do both. Absolutely. The other thing I've seen is we sort of like have these knee-jerk reactions at the state. So we've, all of a sudden, we've got a housing crisis.

Now, this didn't happen overnight. No.

But all of a sudden, everyone's on board. We've got a housing crisis. And they go the opposite direction. So now we have all these rules that they're putting in place about what the cities and towns can no longer do in terms of restrictions. That's really unfortunate because the city of Keene has been very aggressive in changing our code to allow housing and to be creative. But when there are some restrictions, let's say Class 6 roads, for example— There's a reason for that. A Class 6 road is a road that you're not going to have police and fire responding to a home if it's built at the end of a Class 6 road. And now the state, they think that's part of the solution for housing, and they have made it easier to build at the end of the Class 6 road. So I'm really going to be interested to see what happens if people do start building out there and what sort of challenges occur. Municipalities can and do require indemnification, but there's a whole host of other things.

When you hear the testimony at the state level, it's so-and-so told me they couldn't get a permit over here because of this and we ought to change blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's not a lot of testimony involved in that that really underlies it or examines it in any depth of detail. What are the pros and cons? You know, NHMA does its best to put testimony on the table. The Planning Association does its best to put testimony on the table and others put their best. But at the end of the day, the legislature itself seems to believe that any sort of change in codes is magically going to have houses fall out of the sky. And, you know, the bottom line is, if you're looking at housing, the cost of housing is why we're not seeing housing. It's not a regulatory load normally. You know, we're $320 a square foot. You could make it so that you can come down to our parking desk and get a permit to build an ADU. It's still $320 a square foot.

It's very expensive. We were one of the early adopters of ADUs when the state changed the law on that. And we put it out there and not many people built one. And then we've now loosened up the rules around ADUs. It doesn't have to be attached. It can be smaller size. I mean, you see a few of them and you're right. I think it is because of just the cost to build it. The economics have to make sense.

The economics have to make sense. I think 2003 or 2004 is when we put the first ADU ordinance in our zoning code. And we did not see a lot of them, two or three in 10 years.

I know. Yeah.

So it'd be interesting to see how we resolve some of these issues.

So as you wind down and your contract goes through the end of this month, through June, and even after your contract ends, you have to still come back to the City Hall and visit with us. And you've become a very good friend of mine. And just because you're leaving the city doesn't mean you're leaving all of these relationships behind. So don't be a stranger. But tell us a little bit about what do you think you're going to do next?

So working with BEA and a member of the RLNC committee.

What is that?

What it's been charged to do is a subcommittee of the Governor's Commission on Housing and Homelessness.

Oh, regional.

Regional leadership and something.

Something, something, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What we're really doing right now is really trying to look at some of the ways that we could actually create resolution to some of the housing crisis costs. In that regard, one of the things that's nascent in that discussion is training for proto developers, which Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont think is important. We've been looking at how to create plan portfolios, and those plan portfolios would allow you to pick a plan from that register. It could be an ADU plan, could be a house plan, could be a multifamily plan.

So like a ready-to-go, what do you want to build?

Ready-to-go, go get the plan and go down and get your permit and start building. To make it much quicker. It also, on the regulatory side, makes it a lot cheaper if they're pre-approved. And that's kind of the situation. We continue to have further conversations because now the Pew Charitable Trust has joined the conversation.

Wow.

And so has the Urban Land Institute now joined the conversation because apparently we're making a little traction.

And even bringing some money with them.

That's what we're hoping.

That would be helpful.

Yeah, that's what we're hoping. In addition to figuring out how many plans you want to have and of what types, you have to figure out how to pay the designer. There's two methods. One is you simply buy the plans and you own them. The other is every time the plan's used, some amount of money goes to the designer. Liability is something that we'll have to talk about. Once you have the plans approved, and I think, you know, what I would like to see, Building Officials Association, join this effort.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, if we've got a portfolio of plans, let's say there's 50 plans, if they lend their expertise to, you know, taking a look at these plans and making sure they, in fact, meet code, should be a lot of confidence in those plans and permitting throughout the state. And I've heard all kinds of numbers as to how much money that would save.

