Town Council - Regular Meeting

Council meeting from Monday, July 6th, 2026. Everyone please stand for the pledge. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I will open public comment. Come on up, sir. Good evening.

Good evening to the council and to everyone here. My name is Harry Schwartz. I live at number 26 Sheffield Way here in Londonderry. But 2 years ago. I came to this town. The request of my wife over here. And it's how it usually happens. So we I personally she knew what kids want to school here. I came here because I was enthralled by what this place looked like. It was beautiful natural resources. Mountains hills musk wash everything. But I stayed here because of the people. And that was a clear-cut reason why I stayed here. What I've noticed since I've gotten involved in the town a little bit, as little as I have, is this town council has nothing in common with one another. You're constantly arguing, constantly fighting. It's in the paper. There's underhanded stuff going on. It's making everybody, not just me, everybody wonder what is happening in this town. It's not good for the face of this town. It's not good for New Hampshire. Three states, three, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, I have friends in who have called me and said, what the hell is going on in your town? I didn't say anything. They want to know what's going on. If you have a beef with him, that's not on my dime or their dime. That's on your dime. You want to fight with him? Take him outside. You want to argue points? Argue points. But grow the hell up. We expect you to lead. We expect you to lead by example. We expect you to lead with courage, with affirmation, with dignity. And dignity means if you screw up, you say, you know what, I fucked up. I'm sorry. You just admit it. But to attack each other, And to whatever you have on them. I don't know what you have. None of us know what you have on them. But we know that we're paying for it. Why? Is it that bad that we have to pay for this frigging thing? You guys and gals have to understand how we perceive you. We perceive you as leaders. We perceive you as people who keep this thing that we have that like nobody else has running. Not just the town and the gas stations and the medical and the pharmacies and all that shit. It's not that. It's you keep this cohesive and you're screwing it up. You've got to stop picking on each other. If you don't agree, then don't agree. Who gives a shit? Just say, I'm sorry, I don't agree with you. But this legal battle is going to cost us thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars. I don't have it. They don't have it, and we don't want it. We want you to act civilly as leaders, comport yourself as leaders, as people who we look to to run our goddamn government. That's it. Thank you.

Anybody else have a comment? Good evening, Christine.

Good evening. Christine Perez, 5 Wesley Drive. I'm sure that you are all aware that many professionals break down into specialties. For example, doctors have specialties, nurses, I specialized in cardiology and emergency room, teachers, brokers, insurance brokers, cosmetologists even break down into specialties, even lawyers. So based on that, Would one not prefer to deal with an individual who specializes in the service that you're wishing to use or purchase? Doesn't that just make sense? For example, would you want a civics teacher teaching trigger calculus? If you broke your leg, would you go to your cardiologist? How about if you had an abscess in your mouth? Would you go to your ophthalmologist? Of course not. You'd go to the specialist. Specialist... are specialties for a reason. Specialists know exactly what they're talking about. They don't go to someone else or get other help to advise them because they're specialists in their field and are expected to know what they're talking about. We have the luxury of at least three firms in this state that specialize in municipal law. Municipal law. Municipal law. So wouldn't it be in the best interest of Londonderry to hire a specialized law firm or a lawyer? Of course it would. After researching both law firms that are coming before you, I did not see anyone or even a mention of specializing in municipal law. I question why this decision is trying to be made with these law firms. Why? So if you look at Shaheen and Gordon, they have seven pages of what they specialize in. personal injury, employment, workers' comp, civil defense, DUI, DWI, business and corporate, real estate, trust, estates and guardianship, family law and divorce, immigration, litigation, youth development, car accidents, depo provera lawsuits, catastrophic injuries, AFFF exposure, bicycle accidents, business litigation, Business organization, child custody, child support, civil rights, construction accidents, corporate and fraud, criminal appeals, school disciplinary hearings, dog bites. employment law, federal crimes, guardianship, lead paint, motorcycle accidents, nursing home abuse, PFAS, water contamination, premises liabilities, probate, product liability, social security disability, trucking accidents, vaccine cases, and wrongful death. I didn't hear. I didn't hear municipalities in any of that. And the other firm has only four pages, affordable housing, bankruptcy, excuse me, business litigation, cannabis, corporate, data privacy, environmental and energy, estate planning, government investigations, healthcare, intellectual property, labor and employment. Nonprofit, real estate and development, real estate and development, and startup booths. I don't see municipalities in there at all. But yet, but yet, one of the municipal law firms says, we look to build collaborative relationships with clients, fostering trust, understanding, and effective support the public interest by maintaining a focus on expertise in municipal law. We deliver reliability, cost-effective solutions that empower municipalities to navigate complex legal matters, confidentiality, and efficiency. And if you look at the other two, Gallagher, Callahan, and Gartel just won an appeal. for a municipality on 4-26 with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court. And the other one, Whaley, Starr, and Peters, ranked tier two in municipal law best law firms 2026. What's the matter with you? Stop going to a cardiologist to have your broken leg fixed. You're not thinking of the people.

Time. Thank you. Good evening, how are you tonight?

Good, how are you? Good. My name is John Kelly, I live on Grove Street. Teddy, Danny, Ron, Sean, and Deb, right? You guys remember me from last year, remember I walked out of here? Remember, I was in the back row back there by John Farrell and those guys, and I said to you guys, an old man said, are we going to open up public comment again? And before you could even answer, I had an outburst, and I want to apologize for that. Because I said to you, what the voters really want are you guys to all get along. Here we are a year later. The only thing we get along on right now from where I'm sitting is, We can fix a fire station like we fix our homes. So five people vote on that. Everybody agrees with that. We have a library problem. At the library, what are you going to do? It's like your home. It's got mold. You got to fix it. So what are you going to say? No, no, no. And what happens with the library? The library goes down the shitter. You have to fix it. And so that's where I see the unity with you guys. You guys have – you get together when there's a problem that has to be fixed. And we all know because we're all paying our taxes and we all have to pay for this. It's the small stuff that you don't get along. We push off and we – I'd love to see – I can tell who the clique is, and I'm glad the seating has changed. And I have no horses in the race anymore. I don't know Sean. I know what's going on from what I read. I have people telling me, you're out of touch. You don't know the full picture. No, I don't. I don't think anybody does. I think the lawyers know. But we're wasting our money and our time. And every time there's a little problem, like the purse guy said. Take it out back. Go talk. Go figure it out. You guys, five smart people. You don't have to be lawyers. You don't have to be. I don't care what you do. You all do different things in life. I know that. And this guy is the expert. He's supposed to know how to run the town, okay? I know what ticked everybody off. He gave out some raises prematurely. And that was the start. And then whatever happened after that, I don't know. And it's none of my business really. It's between you guys. You're running the town, the six of you. So what I'm trying to say is you got to change it up. You got to get along because the perception you've created in this town is sad. It's really, really sad. Good luck.

Thank you. Anybody else have a public comment?

Seeing none, I will close with a comment. Mr. Chair, I'd like to share something. So, I want to address the ongoing investigations that we've had. It's well known at this point that the town council initiated an investigation approximately six months ago. regarding a complaint involving the town manager. What's interesting is, unbeknownst to me, I was part of that investigation also. So the investigator, Attorney Eric Mayer, from the law firm of DTC, has advised me and the town manager that the investigation was completed last month. Last month, this investigation was totally completed. I was interviewed for over two hours. He called me up, asked me to interview. The town council should release the findings of that investigation. This investigation involved an elected town council, chief administrative officer of the town, the town manager. One or a couple members of the town council directed this investigation to begin. Thousands of taxpayer dollars were spent on this investigation. We still don't know what the total amount of the money that was spent. When somebody asked a few weeks ago about Councilor Paul's investigation, it was over $8,000. The people of this town have a right to know what these allegations are and what the findings were. Both the town manager and I have a right to know what the allegations are and what the findings were. At the very least, the town council should release what the allegations were what the findings were in lieu of releasing the full investigative report mr chair if there are parts of the report that are subject to an exemption under the right to know law that those sections could be redacted the chairman could and should state what the allegations were and what the findings were right now in this meeting Therefore, I make a motion that the Londonderry Town Council hereby releases the investigative report created by the law firm of DTC involving allegations against Councilor Dan Bouchard, myself, and Town Manager Sean Mahala.

I'll second that motion.

Okay, I have a motion from Dan and a second from Deb. Discussion?

So Dan, one, I want to note for the record, you are disclosing and talking about matters that happen in a non-public meeting. You also have disclosed them inaccurately, that investigation was not directed by any one or two members of this council. I will not speak further on that because that would be in violation of the law. You have frequently done this and I'm just making another note for the record that you are doing it again.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to say that I have not disclosed anything from any non-public meeting. I spoke to Attorney Mayor. He told me the investigation was completed after my interview. So these should be released. I mean, this is over a month now.

I will also state for the record, you do know the results of those, and you pretending you don't is inaccurate. The public doesn't know. The public doesn't know. But you just stated before that you don't know. And I want that for the record as well.

That's why I want it released. I want my name cleared.

Dan, for the record, you were in the same meeting I was in. And you know that it's not ready to be released yet. So you're just doing a publicity stunt.

Not at all.

Which is fine.

It's not a publicity stunt, Mr. Chair. This is... Okay, we hear about the investigations, investigations. People don't know what these investigations are. They're secretive investigations. I got to tell you, I mean, I was shocked when I was called in by the investigator. And I am the subject of the investigation. So do I know the results? Yeah, I do know the results, and that's why I want them released. Regardless of what the results are, these should be released to the public. There's no reason to hang on to it. It's been over a month.

And that's why I want it released. So first off, for the record, it has not been over a month, Dan. That is not a true statement. So I want to put that on the record. I'm not going to divulge anything else, but that is not true.

That is true.

Go ahead, Dan.

So I see us going down a slippery slope here. I'm going to bring us back to when I was on the council before, and somebody put in a complaint against me. At the time, the town manager was Mr. Mike Maliguti. They put in a complaint that I used the word seduce in the wrong capacity and that it was sexual harassment. I was allowed to read the complaint. I was not allowed to get a copy of it. Nor was I allowed to get the findings. I took you guys to court, which you ended up having to pay, and it was $17,000. I have a right, Dan has a right, to information about himself or herself, whatever it is, to have access to that and have it in physical copy because... You just should have it. It's about you. So I'm afraid that we might be going down a very slippery slope that's going to cost the town a lot of money. Yet again, as we got called out before by the judge, it was frivolous. It should have never happened. They treated these documents like they were the code to the Fort Knox. I mean, you remember that.

Mm-hmm.

I believe you were on the council at the time.

I was waiting for it to get done. I am done, thank you. That would be true if the situation was as simple as that situation. I wasn't on the council then when that happened. This is a different situation. You guys are aware of the greater detail of the situation, and I feel like this is just an attempt to obstruct and derail that.

All right, so I have a motion. Mr. Chair, I just want to add something, okay? When Counselor Paul was investigated this year because Mr. Farrell made a complaint against her, when we got the results, we released those results immediately, all right, and told her what the results are. I don't know what people are afraid, what you're hiding, but let the people know what the results are. It's pretty simple.

The only difference is, Sean, between that one and this one, is that you want to redact a lot of information. And I understand why we want to redact that information. But that doesn't mean you can't just say, here was the complaint, nobody's names mentioned, just the people involved. None of how they got there is, and the results. So you're talking about taking the beginning and the end, cutting out the middle, redacting it, and allowing it to be out in the public so the people, Have some peace of mind of things that are going on. Obviously, it's going to be what it's going to be, but I'm just trying to be logical here. If these two guys decide to take this to court, they're going to win.

And I'm not accusing you of... lying in this instance or anything. I'm just saying maybe you misunderstand it or maybe you didn't understand it in the meeting you were sitting in. It's not because it needs to be redacted. And I'm not going to speak further on the subject.

Well, then I guess I don't understand any other reason besides that. For it being released, because we're here to serve them. I'm trying to be as calm and as civil as I can to explain this. And I don't want to see the town in another suit like this and be publicly accused of another slap action. And that's what this will be.

Any further discussion?

All I ask, Mr. Chair, is that the results get released. I have nothing to hide. I want it to come out. It's just pretty simple. You made your point.

I'm just going to say that. You know a lot more than you tell the public.

Well, if you release it, then the public will know. If you release the results, I mean, even if you said, Mr. Chair, that this was the allegation, it was investigated, this was the result. Okay.

All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Opposed.

Opposed. Chair votes no.

I went the wrong way. I want to change my vote. I'm sorry. I'm voting that I want the documents released.

Okay, so let the record show that Councilor Powell changed her vote to yes, so it's a 3-2 motion fails. All right, I want to talk about something positive. I have been working with some reps from London Dairy, from Hudson, and from Dairy. And our goal is to move us up on the Route 102 corridor study to get us up higher on the ten year highway plan. I believe it's very important that London Dairy gets moved up. 102 is obviously an issue. And I'm bringing it before this council because I would like to go to the Dairytown Council and the Hudson Select Board and present what I would like to see us do as a group. And Mr. Mahon, did you want to say a few words?

Yeah, as was indicated, there was a meeting that Council of Faber represented the town council with in front of Executive Council of Stevens. And we had Council of Paul was there as well. And Representative Perez was there. And we advocated, which is what needs to happen. And it needs to be you. I cannot do this for you. This is a political situation where we're asking that instead of being 25th on the list for 102 to be studied, for it to be moved up. There have been a number of accidents, as we're all well aware of. There's a significant congestion, especially in those three towns of Hudson, actually Litchfield too, Lennon Dairy and Dairy. And with the meteoric growth that we have in this area, that is compounded every day. Even if we can get it moved up, it'll be years before the results of that come out. And then those recommended improvements get added to the 10-year highway plan, as you know, is way behind. So time is of the essence to be able to do that. And you're absolutely right. Councilor Faber started that process with Representative Perez and Councilor Paul, and then you have taken it to get the other towns on board. It's going to take political pressure to be able to influence the folks in Concord to spend that money here. We have received a number of complaints about safety issues, Mohawk Drive. Just pick any intersection along there of close calls, traffic accidents where people have been injured. And this is the right process to do that. Route 102 does not belong to the town. It's a state road. And the only way to do that is to advocate for those elected officials to try to take resources and put them to address this particular problem in the fastest growing sector of our state.

So I bring this before the council because I'm going to ask Mr. Mulholland if he could prepare some documents for me to bring to the Town Council of Derry and the Hudson Select Board.

Ron, what roots and or towns are higher up on the list than us? Do you know that I don't have it in front of me?

