City Council - Regular Meeting

good evening and welcome to the night city council meeting for august 17th 2026 i first asked that we uh close the non-public session and seal the minutes of that session so move second all in favor aye any opposed uh sally will you please take the role mayor mckecham here assistant mayor kelly here counselor cook here counselor blaylock president counselor badly here council morrow here counselor flynn here council hopkins here and absent tonight is counselor tabor I would ask that the Portsmouth Little League state champions lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

You guys start. You guys start it.

You guys start. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, i didn't tell you about that before i could have uh handled it well um we have the acceptance of minutes for the august 3rd 2026 city council meeting i moved to accept and approve the meeting minutes for august 3rd 2026. second Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And now on to a proclamation and a recognition. First, we have the proclamation of National Service Dog Month, and Brendan Madden here to receive it. Whereas September is National Dog Month, created to raise awareness and show appreciation for the extraordinary work carefully trained and certified service dogs do every day for the people in their care, to honor the dedicated individuals who train and care for these remarkable animals, and to celebrate the profound bond between service dogs and the individuals they serve. And whereas service dogs are specially trained to perform specific tasks for people with disabilities as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act, they can be trained to retrieve objects, assist with balance, give seizure or diabetic alerts, or assist with those psychiatric disabilities. Many also serve veterans living with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, helping them better manage their disabilities and live fuller lives. And whereas these special dogs exemplify the healing power of the human-animal bond, Research shows canine companions can improve cardiovascular health, lower cholesterol, and decrease blood pressure while offering support and a sense of calm that helps balance the emotional and psychological stresses of daily life. And whereas there are more than half a million service dogs in America, Working on behalf of their companions and their communities, more than 12% of the entire U.S. population and more than 10% of our Portsmouth residents cope with some type of disability on a daily basis. And whereas the City of Portsmouth recognized the profound impact that service dogs have on the lives of adults and children with disabilities, thanks to the unique ability to enhance the independence, mobility, and overall quality of life, opening doors for those they serve. Now, therefore, I, Daniel McEachern, Mayor of the City of Portsmouth, on behalf of the members of the City Council and citizens of Portsmouth, do hereby proclaim September as National Service Dog Month in Portsmouth and call upon our residents and businesses to recognize and respect the important jobs service dogs do in helping us live up to our motto of the City of the Open Door, given with my hand in the seal of the City of Portsmouth on this 17th day of August 2026. I would ask Brendan to say a few words. I'll just give you this first.

I would like to thank the Mayor and Councillors for making this proclamation. Having had my own service dog, I know the profound impact that these dogs make in people's lives. Jaffe, my first service dog, worked right up until the day he died. I hope that this proclamation encourages others to learn more about service dogs. Thank you again.

Thank you. Another round of a hand for Brendan. Brendan is a true advocate, tireless, and makes sure that we remember this day every month, every year. Continues to advocate for service dogs and to be recognized here in Portsmouth. Thank you again, Brendan, for your advocacy and for leading the charge on this. It's appreciated. So we have a few folks in pinstripes here today and they had a remarkable season. I'm going to read a little bit and I'm going to say a few words and then we're going to honor our state champions here. The Portsmouth Little League put together a remarkable 2026 season that will remember it as one of the most successful in Portsmouth baseball history. The team first captured the New Hampshire District 2 championship, defeating North Manchester Hooksett in the championship game. Building on that momentum, Portsmouth advanced the state tournament and claimed the New Hampshire state championship with a victory over Bedford in the final. The title marked Portsmouth's first Little League state championship since 2010. You guys gave it your all in the New England regional tournament in Bristol, playing against some pretty tough competition. Overall, with a record of 12 and 5, scored 167 runs while allowing only 55, and posted an impressive team batting average of 383. I don't even know if Rich could get something like that in Little League. But it's... It's a it's an honor to be able to read these words. It's also getting to watch you guys play this year. You had what you hope every kid has when you're a parent. And I'm speaking as like an old dad now. But life is not an easy thing. It's hard. It takes a lot of hard work when you lost. one of the toughest games against Bedford, it would have been super easy to pack it in. In fact, I think that's what Bedford was counting on you guys doing. The fact that you didn't is a testament to the grit that you guys that you guys demonstrate on there. And I know that it hurts not winning the whole World Series. But when you look back on this moment, when you're a little bit older, you're going to realize that the not letting each other down, showing up for your teammates, the next man up, those are the lessons that are tougher to appreciate right now. But this city is incredibly proud of what you guys demonstrate. just an example to all of us of what hard work working for one another can lead to. So with that, I just want to read out each one of your names. Bennett Smith, Ryder Raises, and let's clap as I do this in case I... Sam Carter, Drew Cresta, Tyler Hodges, Drayton Simarstava, Grady Maloney, Jack Lair, Brian Poulin, Joey Coakley, Gabe Poinier, Christopher Foster, Manager Charlie Reyes, coaches Sam Cresta and Brett Graham. They all held a job. All right, so we don't have keys to the city. Because if the city had the open door, it wouldn't make sense

I cannot get me out of these docks. I would assume I have a little free time. I would assume I have a little free time.

Thank you.

Well, Mayor McEachern and the rest of the City Council, thank you very much for having us and recognizing the boys tonight. So, yeah, just unbelievable season. I've said it a few times before, but I'll repeat myself. Like, started coaching Little League six years ago. Never would have imagined finishing out after my son Ryder was done this year the way we did. Winning the state championship and competing down in Bristol was just an awesome experience. So 16 years since we've done this here in Portsmouth, and I told them they're part of Portsmouth history now, and just something to be proud of and echoing what you said, Mayor, that 20, 30 years from now when they're grownups, they're going to remember being state champions and playing in Bristol, and that's kind of what it's all about. So thank you very much. You're here.

Now, this is the awkward moment of the council meetings. We're like, do I have to stay for the entire council meeting? You can stay for the entire council meeting. Or you guys can go home right now. But if you don't leave right now, you're going to be here for the rest of it.

Good job, guys.

Come forward.

so before we get uh to public comment i'd wait a motion to suspend the rules uh on the resident first um speaking order second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed uh so it turns out the first person that did sign up is a portsmouth resident but tyler garzo and we're just going to go down the list here and again it's typically 45 minutes uh we'll take as long as we need uh we are going to keep a three minute timer if you go over the three minutes we'll just you know allow it to to continue but just three minutes is usually a good amount of time to say something and allows us to move through it but uh we'll play it by ear tyler you're up first

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Tyler Garza, 62 McKinley. I actually work for Shoals Marine Lab, which has docks next to the salt pile and runs a shuttle to the parking ride. I'll continue to support the wrap and the rate increase along with other taxpayers. But the 2025 parking study says some interesting things about the downtown worker parking program. Quote, there will not be available capacity to continue to support this program in the next 12 to 24 months. Much of tonight's earlier discussion focused on fitting more parkers downtown when the study points the other way. Up to 75% of public parking is out-of-town discretionary trips, so the real pressure is visitors, not workers. This is the time to create alternatives, in line with Council Goal 2, a multimodal Portsmouth. The study says 10-15 minute service to a satellite lot, like the Pease Park and Ride, has significant and cited precedent in other cities. and there's a two-year lead time before any sort of new garage so this is the window now where we have to build real alternatives follow the study the alternatives need to be ready now and the rate increase being proposed should go directly to supporting those alternatives for workers and residents alike thank you thank you tyler next is margot doering on parking shuttle

Thank you. Margo Doering, 300 Jones Avenue. On behalf of the four puppies that I've raised as guide dog puppy service dogs, thank you very much for your support for that program. Regarding parking, I have to say that I think I'm going to buy cervical collars for the entire city council because of the whiplash you must experience. Portsmouth wants a walkable city, but they want lots of parking at the same time, and I can't imagine how you have to juggle those competing demands. It seems to me that we have a lot of short-term solutions to a very, very long-term problem, and those short-term solutions are very difficult because the problem is a long-term one. I really support your effort to do an exhaustive study, an entire ecosystem study of the parking and the public transportation and other means of reducing the need for parking in Portsmouth. When I've been to cities that have successfully implemented walkability, the three things I notice are lots of public transportation, lots of walking and biking options, and an effort to try and make it possible for people to live without cars or with fewer cars. That includes things like sip car, other sorts of sharing systems. For the people who live in the south end of Portsmouth and need two cars, it must be impossible to try and figure out how to do that, particularly when you don't really have another alternative. If you had a car share situation, you might open up all sorts of possibilities for people. So I think your goal of having a study that's going to look at this holistically is really, really important. And I think it's important to do it as soon as possible. Because it is going to take a long time to figure out and it's going to take even longer to implement, not just in terms of figuring out what to do, but also to change people's mindsets, to change people's habits, to make people willing to give up that second car or willing to walk a little bit further or park in a parking garage. But I'm absolutely certain that if you build another parking garage, if you build more parking, you're just going to have more cars. And you're just going to face the same problem a little further down the road and a little further down the road. Let's take the resources that you would put into that. Let's put it into the study. Let's put it into some long-term solutions. Let's put it into the public transportation system that is just begging for the opportunity to increase the frequency its rides and its routes so that we can get more people on the system one last thing I'll note I actually went on to Google Maps and if you want to walk around just about anywhere in Portsmouth it will take you less than 10 minutes from the parking garage at foundry place from the remote lot at near the Masonic Temple it's just 10 minutes into downtown and we should really be encouraging people to get out and walk Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Margo. Uh, next is Evie summer matter.

Stop it.

My name is Evie summer matter, and I have the great honor and responsibility of managing series bakery. I'm hoping to convince you all that the workforce parking program needs to be amended. Long before RAP went into effect, the issue of free parking availability came up in conversation amongst prospective staff and long-term staff alike. Of the 18 employees at Ceres, only three are Portsmouth residents. We commute from York, Kittery, Elliott, South Berwick, Summersworth, Dover, Wells, Exeter, Newmarket, Rochester, Seabrook, and Greenland. Between gas and tolls, it was never free to show up to work. The hope of a free parking spot was one of the only things that made the costly commute worth it. I've had stellar potential hires choose employment elsewhere with fewer barriers. I've had spectacular staff quit over the prohibitive nature of inconvenient parking. wrap fits the bill perfectly to appease residents unfortunately this program undermines the efforts of small business owners who are fighting to retain staff in a highly competitive labor market after having face-to-face conversations with hundreds of members of portsmouth workforce it is clear to me that we must strive for protected free workforce parking The Portsmouth workforce has demonstrated a willingness to walk far distances for a free parking space. Currently, the majority of free parking is in residential neighborhoods. My prediction is that workforce will be pushed further into the neighborhoods and then those residents will suffer the same inconveniences that South End residents dealt with for years. My hope is that you'll consider collaborating with business owners in an effort to reach a mutually equitable solution for both workforce and residents. Now more than ever, we must protect the workers who sacrificed so much to bring culture and community to this city. It would be devastating to see them leave.

Thank you, Abby. Justin Richardson.

thank you mr. mayor members the City Council Justin Richardson I live at 586 Woodbury Avenue I wanted to talk briefly about parking just to give my perspective as a resident who's been here for about 11 years on the seacoast for I guess 26 now I remember when the parking rates were raised because we wanted to move people into the the new garage at the time the foundry and and it you know did some research on that it drove me nuts because we were taking essentially what were free parking spots that were already paid for and then raising the rates on them in order to force people to change their behavior to go somewhere else. I think that was my recollection. I think all parking decisions have both good and bad consequences. the one thing that i think is the problem is is that when we use the machinery of government to punish people or to influence behavior i think that's a mistake what i would like to see is is you know using parking fees it's the wrong tool for the job i think the only best policy for this City Council is to take government out of that business make parking everywhere as easy and affordable especially for the workers I have a daughter who worked at series bakery for a long time I really understand how that impacts them with the salaries that they have let people get to work go downtown buy groceries and even visit for less we shouldn't be using the parking fees because that takes people like me and i don't go downtown anymore i i in the summertime especially i drive to kittery because it's just easier you know the having to spend three dollars for a parking pass i know there's a resident program i didn't get in it for about five years I just think it's a it's you know, the only policy and the best policy is just make it easy and affordable for everyone Let people figure it out from there.

Thank you very much But sure on flock I Apologized for not expressing any opinions on parking I I People have said plenty at the very end of tonight's agenda is an item, a sample motion brought up by a counselor Bagley. I don't know whether he's going to continue to pursue that, but I. I wasn't sure whether that was going to be public comment then on that, or whether now's the time. So. Two things. Three things, actually. One, I've been working for the last 10 years on license plate readers in the legislature. In 2016, then Republican Representative Neil Kirk, who's a very strong privacy advocate, got passed a bill that put significant restrictions on the uses of license plate readers, automated license plate readers. That bill had a sunset provision that it was to be repealed as of December 31st of this year. This past session I was the prime sponsor at the behest of Representative Kirk to repeal the sunset provision and so that statute is now permanent it regulates automated license plate readers and it does a very effective job it has a lot of restrictions to it and particularly related to how long the agency doing the license plate reading can maintain that information that doesn't result in an arrest We on House Criminal Justice will be taking a look at that again this coming session to see it, given the advent of flock, which is new in the last five years or so, whether whether we need to make any adjustments. But the way I read it now is it pretty much covers it and regulates it well. So I would ask the council to. To wait and see what we do in the legislature number 2, a minor point and not to not to provoke the council in any regard. But I think the council telling the police department what to do with. Licensed place readers, which is within their purvey is beyond the charter. It's the, it's the, it's the police commission's responsibility to make policy for the police department. We're more than willing to talk with council members who want to talk to us about this. We will have a discussion about this at our next meeting. But I would ask the council to postpone any discussion, any resolution or conclusion about Flock and how it would be done until the police commission meets and the legislature decides whether there's anything more that we want to do to really put strong limitations on Flock.

