Select Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone.

Okay. Thank you.

Bye. It's Wednesday, August 19th, 6 p.m. This is a Wolfboro Select Board meeting. We're here at the Great Hall at 84 South Main Street in Wolfboro. Before we begin, if anyone would like to join us, we'd like to invite you to a Pledge of Allegiance, please. Thank you very much. Mr. Muccio, do we have a need for non-public tonight?

We do. It would be 91A. Section 3, paragraph 2, and it would be B, hiring.

Hiring. OK. Thank you. Before we begin, I want to read an announcement. I think it's pertinent to what we're going to be discussing tonight. Last Tuesday, August 11, I received an email from a gentleman by the name of Mark Ishkanian. Mark Ishkanian is the chairman of the board of the Lake Winnipesaukee Association. To me, it says, Paul, our board had a monthly meeting this morning and a motion was made and approved unanimously to withdraw from consideration as future trustees of the Libby. We are pursuing other office options. That was posted on the town's website, but I wanted to make sure, just because it's pertinent to what we're doing tonight to let you know that LWA, as they were calling themselves, has withdrawn from wanting to become a successor trustee. Having said that, let's move into the meeting. I'd like to do consideration of minutes. We have July 13, 2026 special minutes. Board members, any questions about those minutes?

Those minutes, I made the correction. I tabled them the last time. And I added John Thurston's name to the motion, so they should be fine.

Board members?

I'll make a motion to accept the July 13, 2026 minutes.

I have a motion and a second, please. Second. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor, aye. Aye. We're good on those. Thank you. July 29, special meeting. Those minutes, please. Any questions about those?

Move to approve.

I'll second. I have a motion and a second by Linda. Dave, motion. Any conversation? Move to approve. All those in favor, aye, please. Aye.

Okay.

July 29, work session.

I'll move to approve the July 29th work session.

Second.

Motion by Brian, second by Dave. Questions, comments, difficulties? No. All those in favor, aye, please. Aye. Aye. August 3rd, special meeting.

I'll make a motion to accept the August 3rd special meeting minutes.

Second.

I have a motion to lend a second by Brian. Any conversation? All those in favor, aye, please.

Aye.

Thank you very much. We have an August 5 meeting. I'm just going to say that in that August 5 meeting, which is the minutes of when we all got together last time, There was some material that was put in the basket that is in the minutes. Unless there's an objection, we're going to let that all get put into the minutes. But Amy has, bless her heart, Amy's trying to figure out with New Hampshire Municipal how we make sure that when folks like you want to drop stuff off for us, how those get into the official record of the town. So until we get that sorted out, which is hopefully in the next week, what was put into that basket is going to be in these minutes, unless there's an objection. Anybody object to that? No. Okay, so let's go through and take a look at the minutes of August 5, please.

Would you like to have a motion to accept?

Unless anybody wants to change anything. You good, Linda?

Yeah, I'll make a motion to accept the August 5th, 2026 minutes.

Second.

I got a motion. Linda, second. Brian, all those are in conversation? Yep. All those in favor, aye. You good? Aye. Cool. August 8th, special meeting.

I'll move to approve the special meeting August 8th, 2026 minutes. Second.

have a motion brian second dave conversation no all those in favor aye please okay next item on our agenda is our public here a public input a lot of public hearing public input three minutes per resident 15 minutes total anybody wants to come on up and have something to say please do and we didn't get did we did we give you a sign-in sheet no we didn't all right

But I do have a question of point of order before my comments. Last meeting, Selectman Thurston questioned whether in order to hold the hearing and or vote on any motions that might arise, the select board should be in session as trustees. Selecting Deshaies motion later in the meeting was stalled because of lack of clarity on the point and it was deferred to town council. I was wondering if you can speak to what guidance came from your council on that question. We'll speak to it.

We'll speak to it when we get into the meeting. This is public input time. Do you have anything else, Jeff?

Sign in.

Anyone else for public input? Three minutes? This could be a first.