Manchester is one of them. Yeah. But there's assorted other things, so it's like 25th down, so you've got to take 25 different things. Of course. But I know Manchester was a big factor in this because I've had follow-up conversations on this subject to try to keep increasing the wheels going forward, but that particularly like the exits 8 and 9, I know they were looking at, so...

Do we know where we fall for the Route 128 and 28 intersection area? Because that was supposed to be looked at in studies for quite a while, and it seems like it just keeps on getting pushed down the road.

When we were briefed with Executive Counselor Stevens, Route 28 was in the top 10, Route 28. Route 28 is not on the list at all. And that's one of the areas, as you know, that we've identified, especially that south section from Route 102 to the Wyndham line. And we have two spots at Adams and where Peabody Row connect. We've had a lot of close calls and a lot of congestion at certain times of the day at that particular intersection. And then there's also issues at the corner of Mammoth and Pillsbury at certain times of the days that backup flow that we haven't had any bad accidents recently there. And then of course, we already know that route 128 and route 28 is already on the list that project is moving forward. So there's the answer for 128.

So the one at 128 and 28 is moving forward by the mobile station?

That is in the 10-year highway plan. Okay. And, yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about some of that tonight. Okay. How that relates to that.

So there was a massive rollover crash right before the town council tonight. So it's been a while since we've had a major accident there, but... it's not a good intersection of multiple different routes coming into multiple angles of that road uh last thing i'd like to see is more people get hurt there yes and the the hard thing with this is that we are competing with statewide needs so it's not even just what's important for the town of london area it's statewide but it's us trying to get pressure to get it in the right spot we're just rare that we have three state routes in our town yeah good

So at that meeting, as you know Sean, you weren't there Ron, but I brought up to Mr. Stevens the fact that at one time there was supposed to be another exit off of 93 up in the north end of town that was supposed to be a direct route right to the airport, which would alleviate a lot of trucking on our road. They had five designs that they had done, none of them had moved forward. And that would help alleviate, like a valve, alleviate some of that pressure. But if you pitch it in the sense of growth and economic development in other parts of the state in the southern tier that would be able to benefit from this, it would help us in the long run. But the exit itself, having a full look, connection from going to the east and to the west right through Ray Resort because this road this exit was talked about before the bridge was even built and it was to connect 93 to that bridge and make a full circle if you can understand what I'm not very good at explaining that stuff but That, I think, is one of the things that you should try to put out there to get more support from the state because you're going to open up a lot of traffic access, road access to areas that are underbuilt and underdeveloped that would allow the state to have more revenue, which is what they want. And in the end, we win because we get pressure off of our roads as well. So when you do do your pitch to the state or to these other towns, these are things you need to talk to them about. Because right now they're using 102 as one of the cut throughs, up north the 28 is another cut through. But if you had a specific road that was quick truck lane, have things move quickly, you would see a lot of traffic removed from both of those Issued rows go that way.

So I agree with you in that meaning, and I don't disagree with you now. I just think sometimes when you combine two efforts like that, I would like to see something push forward with that idea, if you have more information on it. But it would be a separate effort from this, because I think we have a lot better chance on a one or two corridor study. But that's something that shouldn't be forgotten either.

That's going to fix it. I mean, when you look at your study, the whole idea is to find an answer to that study. So to me, they have to go in a parallel.

I see what you're saying, so- But they've got to be on a parallel- So study first, and that's one of the options for this after the study. I get you.

So is the council okay with me directing the town manager to- Yeah, hopefully- Get them together.

Get the state to move up. Absolutely.

Thank you, sir.

Ron, lastly. Go ahead.

Mr. Town Manager, do we have any update on the 28 and Stonehenge intersection?

I don't. I went through the other day, and it looks like they cut some trees down, but they haven't done anything. I don't know what the delay is. We can certainly check into that and find out what the story is.

That was supposed to be done like 10 years ago.

Well, yeah. I mean, it's been contracted. They did some work there, but I don't know why they're not doing more right now. Take advantage of the construction season. Maybe it's an issue with the contract. But I'll find out, and I'll get back to you with an answer on that. Good question.

All right, up next we have a public hearing. Public hearing about the traffic code adding chapter 301.2, parking and stopping regulations. Who is presenting? I don't see the- Do we have the deputy chief?

We don't need the chief for this one. Okay, all right, okay. Not that we don't need the chief. I got you. Just coming back from vacation, I don't think we can handle this without him. All right. So obviously we went in front of the council on the 1st of June and there was a number of citizen complaints about these two particular roadways with drifting and other behavior out there that was creating a lot of noise for those neighborhoods. And one of the things the chief proposed was parking because they park along both sides of that roadway and they're involved in these activities. So that was one of the steps that he proposed putting into place that requires action of the council to put those regulations in place to do that. So this is the public hearing phase of that, and you have proposed Section 301 in front of you. It also has a temporary provision that allows for temporary no parking by the DPW director for a very limited period of time, and anything permanent after that would have to be approved by the council, but that's like events like Old Home Day, whatever it might be. He can post those signs out there. So we worked together with DPW and PD to come up with the language that you see in front of you, and that's what's being proposed today.

All right, I'll accept the motion to open public hearing.

So moved.

Second. Motion from Deb, second from Ted. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes in the affirmative.

Anyone from the public wish to discuss?

Seeing none, I will accept the motion to close public hearing. So moved. Motion from Ted. Second. Second from Dan. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes in the affirmative. Back to us.

What do we want to do next? We're just talking about putting the no parking signs. We're not doing speed bumps.

Nope. No parking signs and we had, with this being appropriate, I know we had discussed it a little bit, but appropriate to discuss doing the the pavement.

So I guess I'll move that the very town council here by adopts the amendments by adding section 3, 0, 1, 0.2 to the traffic code which is what's displayed.

I have a motion from Sean second second from Dan any further discussion. All those in favor say aye aye any opposed shows the affirmative.

Chairman Dunn, do you want, I have the deputy, you can talk to you about the chip seal.

Yeah, I was just going to ask if that would be, just so that the public could hear about that. That was a really good solution.

James and Dave Wally were looking at options. What can we possibly do, and you can speak to that.

Yeah, you guys came up with a good solution. I just wanted you to share with the public. What is this solution?

Chip seal. Chip seal. Chip seal, what is that? Chip seal is a preservation technique used on pavement. So Dave and I were curious on alternatives to what we could do. And in and through some of what I'm actively working on with respect to roadway program that we're developing the PCI is being developed under that PCI and Pavement preservation techniques that you would develop through that rating system One of those techniques is called chip seal chip seal goes down with a heavy Tack coat basically a bituminous material and then it gets a Stone application applied to it. It's rolled it's swept and it comes back off the product tends to be fairly Aggressive, really aggressive in what it is. It lasts a long time. It's a great technique that's used. There are complaints about using it in neighborhoods, you know, because it does tend to have some loose stone, small loose stone strewn about it over a period of time before it finally solidifies and it takes a little bit of time to cure and kind of clean up. And again, with that, it has a relatively aggressive surface, which would be a great opportunity for all three of these roads, the third road being Aviation Drive. I was up there as well. I looked at all three roads today, as a matter of fact. The technique would work, I would say, for two-thirds of the neighborhood in relation to a preservation technique. I don't know necessarily on a deterrent, but certainly the aggressive nature of the material could work for a deterrent if they start seeing that their tires, that they are so eagerly to burn off their cars, they get a lot less wear out of them. There's certainly that, but strictly from a pavement preservation standpoint, it is a great product in certain applications.

We're doing some quick research here. It looks like it extends life of the road by seven to ten years, and it's a cost savings between 30 to 50% less than a hot mix.

Yes. So right now it's on the order of about six bucks a square yard on average, I think is the number. So the baseline is anywhere between 20,000 and 30,000 square yards to have a full day's work. So doing quick math, anywhere between $120,000 and $180,000. for a solid pavement preservation technique. Now, so that the council does know, I will be looking at this as an option moving forward with pavement preservation techniques to do exactly like Council Combs just suggested to extend the life of the road. It's an intermediate technique in between crack seal and overlay. I've actually spent the better part of the last 15 years researching a good intermediate technique. Correct sealing is very low cost, a couple of bucks a square yard to mill and overlay upwards of $30 a square yard. And chip seal is one of the items that I had looked at, and there are two or three others that I had looked at.

Now some of the drawbacks might be that the roads might be a bit noisier for a while, but also some of the stone could fly back up from the road.

That is correct. That's one of the items that I just mentioned a minute ago, is that until it fully cures and settles, which can take a little bit of time, there is loose stone that's on the road. And that's ultimately the main reason why you don't want it in a neighborhood. It can result in a lot of conflicts in a neighborhood. It doesn't take away from what the product does to the life of the road. So save some complaints in a neighborhood, it works out great. So this type of an application would be great on a main through road or, in this case, an industrial road where the noise is not a factor as far as tire noise. We're not talking about big trucks. As well as, say, spitting up material, loose material. Again, that loose material is not constant. It goes away in a relatively short amount of time, say, a month or two.

Any other questions?

Yeah, I have one.

Okay. So I know that we have a schedule of roads in town. Is this moving this road up in the list and therefore moving other roads down? Mm-hmm.

We don't have a defined road program yet. Okay. John Trotter, over the last several years, many years, has developed an annual program based on experience, knowledge, and need. We had a list last year with a variety of mill and overlay roads, which is kind of the processes which have been happening. Um, and, um, but what this program will do, it will introduce additional techniques to really expand the life of, of the, uh, the road. I don't know if you may remember the, the, um, uh, the PowerPoint presentation that I gave short, uh, just kind of introducing the whole concept of the PCI showed a couple of graphs and one of those graphs. shows a curve that goes down at a rather sharp angle, and it's kind of the life of the road where, you know, up here we get 100, it's a brand new road, and it sharpens and then it kind of falls off and flattens out at the bottom where we get a really bad road. And that's the life cycle cost of the road over 30 years as it relates to cost. By contrast, if you have a good pavement preservation technique, you can extend the life of the road somewhat indefinitely where a certain much smaller incremental cost, it shoots back up and it goes back down, it shoots back up, goes back down, and it stays along the top of the graph. So these techniques say $6 a square yard as opposed to, say, $250 a square yard for a full roadbed reconstruction. You can see the order of magnitude. So, you know, six bucks for a chip seal or two bucks for a crack seal or 15 years down the line, you're doing a mill and overlay. And then at 20 years, now you're starting to think of a full-depth reclamation project. And then further on, if we have a really bad road and, you know, the existing material just has to come out, then you get into full-depth reclamation and, excuse me, full-depth construction where everything comes out. and all new goes in, including drainage infrastructure.

You said it was a square yard? This particular item, yes. I said $6 a square yard. Yeah, and $2.50 a square yard to do a full replacement.

Full reconstruction. On average, I have a running list over the last 15 years or so of what each baseline technique costs that I kind of acquired, again, over the last 15 years. Mr.

Check, can we just get a cost of what it would be to do those streets like that at some point? That's why I wanted to present it tonight so we could—

would like to know how long is this product been around I can do the research for you but it's been around I mean I've never heard of it so I'm gonna go do the research I hear good things but I'm hearing awful things as well and so yeah I mean I live on a main street and I parked near the road do I want rocks flying into my windshield no it was into my yard or near my house correct I I mean, do I want to hear that noise? It's bad enough. I hear the people going up and down Hardy Road like crazy and the highway and whatever else. So do I really want to listen to that?

So those considerations are absolutely taken into account. So again, in a quiet neighborhood, maybe not so much. Hardy Road, it is a main through road, but it's also really tight quarters. And in that environment, it may not be a good place a good application just the same. You have an opinion of what it is, and then you have a fact of what it does. So what it is, it can be noisy. There's loose stone for a period of time. It's aggressive, you know, that kind of stuff.

I think it would be nice if I could see sometime in the future, because I know you said you're going to present this. Yeah, absolutely. So in the future, if you could say, okay, these are the roads we would apply it to, Because they're the smaller, not smaller, but less traveled roads. And what that cost is. And then stuff like High Range Road, Hardy Road, these longer, more cut through roads. How much is it going to, like, so do we, does Hardy Road, High Range Road get paved more? This is real important because when they come-

He's talking about putting this on the two roads only. I understand.

But he also said he was going to do this. So I'm trying to give him a heads up to get it done before we have to talk about it.

All of that information is exactly in the report that I'm going to present to you at the end of August.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah.

Deb, just to let you know, this type of practice has been around for 100 years, and they've refined it over time of the chip ceiling. You had asked how long it's been around? It's been around for over 100 years, and they've been refining the practice.

I guess my question is, are we just hearing about it? Why didn't Llanos or anybody else bring it forward a long time ago?

Perhaps they didn't want to do so. Did you have a question?

The only thing I want to mention on Jim's comments is when they say the rocks get kicked up, you think about this, they're in a cul-de-sac. They're going around that rotary and they're racing. Those rocks get kicked up into another car. So it might discourage them from doing that.

So in truth, that wouldn't be a reason to do this project.

So just going off of rough math here, Jim, our standard road is 28 feet, correct?

In this case, the industrial roads are 38 feet, I believe.

38 feet, okay.

Yes. A standard subdivision road is, I think, either 26 or 24, depending upon when it was built.

So just doing some simple math here, you're looking at a cost savings of almost $3 million for a 1,000 foot long road.

Yeah. But you're talking a full-depth reconstruction with that upper end. So, you know, and it's actually one of the things I've been in and amongst of what I do. I look at pavement every single day, and it's just what I do. And I identify, you know, The condition of the roads and what things are really failing and what things are really good. And actually, Londonderry's road system is in pretty good shape overall. So the techniques that John and Janos have been using over the years have been working. But that's not to say that new techniques can't be introduced and potentially improve that value. But, again, that won't all be fully identified until the report comes. that is generated and I present it at the end.

And I think certainly the other end of this is we can extend out our dollars that we have in these trust funds for replacing these roads where on our current path we're at 100 years or more to be able to get back to that same road to replace it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Dan, you had another question?

I just had a question, Mr. Chair. I mean, we're going to, we did the no parking signs. Yeah. At what point are we going to discuss whether we're going to do the chip ceiling or the speed bumps?

That's coming up in the future. That's why I wanted him to address it with the public tonight so everyone can kind of get and digest it and ask her questions and everyone can kind of understand what it is because I think you and I kind of know what it is. Yeah, I understand. And I just kind of want everyone else to kind of see what it is.

All right. Thank you.