Thank you, guys. Next, David, just quickly on that, the motion before us is to schedule first reading on whether or not we would prevent flock from being uh adopted on city buildings and public lands uh here in the city of portsmouth um that is uh we'll go to second reading of the public comment if it passes tonight so there will be much more time to speak out on you know whether folks do actually want the cameras in the city of portsmouth next up is sorry what that is what our motion is it says that we're gonna prevent them on city land that's the motion that's before the council so you guys are probably in agreement on that but we will have the conversation and everybody can come back for the public hearing which will be at the next council meeting if this gets good oh schedule first reading so two meetings all right I went against my rule of responding back and here we are so David Hanson on workforce parking

My name is David Hanson. I live on Broad Street in Portsmouth. I was just here to talk about the workforce parking at the foundry. I know there's like a 10 hour limit. I think it was mentioned earlier to increase it to 12. I would ask to increase that to maybe 15 or 16 because I know a lot of people that do work long hour shifts in the service industry. they show up at 8 a.m and they're not getting to their card until like 11 p.m midnight um so i would just like to ask to extend that time frame for those individuals thanks thank you david um um penny i'm gonna get your last name wrong um

Oh, okay. Hey, Eddie, come on up. Eddie Dreadful. All right.

so my name is penny dreadful and i am the ceo of pickwick's mercantile fuzzy wigs food and fountain and dubwicks ethereal inform here in portsmouth new hampshire and there are a couple of things first of all i want to stand behind what everyone else has said who is a business owner or a manager it is very hard to get workforce into the city when there is no parking for them We provide a vital resource for the city. We entertain and we enthrall and we bring people back to the city time and time again. And we're only able to do that if we have the right people in place to do so. And making it harder for people to find parking is gonna make it harder for us to make that happen for Portsmouth. The guests that do come to see us, one of the other things that I'm hearing is that the parking is as expensive as it is in Boston. This is what I'm hearing from the visitors that are coming to see us. You can do that, but that's what the perception is of the guests who are visiting us. And the fees that they are getting if they overstay are very prohibitive as well. So that is for visitors as well as for people who are here. With any of these plans that go into place, there are two things that really stand out to me having been here since 2013. We need to do something about how these sidewalks are cleared. During the winter time, you're talking about walking to parking garages. These city sidewalks are not walkable whenever we have a winter storm. So I would ask that that be addressed so that you actually can have people having a safe way to walk to work because we don't have it. And then we just had all of the streets, not all the streets. We just had State Street repaved. I don't know if anybody has gone and looked at the parking spaces and the lines. that they painted, but we lost spaces. You can absolutely see it right in front of Fezziwigs, where there was one spot, or where there were two spots, or three spots, there's now two. So someone should probably go back, take a look at that, and we need to get those repainted so you can get more parking spaces so you can make more revenue. and I yield the rest of my minutes. I know you can't, but I do just want to stand behind everybody else who's been here and said it. It's hard to get workforce here, and I know that the residents need places to park as well, but we're not going to build a city if you don't have businesses to bring other people in. We are what makes Portsmouth special, and we are why people have chosen to come here and live here.

Thank you, Penny. Colin Schuller on Coast.

Hi, I'm Colin Schoeller, Chauncey Street Portsmouth. All of this parking conversation, it's all supply and demand. We have, frankly, a fixed supply, and we have ever increasing demand, and demand that now, really more than ever, has a higher personal cost associated with it. And that's what we're seeing here at these conversations. Our current system clearly needs some improvements, and we've heard a lot of good suggestions both from the people here as well as the council, and I think everyone's on the same page, that improvements are needed. But it is important to remember what the intention of this program is and what the intention of, I think, what everyone wants here, which is that parking is available for those who need it. But since our supply is fixed, the only thing that we can do practically for a long-term lasting solution is to lower our demand. And that can really only be done with alternative means of transportation. Studies and explorations are important, and I'm glad that we've started those. But again, we have a head start, and we have something that we can take advantage of in the meantime while we're waiting for those to get back to us. And we can do it in parallel. We have the coast. We have a bus that currently does get a fine amount of funding, but it is operating at only a fraction of what it could do. It operates only on cash. It doesn't operate past 8 PM. It operates once an hour. All things that if you really need an alternative, make it frankly useless. And it's not that far away from being extremely useful for a much larger number of people than it already is. Thanks. Thank you, Colin.

Jared Parker on parking.

Thank you Council Members. I'm asking you to look at the parking issue not as a revenue issue but as a workforce issue. Many people who work in downtown Portsmouth earn $15 to $20 an hour. When parking costs $2 an hour, it is a significant portion of their daily income to come to work. Not only is it a small inconvenience, it directly affects whether the working in downtown is going to be financially stable. I go to work, many of my coworkers can't even go to places like Ceres Bakery because they can't afford it. And now they are going to have to pay for parking. So we have a workforce that can actually contribute back into the revenue stream of other of these small businesses, but they can't afford it. And now we're going to be adding an additional tax to the people who are coming from very far away or even close by. that they don't have parking in addition to this i also work at strawberry bank museum where we also have free parking for the members who come to visit our historical landmark unfortunately what we're finding at the museum is that we have members or people parking in our free lot because they know it's free we take down you know our manager our site managers are taking down how many people are actually using our lot but not using it for the museum. So we're losing money from the museum as well. And one instance I saw someone coming and parking in our, we have two handicapped spots, and they parked in our handicapped spots, they take their chairs and they're going over to Prescott Park or going somewhere else besides the museum. i do understand that the city needs to manage parking and appreciate the data for oh so i'm sorry um thank you for the foundry i know we we do have that is a program uh that is available to those of us that work in downtown portsmouth but quite frankly sometimes it is too far and as other members have spoken in the wintertime it can be a little bit dangerous especially going on these sidewalks and not having a safe commute walking commute to go all the way from the foundry all the way to downtown Portsmouth. You know, I've been in the workforce here in Portsmouth since the 90s. I remember working at the Gap. All I had to do was show my badge and I was able to get free parking over at Hanover Lot. and that's gone. Some of the opportunities that I have seen within parking within Portsmouth for over 30 years have come and gone, and this is just going in a negative trajectory for those of us who want to and contribute to Portsmouth's income and society.

Thank you. Thank you, Jared. Moira Wright on parking.

Hi, Moira Wright. I grew up in Berwick, Maine, but I've been coming to Portsmouth since I was really, really young. I used to go to the library back when it was, you know, where the museum is now, I guess. I don't know what it's called, but I remember going there. I took my senior pictures in Prescott Park. I used to do ballet recitals at the music hall. I might not be a resident, but I feel really connected to the city, and I went to UNH. I started working here probably my sophomore year, which was like... 2014 or something like that. I've worked all over town. And I've seen the parking diminish and dwindle. You know, this town is really special. I really do love it here. I think we've got a lot of great people who work here who live here. And if it's a revenue issue, it doesn't make sense to me to get revenue from charging people from for something they don't want to pay for. Right? Like, why wouldn't we I feel like we should just create things in town that people want to pay for. And the employees and the residents here have a lot of great ideas. If you take a little bit of pressure off of them with parking, think about how much mental energy people have spent trying to find parking, arguing about parking. This, you know, and they could be using that to create events or businesses that would be totally unique to Portsmouth that would draw people in. People would probably be willing to spend more money here and more money for parking if they can't go anywhere else to get the same experience. I'll also say right now I work at Read More Books and Brews. We've got a lot of tourists coming in. We have so many people who say, wow, I wish we had something like this in our town. I wish we had something like this in our state. I remember Book and Bar. That was also great. But I don't know a lot of other places that have similar. I mean, there's like Trident out in Boston. But that's something really special and really unique. And I just think that if we took pressure off of people, it would be beneficial to everyone. As for the foundry garage, I've served a lot of different restaurants in town since I was like early 20s, 19. And honestly, sometimes you leave at midnight at 1 a.m. You're walking back with cash. You know, I've had I had one boyfriend get me a taser. I had another boyfriend get me mace because they're worried about me walking back. I mean, forget the ice. It's you know, it's not always that safe outside if you're walking around with a lot of cash. And I just think that Portsmouth is so special and so unique. If we're able to put the money back into the people who live here and work here, we really will create something that makes people want to come and spend their money, their time, their energy here. Yeah, but I guess that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Laura. So that is all I have for sign-ups. Does anybody else want to speak? Certainly, you can get you. Yeah, happy. Come on up here.

I've said enough, I'm not as nervous. I just wanted to more or less ask a question or bring up for consideration the privately owned parking lots that we have in town. I have no idea what that business structure is as far as their relationship with you guys, but the banks that are located downtown that operate as like a privately owned parking lot after business hours, those fees are exorbitant. I guess I'm offering up for consideration. Is there... any way or an arrangement that can be made with those privately owned lots to open those up for workforce parking within certain business hours not at the rate that they're asking now but if we are if these are businesses that are also a part of our ecosystem bringing in some sort of arrangement where that those spaces and those lots would be opened up for workforce parking just to offer up some sort of solution towards this very large um issue and i feel like one thing i look at too is the federal building downtown and that part who that who owns that um yeah i feel like he's got enough cash in the bank maybe he would be willing to offer that up for free workforce parking. I just want to say that out loud. Again, I'm not sure, but that's a great opportunity, I think, that is available to ease this issue.

Thank you.

thank you kelsey other okay yeah i just wanted to present one other idea since i know everyone's talking about free parking and obviously we are fighting for free workforce parking but i think it has been proven that park mobile can allow for a discounted rate on parrot avenue so i don't see why more streets more metered spaces can't be made available at a discounted rate for the workforce

thank you Nisa any other ideas comments nobody okay but I guess we'll go on to other parts of the agenda one of them is on parking later I just want to I want to thank the folks that have come here for a couple reasons One, I know it doesn't always seem like it, but this is why we're here, to listen and to try to incorporate as many ideas for as many people as we can. Two, this could have gone a lot of different ways. and it could have been a lot more angry than what folks came up and asked us to do but you asked to be considered and to think about ways that we can improve the system that we have understanding that there's a lot of parts to the system and a lot of pressures on the system I don't think anybody was under the illusion that parking was a great situation in june i mean i think uh kelsey you talked about uh the the tickets um and there was a there was a a focus on trying to create a better system um and i want to recognize something that counselor blaylock said and when he said it i kind of uh was taken aback uh but the mental health aspect of all of this i think that there's opportunity to engage in a way that feels like this is a program that is putting you at you know a priority in here there's a lot of competing priorities in the city but to be able to think at whatever program we end up with that the workforce looks at it and says this is an improvement over what we have instead of this is a regression that one day is going to force me out of here completely And so I just thank you for being here. This is certainly not the end of this. And when we make changes, we schedule changes so that people can come speak to for against them. So those changes aren't going to happen tonight, but we are going to, take the feedback that you have and there's been a lot of feedback one of the things we're going to start is just getting a feedback to the pilot just you know generally so we can start tracking it but um to be able to make changes so at the end of the day you feel as though in my portsmouth that we have a program that's putting us on a better trajectory than the trajectory that we're on and have been on i think since the gap closed And I don't know if that's the reason why, but that was, you know, Portsmouth in the 90s was a beautiful thing. And, you know, I think trying to get to a point where it feels as though it's a benefit and not a burden is what we're trying to accomplish. And I just want to thank everybody for being here this evening and being constructive because we are a community we are bigger than our borders we know a lot of folks that have moved out of portsmouth and the goal is to try to create something that we feel all part of and all proud of and so i appreciate the effort that was brought to tonight stick around for the rest of the meeting if you want but i just want to thank you guys for um and that was folks supporting the rap and those that are supporting a better workforce uh parking program um to to come to the table and making um the city better because of your input so i know also it's not easy to do uh for two hours tonight that you were here and so just thank you for spending your time uh with us to make portsmouth better it is appreciated so with that um we're going to go on to the rest of the agenda if you guys want to hang out you can but there's probably some other things you want to do too so understand that thanks for coming we're gonna miss the best part they're missing all the good stuff there's a lot

I miss 80s barbecue. Let me think of 80s barbecue. Remember when smoke would come out?

80s would come out and be like, all right. Yeah. Now it's like, yeah. I mean, things that I miss, you know, club spin. Yes.

I used to hang out at club spin when I was 30 years old. Bananas.

I was going to say, I'm only old enough for bananas, guys. That's right, yeah. I'm out there, too.

Yep.

okay so we do have public hearings and vote on ordinance of resolutions we have a first reading a couple of first readings here to amend chapter 7 or chapter 10 zoning ordinances article 2 administration and enforcement section 10.234 procedures for variances special exemptions and appeals from decisions of the code official Section 10.246, expiration and abandonment of approvals. And Section 10.1017- or .70, expiration and extension.

Move to pass first reading and schedule a public hearing and second reading for September 14th, 2026.

Second. Any further discussion or any discussion on this? Dr. Moreau.

a lot of the um administrative changes that we're making to this really have to do with trying to line certain things up and it's really more of a cleanup than anything else so we're not making any major changes that's what i'm trying to get at

Okay, we'll take your word for it, and then we'll have the public hearing. Council by-law? All right. All right, so again, first reading, this will pass. We'll schedule a second reading at the next city council meeting. all in favor aye any opposed next uh we have first reading amendment amending chapter 7 vehicles traffic and parking article 3 traffic ordinances section 7.330a no parking in section 7.336 a one-way streets

Your honor, I move to pass first reading and schedule a public hearing and second reading at the September 14th, 2026 City Council meeting regarding amendment to chapter seven, vehicles, traffic and parking, article three, traffic ordinance, section 7.330A, no parking, which will move parking spaces from the west to east side of Flea Street as presented.

Second.

And.

We got to talk about this one.