All right, come on. If anybody wants to cede me some time, that would be great. All right. My name is Jeff O'Connell. I'm the acting chair of the Friends of the Libby Museum. For the benefit of those who are not here at the August 5th hearing, the Friends' mission is in part to protect and preserve the Libby Museum according to the terms of the Libby Trust. Given that mission, the Friends stand in absolute opposition to the demolition of the museum building. Before going much further, however, I would like to thank the chair of the select board for his recent clarity that the trustees have no authority to demolish the museum building except after petition securing direct authorization from the CTU and the probate court. We will assume that the entire select board agrees. As stated on August 5th, when I last was in front of the select board, I noted that the trustees had made repeated public statements that you wish to abdicate trusteeship and find a worthy successor trustee. And in March, the town overwhelmingly voted to approve warrant article 25 supporting the same thing. Why then in April the trustees chose to float the idea of bulldozing the building has never been satisfactorily explained or tied to any kind of strategic plan to reopen the museum and fulfill Dr. Libby's will as the trust demands of the trustees. Every day the museum remains closed, the trustees are in breach of their duties. To suggest that demolishing the building at taxpayer expense constitutes a solution or a way forward is incomprehensible. Fortunately, a potential successor, the Libby Museum Preservation Society, has publicly expressed interest in taking the Libby to a new future. The trustees should be energetically engaged with them and they should be entitled to make their decision as to the fate of the building. For the trustees to attempt to unilaterally demolish the building is preemptive and premature in the extreme and should stop. We reiterate that the Trustee's interest in bulldozing the building is misplaced and injects a permanent irreversible action to solve a temporary problem. Instead of attempting to wiggle out from underneath the current trusteeship by accelerating the death of the Libby, the trustees should pause, delay, or cancel this vote and speed up the safeguarding of the collection to climate controlled storage and aggressively work with successors to deliver a compelling proposal to the CTU for a Libby under new management and new trustees. In addition, attempting to value the collection is worthless and the building is unsalvageable as a setup to claim the original purpose of the Libby can no longer be fulfilled as a means to retain the trusteeship under a new purpose is a strategy that is sure to lead to litigation. The trustee cannot unilaterally alter a charitable purpose without court approval under the state's sea prey doctrine. It must be proved. that the original purpose has become impossible, impractical, illegal, obsolete, ineffective, or prejudicial. Mismanagement by the trustees does not establish impracticability. It does imply breach of judiciary's duty. Also, The story that the town is aiming to retain trusteeship by turning the property into a park and a parking lot for a commercial dock runs totally against the demands of the Libby Trust and state statutes. The fact that a viable successor trustee has emerged proves that the current mission of Libby remains both viable and capable of performance. We urge you to change the road you're on and put this vote aside. There is no need for it. Do not approve the demolition. Rather safeguard the collection by moving it immediately to climate controlled storage and petition the court to completely remove the town as trustee over any and all of the Libby property in favor of a successor. The public private construct is broken and not working. It needs a new fully private trustee. That is the proper road forward.

Thank you Jeff. Thank you. Anyone else?

Good evening. My name is Jim Perito. I'm a 240 Governor of Wentworth Highway in Merrill Lake. I was born in Wolfboro, and my folks taught school. My dad taught at Carpenter School, my mom taught down in Alton, and we used to live just up the street from the Libby for many years. We used to visit the Libby all the time when I was a child, and we would summer in Winter Harbor, and so it was a frequent visit to go there. And that continued. And I marveled at the Native American artifacts and their natural history exhibits that were always inside there. When I married and had kids, we continued to summer in 19 Mile Bay, and we've done that for over 30 years. My three kids enjoyed countless hours visiting the Libby, taking courses, classes, all summer long. The Libby was always a source of learning, discovery for my kids, for myself, and for all the summer visitors that have come all these years. To allow this site to decay and suffer demolition by neglect is the antithesis of all that Wolf Bro stands for. This town cherishes its history. of the land, of the lake, and the people who have called it home for these many, many decades. I urge you to find the path that preserves the living, both the building, and if not the building, a way to rebuild it and what's inside. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Good evening.