So thank you both for bringing it to our attention. You know, you and Dave and, you know, thank you, John, also for all the good work you've done on the road. So appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you. All right, up next we have discuss a petition to request and reclassify the cul-de-sac at Ashley Drive. Who's going to start us off? I'll start you off. Okay.

The process to do this is we have a petition before us. If the council determines that it should go forward to determine whether or not there's an occasion, which is the statutory definition, that's the term that's used, an occasional layout of road. We would schedule a public hearing to do that, and you would make that determination after that public hearing, not here today. Today you would hear from the petitioner, anybody else, in essence it's basically a public hearing as well, to hear all the information you can about that. And then you decide, you could either say to yourself, we don't think there's a reason to lay out a road, we're not going to go any further with this, you can do that. And there's also the person who owns the property. As you know, the town in 1977, the roadway was turned over to the town. And then the cul-de-sac itself was supposed to be a temporary cul-de-sac, 49, it was 50 years ago. Because the idea was the road, Ashley Drive, was going to continue further south towards Adams. That hasn't occurred in 50 years. And the idea is that there was an easement for the cul-de-sac. You need a place for people to be able to turn around, plow trucks, UPS trucks, fire vehicles, and the general public to be able to turn around. And an easement was supposed to be issued in 1977. An easement was never actually issued. Or if there was one issued, it's never been recorded with the Registry of Deeds, and nobody can seem to find it. So we have a proposed easement that was provided to us by the attorney for the property owner, Mr. Haywood. And then we have the petitioner from the folks across the street that are asking for a roadway layout. So what you would do tonight is you would hear that petition, hear the information from them and anybody else who wishes to speak about it. And then you could determine whether or not you want to go forward with a public hearing and do the layout process of a roadway. And then I can get into further detail about what that is if you choose to do that and answer any questions in that regard.

Sounds good. So we'll start off with the petitioner. Are they here? Come on up.

You can sit if you want. It's fine. Hey. My name is Jason Carasquillo. This is my wife, Megan. We live at 12 Ashley Drive in the cul-de-sac. There's only two houses in this cul-de-sac, 12 and 11, which belongs to the Haywoods. I want to start off by telling you guys what brings us here today is that the cul-de-sac on Ashley Drive, we want to become a public roadway. We've lived there for eight years and the street has a great community, the neighbors are all great. We all get along with one another. We have block parties, gatherings in the cul-de-sac. Our kids play in the cul-de-sac. They ride their bicycles around the cul-de-sac. When we bought the house, it was described to us as a cul-de-sac. Not only do our kids play there, but all the rest of the neighborhood kids. They're always riding their bikes through there. There's joggers that go through there. And everything, we had no issues for the first few years that we lived there. Until the first altercation on April 14th of 2024, where a guest parked a few feet onto the Hayward's property. Not on the grass, on his grass, not in front of his house, but on the pavement far away from his house and any other obstructions. Mr. Hayward called the police, and when they showed up, they told us we need to move the car two feet forward. So the police came out there for two feet. What a waste of resources from the town. Little do we know this is just the beginning because minutes after the police left, Mr. Hayward started banging up signs, putting a ladder up, banging signs on the trees that all said no trespassing while yelling at our guests. Again, the police were called out again on August 2nd of 2025 and August 16th of 2025 at a kid's birthday party. The only difference this time is I was so courteous that I put up these little cones across the street on both sides of the circle so no one would go past the cones. Well, one car went a few inches past one of the cones. Well, little do we know that the police came out there again and they said, you're two inches over the cone, can you please- Just make him happy. Just make him happy and can you please move the car? And I said, I'm so sorry, I did everything I could in my power to block the road so guests would not go over there, because I didn't want to escalate the situation any further. But this was still just the beginning as well. Because people didn't know where to park, the worst was still to come. On October 18th of 2025, the whole neighborhood had planned a block party where we actually went down to the police station. We showed them drawings. We told them what we wanted to do. We wouldn't have a bounce house. We rented a port of John, put it at the end of the street, not on his side of the street. We told the police department we wanted to set up cones on half of the street to use for cornhole boards so we could have a cornhole tournament. They thought it was a great idea. They said as long as emergency vehicles could get by, you guys go ahead and do what you guys want to do. Well, that morning of the 18th of October, I was setting up all the cornhole boards in the street. Mr. Hayward told me to move all the cornhole boards, remove them from the road. And if I don't remove them, he threatened to call the cops again. I told him that I had permission from the police department and that I wasn't going to move the boards. What did he do? He got in his car, revved his engine, charged down the road, ran through over our blockade that we had to block cars from hitting the boards, ran the boards over. And told us, and jumped out of the car, started screaming in my face at me, telling me, you know, profanity right in front of my kids.

He could have killed our kids too.

I told him he could have hurt our kids very badly. They burst into tears crying in fear that something was going to happen, that he was going to do something to us. So he called the cops again, cops showed up and told us we were still clear, we could do what we wanted to do. And he left for the day and that de-escalated the situation. Cops also asked me if I wanted to press charges. I said no, because I didn't want to escalate the situation and ruin our day. Two more incidents occurred, one at 2.36 AM on April 9th of 2026, and one at 3 o'clock in the morning on 3 AM on Saturday, April 11th. Both because my son's truck was parked in the street, not on his side of the cul-de-sac, but on the public roadway. And he was in fear of that emergency vehicles couldn't pass by. He told them he wanted the police to wake us up- At 3 AM. At 3 AM and 2.30 to move our vehicle. And the police said, no, we would not do that. There's plenty of space for emergency vehicles to get by.

In that time, a fire truck and a police car showed up.

So on May 4th of 2026, He actually told us, he told my kids that they were allowed to ride through the circle with their bicycles and a non-motorized vehicle. I thought that was great. But three days later, he texted me saying, disregard that. I don't want your kids on our property anymore. So that was the last straw, and our neighbors and us came up with a petition to make that road a public roadway. There's over 144 cul-de-sacs in Londonderry. Only one of them is owned by a private owner, that's Mr. Haywood. Why would Londonderry have one cul-de-sac out of every single cul-de-sac in Londonderry owned by an owner? It doesn't make any sense. The town plows for it. Every winter, a private roadway, they sand, they take care of the pavement there. Why are they doing that when it's not owned by the town? I understand it's for emergency vehicles to turn around, but- Our kids should be able to use the circle with riding their bikes.

As a mother, you want to look out your window, watching your kids play in the front yard with their friends, knowing that they're safe.

There is other roads in London area where there are dead ends and emergency vehicles can get around fine. So I want to make these points clear that this would benefit Londonderry to approve this. this petition to make it a public roadway, the town would avoid repeated administrative costs. If disagreements continue over access of maintenance and the use of the easement of the town, they may repeatedly spend staff time responding to complaints, researching deeds, consulting attorneys, or holding hearings. Establishing a public roadway creates a lasting solution. The town already maintains it, so there's no way that they're already- It always functions as a public roadway.

Yeah. So can we just make it a public roadway?

Out of this, the whole time that we've lived there, everyone uses it. Now, all of a sudden, there's a problem that my kids can't use that, but the kid in the neighborhood. So when my kids' friends come over the house, and they're going around the circle, and my kids are saying, I can't go around the circle because they're going to call the police on us. It's just not right. Emergency access is protected. Fire trucks, ambulance, police vehicles, snow plows, school buses, and utility vehicles, they all benefit from clearly having an established public turnaround. And it really protects the investment of the town that it's already making into this roadway. I mean, they maintain it. They're putting money into it. It should be allowed for public use.

And that's our tax dollars.

So I'm asking you today to please approve our petition. And the easement that the Haywoods are proposing today really makes no change in what it already is. They instilled that cars can't be parking there, kids can't play there, and- They're allowing vehicles to turn around, but we want our kids to play there. Yeah.

The town maintains it.

If you do approve of his easement, I please beg you to allow our children to ride their bicycles through there and live like normal kids in the rest of the neighborhood. Like I said, there's over 144 cul-de-sacs. Why is this one owned by a private owner?

Can I ask how many signatures are on the petition?

Do we have the petition? It's every house but one house. Okay. It's every single house but one house.

That better answers what I was, yeah, thank you.

Any other questions for them?

Thank you. Yeah, I think we have some more people who want to speak too.

Sure, I'm going to hear from the Haywards. Okay.

How are you? Hi, how are you? My name is Kevin Duyon. I've been living at 40 Wilshire Drive, which is a corner of Wilshire and Ashley, since February of 1978. Moved up here from Boston with my wife to raise a family, best thing we ever did. I had three kids all four years apart grew up in the neighborhood. And to be honest with you, I didn't know that Jeff and Sheila owned that property until just recently. But all our kids enjoyed riding their bikes down there, as well as other kids in the neighborhood. I just don't, I mean, I understand how we got here, but I can't understand why it hasn't been resolved, why people just can't get together and talk. I don't know what happened. I think there's more than what meets the eye. But I think the kids should be allowed to ride the bikes around there as far as... I don't use a circle to drive around. I don't have to. There aren't too many people that do, except for Megan and Jason. In the Haywoods. That's it. But the kids should have access to the circle, be able to go down there and play. I know that as far as the grassy area, if Jeff wants to keep them off him, that's great. I understand that. He has to maintain that. I know he cuts it. And so that's all I have to say.

Okay.

All right. Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Michael White, 10 Ashley Drive. During the entire time I've lived there, I've lived there for over 20 years, the cul-de-sac has always been used by the residents of our neighborhood as a place to safely turn around. On occasions, I've had guests also park in there. There's been no issues whatsoever over the years. I've hosted gatherings myself, and I've had guests park there. At no time that I believe I needed anyone's permission to use the cul-de-sac in any way, and to my knowledge, neither did any of the neighbors. For as long as I have lived here in town, the town's plowed it, sanded it, maintained the cul-de-sac. Because of that, it's always appeared as a function, as a part of the roadway, and has been treated that way by the town and its residents. Since the private drive and no trespassing signs went up, I have deliberately avoided driving into the cul-de-sac myself to turn around or anything. Because under... I didn't know it was a private drive. I mean, it never seemed to be. I knew we owned the land, but I didn't know that we could not ride on it. I am doing it because I didn't want to risk unnecessary confrontation or have the police called over something that hasn't been an issue for 20 years. I'm also concerned as a taxpayer, as Jason has said, our tax dollars would go to have this maintained. And I understand why. It all makes sense. I understand that the council has a difficult decision to make. I simply ask that you consider the history of this neighborhood for more than two decades, which it's even been more than that. I've only been there myself two decades. Residents have relied on being able to use the cul-de-sac to turn around. Occasional guests park there. The long history is important, and I hope you give it significant weight in your decision. Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else wish to speak? Mr. Haywood?

Good evening. Hi, folks.

I'm Jeff Haywood, 65 years old. This is my wife, Sheila. 45 years married, 31 years at the very end of Ashley Drive. Both of our daughters graduated from Londonderry High School 25 years ago.

Can I ask Sheila to sit down please?

I would love after I'm done speaking to address Mr. Carrasquillo's comments about time. I should have bolts in my neck as far as what he said. We're going to try to keep this shorter than the 31-year history deserves that we've been here. We understand why people look at a map and they see what appears to be a cul-de-sac. Frankly, we probably would too if we didn't know the history. Roadway too. If you look at the paper in front of you that shows the layout of our neighborhood, that's the only place I've seen the word cul-de-sac in the 31 years that I've lived here. For the last 31 years, every legal document we've received, our deed, our title, our mortgage, our insurance policy, and our tax bill has described this area the exact same way we do, as part of our property, Jeff and Sheila's front yard. The turnaround at the end of Ashley Drive exists because when this neighborhood was developed, the road was expected to continue. It never did. What remains is a turnaround located on our land. Intended to allow municipal and emergency vehicles to safely turn around It was never designed to function as a public roadway an overflow parking area or a recreational space It's also important to understand the layout. This isn't a traditional cul-de-sac. I'm just gonna get a couple things on here This isn't a traditional cul-de-sac There was a dead-end roadway between 11 and 12 Ashley Drive and the turnaround on our property connects to to that roadway through an ingress at the south end and a narrower egress 150 feet to the north, requiring a sharp turn back onto Ashley Drive. In fact, because of that sharp turn configuration, school buses have historically declined to use the turnaround. When my daughters were in school, my God, they're 40 now, but when they were in school and we lived here, I called and asked why the buses won't come down. They had to walk the length of a football field to get to the buses, and they specifically called out that right-hand egress coming out of the circle. At our closing, three things were made clear to us. First, we would pay the taxes. You would think that with 30% of your land being devoted to letting the town turn around, you'd get a break. But we had to understand that before we closed. Second, we would be responsible for making sure the turnaround remained clear and that neither we nor anyone else blocked it. And it only takes one car at the egress to do so.

This is just a couple of cars at the turnaround.

This is a municipal vehicle. I did a lot of taking it. That vehicle will not get out with these cars there. Somebody would have to go get their keys. Now imagine that same picture with 30 cars. I've got those pictures too. And last, the third thing we got was that we would be responsible and liable for what occurred there. Knowing these responsibilities, we purchased the property anyway. Some private properties naturally become places that neighbors enjoy. It may be a frog pond, a sledding hill, an open field, or a grove of trees. Our property became one of those places. We've never viewed it as a problem. We were happy to share it. The fact that private property benefits a neighborhood does not make it public. We still accepted every responsibility that came with ownership. Over the last 31 years, We transformed what was an overgrown, tree-laden area into the open park-like setting you see today, and the effort was monumental. We had several giant pine trees taken down, we planted grass, we've mowed it year after year, we cut the inside branches, and it's beautiful. And many of my neighbors have benefited from those efforts, including the people in this petition. We maintained it because we love it. We shared it because we wanted to. For more than three decades, neighbors, children, walkers, visitors, and the town itself have enjoyed this space. This area appears in countless neighborhood family photographs. Postal carriers, snow trucks, snow plows, emergency vehicles, and countless other municipal vehicles have used this turnaround exactly as intended. By our estimate, just in day-to-day operations, town alone has turned around roughly 12 000 times during the years we've lived here without complaint or incident during those same three decades there was peaceful coexistence in the neighborhood and cooperation without any demonstrated municipal need for this area to function as a public roadway or to be publicly owned our hope has never been to stop respectful use excuse me Our hope has been to return to the kind of relationship where neighbors simply recognize this is private property and ask permission when they wish to use it for purposes beyond turning around. The only time we felt compelled to establish boundaries in the last three decades was when repeated parking conflicts and misuse went well beyond simple turnaround activity and began interfering with our own ability to enjoy, access, and protect property that we alone maintain, insure, and pay taxes on. After years of trying to address those issues as neighbors, it became clear that simply asking people to respect the property was no longer enough. We needed to clearly communicate where the boundaries were and we asked the town's assistance in helping people to understand them. At no time have we ever sought to prevent municipal vehicles or anyone else from simply turning around as the property has always been intended to allow. Our concern has never been ordinary turnaround use. It's been activities that went well beyond that purpose. This isn't the public losing something it was entitled to. It's private property owners finally having to protect property that they've quietly shared for more than 30 years. When we read this petition, we don't see a request to improve a roadway. We see a request that will result in the town acquiring our private property. We certainly understand that some neighbors have become accustomed to using this area in ways that extend beyond turning around. But neighborhood expectations, convenience, and longstanding habits are different from municipal necessity. The good news is that there's already a solution. We've worked cooperatively with the town on a revised easement that preserves the very purpose this turnaround has always served, allowing motor vehicles to safely turn around while respecting private property rights and protecting the property from uses it was never intended to support. and easement expands the town's ability to use the property for its intended purpose. Acquiring ownership changes ownership of the property altogether. Those are very different outcomes. Because acquiring private property is the more costly and intrusive option, we respectfully believe it should be reserved for those rare situations where no reasonable alternative exists. Here, a cooperative easement can fully accomplish the town's operational objectives while remaining the simplest, least costly to the taxpayers, and least intrusive solution for everyone involved. We respectfully ask the town to continue pursuing that cooperative solution. Thank you. Now, if you'd like me to address anything you heard earlier, I'm happy to.