We vote and then. Yeah, so. I could speak to it briefly if. yeah i have some questions counselor hopkins thunder but essentially there's a lot of things happening on fleet street and in order to make them happen it makes a lot more sense to have the parking on the opposite side of the street of where it is now so we're taking parking from the i don't know if it's south yes where the parking is now will now be on the other side of the street and there's a bunch of reasons why that makes sense after all the

Reconfiguration of Fleet Street is done and I think we can get into that a little bit with the the one-way section Okay, are there any other questions I'll just say that these Fleet Street design changes have been run through parking traffic and safety and the bike committee and both are in favor of this because it's going to create a more Welcoming and amenable biking and walking ecosystem on there so in order to do that to improve safety for bikers and we need to move the parking to the other side and that's the reason and it has support

so in those i guess the only question that i have and it's maybe being um sensitive on uh the topic here on parking uh have we we used to um there used to be outdoor dining on that street in fleet street and then we said that that's not allowed because of the space and construction and so i'm just wondering if these restaurants would have i mean they won't be able to have outdoor dining there if we move the cars to the other side or the park cars the other side of the street and I'm wondering you know if we had factored in for the times which they are actually if they were to use that outdoor dining option to get walkability if that would have incurred the same sort of danger and require it to move over to the other side of the street yes so the primary

The reason for moving the parking to the other side of the street is that with the one way design to have a contract flow bike lane. What we would be asking if parking remained where it was was for people to park to go through the bike lane to park their car, which is. suboptimal at best. I'm not sure if, you know, there is sidewalk widening in this project too, and I'm not sure where that stands with, you know, outdoor dining and sidewalks. I don't know what those rules and such are, but the sidewalk is going to be significantly widened in this spot. And, but yeah, I don't think that has been in, and all the times I've heard this explicitly brought up about outdoor dining in the street. So that's a great question.

uh counselor bagley yeah thanks mayor um i see eric eb is here and he's quite knowledgeable on fleet street um i wasn't at the meeting where we improved the contraflow bike rain um so i made sure i don't think we or oh at the pts meeting no the councilman didn't we talk about it we talked about it and we asked you this would be the meeting so so then second reading i want and this will tie into everything i was going to wait for the second motion but i think maybe now is the right time to bring it up i was generally opposed to the idea and the reason is it's a very short section of town and it doesn't fundamentally serve a major bicycle purpose in my my opinion and having lived through the middle street bike lanes my concern is for two blocks of bike lane we may create a public backlash i don't know if we will but we might however when i watch the pts meeting um erica wygonic who's Great expertise in all things parking. She had a concern about the 18-foot travel lane, which I think, and this is where I'm hoping Eric Eby will be helpful, is kind of a requirement of the fire department because they've got to be able to get the ladder trucks to do ladder truck things to the tall buildings there if there's ever a fire um that's the technical term ladder truck things so my concern is i don't want to have an 18 foot wide one way road because people continuously try to turn down it the wrong way i agree with erica wagonic on that like if we don't have something there that makes it hard for you to go the wrong way in the one way it's going to be a problem because of the with the lane however i think there's a lot more public benefit to some kind of bumped up sidewalk that could potentially allow for outdoor dining or something like that, then a contraflow bike lane. What I'm unaware of, is there a way to do that and still meet fire department requirements? And the thought process I have would be the sidewalks on Chestnut Street. So Chestnut Street is, I forget the technical term, but it doesn't have curbs. It has kind of like a colored delineation of where the sidewalk is. And the reason it works there is it's relatively low traffic. I think Fleet Street's going to be relatively low traffic with the one-way configuration. those are my thoughts but i do worry about the the fallout when the public sees the contraflow lane there's going to be a lot of pushback and having lived through the middle street bike lanes i don't know if the the benefit is worth the the pushback well to okay counselor hopkins

Well, I would just ask, because Eric, I believe we have that data on bike usage on Fleet Street. So if that would help inform decisions, would you please share some of the data on numbers and perhaps also, you know, because yes, the change is going to be difficult to change habits on people driving the wrong way on Fleet Street. So at PTS, you know, we've discussed putting up, you know, a barrier, a temporary barrier to really like show people, no, You may not enter here, but I'll let, I would ask Eric to speak more to those things.

We certainly can. This is first reading though, so we can have it as a presentation, but Eric, why don't you inform us if you can on this right now? Certainly.

Yes, prior to our PTS meeting, we put a traffic camera out on Fleet Street, which recorded all activity on the street. It was a two-week period in July, and what we saw on average was about two bicycles an hour going that way down Fleet Street from Hanover to Congress. The highest usage we saw was nine bicycles in one hour, and the highest usage in one day was 50 bicycles. it's on average about 25 bikes a day going from hanover to congress in that direction on fleet street so is that just for context how many cars were there uh peak hour on fleet street there's 100 cars in each direction 200 cars total on fleet street okay um and then for other parts of the city is that comparable high low for bikes i i it's it's probably low i mean compared it depends on what street you pick i mean a middle street gets it gets more usage than that um you know we don't have bike counts on every street but it's it's low for vehicle counts i know that okay thank you eric other questions for eric or comments counselor cook

thank you your honor um as someone who uses fleet street as my crosstown street because when you live in the south end there's not an easy way around downtown you either go to one end or the other but flea street provides that crosstown back and forth i think that's going to be the biggest challenge for people is that suddenly they can't grow back crosstown from hanover um you can't get to to the south end or the library or to town hall coming across fleet that right way in fact you have to go to the end of the street and go around and you have to loop around which sometimes takes a little bit longer so i think that's going to be the biggest adjustment but i personally as somebody who uses fleet street both ways a lot thinks i think it's worth it And I think the change is worth it because we need the wider sidewalks in this space. And so I look at it as we're gaining a huge benefit on fleet by having that expansion of sidewalks. We're not just gaining larger sidewalks, we're gaining some greenery, potentially some trees, I'm hoping, in this space. But I think that the bike lane is also important for bike traffic. The cars have other routes that are really easy to access around town, even though it can be frustrating to have to go around. We don't have a good access point for bicycles where they're not in the flow of traffic. So this provides that access to Congress.

thank you counselor cook um i guess the and i the idea of not doing something because of pushback um is a is a fair one uh i think it's more if i just refine that a little bit it's somewhat difficult sometimes when we do things and this is going to be a huge change like the food street change is going to be monumental uh for folks and when we do it it's going to be um It's going to be immense. And we'll go through and we'll find through the public hearing process. And it's likely, based on what we've seen, especially the changes on Congress Street, it will make more sense long term. I don't think it's going to be up there in changes of market square. But it will make more sense long term. And it's been fully vetted. And a lot of input over the years has put into that. the only thing on the bike lane and i would just ask folks to to think about this and for for us you know for uh people that are you know part of sabre to come and speak to um or others uh is what is it connecting it to because the big takeaway that i found in the middle street bike lane uh part of my life was that there wasn't enough people outside of people that wanted to speak for kind of bicycling in general to come and speak and say this is something that i use on a daily basis and if you take it away it will impact me x it was more or less we have to invest in bike infrastructure and i always think the best way to do that is to connect two neighborhoods or two parts of town completely fully before you know so that people will actually miss if it's taken away and not just bike enthusiasts which I certainly love and respect their efforts to push Portsmouth in a direction that will make biking easier but we need more than those people to show up we need the people that are going to be negatively impacted if we don't actually move the bike lane so you know i'll support this in terms of you know the first reading i really think the counter flow um you know conversation is going to be one that will have more pushback and it runs the risk of being tied up into a you know a person that will watch none of these meetings will say that we closed off the street so that we can do a reverse bike lane on the other side of the street and that's not the the actual answer but that's what this change will end up having um in people's minds because they can't you know it's difficult to you know be as intensive as as as we're forced to be and they'll just kind of look at it um so that's one and i guess the other point you know we've changed parking on the other side like we've never made parking decisions or traffic decisions based on outdoor dining we're not going to start now but we have had in the past moved parking to the other side of the street if I think on Massimo's which or series where it made sense we just took away parking from one side and moved it to the other so it's something that we could bring back here if there was the desire but I do just have some concerns on the counter flow only because it

it's it doesn't necessarily connect two points as well as as maybe it could uh i'll go counselor hopkins and then counselor um i i would say that you know the counterflow bike lane has been identified as a connector through downtown somewhat um how counselor cook was talking so it is because it is a quieter street it's a smaller street um so to the bike community what i've heard through the bike and pedestrian committee is that the this is connector from one side of town to the other the other thing i'll say too is you know if we make it one way and we're worried about um the wide street inviting folks to come down the wrong way um a bike lane with not just a single you know regular like two stripes but you can make like a one to two foot like stripe with cross across really to um it's a certain pavement treatment that you can do that really like delineates this is a bike lane and this is the travel lane those are ways where you can not restrict pavement space so that fire trucks can still operate but still create visual you know awareness of this is one way and the bikes go here parking again i just having parking on the other side of a bike lane makes no sense to me and The other thing too that I would push back on the hypothetical of, we're always gonna hear negative opinions, I'm not saying that we won't, but if part of our commitment to the climate action plan, our commitment to multimodal, our commitment to decreased parking means that we are going to make changes to improve bike infrastructure. I think they need to be visible as part of this plan. On Congress Street, bikes will have their own separate traffic light. So again, there's a difference between, and I just thought this weekend I went to a memorial service where we were in a church that had kids toys out in the back. And that to me says we expect kids to come here and be in this space. When there's bike lanes that are, you know, clearly marked they have their own traffic signal we're saying we expect bikers to be in this downtown and you know if we want a walkable downtown core this is downtown core so if we want something that is better for bikers and walkers we are going to have to shift parking and restrict cars or restrict traffic flow cars to just one way in order to actually take the action you know i i just don't think that um the backlash is worth it on this. I wasn't here for Middle Street, and I think I'm happy about that, but this is something, again, that's well supported by the Bike and Pedestrian Committee, who is made up of more than just gung-ho cyclists. I am not a gung-ho cyclist, but I would want this to take my kid downtown, too. Honestly, to get to the library. This is how, personally, I would come. I would rather do this than coming down further. or going through that worst intersection in Portsmouth where it's all crosswalks. So I am thoroughly in support of these initiatives.

Just for the record, the worst intersection is the Bartlett Bridge, K Street. It's just that I want that to be, you know, doing the best of what we've got there. On the record, the second worst intersection there.

But, Councilor Bagley. Thank you. And, you know, when I talk about pushback, it's not because I think people will be mad at me. I think I do a pretty good job of that already without having to worry about that. When we get pushback on Middle Street bike lanes, it really retards the chance to have future discussions about bike lanes elsewhere in the city. We shouldn't do something because of pushback. We should be very thoughtful that the community feels like they got value for the changes, so they're supportive of more and future changes. And thinking about this more, and I can't remember, I know we did the QR codes. We got a lot of public comment two or three years ago, and everything got delayed because we had to do sewer pipes downstream before we could do this.

I feel like the contra bike lane was thrown in kind of in the last six months or something it wasn't originally or do I have that wrong I don't remember it wasn't a part of the original proposal it came in as a part of the recent conversations as a request of I believe the bike bed

And you know during my time on PTS I was always hesitant about a committee like that that was focused on one core group in the city because it can sometimes drive things that have support in the room but not necessarily as a bad base but what stuck out to me is and I don't know if we have counts on pedestrians but we have a hundred cars each way two bikes each way per hour on average we probably have a at least 100 pedestrians and we have an opportunity to make especially if the the what happens to lad street actually goes through that could be a very very pedestrian heavy area and to me to be giving up sidewalk space for for two bikes an hour if there's a way we can incorporate the the really wide sidewalks and the fire trucks to me that would be the highest and best use of that street and i know we're not making decisions tonight but i thought it was good to get that

idea out there to see if it has any support i think council bagley and i you know i think everybody's saying uh or reasonably the same thing i think uh councilman or counselor hopkins makes some points uh that are certainly useful in terms of this is a thoroughfare and being able to have bikes on there i think the question you know that that i have and we will see on the public comment at the public hearing that's why we get it um is to see how much uh feeling is this is a connector there because the point that we and not to no scar tissue counselor hopkins you are uh you know on the middle street bike lane but we ended up just fighting about bike lanes that you know were on the other side of traffic you know that were like very hard to to to get to and then you know we tried to make you know some modifications and they just made nobody happy and kind of pushed us and Retarded that program for a while because it was you know, such a you know, the bollards just became such a blowback issue, so we'll have the well first we have this motion here and then we have to wait what is it sold on we have first reading and then another one um on this is it's not an amendment oh it's two different ones that have the same thing okay that we have to do okay so the motion on the floor is to move the uh the parking to the other side of the street as presented

And I think I made the motion. Councillor Moreau seconded it.

And this is for first reading to get to second reading to hear from the public. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Second is the second portion of that.

I move to pass first reading. and schedule a public hearing and second reading on September 14th, 2026, City Council meeting regarding an amendment to Chapter 7, Vehicles, Traffic and Parking, Article 3, Traffic Ordinance, Section 7.336A, One-Way Streets, Changing Flea Street to One-Way from Congress Street to Hanover Street as presented.

Second.

And I kind of said all my thoughts on that on the previous one.

Yep, and again, this is to put it to a second reading in the public comment. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? all right public hearing and second reading of the annual omnibus ordinance amending chapter 7 vehicles traffic and parking article 3 traffic ordinance section 7.326 a limited parking 15 minutes section 7.330 a no parking and article 6 loading zone section 7.601 limited hours loading zone your honor we have uh engineer for parking transportation and planning eric eby who has a couple of slides to walk through thank you

yes mr mayor city councilors this is the annual omnibus which covers the changes made by parking traffic safety committee over the past year that affects ordinances in chapter 7. we have three of them tonight the first one is on 15-minute parking spaces and that is on daniel street and these are the two spaces in front of moe's sub shop And what happened was those two spaces were put into place and the three existing spaces on the other side of Daniel Street were returned to regular Zone A parking spaces. This change was actually implemented back in 22 to 23, but didn't make it into the omnibus until then. So we brought it back to the PTS this year for re-approval so that we can get it onto the omnibus now. But these spaces have been in place for at least three years now. It's been well tried and successful. The second slide shows the parking space on Middle Street that was removed at the intersection of Cass Street. This was to open up sight lines at the intersection of Cass and Middle for vehicles pulling out of Cass Street. The original request from some residents was to remove two, three spaces at this location. PTS approved the removal of one space. that was approved back in october of 24 but it didn't get in place until 25 and part of the condition was to monitor it to see how it went and that brought us past the omnibus for last year so it was re-approved again for another one year trial and that's why it's on the omnibus now but it's been one space has been removed now for uh over a year and it's been going well and the last item is loading zones and this one is on Brewster Street this one was approved in May of 2025 however at the time the Islington Street project was still under construction so we weren't able to stripe it or put the loading zone sign in place until after the omnibus deadline had passed for last year so we brought it back to PTS again they reapproved it in October and it's back now for approval this is requested by the restaurants there at the corner it allows a parking space next to closest to Islington and then a loading zone after that and what it did was change the hours of the loading zone so that it would be more available to their customers of the restaurants during hours and so it's been working out well for them it's been the sign has been in place and it's going to be restriped again so

these actions have all been in place now for upwards of a year at least I move to pass second reading of annual omnibus ordinance amending chapter 7 vehicles traffic and parking article 3 traffic ordinance section 7.3 to 6 a limited parking 15 minutes section 7.3 30 a no parking and article six loading zones section 7.601 limited hours loading zone and schedule the third reading at september 14 2026 city council meeting on second that but we need a public hearing yeah we'll have a public hearing yeah

uh but we can have questions uh of eric before the uh the public hearing as well since i don't see it maybe soon um but go ahead counselor cook uh thank you your honor um has there been any anyone come in and ask for additional um spaces now to be removed at that intersection of cass and middle i know that the visibility is not ideal there

no but yes there was someone at PTS last month meeting they've concerns about the intersection of Cass and Chevrolet at Lovell as well as middle at Cass you know it's unless you take a lot away a lot of parking spaces there you're not going to have full sight lines that you you should have but we tried the committee tried to reach a compromise to remove one's parking space to improve it and we did monitor it with cameras afterwards and saw that it was working better where vehicles didn't have to pull away out into you know traffic to see what was coming they were able to stay back a little bit further thank you and i just wanted to note this brewster street loading zone is important and it's one of the areas that i think has become a little more challenging with the wrap with people trying to park there