How's it going? My name's Colin Frucci. I'm the owner of Wake Winnie here in town. I'm here tonight because I wanted to personally apologize for an incident at the town docks on August 8th. One of my employees stayed beyond the 15 minute limit while waiting for a customer, and there was an unfortunate exchange with a member of the board. It's my responsibility to make sure every employee clearly understands the rules. We never want our business to interfere with the residents or visitors who are trying to utilize the pickup location. Wake Winnie was created to help people experience Lake Winnipesaukee and to bring people to Wolfboro. We want to be a business that adds value, not one that creates frustration, and I apologize that it did. Thank you.

Can you sign in, please? Thank you very much. Anything else? All right, one more for public input. Anybody else? Okay. Come on aboard. You know, so the flyers I got up here. Your name, sir?

Alan Simpson. Thank you. I live right across the street, 21th Street. So the property does not actually belong to the town, correct? It's in trust. But it doesn't belong to the town. We hold a trust. It belongs to the trust, it doesn't belong to the town.

And we have the trustees of the trust.

So why is the town discussing the whole demolishing it when it should be the trust? Does that make sense? I'm new at this. But it just seems to me like preserving some history that's here in town, especially like right now our children have to travel way out of town to go visit a museum or something, unless it's the right museum. But it seems like preserving a museum, a natural history museum right here in town, Seems like a great idea to me. But again, I'm a little uneducated, I guess. I didn't come to the last meeting. And then this gentleman over here, is he a transcriber? Or he doesn't have a placard? He's our town manager. And you have barely been paying attention to most of what's been being set up here. I'm with you. All right. I'm sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to say I very much agree that we should preserve the museum.

Just sign in, please. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to close the public input. We're going to move to the public hearing. So this is the second of two public hearings on the topic of the Libby and prospectively. The interest creating comment, unfortunately, is the demolition of the building. We are aware that dating back to last December, it was pointed out to us that the RSA 4114A may not be appropriate. It doesn't fit neatly. We agree with that. However, we are here to take public input, and that's what we're doing. I'm going to read or try to reflect on what I said last week so that we can at least catch everybody up to speed. And I hope, Jeff, I hope I'll address your issue. Last December, Jim Pineo started the conversation with this board about the prospective demolition of the Libby buildings. That recommendation is going to have to be made by the trustees of the Libby to the Board of Select People. We will figure out how to get ourselves into a trustee meeting to make that recommendation. The Board of Selectmen is going to have to determine whether a warrant article is due to send to the voters to appropriate money if the Libby were to come down. So we're kind of acting in a dual role here. but we will get clarity from our council as to how best to do that. We want everybody who wants to speak tonight to have an opportunity to do that. I ask, please, if you spoke last week and you're just coming here tonight to speak, you get first bite of the apple. And for those people who spoke last week and want to come up and speak again, please do. But let the people who didn't get a chance to come Mr. Simpson and wants to come up and have a few words, please do that. Please budget your time so that we can make this thing efficient. And I ask that you please confine your comments to the building itself. We have been since December of, I shouldn't say December, we have been since 2021 in pretty close contact with the Charitable Trust Unit of the Attorney General's Office. Not much takes place in terms of what we are doing without the Attorney General's Office, the CTU, Charitable Trust Unit, being apprised of what we are doing. We did extend through our lawyer an invitation to them to join us. I don't believe they were here last week, but they have been provided links to this meeting as well as to last week's meeting. And so anybody who, and I appreciate what Jeff said, anybody who believes that we can just, as Jim Pineo said, you can't snap your finger and do this, anybody who believes that we can just precipitously take an action, wrong. In fact, my words, we probably can't decide, we have to recommend, if there is a recommendation to be made, to the charitable trust as to what has to be done, and they will become then super involved, as I said last week or the week before. The second thing that we need to be clear about is in order for anything to take place, the voters are going to have to weigh in. It's going to cost money to do anything going forward with the Libyan. I'll show you that in a slide presentation shortly. And so the voters get a chance to say whether they believe an appropriation should be made to take an action on the building. I need to just reflect on my notes so I don't screw anything else up. As it relates to the CTU, I just want to be sure we're just real clear. And I'll just say it for the last time, and then we'll kick off the discussion. We are the trustees of the Libby are trustees of this trust. I think I learned that in business school. We have to get the permission of the court in order to do whatever we recommend be done. I'm being repetitive, but I want to make sure I do that for the sake of clarity. We are thrilled that there is a successor trustee who went through Article 25 and who is ready to step up. And we are ready to meet with you. Suzanne and I just had a brief conversation before the meeting began. We're ready to sit down with you. Just let us know when and we'll do it. In fact, not to put you on the spot, but you all said you wanted to meet with us before we got together on September 2nd, so we're ready to do it. Just let us know. And a week from tonight might be a good time to do that. So the offer is there. We want to meet with you and do that. Now, how did we get here? Why are we talking about taking the building down? Well, I want to at least give you this side of the equation. Hopefully, this pickle switch will work.