Go ahead.

Let's talk about the running over things and that. As you know, Council Dunn, that the police had to be retrained for them allowing my neighbor to close a public roadway, the only roadway I've gone home on for 30 years. If you look at the sheet you have, the entire last 135 feet of a public road, Ashley Drive, I was blocked from. I had no access to the ingress of my property. And the police told me that it was okay because a lieutenant had given him verbal permission the day before. to close a public road. And when I showed that, I actually showed a video of my neighbor, me yelling across the street, you never learn to ask. And he responded to me with the first thing. He said, I didn't need your permission. I got it from the police. The police told us, the chief of police told us that the police were retrained and told that they couldn't do that and that that was private property. Okay? That's that. And as far as running something over goes, I had no idea what he had in the street. It wasn't a scoreboard. It was some stick that I thought. I didn't think anybody would put something rigid in the road, in a public road. So that's what happened. As far as those two calls in the morning, my neighbor just admitted that he's leaving cars out on the street at night, which is against the law. I called the first night Nobody came and it said in the newspaper services were rendered. Why did I call the second night then? And both of those calls were at 3 in the morning. I deliberately did that so that they could see the municipal violation and maybe in the morning give a call and take care of it. Nobody. I will give the town my land if they can corroborate that I said wake someone up. So that's that. I'm just trying to clear the street from two cars that were impeding emergency services. I have a special needs brother that lives with me. I don't want to leave and then come to find out that there's only this much room left for an ambulance to get by. So that's what happened that night. I've never done anything more than to try and keep the neighborhood safe. And as far as the last one with the parking situation, Yeah. I showed the officer that came, that trespassed his brother-in-law, I showed the officer two videos of me saying, please. The officer then told me, told me that I needed to put up signs. He said, you can't be having, I needed municipal assistance to get a car moved after saying, please, after 30 years. It was devastating to us. And then the policeman told us, if you want municipal assistance, you're going to have to put up signs. And as I was putting up the signs, the board of the law wasn't very happy with me. Does this bother you, Jeff? So that was a very difficult day. I didn't want any of this. I said please. I've always said please. So respectfully, we have worked very hard with the town manager, with my lawyer. They had some back and forths with the easement. And actually, this last version you have was accepted by my attorney.

Is there any questions, please? Any questions for Jeff?

Thanks, folks. Thank you very much.

All right. What do we want to do?

well mr chair i'll start off good i live on a cul-de-sac it's great my kids grew up on a cul-de-sac they played in the circle with the other kids it was fun do people park all over the place sometimes when they're having a gathering absolutely um I look at a street Westminster, perfect example, same as Ashley. Westminster used to go and it was a cul-de-sac at the end. It went on this person's property. And then they connected it to Noyes Road. And when they connected it to Noyes Road, that property owner ended up with half of the cul-de-sac because they continued the road. I think it's It's great when people can all get along. Unfortunately, sometimes we have disagreements. I, as a property owner, would never want to have the liability of that property. Because somebody driving around, a kid riding his bike, whatever, gets hurt. I mean, if the town came up to me as a property owner, that's just my opinion. And they'd say, hey, we'll maintain it. We'll take the liability away from you. I understand that at the end of Ashley Drive, there's some property that potentially could be developed down there at some point. uh and maybe that road would continue and then that this whole thing would just revert back to your property that would be nice um yeah i just wouldn't want the liability if it was me but i think the only way really the town should look at this if the road breaks down and you end up with potholes Now you have even a bigger liability. Who's going to repair that? Is it the town going to repair it?

Yeah? Hold on. Just finish your comment.

No, I just would like to know. I mean, who would end up ultimately repairing that? You know? So... That's it for now.

So right now, the town repairs that called us that, correct?

We have been, yes, for the last almost 50 years, yes.

Mr. Chair, if we end up with an easement on it, are we still responsible for repairing it? I believe we are.

Is that correct?

That's what the easement says? Yes. We will maintain that easement in the roadway surface.

But we're not liable, though. We don't have any liability if somebody gets hurt.

It's not that we don't have any liability. What we can't do is we can't provide the liability protections that I tried to get. For Mr. Hayward and identification provisions. And then because we have sovereign immunity as a municipality, we don't have the authority to extend it to private property, which is very unfortunate. So I tried that route. So that would provide the protections to Mr. Hayward if something did happen on the property and the suit was filed, it would be filed and we would be able to defend him. But our insurance carriers, we cannot do that. So I tried that and that's not an option. So people are probably going to sue him because he's the owner of the property, and we can't provide any protections to him, which is rather unfortunate. And he's been in that spot for 50 years unbeknownst to him, which is not fair because it's been used as a public street basically is what it's been used as, and he's been at that risk, which is, again, unfortunate.

Thank you.

John, you wanted to talk?

No, I'm good.

All right.

reading over this easement that was put together I do think that there should at least be some allowable uses for at least bicycles not just for the kids who live at the cul-de-sac but anyone within the whole entire neighborhood to be able to at least take their bicycle down the street I'm not seeing that within the easement to at least be able to enjoy what then we are making an easement for the town and then to not allow people to potentially recreate and go down the circle and use their bicycle i think that should at least be a an addition to add into this easement i'm not sure how we can do that well actually it already has that because it refers to the term vehicles vehicles bicycle is considered a vehicle except for uh financial responsibility and accidents i just want to make sure that there's no confusion about it in the future

Well, that's the issue. We've had some back and forth, even as late as this morning about that, where that's a concern and understandably by Mr. Hayward about that. So they may want some. So they don't have the latest version. The version they have is the one that was originally sent. So there's some back and forth on that. So that. know he wants to his attorney wants to protect him understandably so because again we can't provide indemnification you know for him so what you see is there's actually a couple different versions of that but the final docket would be uh specifically talked about bicycles thank you so mr mr town manager if the town made this a public road

Could we post signs around the cul-de-sac saying no parking?

You would have to adopt a code regulation that just like it is did for Plainview and Delta and prohibit parking along the cul-de-sac.

I could certainly be one of our options. Not if it's an easement, it would have to become a total public road. Correct.

i'll just speak that i think i'm in favor of the easement i don't want to take anybody's property in an eminent domain i don't think that we should be doing that i think if we can come to an agreement like ted said the bicycles and have the easement work that's in the best interest of the town it doesn't cost us any money as a town to take over the roadway it does cost us money

so yeah i would i would lean toward the easement oh no he was first i i was just saying she had a question that i can talk you said um what you just said but i thought right now the town it does cost the town because the town's maintaining it following it fixing it but jeff pays the taxes i understand that but if that becomes the town road does his taxes would go down

We would have to pay him for that property.

Right. But you just said, you know, you don't want to take anyone's land. Right. So are we going to shift the burden of taking care of it now onto him because it's private property?

With a seizement, it does not do that.

Do you see what I'm saying? Like, we're still maintaining it.

The easement, because of... The easement gives us access to certain things. It also gives us certain responsibilities as a town. So then that equals the maintenance. Right now, we've just been doing it. This has been an odd situation that we've just become aware of as a town. It's gone on for a long time without probably the proper paperwork. I think with the easement, it gets the paperwork that probably should have been in place... way back when probably before he even bought this um the problem is it wasn't and maybe they just figured they were going to build the road this was going to be closed off and they didn't have to bother with the paperwork but they didn't build the road and they left us with a situation that's caused some issues up till today so i guess the other question on what you're saying so he's paying taxes on that whole circle thing

Yes. And I would be a non-conforming property to you.

Okay. I'm just trying to understand. But yet the town is maintaining it.

To an easement that the town and Jeff believed existed. When the town manager went to look for that easement, they couldn't find it. and mr haywood couldn't find it so we're now trying to put something legally in place that states that good job oh you want to confession no i just i don't understand why you can't just have his land back and they can put it right there who owns that man well then they'd have to carve into that land over there i think that's the neighbors over there you

you're the ones over on this side right yeah but i'm talking about right at the end of the road you mean further south yeah further this way but who's going to build that but nobody's there now but then we'd have we as a town would have to someone else owns that property yeah buy that property oh i see yeah okay the town doesn't own that property that's what i was trying to find out if we owned it

There's a parcel right next door that the town does own under conservation easements nearby, but we do not own 6-92 there. I'll just wait until you're done with your question.

This one's a difficult situation.

When you're putting yourself in between two people with conflict, it's, you know, the human side of me, I empathize completely with what you're saying. I empathize putting myself, trying to put myself in your situation, buying a nonstandard property that ends up where, you know, you've got to maintain it. Things have worked out and a conflict happens somewhere in between. The problem is when we're dealing with land use issues and we deal with a lot on the planning board, it doesn't come down to how I feel about it. It comes down to legally, how can we do this the best? It looks like we've got two options here where it's more the easement option or we get into just what the petition said, taking the road. Just looking at those two options as legal aspects of it, I know that taking of the property and making it a road is gonna be a more difficult, expensive, because we can go to court, he would fight us on that, most likely. He's maintained it and paid taxes over the years. He probably would deserve some kind of compensation for that. And it gets into private property where you're as a town going, okay, we're gonna take that private property, we're gonna make it a road. Because he's maintained it, has that precedence, if he's maintained it over a period of time, so that makes it difficult. The easier solution here, which is why I lean a little bit towards it, is just the easement. I feel like that should have been in place the entire time, and it's just an oversight by the town. I'm not hard stuck on that, but I guess that's the way I'm leaning, just because I think it's cleaner for this without... court costs and other things that and the expense involved. I think I do agree with Ted, like, you know, the kids bikes and stuff, you see a road, kids don't know a lot of this. And I guess that doesn't necessarily change the law. But I would, I prefer an allowance in there. And it does save vehicles in some aspect. And I do believe that that would legally include those. So I guess, you know, having to pick between two hard choices. That's where I'm leaning.

Good.

Any further discussion.

In either of those actually we need to yeah.

Mister chair, maybe we send it back to the petitioners and the landowner to see if they can work out a better agreement on this easement for the town and put in bicycles.

I think it's an it is one of the town manager just spoke about that and it might as well as in. The time manager just spoke about this.

So the new one has- The definition of vehicle includes bicycles, right? And the stash that I provided to you folks, that's the term that's in there. But they're obviously, as I brought that to the Hayward's attention, their attorney, they're having concerns about that. So there's been some versions back and forth. So they want to address that issue. So the version you have in front of you refers to vehicles. Bicycles are defined as vehicles except for when it comes to accidents and financial responsibility. That section of that chapter of the Motor Vehicle Code, they changed that in 2019.

I guess living on a cul-de-sac, I'll say that we also have scooters and hoverboards and Other stuff like that too.

They would all phone our vehicles. They would all phone to that, I believe, yeah.

I mean, you believe, but I would hope that that would be spelled out in the easement to be very clear so that there's no confusion.

So what do we want to do?

Because who knows, maybe somebody will use a Segway over there.

Any...

Personally, I kind of agree with Sean, which is, holy cow, it's going to snow tonight. But, I mean, I feel bad on all accounts, and they both seem like genuinely nice people, and I really wish that the two could just settle their differences and find a, you know, it's always much better to go to your neighbors and knock on the door and say, hey, this bothers me, than it is to pick up the police, you know, and call the police and say... Your dog's barking. Stop your dog from barking. Because that's already now put somebody in a defensive, aggravated situation. And it's kind of sad that that happens. I... Kind of listen, I agree with what we're saying, but I really. Personally would like to see them sit down 1 more time and try to hash it all out. Both be in agreement. Both be happy with the situation. But I know that that's not an option.

So go ahead. I mean, I always think it's nice when people can can work out their differences. Us being an example of. Up here. Not always getting that right. I don't know the history between you guys. I don't know every specifics, just like people don't know all the specifics between us. It's not always as easy as it seems. I get that. From our standpoint, I think we've got a part of what's caused this problem and exasperated it is not having the legal clarity of where this sits. It's in an odd state. And I think hopefully just clearing this up so everybody knows where things lie might help clear it so you both know what to expect and it helps you carry forward in a better manner. You know, it is always nicer to get along with your neighbors. If you don't, you don't. That's kind of, you know, your world to live in or not. But I think from our perspective, giving you clarity around this issue would be extremely helpful in helping you remedy some of that.

And I do know there has been a lot of back and forth, as the town manager stated earlier, there's been a lot of back and forth. So I think this is probably the best we're going to get.

I'm just going to say again, I think it should go back and they should try to be very clear because living on a cul-de-sac, you've got skateboarders, you've got rollerbladers, you've got all kinds of things. So I think that really needs to be spelled out in this easement so that there's no problems with the neighborhoods, with the neighbors.

So to try to get us to it, sorry, were you finished? Okay. I think to get us to a conclusion, I think I've heard easement from you, easement from you, easement from you, easement from me. Ted, are you?

I think an easement at this point, hopefully it will be amenable and all parties will actually adhere to it. And hopefully it will stop aggression on both fronts. And hopefully everyone can enjoy the neighborhood.