Councilor Bagley. Thanks, Aaron. Just a note on CAS. It would have been nice if we could have gotten one more space removed, but like anything else, we compromise. But what's really nice is when they repaved middle, there's now like a bump out that prevents you from parking. And that parking space that's no longer there was the one that caused, I think, the dangerous intersection by far. And now that you physically can't park there, I think we're going to have pretty good compliance.

council bagley um eric just had a quick question on this just on the one that's the 15 minute i know we've already done that um but we made i mean that it's it's been there um but there was some there was a space or two that was leading up to the crosswalk there uh that was deleted um did we already pass that does this have to was that separate from this i'm not sure where exactly what if you have that sorry yeah daniel coming into market square um there used to be a parking spot just above like well um there's a parking spot ahead of the the crosswalk and then it's removed as a no parking zone i'm just curious on if that was is this on you daniel heading into market it's on the left side of the road yeah yeah there had been 15 minute spaces there there was a alleyway as well where there was no parking and a temporary crosswalk during construction No, I'm actually talking about just right in front of Napolitano. Right, you know, right there. So, nope. Sorry, right there. Yeah, that one. Again, I thought this was all in the same time horizon. I'm just wondering why that's where we, where we deleted that one, because it does seem, you know, it's like, 25 feet from the crosswalk and i'm just wondering um is that something that i don't i don't recall that coming to the vote and i thought this was on the same one to put that in the omnibus so i'm just curious if that's something you can speak to yeah i don't recall that unless it was one that was removed because it was too close to the crosswalk

if you park you know you're not supposed to park right up to the edge of a crosswalk you have to give it at least 20 feet 30 feet at a stop sign that may have been why it was removed i don't recall it coming to pts for approval of that yeah okay um are you i guess we can look into that and report back but i don't recall removing that parking space as a as a measure but we did remove it you know I do remember because you can still like on Google Maps you can still see where the line was before I know we did shift things around that alleyway between the brick market where you can see the gap there in front of those colored spaces that is now a parking space so we did shift things around in order to get more parking in that area that that gap doesn't exist anymore there is parking space there so

okay uh maybe just a just a a flag um this doesn't affect that but would love to know if we can put that parking space uh back in there um and what the is it it seems like there's room to the to the crosswalk uh maybe not the or just the actual crosswalk not the white line that's before the crosswalk but the actual crosswalk cancer bag would you remember that one

known but i remember walking downtown like a week ago and be like oh it looks like we lost a space but it could be that when we gained more spaces further down we just did we had like an orphan chunk of land and what used to be big enough isn't anymore for a space in that particular location but i thought it might be a good time um we've gotten a number of emails and a number of uh i think we even got like a letter from a downtown worker who lives elsewhere that is convinced that we can gain back like 250 parking spaces downtown by not listening to setbacks and if you walk downtown on state street or court street or pleasant you'll see that the parking spaces often time go very close to the intersection of the stop sign because we've looked so the the 20 foot rule and the 15 rules foot rules are kind of general guidelines for the city but in parking intensive areas where the speeds are quite slow we can kind of adjust accordingly or we haven't taken away those parking spots proactively but the the letter isn't really factually correct in the sense that a lot of those intersections we go right up to the or very close to the intersection with parking in a way that we wouldn't if it was like a more rural non-downtown street

and I don't know if you could speak to that Eric or about how we look at some intersections in the city very individually but then we have a general rule for everywhere else yeah well there is state law and city ordinance that when you're at an intersection with a stop sign you must be 30 feet back from the stop line at that intersection to provide room for turning movements and when there's not a stop sign you must be 20 feet from the crosswalk at an intersection And that 20 feet, if there's no crosswalk, then it's measured from the curb line of the side street. So when you have a radius involved, sometimes it can look like you're closer to that side street than you really are, but it's always a minimum of 20 feet that we must stay back from an intersection. I think that letter that we received was asking us to allow parking within that 20-foot area, because 20 feet's the length of a car, you know, on average.

Is there anything that prevents us from, like, what is the, what's the governing authority on making a change and put cars before 20 feet?

it's well the primary reason is for safety because when you park so close to an intersection then you can't see it blocks your sight lines coming out of the side street and so that's why the reason for the state law and the city ordinance prohibiting parking within 20 feet so it's a state law state law yep 20 and 30 at a stop sign and as well the city ordinance for 20.

Okay. I guess just the areas of which it's rather congested and folks go somewhat slower, it'd be nice to know where those are. Or if that law has changed, because I'm looking at the space that I was mentioning earlier, and it wasn't moved back at all. It was simply the line that used to go up and then... and now it just kind of just start the diagonal of the no parking starts faster so it'd be interested to know if that was something that we had had previously that didn't comply with state law because I imagine there's some parts of her town that don't comply with state law because they're older than the state law you know that well they're before the cars with errors and the streets were built so it would be good to know about any of those areas where we could ask for a dispensation from the state to and is that a process that we can you know because I know we have speed limits that are lower than 25 miles an hour and we have to ask to do that so if there's you know any way that we could put a report together to see if we could add parking and request a waiver of the state there is that a process that we could go through for additional parking

I I don't think you really have to ask permission from the state it's more of a you know it's a safety feature is why parking is prohibited from an intersection it's if you you could you know we allow parking right up to edges as driveways because we don't not a lot of traffic comes out of a driveway and they'll have to just deal with that occasionally but when you're dealing with a public street you want to make sure you have safe sight lines for coming out of a street certainly

and i and that's the reason why we're making that change on cass because there wasn't the sight lines that are there and we're moving parking and that makes all the sense in the world i'm just asking in terms of looking at the downtown given the speed of which cars are traveling in the downtown if you know the same uh if the same alignment for calf street and the decisions we're making there would have a different view when there's the cars are inherently going somewhat slower because of the traffic that exists there but we'll take that up in a separate motion or a separate uh report back request oh council cook um thank you your honor um i just wanted to point out that this intersection on that side in particular

a car that's parked there would not be blocking any sight line because there is not a road that is approaching daniel right there because of market square because there's a large bump out there for the market square seating area so you are at least 20 feet off um pleasant street there on that side so i don't i don't know if we moved it because we're close to an intersection it it doesn't impact sight lines on that side and the intersection isn't on that side it's on the other side of the street where we do have a bump out that prevents additional parking so um i think it's it's a reasonable um

idea to look at that again and see if it's feasible to add that parking spot back yeah because that that 20-foot rule applies to side streets intersections as well as crosswalks and i think the reason is it's a crosswalk distance is why it's there because when you have a cross a vehicle parked right up to the edge of a crosswalk and a pedestrian walks out in front of that parked car you're not seeing him until he's all of a sudden in traffic so

Council Bagley. Your Honor, I might have inadvertently opened a can of worms, much like the 20 mile per hour speed limit that we have places that may not 100% be in compliance. I think we may have some parking spaces downtown that are not 100% in compliance, so I wouldn't want to do anything to trigger an audit.

I mean, it's, well, I think... Eric mentioned that we don't have to not a it's not something that this is I was guess unclear is the state gonna make us change any of these things no but it's a city ordinance that you can't have the parking but close to an intersection so you'd be going against the city ordinance if you allowed parking within 20 feet of an intersection okay understandably for but that is a that's regardless of traffic speeds yes

okay i mean is it possible to take a look at that from a standpoint of like is there do we do traffic speeds have any impact on the on the safety of the intersection and the requirement of 20 feet oh yes i mean the the 20 feet is really insufficient for most speeds because the actual sight line is is so short if you have a car parked right up to the edge your sight lines are extremely limited and you know a vehicle going more than a couple miles an hour you wouldn't be able to see them or stop to them

okay uh councilman just to follow up with that let's keep in mind you need that 20 feet to also be able to parallel park into a parking spot so you're going to be pulling into a crosswalk if you're right on top of the crosswalk in order to get into the parking spot before i get anybody kind of reaching out to me like you know devil my care attitude when it comes to parking i this was just a this is a parking spot that used to exist

and then when we made the other changes that we're now approving right now it went away and it's not on the list of things that we are uh accepting as a part of the omnibus and so i'm just trying to get to the bottom of where that parking spot change happened and maybe it happened in another omnibus bill that we passed but if it didn't i just would like to know what the reasonings before it because it used it lived there for you know um well for as long as you know i can't recall and now it's not there and so i thought it was a part of this one it's not and i just want to figure out where it is all right all right you need to open and close a public hearing all right uh opening the public hearing if anybody still wants to talk about uh parking as it is currently and not changing any of that right now um seeing no one rise no one on zoom closing the public hearing um now we will have a any other additional council questions seeing none all in favor aye any opposed your honor I'd like to suspend the rules and pass there in final reading second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed

i forget do we have to do did you say yeah now we gotta do the motion your honor i move to pass third and final reading of the annual omnibus ordinance amending chapter 7 vehicles traffic parking article 3 traffic ordinance section 7.36 326a limited parking 15 minutes section 7.330a no parking and article 6 loading zones section 7.601 limited hours loading zones with schedule third oh

and pass third and final reading second any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed all right next third and final reading of ordinance amendments chapter 12 building code section 1201 through 1209 by deleting and replacing the entire chapter

all right move to pass third and final reading of the amendment to chapter 12 building code section 121 through 1209 is presented second second uh biggest question looking at jane did they accept they accepted our changes all right happy days happy days all right all in favor aye any opposed thank you sean you can uh turn us off now

all right uh public hearing continued from august 3rd 2026 a meeting to set parking fees for on street and lot parking for fy 27 3 per hour for the first three hours and six dollars per hour thereafter pursuant to chapter one administrative code article 16 adoption of fees section 1.1601 procedure

I move to set parking fees for on street and lot parking for fiscal year 2027 $3 per hour for the first three hours and six per hour thereafter pursuant to chapter one administrative code article 16 adoption of fees section one point one six zero one procedure We have the public hearing Discussion second for discussion Public hearing

we will i guess we could always continue it if we uh but we'll close the public hearing um seeing no one rise and no one on zoom um any discussion on this after uh this evening we have someone oh you do oh sorry i didn't see you sue all right uh opening the public hearing you snuck that you snuck back in you didn't see you come back i'm susan starry broad street portsmouth

Does it? I've read articles in the newspaper and everything. Does this change the resident rate? No. So technically, or right now, it's going to be $1.25 for as long as I live here. No. um so it changes nothing in that in that area and was there a study done on on this um raising it to three and then the six or i mean where did the figure come from i'm just curious if that's possible

the fee committee could speak to that or counselor Bagley member of both we raised the garage fees to three dollars an hour and we raised the garage monthly passes best parking practices is your on street you want the most turnover right so it should never be priced lower than the garages which it is currently because of the

so we're raising it so that it maintains its status as the highest value parking in the city okay so in the future like if we raise parking in the garages the rate on streets will come up to probably

Presumably, it would be up to the council at the time, but that would be the best practices.

Actually, the committee now. The committee gets to do both of them. The committee or council.

Right, which is approved by council.

But yeah, best practices is your on-street should always be your highest cost parking. So in theory, if in the future another council wanted to raise fees or prices, the street parking would always be the highest number.

And my one last question, how would this affect or does it affect with all the discussion going on about workforce or parking downtown for service people?

The wrap would remain the same, but if a service worker who is not a resident parked in a parking spot in Market Square, they would have a higher price because everybody that is not a resident now has a higher price in Market Square, for instance.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Sue. Apologies for closing the public hearing early. Now we'll close it. Ambassador Bagley.

So, Your Honor, I still have yet to have anybody give me any feedback on this change whatsoever other than what we could do with the money, but not the actual change in pricing. I do think this is an opportunity. I was looking at the signs today. They have the pricing on the sign. there's been some talk that maybe the workforce parking should be included in some of the signs or that maybe there's different verbiage we could use on the sign i'm guessing we'll probably just put a sticker over the two dollars to say three dollars um in the short term but this could be a good opportunity to get signs that are a little clearer and i don't know what that means exactly but if we're going to be changing a bunch of signs let's not do it twice if we don't have to understood

Councillor Bailock. Thank you, Your Honor. I'm going to vote against this at this time. I just think this is not the right time to be adding on. You know, I just feel like we've really... I don't know. We have just kind of, you know, put a twister over Portsmouth parking and really affected everyone's mental health and everything like that. And yeah, I'm not worried about dollars and cents right now. I'm worried about taking care of our people in our community. So I'll be voting yes to this at this time. Thanks, Councillor Bowick.

Councillor Cook.

um thank you your honor um so i want to know how how quickly and what we would need to do to change the workforce designation so that more people qualify for the workforce parking program and the reason i'm asking that is that we receive several emails from people who are saying they're spending twenty dollars a day parking And, and that tells me that they're not using the workforce program. And so, um, I want to make sure that our workforce isn't negatively impacted by this increase in rates. And I think the best way to do that is to make sure that more people can actually enroll in the workforce parking program. And so I just want to know how quickly can we effectuate that change? Because it's not really written down anywhere in ordinance or anything, how that is administered.

I think it would be, Your Honor, I think it would be fair to provide all that information in a report back at the next meeting.

Okay. Other questions or comments? Council Boyle.