Wow.

For those of you who've been here last week or two weeks ago, you're going to see this presentation again, so please bear with me. In 2019, the voters were asked Appropriate $40,000, and you can read the detail of what they were asked to do. All right, $40,000 to do some things around the Libby. Prior to 2019, Mike Hodder did some work for us. It was probably half a million dollars spent on capital to fix the building, tie the building together of that nature. 2019, $40,000 for some design options on the Libby. Passed. Voters said go do that. 2020, this is around the time that there was a buzz going on in the town about Museum Town, the Biber Group. It was growing the back of the Libby building, making it bigger. This is when things started to get a little busy, and so there was a warrant out to the voters for $300,000 to start doing some repair, moderation to the building, it passed. Right after that, and this is my side of the story, there may be other sides of the story, but very honestly, we could just grab a lot of pizzas and try to do a revisionist history, but the following year, 23, $2.2 million of donor money was put on the table. The business plan was written by the friends of the Libby that said, if you're going to really run a museum, here it is. Boom. Memorandum of understanding between the parties was put together. was involved in trying to get updated quotes on the building. The long story short is we put a $4 million, we the select board, put a $4 million warrant in front of the voters to actually do something in a substantial way around the Libby. The Board of Selectmen voted four to approve, recommend, and one abstention. The Budget Committee voted five to three to not recommend. Because this had to be bonded, $4 million hit on your tax rate. It was a pretty big nut. It had to be bonded. It needed a 60% majority of the voters to approve it. It failed. The party separated. There was a lot of, how did we get here? What happened? What went wrong? I wasn't around at the time, but frankly, it felt like hurt all over the place. The following year, 2025, went back to the voters and said, we need another tranche of capital. Try to keep the building up. stabilized, whatever the right word is, failed. So, excuse me for looking back, I just need to read the chart. So from 2019 to 2025, $4.6 million was asked of the voters. Approximately 340,000 was appropriated by the voters. The last time an appropriation was made by the voters was in 2020. As I said two weeks ago, of that $340,000, we probably have $150,000, $130,000 left in the wagon. Maybe more, maybe less. Not a substantial amount. And those monies are being used. We had a preservation timber frame come and brace up the structure. I forget how much that was. $130,000, $120,000, $50,000 is up there. revaluing, trying to get the collection out of the building. So what's left in that amount of money is shrinking. On a going forward basis, we still have a responsibility until the court says the successors can succeed, we still have a responsibility to the building. And so that's why we're having these conversations. When it's all said and done, we'll meet on the 2nd, and we will take one of three possible decisions. or recommendations. And it all will degenerate into going to the charitable trust if a decision is to do something with the building. It also will probably work out to go to a warrant. So there's guardrails here. There's guardrails. And I don't think the town owns a bulldozer. There's guardrails here. And and in and there's it's meant to be like that So for tonight, please confine your comments as you all did a couple of weeks ago What do you think we should do about the building and then we'll go from there. Okay with that. I think I Said everything I need to say Everybody wants to come on up.