Just to be clear on I don't support an easement unless it's more Claire clear. I want more. I think the clarification. Yeah, I want more clarification so that everybody on the stands and I don't disagree with that.

So Sean, do you need any further direction from us.

So I just want to clarify the direction. You want me to go back and work with the attorney for the Haywards and draft, get some finalized language to bring back to you to consider. And then obviously I would share that with the folks in the neighborhood so they could look at it and provide that comment as well. And then we have full disclosure. Everybody has an opportunity to provide a comment on it as quickly as we can get that done.

I think we all agree on an easement, just a matter of the way it's clarified. All right, we will move forward with that. All right. All right, up next. No. Discuss and authorize the town manager to shift previously allocated New Hampshire state aid bridge funding from Stokes Road Bridge to Hall Road Bridge. James Daines, come on up, sir.

Welcome again, sir. Oh, thank you very much.

Go ahead.

Look at that. It's not that many pages.

I did add a few pictures in there.

This will be some good education for people. I think a lot of people don't realize that there is a bridge on Hall Road. They go by so fast on Hall Road at times, they might not know that it is a bridge.

All right. All right. Go ahead, sir. All right. Okay, so my name is James Vance. I'm the Deputy Director of Public Works. And I'm here to talk about municipal bridge aid funding. Hold up, James.

Can we have the crowd stop talking? Can you take it out to the hallway, please? We can hear you up here. Please. Thank you. Go ahead, sir.

All right. So I'm here to talk about municipal bridge aid funding between Hall Road and Stokes Road. Sue, look at that. It works. Okay. So topics I'll go over tonight here is I want to just kind of briefly go over some of the municipal bridge aid funding, highest and best use for funding and what we use it for. Go over the red list. We have two red list bridges in town, and we have funding for one of them, or at least we've been approved for funding for one of them. And that is actually Stokes Road, not Hall Road. I'm going to go over the bridge conditions of both of the bridges and their operational needs and how they apply to the town. And then I will kind of briefly talk about shifting the funds and why it's better to go for the Hull Road Bridge based on our needs. And then finally, I do want to go over just briefly the Mammoth and Rockingham Road intersection coordination and how that might affect Stokes Road and ultimately the Stokes Road Bridge. And I think I probably should have put one more bullet point up there to reduce the number of ums in my presentation.

Didn't notice.

All right, so going right into it is the Hall Road Bridge. Here's a locus map of the area. You can see Hall Road is up at the north end of town, and it kind of connects the old village to Harvey Road. There's a zoom in of the area. You can see there's a big wetland complex that kind of goes on both sides of it. I zoomed in to where the actual bridge is. And Council Combs just mentioned that most people don't even know there's a bridge on Hall Road. And there it is, right there at that stream channel. A couple of arrows up there showing you northeast to Mammoth Road and southwest to High Range and Harvey. All right, so Hall Road, just a couple quick little bullet points on it. It's a very important east-west connection. It's got a significant amount of daily residential traffic. It's used widely by municipal services. The school transportation network uses it as well as emergency response connectivity in that north end of town. It sees roughly 2,000 cars a day at about 1980, 1980 AADT. All right, now going over to Stokes Road. In contrast, Stokes Road is a much smaller road. It is an isolated neighborhood. Here's your locus map. And now zooming into the aerial photography, you can kind of see where the bridge on Stokes Road is. Stokes Road Bridge, again, it's an isolated neighborhood. It's used for neighborhood traffic only. And in contrast, it is only 29, that's two nine trips a day, as opposed to 2,900. So, I mean, a factor of 100 between the two. All right, bridge condition of Hall Road. The bridge was built in 1974. It's posted at an E2. That means it can handle all loads, but it does exclude certified loads, really heavy stuff. But, you know, it can do buses and fire engines, you know, as part of that posting. Tractor trailers? What's that?

Tractor trailers?

Yes. Just certified loads. Stuff that needs special permitting to drive on local roads would be excluded from this bridge.

Now, I know sometimes GPAs might pop up and say, take Hall Road for that driver. I know we may have signs that are put up for no trucks, but a lot of times they don't seem to follow it.

So typically when you have a permitted load, they actually map the route and they look at bridge limitations, bridge height restrictions, neighborhood restrictions, turning movements when you go in for a certified load permitting application. It's an actual permit to ride that route. That's good to know for the public. Thank you. Yes. All right. So, and again, it's a red list bridge. It's only red listed for the substructure, the part underneath the structure. That means its foundational support is failing, and it's really a function of scour and a foundational support below the abutments, just like it just said. So right there you get a picture of the bridge and zoomed in. Right at the water level right there, you can see the underside of the concrete at water level. You shouldn't be able to see that. That is a relatively shallow abutment on that bridge, which is not typical. And it actually sits on stilts, I-beams that go down to bedrock. And again, there's six or eight of them on each of the two abutments. Now, the roadway also here, as far as condition, is also failing at a regular rate, and I'll go over that in just a second. And then full bridge replacement at this location would be advisable only from the perspective that in order to address this issue, you basically would have to disassemble the bridge and, hey, while you're at it, you might as well replace the bridge. pulling the deck off, pulling the guardrail off, getting your cofferdams in place. There's a tremendous amount of expense just to get to the abutment, so you might as well spend the money and replace the entire structure. All right, so here's what I was talking about a minute ago. Behind the abutments, you have continuous roadway failures. And you can see here the west approach and the east approach both have been repaired. You can't quite see the patches here, but within the patches, they also are starting to fail in addition to the cracks on the rest of the road at each one of the abutment approaches. Alright, so here's a little diagram for you to look at. These are the abutments I was referring to that are kind of sitting on I-beam piles, stilts down to the bedrock. You get your stream channel in the middle and your road across the top. So that little gray oval there off to the right-hand side is where the scour is occurring at the base of the abutment. So when that scour occurs, the material under the bridge, you get a little arrow that just showed up there and that comes out and that shows you that where the exposure of that abutment was in that other picture I showed. So when that material disappears, guess what happens? The material from the road goes down. So here comes the continued sinking of the road and the repairs are constant. It's not a static situation. It is a dynamic situation. All right, so now let's go over to Stokes Road Bridge. It's a much older bridge. It was built in 1930. It is posted as a three-ton weight limit. That is a small SUV vehicle, basically not loaded. Do we plow that road or that section? It is a public road, yes.

I guess I meant do we plow it with that kind of weight limit?

Yes, I believe that road is plowed with a one ton so we can easily handle the weight. So this bridge is actually a red listed for three categories, substructure, superstructure and deck. So the foundation, the abutments and the road surface, the deck itself. The variety of things that are going wrong with this, we have some wing wall scour, there is concrete spalling, substandard bridge rail, deteriorated curb, by all accounts a much worse bridge than the haul road bridge. Ironically, the road itself is actually in pretty good condition, but again, it's a very low traffic volume road. All right, so here's a couple of zoom in pictures here. There's our weight limit restriction. Yeah, substandard guardrail. You can kind of see it doesn't, again, similar to the roads, I look at guardrail a lot as well. Sorry. So there's no standard there. All right. So here's the concrete curb on. You can see it's basically literally falling apart. And then you can also see in this picture the how the bridge rail is actually attached to the structure, which is kind of a substandard situation just by itself. And you can kind of see underneath the bridge here, a picture just showed up, and you can kind of see how the spalling of the concrete is happening, and you can see exposed rebar in that last picture. All right, so jumping into bridge ratings. I've identified red list a few times. What does that actually mean? It's a category of four, a rating of four, and it means poor. So the bridge categories, I believe, go up one through ten, and that's pretty low down on the list. So with that in mind, we've identified the Hall Road as a much more higher priority, even considering the conditions of the bridge itself, from an infrastructure concern, which requires timely action. If Hall Road closes because the bridge fails, that will cause a world of hurt for the entire town, as opposed to Stokes Road, which has two avenues of approach and only eight homes that use that road. Funding NHCOT Municipal State Aid Bridge. We have an estimate of the Hall Road Bridge at roughly $2 million. The town's 20% match on that would be $400,000. engineering, study, construction, oversight, as well as permitting. The town currently has that money in existing state aid bridge block funding. That state aid bridge block funding can only be used for bridges. And again, we currently have that money, so there's no tax impact on this project. uh... so again the the the principal function for me sit in front of you here tonight is a request that uh... might be allowed to uh... ask the state to shift the money from stokes road bridge to the hall road bridge we've identified as you know us as the community we have a responsibility to Spend wisely with the limited resources that we do have. So what's the highest and best use of the NHDOT funding that's provided to us? And, you know, you take things into consideration like public safety, infrastructure resiliency, long-term transportation planning. and responsible use of local, state, and federal resources. So, with that being said, I want to jump back to infrastructure resiliency. If that road closes, haul road, if haul road fails and it closes, the impact on on emergency services, public works services, the residents, the detour route, if you can go back to the locust map, is fairly significant on Hall Road, and it has a fairly significant impact to the community on the north end of town.

Do you know the cost of the Stokes Bridge as well?

I do. It's in a separate letter. It's about 1.8. And by contrast, the Hall Road was at 2. And DOT will up the funding based on construction end of estimates. All right.

So the last thing I wanted to... Bang for a buck for only $200,000 more.

I apologize, what?

Bang for a buck for only $200,000 more. You said it's $1.8 for Stokes and $2 million for Hall. Yes. Hall, yes, is about $200,000 more, yes. Right, so better bang for our buck.

Certainly, when you consider the impact on the community, absolutely. All right, so the last thing I wanted to talk about is the impact of the Mammoth Road Route 28 intersection project on Stokes Road itself. That project is in its infancy stages. We only just had a scoping meeting in November of 2025. They're actively moving forward with the next stages. So this diagram that's shown in this picture is pretty much all that we have thus far. But under the guise of this particular project, what will end up happening is the intersection will be reconfigured to a 90-degree approach. You can kind of see that in the yellow on that diagram. Next thing to happen is the cut-through road, Smith Lane, would actually be removed from existence so that it's no longer a cut-through road.

Will that become a light?

That was the next point I was just going to make, is that the reconfiguration would also support a signal, and the Stokes Road southern entrance or eastern entrance, depending upon how you're looking at it, I think it's the southern entrance, would be looked at for reconfiguration and realignment to come into the actual signalized intersection that would be proposed. So you can see the realignment just kind of pops into the picture there. You can see what that might actually look like if Stokes Road was actually realigned. So the second piece of this project is they will look at the northern intersection, which currently has a pretty substandard approach. It's very steep approaching Rockingham Road, and it's not entirely safe for traffic pulling out onto Rockingham Road, given the steepness and the speed of the traffic in that area. All right, so my recommendation, DPW's recommendation, is to reallocate the state age bridge program funding from Stokes Road over to Hall Road. It provides a greater long-term public benefit and transportation utility. Stokes Road curb cuts, again, they're actively being assessed with the Mammoth Road intersection project. So we don't know the status of what's going to happen over at Stokes Road. There is in fact a world where the northern curb cut is closed by NHDOT over on Stokes Road. If that northern curb cut is closed, that bridge is no longer in use. All right. Again, the funding transfer, it's a proven responsible capital planning adjustment. But the most important thing to identify with Stokes Road itself is that Stokes Road will remain in the bridge program asset inventory. So it doesn't pull it off of the equation. So should funding come about and should that curb cut not be impacted, with the intersection project, the opportunity may arise in the future to do something with that road. And further, if that bridge does get closed due to condition, still there's a second avenue of exit for that neighborhood until a solution can be brought into place. So again, not only do you have a much less smaller impact on the town, you have a you have a alternate means of access if by chance that road were to happen to close. All right, so that's it for the gist of the... Is there anything that I can answer? Jim. I thought I saw you first. Go ahead.

How long is Stokes Road coming out from the potential new intersection all the way to the furthest house before you get to the bridge? I actually did not take that dimension. I don't know. Okay. Just wondering in case. In the future, DOT decides to close that intersection of the northern part of Stokes Road and say, we're going to close that. That bridge isn't safe. We don't want to put money towards it. We're just going to close it off. I want to make sure, what is our distance? Because we're supposed to have, I believe, is it 1,200 feet? for a cul-de-sac to go in on a road. So I want to know, are we still following our same standards with the town or not? I don't know. I don't know the answer as far as how. Yep.

Yep. As far as that goes, again, they're in the infancy stages. We'll work that through with the DOT right-of-way bureau. and try and work through some of the intricacies of our own ordinances to make sure that in as much as possible we can comply with our own ordinances.

And I guess the other piece of this is how the people on Stokes Road and Hall Road made aware that there might be funding for both and we were going to be choosing one or not.

I did send out a neighborhood notification to the residents of Stokes Road in advance of this meeting to let them know that what was happening as far as me being here in front of the council and requesting that the funding being shifted. I also made point in that letter notification to identify that the intersection project was being done. Curb cuts were being evaluated. and that the funding being shifted does not remove it from the bridge program. It just removes, it just delays it, in essence. Thank you.

Dan? My only question is, if we don't do the bridge, I heard from the old-timers from years ago saying, why don't we put a culvert in there? It would be a lot cheaper. and redoing that bridge on Stokes Road.

There's a hydraulic capacity with the stream channel that's there. I don't have those numbers. A culvert wouldn't work. It doesn't function in so much as a, I think what you might be referring to is a hydraulic equilibrium. So when you have stagnant water and you have a bridge that crosses from one spot to the other, the whole function of that culvert is just to kind of rise and fall with the equilibrium. But in this case, we have moving water. You have water that's getting from point A to point B, so there's a hydraulic capacity, which is kind of defined by the culvert that goes under or the structure that goes under 28 currently.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Do we have any further timing on the intersection?

I don't. I checked in with them, ironically actually checked in on the Stonehenge intersection as well a couple weeks back. Stonehenge is actively going through utility relocations before they can go any further. So some of the stuff you've seen is just in preparation for the utility relocation. So that has to happen before any other roadway construction. But zipping back to this intersection, again, they're at their infancy stages in the planning, and they're kind of actively moving forward.

I'm just glad there's a final note before they've been talking about this for, I feel like, 20 years.

It's active, it's moving, so that's good news.

It's on the list for 2029 and 30 for construction, but...

Yeah, we'll see.

It means nothing.

We'll see.

Unfortunately, yeah. Realistically, whatever they say it's going to be, it's not.

Yeah, yeah. We know that. One more question on that intersection, if you can go back to the map there, Jim. All right, let's see if I can do that.

Right there. This one here?

Yeah, so the portion that goes south on 128 there in the hashed off section, is that going to be going away as well? That's correct, yes.