Could that report back just include, like, if the foundry garage is filling up and, like, when it is filling up? Because I have heard that, you know, the supply we've provided for downtown worker parking is sometimes not available.

fair point i think one of the points that was made um in the uh one of the requests was to be able to have more areas included in the uh the downtown worker parker program um you know that's if they're full uh then you know obviously uh three dollars is a lot more uh to pay there the issue that we're facing at the moment is the garages are

we changed the garage before we changed the downtown worker parker so the garages are now more expensive than the street parking the inverse of where we want to be I understand the current situation I just don't want to add anything else to you know our one of our marginal our most sensitive community members you know these people just trying to make ends meet you know and we're just you know it's just yeah not right now if anything i'd go back and let's go back and change the garage and lower that you know what i mean let's go in that direction let's not keep climbing up this mountain that you know what i mean people are urging us not to climb up um i just feel like we should maybe pause and listen maybe and try to you know instead of just stepping forward but that's just me any other questions or comments

councilor cook uh thank you your honor um so what i think is critical is i do understand the issue with the garage being priced higher than on street parking and that actually should not be the case it goes against our parking principles it goes against all of our planning and the way that we administer parking programs within the city however we have to be able to move quickly on fixes for the workforce if they're having challenges with regard to parking and that means our next meeting isn't until middle of september so if we make this change that's a month of an additional dollar an hour parking and then an escalation to six dollars an hour which is an additional dollar more than they were paying for on street parking if they have to park in the downtown zone so if we're waiting for a report back in september that means there's no action on that until at least probably october and so i'm concerned about that kind of timing we could schedule another meeting i have a potential modification perhaps a counselor could bring forth a request to modify the existing policy for the word downtown worker program to specify

the expansion of the workforce program to include different folks salaried versus otherwise. So if that helps your line of thinking.

uh assistant mayor thank you um i think to to express my opinion piggybacking off my fellow two counselors the concern is that we know that whether whether it is um positive or negative we know that downtown workers are parking on the street and so i think part of the issue is that um as comes with legs that founder does fill up it we've seen it several times over the summer that it's it's full between the downtown parker program between regular tourists between renters between pass holders which is great i mean a couple years ago i think nobody thought boundary would ever fill up um but you know i i sympathize with the fact that we're making this change and we know um that there are people and downtown employees and workers that park on the street. So while we won't have a solution, as Councilor Cook said, and or, we won't really have any update about the rat program until October. That is where I struggle to vote yes for this understanding the logic of you know, that we want them all to be the same rate. But it feels like it came Backwards, um, and now it feels like we are, we're having to do this because we have to do it. Um, but yeah, I think again, the acknowledgement that not everyone uses the, the. The work, um, 1st program, there's not always enough room for people in the work for the program. and some people come in at five o'clock at night to a shift and they are running late and they park on the street and i understand that the goal is turnover and turnover and turnover that is the whole point of paid parking but that's not always the reality of the paid parking

agreed um and i think so just uh really one quick point on the the mechanisms of this so four hour stay is cheaper uh on uh the street than a garage um a five hour stay um would be more expensive on the street from the garage yeah right because it goes to five dollars so i mean at the end of the day like it's kind of on the margin at the moment here um but um counselor uh hopkins and the counselor bagler

So while I do hear the workforce's concerns and I do agree with the sentiment that this is a lot all at once, if we don't change this, then we're gonna run out of street inventory. It does take that time. So then we're gonna have tourists parking where we don't want them to park so the parking behavior patterns would would shift in an unfavorable way and you know that arguably could cause workforce folks to just not find a spot and have to circle should the parking on street continue to be cheaper than in the garage i think would oh sorry

um counselor uh bagley and then go back to assistant mayor um i i think i'm gonna vote in support tonight for for a couple reasons the first is we're in the middle of a data collection exercise yes this did come at the tail end of all the other changes but procedurally it had to there was no choice we're in the middle of the summer season this is when we want to collect the data on what this pricing change happens two other things are going to happen One, with the increase in pricing, I think we're gonna see a lot more residents sign up than we had previously, which I think is a great thing, because all residents should be in this program. And we're gonna see more workers sign up, and we're gonna get to see what the pressures are, and do those spare spots on Parrot Avenue go away? Do we need to do something with the Parrot Avenue lot? And then I'll push back a little bit, and this will make me incredibly unpopular, but we've got storefronts downtown that are running for $9,000, $10,000, $11,000 a month, and all that money goes to the landlord. Why is it that the Portsmouth taxpayer who never goes downtown has to supply parking for that landlord? Why is it the system that the city is beholden to provide parking for employees that work at a T-shirt company? Shouldn't that come from the T-shirt company and the landlord of the T-shirt company? I mean, we're talking about 30 cents an hour, which 50% an hour bump in pay. would support the parking cost. Now, there's a lot of arguments to be made, but there's a lot of economic vitality in this town that's not downtown. We have the trade port. We have all the companies out on Route 1. We have all the companies out towards Market Basket. We've got a lot of commercial and office businesses in this town that provide their own parking lots, and they pay for those parking lots. They pay property taxes on those parking lots. They pay to have them plowed. They pay to have them lit. downtown if you own a building in a lot of cases you don't pay any of the parking overhead and i think it's unreasonable to expect that portsmouth residents bear a hundred percent of that burden and if a landlord can only get eight thousand dollars a month for his downtown storefront instead of ten thousand dollars a month i think that's actually a good thing and we're going to see a return of downtown resident focused businesses and it's painful but it has to be said if we want to go down this road of just tourism and we keep our residents from the downtown i don't think that's a good path we've gotten a number of emails from residents we had residents reach out some come tonight i go downtown more now because i can find parking Don't we want a downtown that the people that live here want to visit? Isn't that like a good thing?

um counselor or uh assistant mayor and then hey counselor i'm fine um i constantly i would say that nobody's arguing against that that this council has very vocally tried to bring residents back downtown i would argue that that same argument of a property owner could be argued against the south end to say you bought your house with one parking spot that's your why should your neighbors over in elwyn park be responsible to make sure that you have more parking. I also think we have to make sure that we're categorizing downtown property owners and businesses very differently. We heard tonight that there are employees of much larger companies like Novocare using the downtown parkers program, which I'm okay with. But you are... we are in this discussion comparing a small business who the majority of the small businesses downtown don't own their property they they're they're renters and so by saying you know it's not our responsibility it's the landlord's responsibility well we've seen what happens the landlords are using private companies to monetize those lots more when it used to be you would show up for your five o'clock shift you know you'd be five minutes late because you'd be parking at a bank now that bank that bigger corporate company is monetizing in a way that the little people even if they own the property cannot monetize the same way so I think we have to be careful about when we're when we're doing the generalizations of Well, a downtown landlord. As a former tenant, we were lucky enough to be able to buy a small space, but we were one of those businesses paying $8,500 to $9,000 a month for a commercial lease with no help or no parking or no anything. And my landlord was banking all that money. The question is, if we're gonna say the onus falls on somebody, how do you then, it's a trickle down, you're then putting the onus on the small business that is locally owned. We are seeing a higher concentration of larger corporate companies coming in, retailers coming in, because they can foot that bill. So when we talk about wanting to bring more local downtown um centric businesses those are the little ones that are owned by the mom and pops that live here the gus and rubies you know what i mean the series the the the cali bees that don't the majority of time don't own their buildings and so if we want more of those and less of no offense to them but less of fat faces or the sheep overload or these larger corporations, then we have to do something. So I just think we have to make sure that we're very careful when we talk about like a landlord's getting. What a landlord is getting and what profit that small business is making are big deltas.

Thanks, this is American Council.

Thank you. We actually the history reports we used to actually make businesses pay for the spaces in front of their business. So the businesses used to not move ever. I remember talking to the owners of the, you know, rusty Russell T hammer, you know, and then he was one of the best things we did was remove that fee so that it allowed small businesses to open up without this extra cost. and downtown has been built by these small businesses by these restaurants i mean back in the 70s it wasn't a place you wanted to go you wouldn't let your kids go down there we used to have to walk our waitresses back to their cars because girls were getting murdered in the 80s like i don't know if you've understand how they've contributed to our community um i mean it takes a village it takes all of us but they're part of it thank you councilman council cook

um thank you your honor so so what i'm really struggling with is that sorry several of the individuals who were here tonight have told me that they are not part of the workforce parking program and the reason they're not part of the workforce parking program is they work full-time they're salaried or they're a business owner and they don't take a paycheck so they have no proof to show besides their lease and I guess they could open their books to the city to show that they work downtown and as a result, They either now, if they don't get a spot on Parrot and they don't get a spot in the Parrot lot or the Masonic lot, which Masonic lot actually fills in the morning. The Parrot lot is almost always full, by the way. They have to park at Pierce Island where they don't feel safe because they're leaving at midnight from their business after they close up shop. And I can, while Portsmouth seems relatively safe And I feel like it's very safe at night walking around in dark areas. As a woman, I can understand how anyone might feel unsafe walking to Pierce Island. So their only choice they feel many times is to park on the street and to pay the full rate or to park offsite until it's a little bit later and they can sneak out and grab the car. and move it and then they park it on the street so they're only paying for you know four hours of parking on street so my concern is that we're disenfranchising the people who are running our small businesses downtown because they're not part of our workforce parking program and we haven't allowed them to join and so i want to make sure that we're we're including them all before we change a rate downtown in our parking so in terms of sequencing

if the council were to find consensus and support this item tonight which is in keeping with the parking principles as a matter of sequencing we now need to order and install the signage we need to get messaging out so in reality this parking increase would not take effect until October 1st so what I'm suggesting for your consideration is you could define as a council eligibility for the downtown worker parking program on September 14th you could if you saw in keeping with the vote tonight take this vote tonight knowing that this would not take effect until October 1st just for your consideration Thank You city manager councillor Hopkins one thing I'd like to because I'd like to mention here whenever folks have asked for

exceptions or you know certain programs or can i you know buy something at a resident rate even though i'm a non-resident the answer that i've gotten from our parking staff is it would have to be equitable across all companies like we cannot just pick and choose which businesses we give benefit to and which we don't so whenever we look at i think changes are warranted but keeping in mind it's i and you know the city attorney can correct me if I'm wrong, but from the sense that I get from the folks in our parking department are that it's just, well, it's not equitable and it might not be legal to provide certain exceptions for certain people and not others. So when we're looking at this, we really do have to look at all businesses. The Sheraton and Sarah's Bakery would get the same benefit or not because then that just opens up a whole other can of worms. While there is definitely a big, you know, delta in pay and profits and whatnot and revenue, from what I have heard, it's that we just, we can't delineate. It's either all or none of our businesses for programs like this.

Is that accurate?

i think that you've made a good argument as to why you might have certain classifications that would help defend your classifications but you know i'm giving you a off the top of my head okay in terms of like income eligibility or things like that i also you know i think running a um there's limits of what like our our you know process allows us to do in some levels um but you know uh that's

useful information and it seems like i guess i was surprised to find that members of the uh or cancer hopkins was it your husband that qualifies for nova cure he does so and nova care pays for you know he gets reimbursed for parking at foundry okay so but the the through the worker rate or through uh nova curate

When he feels like showing up to show his pay stub, he'll get the worker rate. And when he doesn't, Novogear just pays the full rate. So that's why I don't know. I would love to see where that's written down in the salary, because he is full-time salaried.

and he gets the stickers at foundry it's not written down anyway okay counselor i'll just make one more point where we you know we're concerned about the the raising parking um in 2024 we did the state mandated revaluation and by and large uh for instance i own roughly a median household value home and it went from uh roughly 7 500 a year in taxes to 9 500 a year in taxes that year it was a 2006 dollar increase in taxes. I looked up a lot of downtown businesses. A lot of them actually saw a reduction in taxes that year because their evaluation didn't rise nearly as fast. It went up, but it didn't rise as fast as residential. And in fact, the hotels collectively paid over $300,000 less in taxes that year because of the readjustment and the revaluation. So the residents really got hit hard with the revaluation because the cost of residential relative to commercial changed so much. Now, albeit, it went up a lot less in places like Pease than in our downtown commercial sector, and some places saw, some of the downtown places saw evaluations rise as much as residential. But as a question of fairness, My job as a counselor, I have to think of residents first, and we're in a budget scenario because of downshifting and everything else, inflationary pressures, where we're reducing our head counts in the schools. I've gotta think of all of the competing things that happen as a city, and I think this is the right move, and yes, it's painful, and yes, it's gonna cost people more money, but the people that live here that never go downtown, they are paying substantially more in taxes. they did prior to the revaluation and a lot of the commercial properties are either paying less in taxes or almost the same in taxes as they did prior to the revaluation so i i think there's a lot at play here and i'll be supporting this because of that counselor bagley any other uh discussion mayor i'm sorry thank you um you know i agree that we heard from a lot of residents that

are in support of this, particularly those residents that are in those neighborhoods, but I feel like coupled with some of those comments were like, and we are, Sympathetic and empathetic to what the workers in town the people that I mean, I think it's fair to say that is why people go down Right. Yeah, I have these places Open and vibrant and you need workers and it's just this is you know, it's just been another piling on of costs for people so it's it is hard for me to think about saying yes to this even though I know that this is a part of the and that we need to do this to make it competitive. But it's a tough pill to swallow. I heard from a lot of residents who were like, support the workers. This is why we're going into town. This is a really, really tough thing. Intellectually, I understand it. another part of me is like it doesn't feel like a good time to do it you know which is I think why you brought it up to begin with councilor Bagley you know put the brakes on the last meeting I don't have a resolution but I think that's fun counselor cook I have a legal question if we move to continue to continue

consideration until the september 14th meeting would that be too late to implement the changes by october 1st what are the changes again the signage and the computers signage and messaging to folks in that grace period we typically give them where we don't enforce the increase in the fee

it's not really if that your question was about notice and public hearing yeah we don't need to worry about that but it's more the implementation issues the system I feel like while I'm not in support of this the the delay of it then somewhat feels

this is probably going to be the wrong word, punitive towards residents as we're coming out of high tourist season that we are, you know, it's almost like the longer we wait, the worse it is because now it's say November when it's one of the lowest tourist months and we want residents to come back, you know, say like, hey, it's time to reclaim. We've kicked them out. Those 16 weeks are gone. And now we're like, and... you know if you haven't remembered to sign up which we know that there are a lot of residents who still don't do it you know it can be seen as it can be seen as a little punitive but that's my only concern with pushing it out or like now we're kicking it into the holiday season when we're asking people again so i just i don't feel like there's any good time except the now uh counselor

Thank you, Your Honor. My concern is I just want to make sure that we don't somehow fail to change income eligibility or something in September. If we vote to make this change, I don't want to be in a position that we turn around and we don't make some of these individuals who are struggling with this eligible then for the program. without that kind of information tonight, I guess I feel kind of challenged as to make this decision without knowing what their eligibility will be. So.