It's time is the big thing. You know, we have a short construction season here in New Hampshire and time is money. Yeah.

You would save time. You'd have a lot of savings in that regard. You basically come down with an application, get your permit and go, provided you meet zoning. Right, right.

That's exciting.

That'd be a great program.

Yeah, I love it. So that means we're going to be hearing a lot more from you.

I sure hope so. I'd love to come back and do a presentation on it as we go forward.

That'd be great. So, Med, I just want to say thank you personally. Thank you. When I walked through the doors back in 2017 and you were one of the first people that I talked to, I knew right away that we were going to be fast friends and get a lot done, and that's exactly what has happened. And so... From me to you, thank you so much.

And thank you to you for being such a good leader and good friend.

Thanks, Med.

So that was really great. Yeah, what a great discussion.

Med has so much information and experience, and he's built so many relationships over the years. He's been very valuable to the city of Keene, for sure.

And to me, he's been very helpful. The city of Keene has been very, very lucky to have Med on their team.

So last night, we got a budget. We got a budget. Yes. So last night, the city council adopted the budget and all of the related resolutions. So everything that sort of makes the budget work. So there's one resolution for the actual operating budget. And then there were multiple resolutions for any debt funded project. And then also there's a resolution for our salary ordinance, which is for the non-union employees. And of course, here in the city, we have six unions. And so those unions are calculated into the operating budget, but that's not part of the salary ordinance. So yeah, it was great. It's always a big relief to get that done because the budget starts July 1st. We always, I mean, it's just the way that it works in cities. That's our timeline. But I talked about last night,

We actually are starting now the fiscal 28 budget process. Isn't that crazy? It's just all year round budget time.

It really is. It does not stop. We start with a workshop to discuss the city council's fiscal policies. And so that workshop is scheduled for June 30th at 6 p.m. here at council chambers. What the fiscal policy does is it sets the parameters specifically. basically for the city manager and how much money will be raised, how we structure it, the use of unassigned fund balance and all of those pieces that go into the budget. So it's a really important part of the process. And the finance director has a few changes that we need to make from law. So, for instance, the law changed related to ambulance billing. And so we need to make an adjustment to the language in there. And then there are some other things like we used to have here in the city, self-funded health insurance, but we haven't had that for a long time. And so we need to remove that. And then we have one more meeting internally to see if there's anything else that has been problematic that needs to be addressed. Finance director reaches out to the department heads. So an email went out to them, I think yesterday, to ask them for their input. And then we meet one more time and then the finance director will discuss put together a presentation, probably a PowerPoint to kind of walk us through the recommended changes. And then we hear from the council. So we have some new counselors here, and this will be the first time going through the fiscal policy process with them. And so there'll be some education as to how things work and what it means. For instance, you know, fund balance is very difficult to explain. In government, fund balance is sort of like your equity. And when you have budgeted a certain amount of money for your expenses and budgeted a certain amount of money for your revenues that you think you will be collected, at the end of the year, the difference between them falls to fund balance. So if you didn't spend all your budget or if you spent your budget but got extra revenue, it falls to fund balance. And so there are different types of fund balance as to whether it's restricted or not. And typically when it's restricted, it's restricted for a purchase order. So a project that's in the works but not yet been closed out. So it crosses over the fiscal year, but you don't release the money. You keep it restricted because you have already obligated it. So I'm sure that's going to be one of the things we talk about, you know, because that's just very confusing. And to really understand that and how fund balance works, but also to understand right now we have parameters on the amount of money that we should be keeping in fund balance, because really fund balance is for those things that are unexpected. an emergency, something that we didn't know was going to happen, a project that came in higher than expected, and we weren't able to change the scope enough, oftentimes we'll go to fund balance. And so I think that'll be a big part of the conversation. Right now we have a formula which talks about keeping 7% to 17%, and it's based on, I think it's 180 days of operating budget. And so There's a formula that the finance director does, and it's in the budget book. So if you're interested in looking at that, there's a summary of fiscal policy when we do the budget and those calculations, where we are at in terms of the percentage of fund balance and where we think we'll be. And there's a calculation as to how we meet the fiscal policy parameters. So That's in every budget book. So our budget book is available online, and it's in the beginning of the book. It's within the first few pages. And so if anyone's interested in taking a look at that, we have several budgets available. Our budgets are on the finance department section of the website, and I think it's under financial documents. And so both the budget and the capital plan are there for anyone who's interested. But the fiscal policy, I'll be interested to see if any other recommended changes come out of the workshop from the council. Anything that comes out of that workshop then goes to the finance committee. So a while ago, the council was putting their rules. We could have workshops and they could create recommendations from the workshops, but decisions would ultimately go to the committee's like any other item. And so this is something that would go to finance. Then finance would make a recommendation to the full council, and ultimately the council would vote on it, and it's by resolution. So there will be a few meetings where we'll be talking about the fiscal policies.