You can see that driveway. They would make a driveway accommodation in that hash area. A similar thing to the storage center over on Smith Lane where there's a driveway in that hash section that we'd have to make an accommodation to.

That driveway... That seems like a dangerous location for them. I see where they're putting that there, that little square there.

I can see that as well. That's just one of those things that would get vetted well in advance of a final plan.

And that should be more like Smith should be their own driveway. And that you only access it from Mammoth Road. But that's just my opinion for ease of access and safety of people in and out of there.

Good point. Any other questions for James? All right, bring it back to us, what do we want to do?

I think it makes sense for the overall community for Hall Road to move forward, now knowing the concerns of the bridge. With how many people go on it every day. and with the multiple traffic volume that it is and as well that bridge uh services uh the aquifer of that uh streamway there and we can't let that fail the the co-host broke there thank you you're welcome

So I'll move that the London Dairy Town Council hereby authorize the town manager to request the reallocation of the municipal bridge aid funding from Stokes Road Bridge to Hall Road Bridge.

I have a motion from Sean.

Second.

Second from Ted. Further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay, votes to the affirmative, 5-0.

Thank you. All right, thank you very much.

Appreciate it. Does the public get to speak on Stokes Roadside?

No. Up next, discuss and approve the transfer of funds from the Transportation of Capital Reserve.

Mr. Trottier. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. If you recall, I was here with other members of the traffic management working group back on June 1st. Hold up, John.

Can we have the conversation in the back? Go to the lobby, please. Go ahead, John.

Yeah, again, if you recall, I was here with the other members of the traffic management working group back in June 1st, where we had presented a status report to the council. If you recall, again, it does consist of members of the police department, the Department of Public Works, the town manager's office, and a member of the planning staff. The objective of the traffic management working group was to identify roadways and intersections with traffic safety and congestion concerns and to identify various strategies to address these areas. One of the strategies that we have identified includes the collection of data. conducting studies determining improvements and determining funding for those particular improvements so i'm here this evening to request the approval of the expenditure from the transportation capital reserve fund for traffic data collection equipment if you recall during that presentation there are there's equipment out there it's i believe it's in your packet that will not only count the number of vehicles, but also track the speed of various vehicles. So the group has identified ten locations throughout the town, which is also part of your package. Those devices, they will again provide traffic counts, vehicle speeds, accident data. Strategies will then be identified to include enforcement and or infrastructure improvements. The data will also assist in future corridor studies. In general, those locations include these devices on Hall Road, Hardy Road, High Range Road, two on Litchfield Road, two on Mammoth Road south of the 102 intersection, Stonehenge Road, Wiley Hill Road, Hovey Road, and there are two to be installed on Grenier Field Road as part of an off-site contribution by a developer in that area of Page Road. So like you say, I'm asking for the expenditure of $39,400 from the Transportation Capital Reserve Fund for the purchase of ten radar speed signs and posts. Any questions for John?

So this spending of this money wouldn't technically fall out of the Transportation Capital Reserve Fund as it's written by DRA. Is that why we have to move it to the general fund to expand it?

The expenditures occur in the general fund. That's the proper way to do it is you actually move from one fund to the other. It's a revenue and I know that you haven't done that in the past.

Okay. I just want to make sure for people here and at home that why we're moving the money from one thing to another because I think in the past we would just be expended out of the capital reserve fund.

Right. So the public doesn't see that. What they see is the general budget. And now they can see that money has been spent. Now the revenue is coming in from that side as well. These special funds, people don't see those and they have no way of knowing how their public funds are being spent. That's why you show it in the general fund. You move it to that location.

Does does that end up having the general fund budget bigger, though, which by default makes the default budget bigger at the end of it?

Okay, it doesn't, because that default budgets based on what occurred from the measure of the previous budget, and then contractual obligations, which this is not, okay, there's a number of things grants that come in during the year, you accept those monies unattended for, you know, you understand.

Any further questions for John?

John can you go over the speed location signs and where you plan on putting them throughout town. Yeah.

So again, you can start in the north end of town up off of when you feel road. It's in the vicinity of Merrill's feel. So it's it's west of the intersection of mammoth road and greenfield road. If you can envision where I'm talking about that open field, that's where it is. Again, both eastbound and westbound, those locations. On Hall Road, it's going to be eastbound. That's in the vicinity of the bridge. Is that before or after the bridge? Again, heading easterly, it's by Murray's driveway. So it's this side of the bridge. Depends which way you are. Hardy Road north, that's in the vicinity of Hovey Road, where Hovey comes into Hardy. Just south of Deb's house. Where Deb lives. To watch out.

I believe we already have one on Stonehenge, right?

Right there? Doesn't work. Excuse me? We already have one on Stonehenge there? Yeah, again, on Stonehenge, but not on Hardy. Gotcha. Okay. So again, I'm just going down the list so they can keep in order. High Range Road. Northbound, so that would be south. To identify northbound traffic on High Range Road, the location is south of Shasta in the vicinity of the power lines. Litchfield Road, west and eastbound. So one by the church, the Baptist church, that would be heading westbound. and then one heading eastbound or in the vicinity of Alexander Road. Mammoth Road North and Mammoth Road South, these, like I say, are both south of the 102 intersection. So one of them is by Wedgwood. And the other one is by the church on the east side of Mammoth Road. I'm not quite sure if it's a church still today. It was a daycare. Stonehenge Road heading east. That would be in vicinity of McGregor's Cut, where one of those existing signs is that's no longer operable. Wiley Hill Road, westerly direction, that's in the vicinity of Burlang Road, between Burlang and the overhead power lines. And lastly, Hovey Road, heading south, so that's in the vicinity of the cemeteries.

Can you tell us more about the software? Is it- No. I love it, John.

That's awesome, John.

No. Is it something that will send you the data or is it- It is something- I'm reading something about a USB port. Do you need to actually get a USB port and get it?

So it's my understanding they'll be able to download this remotely? Okay.

You know, I saw something in here about a USB port. So and it wasn't a virtual node was not supported. So I wasn't sure that meant that it wouldn't send it. So that the the PD is more familiar with this than cellular.

That's how it sends the data back to the center. Yes.

Right. Thank you. Sorry.

Just to be clear to your point, though, that is going to be a recurring cost for that cellular service for each one of these.

Oh, really? Yes. That's unfortunate.

Well, the thing is, I don't want people pulling on the side of the road. That's dangerous for them to do that. Whenever you have a vehicle pulling, especially in the wintertime, that puts people at risk. It's much cheaper to have cellular data. And then we get it real time as well. And our plan is to put that on our website so people can actually see these traffic counts. They don't have to ask for them. They'll see what the speeds of vehicles are, and they'll see what the traffic volumes are on these roads. What is the yearly cost on that? I think it's $30 per air card per month.

Gotcha. Any other questions for John?

All right, what do we want to do? I'll make a motion that the London Dairy Countown Council hereby approves Order 2026-XX14 and directs the trustees of the trust fund to disperse $39,400 from the Transportation Capital Reserve Fund for the purpose of 10 traffic data collection devices and associated costs.

I have a motion from Dan.

Second.

A second from Dan.

Discussion real quick. What is the life of these units and what is the maintenance and or warranty and repair of them if they fail or stop working?

Ted, again, it's all within the quote as well as the backup that was provided.

It's just a lot to go through. I see two years warranty on parts and labor, one year on batteries. It does not cover malicious abuse, theft, or damage.

Unfortunately, nobody will ever cover that.

No, I understand that, but we only have two years on parts and lever and one year on the batteries. So I'm seeing potentially mounting costs going up if they fail within two years. Was there any other supplier for these that would have a longer warranty?

I believe the PD did most of the negotiation looking at these radar signs.

Okay.

And this was a sign in a vendor that they are familiar with. Okay. And they were comfortable with.

I guess we'll see how long they last.

I can tell you, Ted, that being on those meetings, It was an eye-opener when the ones on Stonehenge Road, everybody thought worked, that we could get data from. They didn't work, and we couldn't download anything off of them. And it was, well, who's responsible for it? Now we're going to know we have DPWs going to be responsible for maintaining them. And the PD is going to be retaining the data. Get the data.

Correct. Council of Coons is a good point. I mean, there's going to be maintenance costs. And, you know, it's cold out in the wintertime and batteries don't do all that well. And then extreme heat. Or people hit them. Yeah, absolutely. And they need to be in the, you know, it's the solar. So we've got to put them in a location where the trees aren't going to provide. Some of the ones that were installed were solar and there's complete tree coverage.

Or in the wintertime, if it gets snow covered, the solar won't work either.

Yeah, the way they're angled on that, that hasn't been an issue with people who've used them. The issue is that in the summertime, the leaves come out, obviously. There's that, too. Yeah, the trees get bigger over time, and that becomes an issue. Then you have to consider moving them. The ones that were installed have the rather large pedestals, which are far more expensive, and a concrete base. We're using U-channels so they can be moved at any time. So it's a lot easier to do that. We just have to do dig safe and go out and move from one location to another. And they're breakaway, so if they get hit, you hit one of those other metal columns, that's going to do some damage to a vehicle. Whereas these are breakaway, they hit, they get knocked over, and the car...

Thank you. I think we have a better plan of what we're going to use these devices for and the data that we're collecting. Those other two that were installed on Stonehenge were kind of a knee-jerk reaction, in my opinion, to, you know, let's set up a sign to make people aware of how fast they're going. And the data was never really formally collected and analyzed.

We're looking at 10 because there is a cost, to your point. I mean, maintaining these, and we've never done that before. So that's why we're limiting it to this number. We expect that there are going to be others, but I don't expect that taxpayers are going to pay for them. I expect developers to pay for them. The case of Auburn Road for that PUD that's being proposed, as well as Pillsbury Road with Woodmont, that I expect them to pay the cost of the capital outlay for those pieces of equipment.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Any opposed?

Chair votes the affirmative, 5-0.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Up next, we're going to discuss traffic management policy. I know that Dan, you and I had talked about getting together and discussing this, so I didn't know. how the council would feel if they gave dan and i a chance to discuss this and uh work out some of the things that we have an issue with and come back to the council with it i think this one i mean we've got a lot of other things on here i think this one yeah it needs further discussion i think that's a good starting point

So do we want to take a pause for this time being?

No, I think they can.

We've got enough stuff coming up on the 20th. I think they can take some time, take a look at this, see where they get with it. I don't think we need to schedule further action now. He's asking what we feel about it.

I feel like Dan and I can eat. Hash it out and then- If we would like to motion to table this item until you guys can- I don't think we have time.

Yeah, but we just want to discuss it.

I'm not sure what you're asking here.

If we're okay with them discussing it.

Mr. Chair, I think you and I have discussed this. I think we need to address this code. There's a lot of issues with it.

We do. You and I haven't formally sat down and discussed it, so- We need to bring it forward. I'd like to do that with you.

You good with that?

I'm good with that.

All right, perfect. All right, up next, discuss and set a public hearing to repeal Title II traffic code and replace it with Chapter 301 traffic code.

So we'll be pausing that as well then for the time being? If we can. Since you don't have a revised document.

We can combine this together then.

You can't really remove something with not replacing it with something just yet, so that will have to take a pause.

All right, up next, discuss and schedule a public hearing for July 20th regarding the revision of municipal code adopting chapter 15 fees. Mr. Mulholland, did you want to start out?

I just have to pull up your brief through those two items so quickly that I didn't even get ready for that. Give me a minute.

Yeah, go ahead, Sarah. So we're bringing Chapter 15 back before you, and I'm going to try and pull this up at the same time as I'm talking, so bear with me. And we're bringing Chapter 15 back before you because under New Hampshire RSA 419A, The Town Council as the legislative body is supposed to authorize all of the fees that are charged to the town. It's important to note that this doesn't include fines or violations. This is just the fees that are charged for the town's services above and beyond the ones that are provided free of charge. In this case, what the town manager's office has done is we have pulled together all of the fees from all of the different departments that are currently being charged as well as itemized any additional fees that have been changed or added in for the first time in here. This policy goes through and includes the fees charged by each department. So sections 15.1 through 15.9 are the policies and the procedures, the justifications, how often we'll revisit this, which we're suggesting on an annual basis. Looking at the master fee schedule, which allows a regular and transparent routine, which our residents can expect to see these fees adjusted based on the costs of those services. So the rest of it, sections 15.10 to the end, go through each department and includes each department's fees as they are currently being charged or as we are suggesting to be revised based on the costs of providing those services for fiscal year 27. So as you can see, buildings, some of them are much more substantial. Buildings got three pages. Cable services has one line. So we've really tried to pull everything together in one single place, place it in code so everyone knows about it and everybody can see what everything is. this actual policy outlining all the fees like i said it's a 16 page policy so what we've done sorry 16 page code so what we've done is we've actually pulled out and indicated the section the letter and the number for each fee that is changing let's be honest increasing or is a new fee you can see we've indicated where they've changed moving forward for fiscal year 27. So what we're asking today is that the council move this to a public hearing on July 20th so that these can be effectively implemented for fiscal year 27. Of note here is some of these fees have been being charged, but they haven't been authorized by the council in the past. That's particularly the senior center fees, the cable services fees, the recreation fees, and the cemetery fees. So this makes brings everything under one umbrella, one code provision, and places it clearly in front of the council on an annual basis.

Mr. Chair, if I can ask one question. I know this is not under our public hearing and all that, but I see our fire department and police department are under this document as well. And I know we had passed, not too long ago, updated fee structure for the fire department. Will that negate that document?

So it's included in here.

I see it included, but will it negate the whole document that we approved earlier this year?

No. No.

There's some additional fees that were not originally approved in there for alarms and those sorts of things.

So if you look on here, for example, the fire prevention ones, these are the fees that based on the actual costs of going out and providing these services that Chief Young and Division Chief Johnson suggested. So you'll see that some of these increase to reflect the actual costs. And then there are some additional fees that were added. Food truck inspection fee, electric photographs and then. Detail related charges, and this is actually those were introduced to bring it more clearly in line and consistent with the police department. So now the police department. And the fire department have a fee for the person, for the vehicle, and a cancellation fee. And it also adheres to the standards in the CBA that they need to provide for cancellation. So if somebody cancels, now it's reflected they have to tell the person 24 hours before in order to not pay them. So we've included that in here at the fire department's law.

Could we see where, because this is the new, I just, could we see where they were in code? It doesn't have to be tonight, but for the next meeting, just so we see kind of what, to what Ted was speaking about, the old fees and for that and some of the other fees just to wherever they happen to be. I just want to see what we're replacing with what.