Councilor Bagley. Parliamentary question. If this was to fail tonight, how does it get brought back? Because we can't bring back something if it fails unless, and I know there's like a certain Robert's Rules of Order of how you would, it would be somebody that would have to have voted against it. You would have to bring it back in the future.

i believe it's somebody who voted for it would have to then move to reconsider and you do that at the time of the vote you have to be somebody on the winning side of the vote not necessarily for or against it but the winning portion of the vote is that correct right that's what i believe if it didn't pass it would you have to be somebody that voted no tonight sorry to bring it back and the rules specifically is that you make that motion at the time the same night as the vote that you're gonna move to reconsider it so if we vote this down tonight I'm confused about order of operations if it doesn't pass can we not ever bring it back at $3 it doesn't pass and you want to reconsider it at the next meeting you would make the motion to reconsider it after it doesn't pass okay

to reopen the public hearing and to continue this matter yeah so okay I'll pass the gavel to so sister mayor keeps me on point I think I think it was Margo that was offering um some cervical callers uh when it comes to this and all of the things i think are are accurate i think that everybody that would come in would speak about wanting walkability want to move us into a direction of less cars At the same time, there are some realities that exist for those workers that are commuting in that don't have necessarily one the luxury to come to meetings and pay attention what city council does. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of, yeah, it just simply takes time. And so they could be working during this time. And many, I think when we were having a conversation about this or it was being, the conversation was happening was the feeling of, parking right now is $2 an hour and it's going to $3 an hour and more of our free parking is being taken away and while that is accurate it doesn't reflect that there is an extension and expansion of the downtown worker Parker program that i i believe right now needs some tweaks um and need some improvements gonzar cook and others have spoken about the you know to include more people uh as a part of that that's one i think the idea of making passes easier to get and potentially expanding what those passes uh would get you uh would be a second one um you know even things that are further afield of you know are we talking about using the app are we talking about using you know some sort of just uh you know you you buy a permit and you know that gets you into the system where you can just park at the resident rates you know regardless but all of those things i feel as though need more time uh to discuss as a part of this program because simply the fact that we're going to change this is what will happen if we vote for this this evening according to me um the uh the resident or the folks that came will uh feel as though uh we listened to them and then we simply changed uh the parking rate anyways Now I feel we have to change the parking rate. Like that is something that I've been, you know, like there is a lot of people that come to park here and, you know, we'll, if you park in a private lot we have no control over what rates they said we've tried to be able to get them to uh at least sign the fact that it's not a city lot but they're you're paying 10 bucks an hour to park in one of those rates um or park in one of those uh spots you know and we would be charging three dollars and we can use that difference to fund more things like a transit loop or things like that so it's right now a couple of things i think need to happen in order for us to pass which i think you know i agree with counselor blaylock and you know i i don't put words in his mouth but not right now meaning not before we have a better clarified plan of what is going to occur with the workers which i you know would love for the landlords to take care of but um it's not it's something that's currently um there right now um two uh what we're going to use some of that um extra money that we will create as a part of you know doing this right now it's going into the parking fund you know it's creating a third garage would like to you know uh have a better plan in terms of where we're gonna fund a uh fund a shuttle loop or some of the other things that have come up you know uh currently but i just think that you know and it's literally the idea of thinking about parking for another two and a half weeks is not something that i want to do but unfortunately parking is something that everybody thinks about every single day and we need to figure i believe that we need to figure out a better uh worker parker program that would seem as though is an actual benefit even if it's not you know even if it's not perfect heard some ideas that we could implement uh this evening and then come back as a way to fund some of those changes an increase of the parking uh rates for tourists and you know uh non-residents um you know lost in this is the volunteers and i think there's been some work made on the volunteer that could be opened up to that. But I think that even though this is something that makes economic sense, can certainly fund some of the things that we need to take down the problem, put more people in the garages, this is something that I will eventually support, but want to be able to have a better a better action plan for the workers that are gonna not have followed any of this not signed up for any of evy's petitions and you know will be surprised when they're late for work uh and have to park on the street and look at okay well uh the first uh the first hour of my uh first hour of my day is going to to parking so i think we just need a little bit more time to figure out you know how do we extend the parking program to more people and then raise the rates in order to justify expending the additional money that we will spend on that

so i think you have a motion second we have a motion in a second says passed as presented um i would uh i would support if um councilman i would like to float the idea of what if we amended the motion that it wouldn't take effect to a specific date so that would give us time to look at but we'd still have we'd be able to change some of the

policies around the employee program possibly even expand it but at the same time at least we would have this piece i think we have one shot at this to be honest and i don't know if it's passing the and i understand all the reasons to do it and i certainly understand the fact that this is going to be very painful going forward and having this conversation at a third or fourth council meeting after having this conversation for seven different uh council meetings before that uh my concern is that we don't control the conversation in portsmouth meaning that we can't talk to every individual and we can't have a conversation with hey we have a plan for this what is going to come out of this i fear is going to be we had a work session council went forward with raising rates to three dollars and what's going to be lost in that nuance is the efforts that we've made for the parker program just having one in general what we're trying to do to expand that and i think that if we do change the if we change the rates before we have a plan that at least is in the ether of hey this is like how we're going to use that money to expand access to what you have and ultimately some of the plans of how do we get more cars off the road make it an easier way to get into portsmouth you know take you know the million dollars that we give to coast and say we're going to generate another million from this what can we do to reduce our dependence on you know cars commuting if we have a credible story for that it's a win if we do this and then come and try to scribble out what we're going to figure out i just don't see that is going to be the i just don't think that we're going to have the ability to control the conversation because we don't control any conversation that happens in portsmouth i mean this is the only room we control um and even then it's limited um and so i would say that if we could come up with a more concrete plan of how we're going to expand the worker parker program and delay the increase in the on-street rates even though it doesn't affect residents right now and there's place for the workers to find parking it's not going to be three dollars i think we're going to lose out on an opportunity even though i know and like i i can't express how much i would like to you know have this kind of recede into you know uh just expect it but we have a chance to do not business as normal and figure out a pathway to engage more citizens and more you know other folks that aren't citizens of portsmouth that are part of our community counselor bagley um i tend to agree and i greatly respect respect your opinion there but i tend to agree

or passing it tonight and delaying it in a sense. So there's a chance to make those modifications. We had a lot of people show up today. We have a lot of visibility. We don't pass it tonight. And I think a lot of people are going to think, okay, we won that battle. And then three months from now, we're going to raise prices a dollar in the middle of, you know, going into the winter season. I think we either pass it tonight or we put this on the shelf for a couple of years.

okay so um is there not a motion okay counselor cook um thank you your honor um this is a legal question um because this is raising revenue what is the vote required is it just a majority or do we need a two-thirds i think it's for your fees so it would just be a majority okay thank you

Councillor Butler. Thank you. So just to reiterate my perception of the situation right now, I feel like we've kind of kicked them on the ground, right? We've kicked the employee, the downtown workers on the ground. They're lying on the ground right now. We don't want to kick them again. All right. But if we could come up with a plan and say, hey, we're including you in this plan, we have a solution. Once we find that, then we can go back and take care of business. and make sure all the numbers work out and everything like that but until you get there you've kicked them down you can't just be like hey sorry this is you know we already just kick them that's that's going to be the perception I promise you so let's just be sensitive like they all came here we had 1900 signatures there's people that couldn't speak tonight because we spoke for 45 minutes of the work session

there's some people that were residents and business owners and they couldn't stay they had to leave um so there's no reason to rush this but we got to do it right guys i think councilman sister mayor i have a parliamentary inquiry um and it's not true it's directly but um directly related to this um for not a motion to be made tonight but if we wanted to say our next meeting amend our pilot program to remove parrot aff is that something that could be done separate is apart from this right this passes this goes through is it possible for a counselor to make a motion for

well i think your rap program is a policy that you have currently so you have to be moving to amend your policy i thought it was an ordinance yes it's a policy i think i'm looking for confirmation but i think it was a pilot policy policy that kept following the packet as a right yes right in the night yeah so to change it is not it would not be it would not be three right readings all okay right okay so is that allows me to consider it i'm looking for firm confirmation from my

Is Jane making moves?

No, she's sitting down.

Both. Listed it in the ordinance. Great. I thought, I knew some part of it was a, some part of it, so.

it's the parent lot versus a wrap yes you are everyone's right i'm a lawyer um the um the policy is um one that the council adopted and that is the wrap program however you also adopted an ordinance on the rap zone which includes and lists powerdav so that is in fact an ordinance So it's paradigms baked in the ordinance, and it's also, I believe, part of the policy as well.

Just a timeline question, and I know this is throwing a wrench in people, and I do apologize, but I just want to put out the scenario. If this passed tonight, and then it's September 17th, 14th, that meeting, a change to the RAP, a potential change to the RAP pilot program was brought first for first reading, then the second reading. It could fall within the same timeline of the implementation of the change of fees.

It could, if I could just address that. So if September 14th, it was first reading to remove Parrott, then the first meeting in October would be public hearing in seconds. And if you suspended your rules to pass third and final, it would be the first week in October that you could conceivably remove Parrott

through the ordinance and all you'd have to do is remove it from your policy once you don't have to do the second and third so conceivably it could time with early october i think that's helpful and i bring this up for for two two sides of the coin obviously we heard a lot from the workers of that space we have had you know no movement of what we are really going to do for volunteers for library overflow we're hearing from those other neighborhoods forward that they're seeing more overflow now so in hindsight with obviously with and I part apologies Carl Ben and everyone that loves the data that even without the data we're already starting to see minor ripples and repercussions that are only going to potentially grow so I just want to put it out there timeline wise if we're thinking that this if this passed tonight and we're thinking that it's October ish timeline. For this to really be implemented, I just would wonder if that's the base that I'm kind of is wondering that. in that same timeline could we possibly amend the rap program to remove what seems to be one of the artillery zones that have really triggered people which is that paired app that's all sorry guys i just wanted to make sure i was could we change it faster if we just changed the fee on it

like yeah this is just like on the parrot have a lot or the parrot have not the lot not the lot is if we just change the parrot have could we just remove the fee from that without three readings because fees now moved right

i'd have to review the what we say in the ordinance that paradav i believe is specifically called out for the worker parking program and the rates in the ordinance so i'd have to look at it again but that's my recollection you could pull it from from everything Again, the timing of whatever ordinance you want to change could be done in early October if you did whatever you want, first reading in September 14th, and then public hearing second, early October meeting, and then suspend rules third and final. But that would require consensus. yes and so that's what's tough with something like this with so many different elements that are just being brought to the council's attention you know how do we want to adjust and move forward how do we amend these pilot this pilot over the next year and do we do we do or do we just run the I just wanted to get clarification of timeline that if it's something that

came up that we wanted to amend it um it could be potentially done within a at a period of time where these fees would be enacted the the other issue is you know this is obviously a new process with fees being adopted by the by the council um

i am trying to recall that what was in the actual budget for the for the wrap rate as well i believe that came forward in in the budget approval if i'm not mistaking as as well so again you have a hearing you can change your fees but we wrapped an ordinance prior to that change. You know what I mean? We created that ordinance before it was determined that you guys would just pass parking fees as fees at one hearing as opposed to ordinance.

Sorry, I just...

well we certainly had enough you know like we've extended the meetings on that and that quick change but uh counselor cook and then councilman thank you your honor thank you jane um i think it's important to remember that the reason that there's availability for the workforce parking program right now on parrot ave is that that is now metered whereas before parrot ave was always full almost 24 7 lots of long-term parkers so we would be removing the availability of the workforce parking program there so they might actually lose parking spots not gain it by taking parrot away and making it available for everyone again because really there was a lot of long-term parking is there a timeline limit on parrot f

what was that question everywhere in the city is 72 hours everywhere and so the parrot have a lot and simply just have that 72 hour requirement everywhere in the entire even in front of your house but we don't enforce it there. Councillor Bagley. Councillor Moreau.