And I think just having a good overview, because if you're not in the budgeting process every day, I mean, it's so intricate and it's so complicated. And just getting like a solid definition of like what these terms mean, I think will be really, really valuable, especially to the new counselors, but also to the council as a whole. I mean, just a good overview and a good review is really important.

Yeah. And I think it's important to really emphasize that this is where you make the difference in the budget, because once we put it all together, we've worked within these parameters. Now, a lot of the language in the fiscal policies is standard government finance officer association recommended language. So there's a lot of just like accounting principles that we're not going to be able to change. Those are things that will stay year after year unless there's a wholesale change for the state of New Hampshire. But the parameters on how we put the budget together, that's the first step in saying, OK, I want the city manager to bring us a budget that does this, whatever this is. So that will be the start of the fiscal 28 budget. And we talked just a little bit about that last night. The other thing I talked about during the manager's update is the Robin Hood Park renovations. We started this conversation in earnest back in 2023. We had worked with a consultant to come up with some conceptual plans. And we did some outreach to determine what did the community want to see happen. And at the time, back then, the big question was, do we continue to have a pool? We already have a pool at Wheelock Park. Is it important to the community to have a second pool in this area of the city? And it came back pretty loud and clear from the public that they wanted to keep the pool. Now, the pool is expensive, expensive to maintain, expensive to run. We have to have lifeguards. But also the pool has been leaking for a number of years. And so the big question was, do we have to build a brand new pool or can we rehab this pool? And so back in 2023, Andy Bohannon was still the recreation director there. And he did work to find a solution for rehabbing the pool. And it actually then made it possible for us to do. Because in the beginning, it looked like all we were going to have for an option was to build a new pool. And that was cost prohibitive. So we are moving forward with a rehab project for the pool. That will be the first phase of the Robin Hood project. We have a consultant right now drawing that up. What I talked about last night was there's a committee now that's been created, a steering committee to... look not only at the pool, but at the rest of the park and provide input as to what they think should be there, what's there that we keep, what's not there that we need. And one of the things we talked a lot about at the first meeting of this committee is accessibility. If you've been to Robin Hood Park, you know that there are some issues in terms of the terrain and how people access different pieces of the park. How children access the play structures. And so I think there's going to be a lot of change that will come out of this project to improve accessibility for everyone, including for the pool. You know, it's too early to know if this is going to be feasible, but there's an option they're looking at, which allows you to walk into the pool, sort of a group. Gradual. Yeah. And if you think about it, for someone in a wheelchair or just someone really not steady on their feet, it's much easier than trying to climb in. That's a great option. I love that. Yeah. So we'll see. We're in the very, very early stages of design. And so once we do have a better handle on that, this will all be vetted at the MSFI committee and it'll go ultimately to the full city council. One of the other things that the council approved last night is a contract for a strategic plan for public works. I'm really excited about this. We have lots of plans in the city. You know, we have plans for projects. We have plans for assets. This is to bring all of the pieces of the public works department together. So police, fire, and public works, those are the three big budgets for the city. So public works is made up of highway projects. It's made up of the Water and Sewer Fund, which has a wastewater treatment plant. It has multiple divisions under the Public Works Department. This proposal is to bring on a consultant to help us build a 10-year plan, but the The other really cool thing that this does is and I give a lot of credit to the public works director for putting this out there and wanting to do this. It looks at all of the services we provide in public works right now and looks at our staffing levels. So it looks at how are we staffing different services in the city? It will benchmark the public works department services against other communities with similar services. And so it's never really one full department looks exactly like one department at another town or city. There's usually some nuances. And so this is really looking at all of the different facets of public works, benchmarking it, and then providing some recommendations. I think this really just opens it up to say, are we doing it the most efficient way that we possibly can? Are there things that we are not doing that we should be doing? It looks at safety as well. And we've had really great success. We have a professionally run department and they're very engaged. They have great communication tools with the community. And I think they're doing a great job. But we don't know if we don't look. Right. So we don't know what other departments in other areas of the state or even other areas of the United States, how they are approaching some of these things. And so it will look at operations, our organizational structure, our staffing and our services across all divisions of public works. It's a big lift because the question was, why aren't we just doing this ourselves? And so that's a lot of work, number one. And number two is. It's really helpful to have an outside perspective, someone that's able to come in who has looked at this in other places and to provide some valuable input. So I think this is going to be a big lift even with a consultant, but I'm looking forward to seeing the results. And I really give a lot of credit to our public works director, Don Lucier, for putting this forward. I think it makes a lot of sense. As we move into the next budget year, there's going to be hard decisions made. And we know there's an increased pressure on taxes right now. And we know that services is what our organization is. We provide services. We're a service organization. And if you want to make a change, it has to be to services. So Kudos to him for bringing this forward. And the council approved it last night. And so we will be moving forward. They have already done the RFP and selected a consultant. And now we will execute the contract and they'll begin the work.