And or where they might have been located.

Yeah.

So these are, so this, anything, if it's not on this two pages, it it's not changing so you've already approved it at some point in time if you'd like a list of those codes where you approved them in the past we certainly can do that no just what's changing i want to see the kind of what we're replacing so old yeah so this is right here so the crossout the strikeout i i meant the location because yeah i i see that there okay just kind of the location where they were Okay, so you want the old code provisions? You want the list of the old code provisions?

If we're looking at new policy, I just like to always compare it to old.

Certainly, yeah. I can- Thank you. When and where you approved them in the past. As I mentioned before, there's several that we've been charging that should be approved by council that haven't. And those, like we said on here, cemetery, senior center, rec, and cable access. So there would be no associated code provision. But none of those, aside from introducing the facility rental fees, have changed.

I have a question for you. Isn't the cemetery its own board of trustees? Aren't they set their own fees?

So we went. I'm asking just to make sure.

They do not.

We at NHMA made that quite clear. We asked for an opinion, which we got it no charge, of course, that it is the governing body. The statute's rather clear. You folks have to set the fees. And that hasn't occurred in the past in many of these things. And we've been charging fees that are not authorized to be charged. That's the power of the governing body to make those decisions.

They set the budget, you set the fees to compensate for that budget. Yeah.

So my concern's totally different than yours. So I'm looking at the rental of this room. Yeah. And the town commons and the pavilion. So if a local not- Yeah, just for everybody at home, what page you on, just so we can see. God. Starts on page 10. Okay. Page 10, 11. Yeah. Okay. So I'm just thinking like the Blues Festival, right? He rents it for like, or uses the town, it's like, I don't even know, four or five hours to do something that he donates all the money to the veterans. He's going to be charged $20 per hour for See, he's not a non-profit, so he's a for-profit. I don't think he's a non-profit. I don't know. I shouldn't speak.

So, Deb, I'll call your attention to the top of Section 15.19. What? The top of the section, the town manager may recommend revisions to parks and recreation fees within the master fee schedule with the town council's approval. That was put in there to indicate that at the town manager, In this particular section for parks, recreation, and community service fees, those fees may be waived by the town manager with the council's approval. So in certain circumstances, so for example right now, when different groups are using these rooms because the library's closed, the ones that normally would be using the library. Obviously, we wouldn't charge them for that. So in those circumstances, there is a process to waive those fees, and we've included that in there, if that answers your concern.

Well, sort of. I mean, so I'm thinking I'm going to be selfish here and have my own agenda. So someone like myself, who we use the Lions Hall Pavilion to do the plant sale for the green team, big fundraiser which we give the money to other things, educational classes that we pay for, for the residents in this town to go to for free. We now have to pay $20 an hour to use the pavilion. If I'm doing the farmer's market there, would I have to pay the $20 an hour to run the farmer's market there?

So again, these are the base costs. And the reality is, when we rent out these facilities and let groups use these facilities, it costs the taxpayer money. So the maintenance costs, the public works costs to set up, clean up, the use of even down to portable toilets, dumpsters that the taxpayer pays to empty. So the reason these fees exist in this schedule is to charge for, lack of a better term, extraordinary use of facilities, right? Common and the Town Forest are open to everybody all the time. If somebody wants to go up and sit at the Lions Hall Pavilion and have lunch, absolutely. But when it's being reserved for either exclusive use, which precludes the use of it by other taxpayers and residents in the town, or when it engages in a use that's maintenance will then cause the taxpayer money. That's what these fees are meant to recover. So in the case of the recreation fees, There is that provision in there that would allow the town manager with the council's agreement to waive those fees. But the reality is, and we've seen this come up frequently this year in that. You know, it costs us electric to run, you know, if people are using the electricity in the car on either the lines hall pavilion or the common that gets charged to the taxpayer. So rather than pass that on to everybody, those extraordinary above and beyond uses pay a small amount of compensation to account for those increased costs. So that's the justification for these fees. And again, in certain circumstances they absolutely can be waived so when you're talking about the blues festival which is a festival put on by a resident he's not he's not even a for-profit he's just a person you know that's definitely that's been going on it's not a birthday party i'm not talking about a birthday party but when someone does something there that's for the general benefit of the public Sure. But in the case of, you know, again, I can't speak to a specific circumstance, but a farmers market would be a, that's a commercial use of the space, the people who sell there would be making money. And so that would be something that most Communities would factor that into the business plan. And again, it's not an extraordinary amount of money. It's not.

I just need to know that I need to do that since I'm planning for that. I have to prepare, correct? And that's why we have in front of you. I guess my plant sales would have to go someplace else.

Is the green team a town organization? Is it a town organization, the green team? It doesn't fall under one of our committees?

I'm sorry?

It doesn't fall under one of our committees? I thought it had.

Didn't they partner with the Conservation Commission this year? No. I thought it was.

Marge is on it.

But again, these are the specific exemptions that could be brought before the town manager to get the agreement of the council to waive. So based on what they're doing, what they're using the money for. Those are the conversations that could be had, and that's why that's specifically provided for in here.

Yeah, because that allows us to pay for programming at the library, at the YMCA, to educate, and anybody from the public can go for free. $100, $200 to get these speakers to come. It's not like we're making millions.

And that's exactly what it's for. And that's why I kind of brought up the difference between that and a commercial enterprise. Even if it was run by a nonprofit, the people there are engaging in commerce, and that's a little bit different.

But that's like I was thinking of the Blues Fest. I mean, he does that, and every piece of money goes to something to benefit the veterans.

And to be candid, part of these is to put some skin in the game for people, too. People will often, some of these charges you'll see are really nominal. But when people reserve a field or a space or a room and we tell other people they can't use it, and then they don't show up, that's time and energy that is expended by staff members that could have gone to other services, and it's also taking something out of the use. So, for example, you'll see some of them are very small charges. But it actually improves communication, frankly, and it can actually remove the burden from causing extra work for staff by simply charging $5 an hour.

Mr. Chair, we'll move to on the agenda.

I think Dan had a question for us.

No, go ahead. Move it to the agenda.

Okay, I have a motion from Ted.

Sorry to clarify, is this a motion to move it to a public hearing on the 20th?

Yes.

Yes. My apologies.

No worries. Anyone want a second? Second. Second from Dan.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? So it's the affirmative, 5-0.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. All right. All right, up next in the old business, discuss consideration of owner's consent for the Reverend Morrison House to authorize and sign the consent form originally discussed back in August. Mr. Ellis, thank you for your patience.

You know me. That's one wheelchair drive for the record.

Please sit down. Please, David, sit.

The briefing package that was included with your agenda materials has got everything in it. I've spoken to this, what, three, four times. I've described it. Everything in that package is correct. I'll answer any questions you've got, but I don't think there's much virtue in me repeating it.

Any questions for David?

I think what I said last time we had talked at Council is true. I'm in favor of doing this. I just, I want to, you know, we do this for a limited amount of time. If we're not getting any grants, then, you know, like you said, we can remove it from the list. Do you know how long you need to get and pursue and to see if we need grants?

The approval process goes before a committee, and I believe they meet about once every three months. So it's likely to be somewhere like three to nine months probably before we hear whether it would even be approved. If you're referring to grant applications, I mean, those depend on the grants. The town's had grants for conservation stuff. You probably know more about that sort of timing than I do.

Mr. Chair, so the Heritage Commission has spoken on this item multiple times and they had moved to not vote on this item and not move to do the historical easement. As they know that there are no grant dollars out there. and they wanted to see what was going to come out of the vote in March. And they felt like there wasn't much movement on this to do anything with it. They wanted to see potentially other options from the town manager at that time. And I believe the town manager had found that there were not really any grant options out there. Was that correct, Mr. Mulholland?

There are grant opportunities out there, whether they apply to our circumstance is an open question. And the dollar amount of those grants is relatively small that are available.

Yeah, right, where we had come to a conclusion that it would cost about $3 million to do the renovations.

I don't think you're looking at a grant for the whole thing, necessarily.

It's kind of hard to piece mail it.

Well, it depends. I mean, the grant process was a notice came out, Art Rugg forwarded it this afternoon. about the grant process for 2026 is just closing now. So there is money there, but you're correct. You aren't going to find a grant for $2 or $3 million worth. But when the Meeting House was discussed, when was it, about a month or two back, the suggestion was that... For the moment, it is essentially mothballed, or I think that was the general consensus of the direction you were going in. Now, from that point, you can do pieces.

Dan, I saw you next, and then Deb.

Mr. Chair, I think it's clear that the voters did not want to spend that kind of money on this building, but it is a historical building. We have people in this community that have stepped forward and said they want to give it a shot to try to restore this building. When we talked about when Mr. Ellis brought this forward before, I felt we should have listed it back then. So I think we need to move forward on this and see what's out there for grants and what's out there for money, and let's see what we can do to save this building.

Listing it doesn't mean that you have to accept a grant. It just makes it a little easier if you want to. Definitely.

So I do want to say that Hills House in Hudson just got $75,000 to replace four windows in their building. Not stained glass windows, just regular old windows to get the ones with the pulley things inside. There's money out there, not huge amounts, but for specific projects. And I think that's a good thing, you know, because it's just going to be for a grassroots effort to do this. going to be little baby steps at a time and I do know that they can also go for the casino money but they need to have recognition of the towns like backing them that they have permission to do this or they're not going to be able to become a non-profit and that's going to limit them to get what they need to move forward. I mean, I know businesses have mentioned to me that they want to get involved. But there is money out there and not just grants. Like a lot of the banks and other bigger companies have So he could, as a nonprofit, they can go and tell their story. And they'll make donations of $10,000 to be used towards whatever. As long as, I mean, obviously, towards the building. It can't be just like take a trip to Bahamas. But you know what I mean. Yeah, so there are things out there to help them. I mean, I can't really tell them where to go or what to do. But they are out there. And I'm sure this would only help solidify that it's a real organization and that they have our blessings and they have the blessings of the state being at a historic building.

I'LL MOVE THAT THE LONDON DERRY TOWN COUNCIL AUTHORIZE THE TOWN MANAGER TO EXECUTE AND SUBMIT THE OWNER CONSENT FORM TO THE NEW HAMPSHIRE DIVISION OF HISTORICAL RESOURCES FOR THE PURPOSE OF LISTING THE REVEREND MORRISON MEETING HOUSE ON THE STATE REGISTRY OF HISTORIC PLACES.

I WANT TO OFFER AN AMENDMENT BECAUSE I SUPPORT THIS AND I SUPPORT GIVING THEM A CHANCE. THE ONE THING I DON'T WANT IS TO GET STUCK INTO A CONDITION. I'd like to add to that that we do that for the term of 1 year, and if we don't have a grant approved or anything else, it can revert back to its previous state and we pursue removing it because. If we're not getting any traction and it's not helping, I don't. That's been the hold back for me when we didn't approve it the first time.

So it would be one year.

So how about if we do one year after they're approved, Sean? Because he said it might take nine months to get approved. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Okay, I'm fine with that.

Approval.

Yeah, I just want to give them enough time. I'm fine with that.

That's fine, one year of approval.

All right. Do I have a second?

Every opportunity. Excuse me. Do I have a second? Are you in? No, I couldn't hear what you were saying. Do I have a second? Yes. All right. Any further discussion?

I don't think you can put a sort of a... an initial one year on it like that. I think you'll find you have to make the application and then in one year come back yourselves and say we want to take it off. That's what we're talking about, David.

We're going to get you what you want.

Just to amplify that, you're putting in the motion, though. The difference is they're probably going to say, well, we're not going to do this. There's no commitment from the town. I would be cautious about doing that. You can always come back at any time you wish to. But if you put that in the motion, my concern is they're going to say,

It's probably not going to go anywhere.

I'm not going to go anywhere. All right.

Let me just ask Mr. Ellis. I'm fine with removing it to give you every chance you want. I want to give you every chance that you guys, I think it's wonderful that you put this group together and you're pursuing saving the building. What I don't want to happen is that this will be an understanding between us. We can come back in a year and we'll do it if there's been no traction that we don't get I want to give you your opportunity, but I always worry that we get stuck in this mode. And so if we haven't made any traction on that, I don't want the fight over, now you guys are taking it off, but nothing's happened in between. That's my only concern. I feel like the years are reasonable.

The other concern I have is I would hate to get stuck into the historical easement and Now we're stuck at paying higher prices for materials. Yeah. For. Excuse me. Ann, Ann, Ann, you're not recognized.

Ann, Ann, please.

Ann. I would hate to get stuck into a higher price designation for materials if someone all of a sudden puts a historical designation on those materials or saying that we have to stay. WITHIN A CERTAIN REALM WITH MATERIALS THAT WE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO USE.

LISTING IT ON THE STATE REGISTER DOESN'T HAVE ANY IMPACT AT ALL. YOU CAN STILL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH WHATEVER MATERIALS YOU WANT.

What do you anticipate?

I mean, you've got to give them some idea.

I mean, just within the well of reason. Like, if all of a sudden there's zero grants, we've got nothing, there's not a plan put together that involves it being on the list. I don't want to get... This is a pure intention. I don't want to get in the way of anything you guys are trying. I want you to have every possible opportunity. What I want to address, because this has been the concern from the council in the past, so that's what I'm trying to bridge the gap here to get you what you want. The gap... when we rejected this was we were worried, like Ted said, about the materials and everything else. And I know you've said that it's not the case. But I think if we say, OK, if we've gotten nowhere with this in a year and we take it back and we're all good, we gave you your fair shot at doing it. That's what I'm proposing. So if there's any traction on it in any way.

If they came back, right, with something from the preservation easement. Yeah, you got this. As a matter of fact, you don't have to put in all the sprinkler systems because under the New Hampshire historical thing, you get a waiver, which saves all this money. If you have a document that shows that within a year of getting accepted. That would be sufficient for you.

It's a great building. I think it's going to take a little longer than a year. I think you- We're losing focus here.

Let's get back to the- I just wanted to understand. Yeah.

Dan, can you re-do your motion, please? Thank you. Can you restate your motion? We already have an amendment on this.

Counselor Faber, will you withdraw your amendment?

Yes, I will.

Okay.

Can you please restate your motion? So my motion- Put my glasses on.

A move that the Londonderry Town Council authorize the town manager to execute and submit the owner consent form to the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources for the purpose of listing the Reverend Morrison Meeting House on the State Registry of Historic Places. I have a motion from Dan.

Second. A second from Deb.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes the affirmative 5-0.