I mean, we've received several emails from residents specifically about Paradave and how they're coming downtown more to shop or coming downtown more to volunteer because they can find parking on Paradave. I'd be against removing Paradave because that seems to be the part that's working the best in the whole system. I mean, if we want people to be able to come downtown that live here in town and we've given them an opportunity to get downtown and have a decent chance of finding parking, with a relatively easy walk into town. To me, that looks like a win.

not saying it's not i'm just i'm pretty sure i remember from fee study committee that we actually set the 30 cent per hour plus transaction fee and the other fees so we didn't actually put the fees in the ordinance we actually put it up to the fee study committee that's what i remember because i remember at fees committee we actually set that makes sense yeah i just because we were talking before that the fee was in the ordinance i don't think we pulled all these out and put it to the fee committee for for precisely that reason to give flexibility correct so that the council could make those changes with just one hearing in the middle of the program if we wanted to just wanted to remind everyone of that

yeah because weren't we thinking about changing the rap area program as a part of the ordinance previously because it had been different than it was in the garages correct because it originally they were matching the garage and we wanted to match the on-street parking so we set the wrap period the wrap rate to equal whatever the on-street downtown rate was without escalation okay i mean so conceivably we could amend this to say um you know the uh the rate goes to uh zero dollars uh per hour uh provided you are a downtown employee on the paradave lot and people erin f street yes oh my god do not say that we're gonna change that yeah so but i'm just saying we could do that um still require workers to sign up uh to get the uh the pass in the parking um and conceivably the enforcement of that would be paid for by the increased parking rates that we would have

otherwise supported but we would need to re-notice that would be a substantial substantial change and would need to have this at the next meeting if that was the case right again it's it's this is not an ordinance it's a few change and it's kind of a new process but given that that would be a substantial change i would suggest another public hearing

and let me just note if we do that we are going to be pushing a lot of the workforce on to parrot who would normally be parking in foundry so we're going to have to potentially expand that space to maybe even the parrot lot and i'm saying that because i know that our middle school workers

will be coming back to work in this month and suddenly we're going to occupy a lot of parrot avenue with them parking in that zone so i'm sorry councilman i guess i would i would um as we talk about this continuously about the about the school teach school employees i would have to be under the assumption or i am under the assumption that at some point someone from city hall as we've developed this project has talked to the school about and if they were they are not charged yeah they're not charged okay that is that is what i understood but i just want to make sure the library too really substitute teachers no teachers are not charged substitute teachers i believe are charged they're not like literally volunteers and stuff or umpires or

I would like the Makuta, I don't know if they are yet, or Council Brother.

okay i just want to clarify that because i feel like that has been a big conversation of of where are they going to park i would i would assume that the staff has has addressed that handled that and we so i mean because it's always kind of been a cluster down there and it will always be a cluster um and there's always been places for people to park so i think we should just call this vote and then we'll go to the next stored issue

so if the vote fails and there's no amendment to the vote on the table or consider at the moment what would the what occurs the vote fails and no one makes a motion to reconsider the vote and reconsider at a future meeting or reconsider just again right now

you'd have to make a motion to consider at the next reconsider at the next meeting um and that it's rule 16 for your rules and um you can only have one motion to reconsider any vote during your term so like during our two years per issue not just it's not like a whole it's like the only time you can ever do that it's not it's not a mulligan it's not like uh only one motion for that vote oh motion do we consider any particular vote i definitely heard that wrong all right you have one challenge um yes i would much prefer that uh that way yeah

a way to tie this to something that seemed more of a benefit i understand the point of trying to trying to right size the rates but i just don't think that the our ability to get information out is as fast as this will feel and i think that there's an opportunity to engage more people so i would like to see this uh at the next council meeting when we have a plan for the uh the worker parker program that seems a little bit more thought out but at the moment it doesn't seem like we have that so we'll do a roll call vote uh on this and we'll see what happens if it ends in a tie

do you mean roll call roll call okay i don't know if i should start or not is this your mayor kelly no councillor cook no councillor blaylock no councillor bagley yes uh councillor moreau yes councillor flynn no councillor hopkins sucks being last no the mayor's last and the mayor's last

I'm voting yes mayor oh where are we at now we're at three yeses four no's what happens if it fails anyway you have to pass it by a majority okay no so it fails because it's tied anyways okay

your honor i would it's not tied though it was five to three correct five to three no no i've noticed three yeses right oh okay so all right your honor i would make the motion motion to reconsider this at the next city council meeting on october 14th september september wow your second second and if i can speak on it i think that hopefully we can have a little bit more of the information back and some ideas from staff of potential workforce downtown worker and besides ideas, just some of the requests for data that we asked for at the work session by then. So there can be things like when we talk about foundry, we asked for data on the usage of that, how full that is getting, all of those things. So if we can have some of that data back by that meeting, I think that will help at least myself be able to support this adoption.

Councilor Cook.

Thank you, Your Honor. Yes, I echo what the assistant mayor says. And also, I would love to see what parameters the staff thinks we should set as far as qualification for the program and how people can prove that they qualify for the program, especially someone who is a business owner and doesn't necessarily take a paycheck. And then it's kind of essentially an independent contractor.

uh councillor beckley yeah thank you i won't be supporting the motion tonight i think we had a lot of people show up we had a lot of attention that's the time to make unpopular decisions i will not support any motion to increase street parking for the rest of this council term okay uh all in favor aye aye any opposed opposed can i who's the second opposed okay thank you

not often i agree with andrew well that's good we can bring you two together then who knows what's possible all right uh we'll take a five minute recess

good evening and welcome back um on to the city manages items which require action thank you your honor first up is a request to hold a work session solely for the topic of rolling stock and historically it's really almost served as a footnote in and around the cip process and we're going to have the kickoff for the cip coming up this evening um but what we'd like to do because we've gotten some questions in the past about how rolling stock is comprised and and can you explain more about the replacement schedule we thought it would be helpful to give it its own work session so we would propose to do that in and around the uh the formation of the cip so we would propose to hold that right before the council meeting on october 26 of this year you are moved to schedule a rolling stock work session at 6 pm on october 26 2026. second

any further discussion yes i have a question sorry um when would be a good time to bring up something like biofuels since the electrification of the city fleet it has been you know put to the side what else what other options could we explore and when would be the best time to explore them as far as sustainable transportation

I think it would be great to know now that we can provide that as part of the work section.

I would request that for this work section then, what the landscape is with biodiesel and alternative fuels since electrification has been pushed to the side for now.

Happy to do that.

Thank you.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right.

Item B would be a request to rescind City Council policy number 2018-02, the license fee for the encumbrance of city property. As you will recall at the last meeting, we now have that incorporated into Chapter 6. So the policy is essentially rendered no longer applicable. So we're looking to rescind that policy tonight.

and move to rescind city council policy number 2018-02 license fee for encumbrance of city property second any further discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed

thank you item c is a request to hold first reading of uh amendment to chapter one administrative code article three boards section 1.302 d at the september 14th city council meeting and this is relative to appointments tenure and removal and in the same way that we have recently updated procurement notification we would look to make that same modification here to remove the requirement of a newspaper publication to rework notice provisions to be more flexible such as on the city website and through the city's means and methods of channeling information so For your review and consideration in advance of the filing first reading We would have Suzanne Woodland regulatory council come to present on that matter. I

Your Honor, I move to schedule first reading amendments to Chapter 1, Administrative Code, Article 3, Boards Section 1.302D, Appointments, Tenure, and Removal at the September 14, 2026 meeting. Second.

Council Cook.

Thank you, Your Honor. I just wanted to thank the City Manager for bringing this change forward. This is probably long overdue. That's correct.

any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed thank you item d is a request to establish polling hours for both the new hampshire state primary and the general election and in accordance with rsa 659 colon 4 the council does determine those polling hours and based on past midterm election years we would request that the polling hours for the primary election on september 8th and the general election on the november 3rd of this year be established from 8 a.m to 7 p.m

move to set the polling hours for the new hampshire state primary election on september 8 2026 and the new hampshire general election on november 3rd 2026 from 8 a.m to 7 p.m second any discussion

no I think this these hours give everyone opportunity to vote but I also feel like we don't you know that is a long day for anyone working the polls working the election sites but you know it's it's reasonable all in favor aye any opposed

Item E is a request to approve the custodial supervisor's tentative agreement in your packet. It is a three-year agreement which grants us increased flexibility on health and dental insurance plan and carrier considerations and includes an annual one-year percent increase in the contribution of health insurance on the part of employees and a COLA increase in wages based on the 10-year rolling average of the CPI at 3.03 retro to July 1st of this year.

Your Honor, I move to approve the proposed custodial supervisor's tentative agreement as presented.

Second.

Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

thank you next up is approval of the tentative agreement with afsme 1386a and i'm pleased to see uh one of the union reps andrew holdsworth on zoom thanks for joining us andrew very similar to provisions in the custodial supervisors along with some others specific to the uh the afsme 1386a folks and just as a point of reference all members fall under dpw across all divisions that's the group that makes up this union

Move to approve the proposed AFSCME 1386A tentative agreement as presented. Second.

Further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Thank you. Item G is my last item, and it is a request relative to a donation of a memorial bench at Bohanko Gateway Park in honor of Sue Warner Thorson. Typically, a donation in and of itself would come under grants and donations. This one is a little different in that we are receiving a check that should cover most of the cost. But in the event that donations do not cover fully all the costs related to this bench, there are funds available in the public art trust and therefore the the second part of this um it's a two-part motion would be to allow the city for the release of funds from the public art trust and in and in this way we have satisfied the requirements of the put forth by the trustees of trust funds in how we direct the funds so there are two specific motions here tonight but i would i would like to add that sue thorson was able to see the completion of the wonderful work of the endeavor as part of the 400th and noted that there was the absence of benches with back support. So that's what Bob's trying to do tonight.

Your Honor, I move to request the City Council accept a $10,000 donation to the city from Bob Thorson to be used towards the bench and vote to accept any additional financial contributions towards the bench from Bob Thorson, the Thorson family, or other private donors. Second.

Councillor Blaylock thank you I'm very happy we can help honor the Thorson family they've been such generous members of our community just selfless just outstanding yeah my heart goes out to the Thorson family thank you Councillor Blaylock agreed all in favor aye any opposed your honor I move to authorize

and direct the trustees of the trust funds to disperse such sums from the city of portsmouth public art trust as directed and certified by the city manager that such funds are needed to complete the design fabrication and installation of a sculpture memorial bench to be installed in bohanco park not otherwise paid by private donations such sums may include without limitation payments due or obligations satisfied under a contract with si ja sorry chen and any incidentals that might fall outside of said contract funds shall come from the capital improvement program contributions to the public art trust no further approvals of the city council is required second there's a long one any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed

thank you through your right now we have the consent agenda I move to adopt a consent agenda as presented second any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed next we have the CIP kickoff presentation

good evening folks as the city manager pulls up my 75 slides I warn you that that this could run long and I apologize for that actually you've seen all of this before it's an important part of our CIP we talked a month ago about the CIP citizen portal being open early in July it remains open we'll reference the dates in a moment our committees have opportunity to kick in suggestions and our citizens as well Our CIP capital improvement plan in earnest for fiscal years 28 through 33 kicks off now, which is really a signal as much as anything to staff as the departments begin to work on bringing together their submissions. Tonight, we just have a few slides to remind you and the public about the capital improvement plan. First slide up is a definition. Next slide, thank you. First slide up is a definition about the CIP and what it is and why we have it. It is for us a long-term multi-year financial and infrastructure planning tool, and it helps serve the purpose of helping us maintain safe infrastructure in the city. help us coordinate financial strategies for the capital projects that that we undertake and assist in the achievement of citywide goals the cip process and the document that we create at the end communicate to our residents about capital needs that contribute information to the development of the annual budget each year and promote maintenance of safe maintenance of and safe access to our city infrastructure next up uh is just a quick definition what is it that qualifies as a cip project there are a handful of categories of six a half dozen actually first the construction or expansion of public infrastructure in general major rehabilitation of of a public infrastructure planning or design related to a capital project so the early effort any significant non-vehicular equipment purchase Large vehicle purchases, generally with a 10 or more year lifespan, and the acquisition of land when appropriate. over the over the last couple of years we work really to refine the rubric with which proposed projects are evaluated and our priorities considered the capital improvement plus process considers three core strategies the first of those does the project fulfill a core function of the city that may be regulatory expectation public health and safety needs or addressing something substandard in conditions throughout city infrastructure the second category is does the project achieve a financial benefit to the city that may be matching funds being available or efficiencies being achievable through synergies with other projects or maybe reductions to operating costs that we seek as a part of our budgeting process the third is does this project address a community plan or some service improvement maybe will satisfy the objectives identified in our planning study that we've worked on it'll improve or add capacity to some existing city service maybe it drives further economic development or it responds to a request of our residents so what are they how are they judged how then do we fund them First up is, well, let me say, we lean on two major funding streams. in addition to and beyond state and federal and private funding, we have our local capital outlay and we have borrowing through municipal bonding. The first of those capital outlay is our pay as you go funding option. Capital outlay represents dollars that we appropriate every year as a part of the general fund annual budget. and the target for our capital outlay is to invest at a level of up to two percent of the prior year budget that's one of our financial policies you'll read about that in the financial policy section of the annual budget document and and this i changed the language just to just because i thought it was important as you look at the graph uh our goal is that we move this in the direction of two percent and as we are able and can afford to we're using these general appropriations to invest in capital infrastructure you can see uh from the graph that we we got close in fy18 to two percent certainly through the pandemic uh we backed off on some of that cash infusion of capital projects this last cycle after the amendments that we made to the budget which were in the area of capital outlay. Our FY27 capital outlay is 0.96% of the prior year's appropriation. The second then of those funding alternatives or funding streams is municipal borrowing. And we do this with multi-year repayment plans through municipal bonding. Annual payment of principal and interest we refer to as debt service. And our policy is that the target for net debt service is to remain below 10% of each year's annual budget. This last year, FY27, stands at 7.64%. And the chart shows you the 10% bar, but it also gives you a sense of what the out years of our most recent six-year CIP looked like. I think it's important for us to call out that every year in the last, I think the analysis that we did was 15 years, every year we come in in the 7.5%, 8% range generally. the out years often look larger not because not because they will be when we get there but because as we go through the management exercise of deferring things that can be deferred and trying to limit the scope of our net debt service year over year we push projects into the out years so as not to leave them behind or forget them but to defer them if we look at the next slide which considers a 10-year run and looks just beyond the out the six-year outlook again only based on what we have and what we know this includes our net debt service this includes all of our ongoing projects or past projects for which we are continuing to make principal and interest payments against municipal borrowing you you should not walk away concerned that if you look in your five six seven eight those numbers are up near ten percent or over ten percent because our exercise has been that by the time that becomes the year that we're making decisions on that will have fallen back into the seven and a half to eight and a half percent range It's important to note that these are all based on last year's CIP. They do not include any projections of anything new we've been discussing. All of the project information behind this graph is based on June 30th of 26th, the end of fiscal 26th. No new projects added. No new projects added. And we look forward this year to trying to put a little more substance into the 10-year cycle. The CIP will continue to be a six-year, but the departments are working to make sure that we at least identify projects that reasonably are in the 10-year horizon. I think before you leave the site it's important to note that this includes the initial debt 42.2 initially envisioned absolutely thank you for that and I won't read to you but there's a number of additional comments here about our CIP CIP process these are excellent for posterity and for those who will download this as a resource later it's important I think I want to emphasize as we often do the capital project approval has really three steps this CIP plan is the first step we consider through the development of this with the council and the Planning Board's participation and that of our public and a plan for six years of capital capital investment the plan is recommended ultimately by the planning board and then adopted by the city council your timeline has included that happening in december in most recent years the second step the f is that the first year of the of the approved cip as it's finalized it's in december becomes a part of the proposed budget that you'll see in the spring it doesn't mean that it all stays in that proposed budget but the first year of the adopted uh cip plan becomes a foundational block in the budget that we present in the spring finally any long-term borrowing that is in the approved CIP that works its way through the second step of the budget comes back to the council as we did a month ago for the consideration of bonding authorization so the council and the public all see any of these projects at least three times for very formal discussion the timeline is here so that you can refer back to it i would call out all of the all of the little human figurines represent opportunities for public input we are tonight here the kickoff of the council uh the kickoff of the of the cip i mentioned the citizens submissions of citizen portal submissions of citizens requests those due on friday the 18th of september your departments will make their final submissions on the 20th by the 25th then we will have a citizen request subcommittee of the council that will review those projects that have been requested by citizens that is scheduled now for 8th of October 6 o'clock I believe we'll be in conference room a and then we start in earnest with the council and the Planning Board with a joint work session November 12th you'll have a public hearing at your november 16th council meeting the planning board will be invited to attend to hear the public's input the planning board will consider it in november and you'll be hopefully adopting the cip in december only to make sure that the public has access. Citizens requests are available for submission through the portal which is at the link at the bottom of this screen. All of the submissions that come in will be reviewed by staff. to put some substance to them and help us to delineate those that are potentially already cip projects those that are not eligible by definition to be part of the cip and those that are uh and and may become cip projects and then we also have to address that in some cases the requests that are made are better served alternatively and we work with the residents to make sure they understand what those are so that we can pursue them in that direction the meeting I mentioned again October 8th I commend that to you our CIP process that kicks off now with the staff any questions certainly would be happy to try to address those will the CIP subcommittee get to see these resident requests before the meeting

I just know in the past I've been on that committee and I kind of get blindsided.