I think those were the, you know, we had the budget and those couple of things that were interesting and garnered some conversation.

Did I miss anything, Lisa, from last night?

I don't think so. Those seem to be the big things. I mean, having a budget is huge.

Yes, obviously, that's the biggest thing. I just want to make sure that we are always grateful for the support that we receive from the council and the public. We're very fortunate here in the city of Keene. The nine years that I've been here, the council has been extremely supportive, asked great questions, been engaged. And we're fortunate that it's not like that everywhere. And so I'd just like to remind everybody to say thanks.

Huge thank you. Yeah. I will encourage everyone to go to keennh.gov slash jobs. Check out the open positions there. I have mentioned this at the last couple of episodes, but August 18th from 4 to 7 p.m. is going to be our community night. From 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. is going to be a sensory hour where the trucks will not be honking. It's always really fun. There's free food and fun activities. So put that on your calendar. And then another thing to put on your calendar is that July 6th is when phase one of the downtown project is scheduled to start in Central Square. Yeah, great reminder.

And you guys have been, you ladies actually, you and Rebecca, have been doing a fabulous job on your social media and outreach. And I saw this past week a reel or a little video interview between Rebecca and our city engineer, Brian Ruoff.

Yeah. Well done. We were really fortunate to have Brian come on down and answer some of the frequently asked questions that we get about the Downtown Project. And we asked him lots of questions. So we'll be putting out some information, some little videos where he's answering some of the most common questions that we hear. Stay tuned for that.

Yeah. And I would just say anyone listening, if you have a suggestion, something that seems to be confusing people or that you want to know more about, send it to us. You can do it through contact us through the website, but reach out, let us know if there's something that you think we should be spending more time covering or should be a bigger part of our outreach efforts.

Yes. Yes, please. We get a lot of engagement in our comments on social media. And I will say that Rebecca does a fabulous job answering. We've had questions about parking and she'll provide documents and links where you can get more information. So, yeah, ask away.

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 Keene and Focus. We'll see you next time.