You can go get it on the list. Go do it, David. Thank you, David. Go get them.

Up next, discuss and approve the engagement letter with Shaheen Finney for legal counsel. Any further discussion from last meeting?

Yes. Okay. So on February 2nd, 2026, the town council directed the town manager to initiate a process to solicit proposals for law firms to provide general legal counsel to the town. On March 4th, 2026, the town manager initiated the process. The town advertised, encouraged firms to participate in the process. The proposals were due on April 22nd, 2026. Four firms submitted proposals. Upton and Hatfield, Drummond, Woodson, Shaheen, Finney, Rath Young, and they only submitted for landfill legal counsel only. So in May, Chairman Dunn asked the town manager to hold off on any additional steps in the process as Councilor Paul requested that we solicit other firms to submit proposals such as Mitchell Municipal Group. So we conduct these processes to ensure that we can receive multiple proposals for consideration that will allow the town to receive the best services possible and the best price point possible. Subsequent to this process, which is still on hold, Chairman Dunn initiated discussions with the firm of Shaheen Gordon to provide legal services to the town. Chairman Dunn on his own action without a vote of the council has utilized the legal service of this firm expending taxpayer funds. This violates various provisions of the town charter. Section 4 point one 0 town turning the council shall engage as needed such attorneys as team in the best interest of the town to provide legal advice to the council. The manager. The town departments or other agencies and represent town in any legal proceedings criminal purse prosecution and traffic violations such a Turner shell on Council direction perform any other duties prescribed by the charter or by ordinance. Under the charter section 4.8 the council shall act in all matters as a body. 49D, colon 4, non-interference by the elected body. The elected body shall act in all matters as a body and shall not seek individual to influence the official acts of the chief administrative officer. So the cost for legal services proposed by Shaheen and Gordon are almost twice the amount proposed by two of the other three firms proposing. So I don't know if you guys have gone through this, but I looked at the proposals, the RFQs that the town manager sent us back in April. Upton and Hatfield, I look at their rates. First of all, I look at the staff that they're proposing. Every single one of them has municipal, litigation municipal law experience they're talking about you know representing municipalities so upton and hatfield i look at their rate two hundred sixty dollars an hour for all services two forty five uh... for another one that they list and two ten for another one So that's them. Drummond and Woodson. Again, if you read every bio on their attorney list that they would provide to the town of Londonderry, it's all municipal law. Now, I look at their rates. $2.90 an hour, $2.75 an hour. All right. Shaheen Finney. What's that?

What's funny? He drank my water. I accidentally drank his water.

Shaheen Finney. Hope you didn't. Okay, which is our current attorney. Their standard rate is 575 for one attorney, but they discount it to 375.

So I'm looking at all this and I'm going, wow.

I looked at the one from Shaheen and Gordon, $500 an hour? None of them have municipal law. So the other three firms provide municipal legal services to a number of municipalities. This is an area they specialize in. You know, if I had a heart condition, I wouldn't go to a sick doctor. So I don't see any indication that Shaheen Gordon provides any such similar service for municipal law. Why wouldn't we finish the process that we started and receive the best service and best price possible for the community? We are not budgeted for legal services at a rate of $500 per hour. And like I said the last time when we talked about this, so you got an attorney that you're going to go talk to at 500 an hour who won't have the answer, who's going to go talk to another attorney. at $495 an hour and we're paying $1,000. So we are paying $290 per hour to Shaheen Finney. That rate went up to 375 on July 1st. So we started the FYI budget last week on July 1. With a legal budget that consistently is overexpended every year over $100,000, this will now be magnified even more. And nobody seems to want to address this. It's like, okay, we'll just take the money somewhere else. All right? We need to take reasonable steps to manage our spending in the best interest of the taxpayer. Invoked council privilege last time because I wanted to take the time and look at all this and there's no way to me when I look at the firms that have Step forward. I mean we sent out an RFQ Shaheen Gordon could have easily responded they didn't so I Would like that the town council directs a town manager to continue the process of that was initiated for general legal counsel as directed by the town council and bring those proposals before the town council for consideration. And in the interim, we should not engage Shaheen and Gordon. We never had an engagement letter or contract with Shaheen and Finney to provide general legal services. We have used them for years in which they are specific letters of engagement for specific items that we've used. We have been using them for years to provide general legal service. Although not ideal, we can continue to do so until we can complete the RFQ process and determine which firm should provide general legal counsel to the town. So I will make a motion that the London Dairy Town Council hereby directs the town manager to continue the process that was initiated for general legal counsel as directed by the town council. Bring those proposals before the town council for consideration. That's my motion. Okay. Motion from Dan.

I'll second it.

Second from Dan.

Any further discussion? Just one item to note. We've had a good run of getting along in this meeting, so I'll keep it respectful. I just want to note for the record, there's misrepresentation of things said in attorney-client privilege meetings. All these things are pursuant to other items in there that is known by the members of the council speaking, and we'll just make a note of that.

All right, all those in favor say aye. Pass them. Okay, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Yes, on the side.

All right, so my reason for not wanting to do this, if anybody's interested. I am. It's totally different. Yeah. So I, as you know- Hold up, Deb.

Can you take it outside, please? All right, thank you. All right, go ahead, Deb.

So I asked to look into the municipal group, and it was recommended by Sheen Finney. It was two of their lawyers that they recommended to us. And I did look into them, and they are like the number one. And that's all they specialize in. They handle over 40 other towns. or municipalities within this state, they get a five-star rating as far as winning cases, litigation. They very rarely lose. And let's be honest. In law, there's just a winner and a loser. And you want somebody who's on the winning side the majority of the time. in one of our, I wanted to be able to interview and to talk to these people to see who's the best, who melds the best, and we haven't had that. I felt like everything was being told to me. You know, yep, Ron's going to go look at it. Ron talked to him. I didn't talk to him. I didn't want to go ring a bill up and charge a bill. I figured it was something we would do here publicly and say these are the top firms that we liked or the top two, and we would all as a group get an opportunity to speak to them. and and and figure out which one we thought was best so the people would know how we got to why they were the best for us at this moment in time you know whether their strength is not just municipality but litigation or contracts or planning or zoning whatever it is i felt like that was robbed from me and that's the reason i i feel like I'm being told and that I'm not one of a body of five. I'm by myself. And that bothers me. You know, I mean, it's not fun being on the outside and not really knowing how you got there. I don't know if you talk to them, Sean. I have no idea. I have no idea. Ted, as all I know right now is that Ron is the only one who spoke to these people. And, and, and, and, Not that I don't trust you, Ron, but I would like to be included in this decision because we're equal. And that's the reason why I wanted to have that opportunity. I really think we should have looked at the municipal, not association, the municipal group law firm, Michael something or other. that Sheen Finney recommended to us, that's my two cents. I know it's going to be ignored, but I had to get it out there.

I won't, with you Deb, say that the intention was purposeful, but there are items in here, and I just make a note for the record, that were discussed in privileged meetings right here. There are other extenuating factors we can't fully discuss, and I'll leave it at that.

I'm looking at the RFQ and it says the town seeks council with substantial experience in New Hampshire municipal law.

Very clear, okay? Just so you know. Wait a minute, I just want to have another one.

All right, and also minimum qualifications. Demonstrate at least five years of significant experience representing New Hampshire municipalities. All right. So when I'm looking at this are a few and I'm looking at what you're proposing today. And again what council Paul said. We got recommendations we asked him we have to cut the attorney. You know for recommendations. She she Gordon was not even on them so. We've ignored most everything or the recommendation.

All right, so we have a motion from Dan and a second from Deb. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. Chair votes no. I'll make a motion to approve the engagement letter for Shaheen Finian. I have a motion from Sean. Second. Second from Ted. All those in favor? Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Opposed.

Chairman, stay affirmative. Councilor Paul and Councilor Bouchard voted no, 3-2.

I will make a motion to approve the engagement letter for Shaheen and Gordon.

Second. Motion from Sean.

I'm not finished on the motion. Retroactive back to June 15th of 2026. Second.

Motion from Sean, second from Ted. You can't go retroactive. So what you've done here, okay, is you've consulted with an attorney without a vote of this council. And you've gone now to go retroactive to pay him for things that you've done illegally.

Nothing was done illegally. Nothing was done without authorization.

Dan, nothing has been done illegally.

You haven't, we- Christine, do you want to step outside please? Why are you going retroactive then? Why are you going retroactive? There's no need to go retroactive. There's a motion on the floor.

Okay, I have a motion from Sean and a second from Ted. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. Chair votes the affirmative. Let the record show that Councilor Bouchard and Councilor Paul voted no. 3-2, motion passes.

All right. There is one item in consent items I just want to call to attention. I don't necessarily want to remove it just because this came up. There is an abatement on the last page for 2 Litchfield Road. I don't know. Can we discuss it and just approve it separate? Should we approve it?

I'm just trying to think of what she would do is you would ask to be taken off consent.

To discuss council can do that and then and I can can I do that one and I don't necessarily not want to prove it. I just want to discuss it.

No, just you just asked to be taken off the consent. Okay. It's taken off approve the rest of it. Okay.

So I'd like to take just that item off consent just to discuss. I don't I don't know necessarily that I oppose it. The rest we can approve if that's okay. Anybody object?

Okay. I'm fine. Okay.

So I'll do a motion to approve the consent items.

Without that. Without that. Okay. I have a motion from Sean. Second. Second from Ted.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Chair, was there an affirmative? Sean, go ahead.

So the only reason I wanted to discuss this is just because this property has other aspects that came up to us. in items I don't know necessarily. I should disclose the entire aspect of it, but I just want to know, because this abatement might be related. The reason this was rejected was they assessed zero value, and typically something assessed the value of zero gets rejected. I don't know, Sean, if you can speak to any of that or just to get some clarity.

Yeah.

And if you can't, then feel free to let me know. I just.

Maybe we should have Megan Carrier take a look at why this was denied further. Yeah, I don't know the specifics of this because the assessor's produced that.

I can certainly get more detailed questions answered for you on that one.

Okay.

Can you move this to next week or something?

If I have to. Do you want to do that?

Do you need me to call counsel?

No, no. I'm okay with us just moving it to next week if we just wanted to get more to take a look at it.

Yeah, nobody doesn't take council privilege because it's a consent item, it just gets- Yeah, I'm okay with just taking a look at it until next week.

Are you guys all right with it? Yes.

All right. You good with it? Yeah. Okay, then.

I'm sorry. No, it's fine. All right, liaison reports.

Anybody Old home days moving forward we had a good meeting recently Kirsten do we have any update on the? Quote for the fireworks company.

I know we were still waiting on that It's in and it's on the agenda to be discussed at our board of directors meeting on Thursday.

Wonderful thing Any other reports All right comment report

I don't have anything actually additional to report to you folks. I'm still working with the town of Litchfield in regards to dispatch service. Excellent. That's the only thing that's basically new. And I'm also working with the senior resource committee in regards to funding for . I talked to you about that this morning as well, just for the benefit of the other councilors.

And if there's any updates on that, those will be included in your regular weekly, okay.

Yeah, I got an email from John Wilson sitting here, but I haven't had a chance to- Not the cart, sorry, the Litchfield thing. Yeah, I expect them to have some information and send some stuff out to you shortly on that. That's my point on that, as that developed throughout the day today.

All right, I will open public comment. How are you tonight, Moore?

I'm okay, tired, how are you guys? Give me one second. Yeah. I can tell you with absolute certainty though, you don't hire lawyers off the hourly rate because that doesn't mean they're good lawyers. Okay. My name is Maura Ryan to Snowberry Hollow. I also thank you for putting on the July 20th about discussing the fee because I think you have to have a process to waive that for people who are lower income or indigent or disabled. But I did have some questions regarding the budget because we're in budget season right now. And I wanted to know, there's a CIP guideline for projects online. And how strictly do you follow that guideline when you're examining CIP projects? I'd like to know because I want to know if this is a strict guideline or if this is just a suggestion. And I also understand, because it came up in one of our meetings, that they're recommending that the library... break up a bunch of the CIP projects into smaller projects. And I'd like to know why that recommendation is being made. In addition to which, we had, we were trying to increase transparency in our budget. So we added line items to break out of like general or miscellaneous to sort of have more transparent reporting and we were told that you guys would have to approve our line items which we had already voted for last year. So I would like to know the rationale and basis for that and I would like citation of any legal references if there are any. In addition to that something that came up specifically in the meeting and if you'd like I did transcript the meeting Regarding the children's librarian position, I do think this is an important position because we put it on the warrant. And the director last December made a recommendation to cut that position for the budget. So that was voted out of the budget at this point. But now we're being told that the town has directed that we have to go back and hire a children's librarian. So, again, I'd like to know the rationale and basis, since this was already a budget that went on the ballot with that budget cut specifically, because I don't understand that. So I need you to educate me and tell me what the rationale and basis for that is. In addition to which, one of the issues that I think that we've been running into. our part-time positions which are which were put it was put on the warrant as non-benefited but it's not actually a non-benefited position it doesn't include insurance but it does include everything else so that person would get tuition reimbursement paid time off all these other things so I need to know how you guys when you're doing financials are factoring that in because we have a total of 32,000 and change for that position but how are you factoring in the PTO all those components because I need to know that for purposes of preparing the budget as well and that was not adequately explained. On top of that, it was requested, apparently there's been some meetings going on between the town and the certain members of the board and some of us are not being included in those. And when I asked about communication from that, I was told that it was the responsibility of the chair to disseminate that information. However, if the chair does not do so, then we are left in the dark, which is not appropriate because like you guys as a body of five equal members, we are also a body of five equal members. So I would like to request the communications regarding that. In addition to which, We were told that the town had directed us to exercise financial restraint, but I don't understand what you mean by that, so I need specifics. On top of that, we were told that there's about $178,000 of funds left in the library budget, but we were told that those are going to be encumbered for the building repairs. I don't know how much of that is actually available because I don't know what was encumbered before the end of the year because I have not seen one piece of financial paper since the election. In addition to which, I need to know, you know, what are you guys encumbering? Why are you encumbering it? How is that going to work? And what numbers do we actually truly have? So I have those questions, and I would like to get answers to those. And if you have those now, I would like to know now.

Mr. Chair, I believe those are communications between the town manager. Maybe some of these are answered in finance, but this isn't something I think this board knows the answers to.

Yeah, I have them all written down more.

A lot of these have been going on and being presented and talked about with a internal library director with the town council for a couple of months now, right, town manager? So those numbers have been discussed multiple times.