Did you get blindsided with it? Yeah, you know what I mean?

And then I have to make all my analysis.

I think it's quite reasonable you want to see those in advance, yes.

All right, thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Councillor Hopkins.

Thank you. Nathan, could you go into a little bit more? Because to me, as someone new to engaging with city government, Submitting a request for CIP sounds kind of scary. Can you talk a little bit about what that would look like? Can I just write down anything? Does it have to be in a certain format? Do I have to cite, have citations? What are we asking the public for in the simplest terms?

So the best answer I can give you is that the portal is pretty intuitive and that when you kick to that link and log in, it'll ask you for contact information. It'll ask you to describe the location or facility. It'll ask you and prompt you for some elements. And then it provides you a fairly open narrative. And all of the suggestions or the comments that you made have been among the submissions that we've received. some of them are very straightforward they're very succinct I went I need a sidewalk on XYZ Street and some of them are some of them are much longer in terms of the detail that's provided references and the like no expectation really this is your community and and your process as residents as well as council and so for residents once you've identified yourself and to the best of your ability the location or nature of your need and then describe it narratively that moves forward in the process staff will do their best without without changing the scope or trying to amend the request staff will work to try to wrap that with explanation about facility expectations needs legal requirements and the like and flesh that out in our process so we're really looking for for residents to provide us with the pain points that they think need to be addressed And we'll do as much of the legwork as we can. Thank you. Thank you.

thank you your honor and thank you for the presentation tonight i just wanted to encourage our residents to submit requests for the cip if you see something that needs to happen in the community this year we're completing the little harbor school playground project and that was brought to our attention from parents in the little harbor school and letting us know that that project absolutely needed to be done and needed to be done sooner rather than later and so It's because of residents who bring issues forward to us that we see the things that need to be improved. And I'm very excited for our new playground at Little Harbor, which is the first of three playgrounds at all of our elementary schools.

Absolutely. And that all started with a conversation that parents brought to the process. I guess I would offer one clarification. If it's broken and it's dangerous and you identify something, we have click and fix and you should let us know. This is not for acute care. These capital requests are for things that you would prefer to see that would make your life in the city and the lives of your neighbors better. If you see something that is of critical mass or of acute nature, obviously we have a mechanism for that as well.

thank you very much nathan looking forward to this process once again all right next up email correspondence your honor i move to accept and place on file second in favor aye any opposed um an appointment to be considered is the appointment of uh jack holzman john jack holzman to the zoning board of adjustment this took a little bit longer because we had to notice the uh the vacancy and he will be uh being appointed uh if he is successful uh to the full member vacancy that was created and with the departure of paul mantle serving out the rest of his term and you'll have a vote again um in january their terms end i think the end of november end of november so very quickly thereafter um and then um so that's just appointment to be considered appointment to be voted would be the appointment of wendy ellip to the sustainability committee and move to appoint wendy ellip to the sustainability committee second

further discussion Thank You Wendy for stepping up to serve again all in favor aye any opposed counselor cook Thank You Your Honor I am just reporting out on the legislative subcommittee meeting and that we had this last week We will be attending the New Hampshire Municipal Association's annual discussion to adopt their proposed legislative policies. And the committee met and registered our views on the policies to be discussed at that meeting. You'll note in the packet that there is a memo that outlines the policies with which we had questions in which we decided to register our opposition So I think it's important to note that we don't always agree with all of the policies but when we do attend we register our opposition or choose to not express an opinion on items that we think are nebulous or confusing and don't would not make sense to for the city of Portsmouth to support so you will see that in your packet I'm happy to answer any questions as I'm sure the other committee members are as well so I would move to approve New Hampshire Municipal Association's 2027 to 2028 proposed legislative policies and principles as recommended by the legislative subcommittee second

thank you councillor cook any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed uh councillor bagley thanks earner um i moved to direct the city attorney to review the attached proposed ordinance language regarding automated license plate reader systems and return a final draft ordinance to the city council for first reading second I'll speak to it a second yeah as Commissioner Scher mentioned earlier tonight they're commonly known as flock cameras that's really just a brand name leave the cameras that we use currently are not flock brand they're a different brand but what's happened with the acceleration of license plate reader cameras and the combination of AI and video is We've seen it in states outside of New Hampshire that it becomes a surveillance tool that can be abused. Right now, we have RSAs in place, thanks to Commissioner Scherer in his state rep role, preventing the sunsetting of the existing law. However, it's not to say that that law is not overturned at some point in the future. So I think it'd be worthwhile to investigate if we can pass municipal ordinance that takes advantage of that law, just in case it is sunset in the future. It adds a...

an extra point of friction and an extra chance for the public to come and express their opinion i think generally the public sentiment is we don't like being tracked thank you council bagley council morrow um i'm just wondering if we could also amend the motion to also send back for a feedback after it's drafted from the police commission

what I guess as I read it and I know that there was an email it says I want to make sure that I have it right I guess I was surprised to hear the police commission members concern around erecting fixed cameras on city land why there would be any jurisdiction for the police to do anything like that without the express written permission of the city of Portsmouth I understand they could use these in their cars or mobile units but a way i understood that the the draft ordinance was written was that it would be preventing any kind of fixed camera on city land or buildings and i don't believe that that would run to the uh the ability or run afoul of the separation of powers within our charter

um thank you i i agree with your opinion i am not a hundred percent sure that uh based on emails i received that the commission or one of the commissioners at least agrees and thinks that the maybe the council's overstepping its bounds by having this discussion which to me means all the more reason to have the discussion in public

certainly yeah I guess I'm happy to I guess it would be a a question for the city attorney on and we'll get maybe it's easier to have her draft something that comes back to us you know for discussion around this

I can do that and I can also share that the chief of police and the commission at least commissioner sure have significant concerns about the proposal and will probably want to address those with with the council at the appropriate time.

Okay. Council Cook.

Thank you, Your Honor. I'm happy to discuss the delineation between whose roles this falls under, whose role this falls under. But I would note that these cameras have not just been used for law enforcement purposes. They've also been used for insurance enforcement purposes and general tracking beyond law enforcement. So this is not just a law enforcement function that we are discussing.

i just clarify that that that might be true in around the rest of the country but in new hampshire the use of these types of reader license plate reader systems is only authorized to law enforcement and under very strict controls the statutes very detailed in terms of how they can be used They have to be registered, they have to be policies, et cetera. And the information can only be held for a certain period of time, like three minutes. So other states, however, do not regulate them. So what you're hearing from other states around the country and how they've been abused, these types of equipment cannot be used outside of law enforcement legally in New Hampshire.

so um and sorry to jump in on councilman rose uh kind of jumped all over you guys were agreeing so well um i guess in terms of the uh this would come back at first reading i don't i mean again i think that the the effort to have the conversations in public on this would not be prohibited in terms of first reading or second reading on this to be able to speak to at after first reading and once we see what is What's before us? I mean, I think maybe a way to thread the needle would be to send them a Draft of what is going to come back for first reading so that they're prepared to speak, you know ahead of you know a public comment before we have first reading and then Certainly, they'd have the opportunity to speak at a second reading but you know, I I think it's pretty clear in terms of the city buildings and what we would do and the feelings of many in Fort Smith and New Hampshire that want to make sure that while the police have every ability to enforce in their cars, I think there was even a draft for temporary locations to be used or in the event of an emergency. But I think the permanent affliction of these cameras to buildings or public lands in the city of Portsmouth is something that a lot of people would have or at least want their voices

um heard on through the council vote that's about it yeah i would just say your honor i'm not going to borrow everybody tonight but i did put in the packet it's about a page long it's fairly technical and uses you know the technical terms but it does have a lot of carve-outs for different types of uses, but all with the caveat of oversight. As I never get tired of saying, but I wish I didn't have to, we're a Dillon's rule state. We can only do things when we have enabling legislation. This legislation was due to sunset this year, but Commissioner Scher, as a state rep, eliminated the sunset provision. But that's not to say next year it gets overturned. as we know the state house makes new laws and regulations every year and if we have something in the books now when we have the ability to put something on the books now i think it serves us well in the future and that's the reason for my bringing it forward because of that sunset purse uh provision i'm worried that it will be forced out in the next couple years

So I'll just add to the conversation for, you know, I've been looking at where this could go in our in our ordinances and looking at the law. I mean, there are and looking at the charter issues, there are potential charter issues here. There are potential issues that the state has preempted this field in terms of trying to regulate it. um in any way but um on the other hand i've also looked at the council's authority and your main authority is your control over city property and the use of city property so um i'm still trying to balance all those concerns i haven't come to a final legal opinion on all of that but there are a lot of issues at play and and certainly I think that the police commission would welcome the opportunity to have an opportunity to contribute I don't know if this would have to be

Sorry, within an edit to the motion, but I would certainly like to see a memo back from the city legal department outlying kind of all of the things that the city attorney just mentioned. ideally prior to or in conjunction with a proposed ordinance language. Because I think an ordinance can read one way, but without the backstory of why it's written a certain way. I think it's good for the public to be able to see the memo and the council to be able to see the memo and all of the different touch points that have to go into considering if we can even write an ordinance or if that needs to come, again, from a charter department or not.

i so i don't i don't know if i can just request that or if that has to be added as an amendment to the motion well would it so i guess um maybe city attorney would you be writing this like this would you be writing an ordinance that conflicted with our charter

so there are questions about you know who controls you know the operations of the police department and their you know investigative abilities abilities and the equipment that they use to conduct their investigations so as long as they're in compliance with state law um to have the city council chime in those are the concerns that the commissioner has raised in the first instance so i'm happy to do a report back prior to any final draft or a draft for first reading if that's what the council would prefer

I guess the question is would you be able to create an ordinance that could we just change the rules slightly to say or a draft summary of the ordinance as presented or a report back saying why it can't be completed?

I guess that's what I was trying to get to.

Is that possible? Because we're not going to be able to pass an ordinance that you deem as illegal. So if in the process of finding this you find that it is illegal, so an either or, is that possible to do? Would that satisfy the maker of the motion?

I think, yeah, if the city attorney comes back and says that the council has no authority on flock cameras, then that's the city attorney's opinion. Okay.

so do you need to amend your motion i i think the motion is suitable for my request okay so then i guess i would make an i would make an amendment to your motion to

well i guess like the request is like i guess like i don't so i don't know how uh counselor bagley can request something that's illegal so if it comes back and the report back is stated this is you know um like we can't make this then that's the end of that and we have a conversation uh on the what you would need to change you know and if there's a willingness to look at the charter uh to prevent um the uh the installation of uh on city buildings and property um you know further down the field but like so like if we can't come back we'll come back with a different you know conversation but i feel like the motion as it's presented allows the city attorney to make an opinion make that opinion known and sometimes it comes back and says we can't do this because x y and z okay all right thank you uh i'll make a motion to go past 10 30.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. Okay, that's only three. The motion on the table as presented by Councillor Bagley. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, now we're on to...

counselor Hopkins all right any discussion on this

all in favor hold on oh wait minutes related to parking and traffic safety but um i would ask if jane could come and explain what she's oh okay what she's trying to tell us

Just to clarify, the city council, it was almost like a report back for parking, traffic and safety on those two elements and on those two specific motions. So the actions is the action is recommends the two motions. as you may remember from the last bike lane issue when we accept the minutes of the pts interactions it's being endorsed by the council but i just want to clarify that because it just says recommend the motion that that these can move forward without binding the council um on those specific motions on fleet street okay just just just to remind you all that that because it was really basically a report back from you mayor to say hey did the pts actually address you know the the parking the lane and and the parking on one side of the street and they went back and they did but it isn't binding the council by accepting the action that is great thank you thank you

all in favor aye any opposed all right city managers informational items back request that you made at a recent meeting staff has discussed ways to balance the priorities of those private landowners particularly working in the downtown needing to perform work with those who seek to move safely through the city such as workers and tourists and shoppers to limit the obstacles and opportunities which can negatively impact the livelihood of our small business community would depend on that foot traffic to move about safely. So what is under discussion is a different set of rules, I'll say, during peak season versus non-peak season as a means to hopefully incentivize non-peak activities wherever possible. And we appreciate the needs of business owners and yet recognize the need to limit the negative impacts during the peak season. So if we were to define the peak season, it would just roughly be June 15 or right around Market Square Day through Columbus Day weekend. And in the same vein that we talked about this the city was mindful to take up many of the very disruptive improvements on Congress Street in a non peak manner and Same way we are trying to do this. We want to be Private developers private landowners private property owners to do the same so more to come but that's Thank you

thank you city manager I know it doesn't always feel like we're not doing it during the peak but you guys buttoned it up and I ran down market square day you know and you guys are gonna have to we're gonna have to pull it back up you know to finish it before next year but it is something that I hopefully will give some relief to some business owners anything under miscellaneous I'd wait a motion to adjourn second all in favor aye good night Portsmouth