Please do Can I darken this Barry? Hit the next

Anybody who wants to come up to the microphone? Anybody who wasn't here last time who wants to come up and say something? Want to raise your hand? We have no repeat business. Okay, come on up. Just tell us who you are and sign in, please.

I'm Pam Hopkins.

I live at 144 Key Waden Road.

Little dad, there you go.

144 Key Waden Road, Pam Hopkins. I was born in town. I lived in town until I went to college and enjoyed the Libby very, very much. I was involved with my neighbors who were unearthing and cleaning the canoes by the Native Americans. I also, after I moved away and raised my family in the Seacoast, I have moved back. During that time, I was an educator for 36 years. I worked with elementary school children. And I can't tell you how necessary it is for teachers to be able to take children on field trips so that they can understand the history of their town and their state. Certainly there's a lot of history there in the Libya, or there was if it hasn't been moved out, about the Abenaki Indians. And I feel that that's very valuable to children. As a person who is now living here, I have a three-year-old grandson who goes to an outdoor school down on the seacoast and is very, very interested in all of nature. I'd love to take him there. So for all those reasons, I'd like to see it preserved.

See the building preserved and the museum itself inside?

Absolutely.

OK, thank you very much for that. Hello. Good evening.

My name is Cindy Hinnendale, and I am great-great-granddaughter to Dr. Libby. I have met you at the meeting that was held by the Friends, and I accused you of failing your position.

You did.

And you agreed.

I did.

So, knowing that, and you accept that as... Trustees, why have you not given up the ship? Why are you still holding on to something that you have no care for? Can you explain that to me?

Sure, I'll try. All right. Because we can't, and when was the date of the meeting with Mr. Donovan?

I think about 2020.

Yeah, no, it was 2021. It was when I was first elected. Okay, 21.

I'm just trying to get a little data here for you so I can try to answer the question. In 2021, roughly speaking, that's COVID. Yeah, I was in that timeframe. Okay. A an individual by the name of Thomas Donovan, he was part of the charitable trust unit. of the Attorney General's office. I was not on the board at the time, but he came and visited. And I think the question was asked, maybe one of you who were there, did you ask the question?

So I called Mr. Donovan. He was the head of the CTU at the time. And I asked him to come look at our museum because I said, we don't own a museum. We have a museum in town that we're the trustees of and we're the select board members also. And he said, it's very unusual. This doesn't happen. And so When he came up, we asked him what we needed to do to get out of trusteeship. And he said, you need to find somebody who has the money in order to fix the building, maintain the building, and operate the building, and someone with museum expertise. And we said, well, we don't have museum expertise, but you have the building right now. So he said, in order for someone else to become the trustees, they have to have that skill set. We haven't found anybody yet. And we've talked to every museum on the eastern seaboard.

OK, this is all repetition from the last meeting. This is the truth. It's like verbatim. It's the truth. But I want to know why you guys have been dragging your feet for so long. that you have not put the amount of effort into the building.

Okay, so Paul did go through something that he showed us. Now, I've been around since 2021, and when the Warren article was coming up with the Friends of the Libby, we were hoping to get $4 million to rebuild the whole building.

I heard that it was... Was shy seven ballots, seven votes changed the position? 89. How many?

49.

About 49. Oh, okay. But we don't have any money.

But we can't change votes. If the citizens say no, we can't spend the money. If we don't have money to spend, we just can't spend it. Linda?

I just want to also say that we asked Mr. Donovan whether we could give him the living, just get out from underneath it. And he said, no. And that's when he told us what we needed to do. And I will say, let me finish. I will say that I was on the board up through 2017. There was a plan and a proposal on how to address moisture in unheated building. And we stopped moving forward on that because of the Bibber Foundation wanting to support the North American collection. And that led to the Warren article. So that's where we were. So we were working with them to come to that.

I just, we all know you failed. And you've accepted the terms of failing to present a viable museum for the town as trustees slash selectmen. That's kind of a conflict of interest right there. But that, we won't go there. I would like to see it saved. I would also like to see it built on the footprint as it is and if it means having a structure that is metal and a replica of the building and the collection all inclusive would suit a lot of people and I know you are on the last voting of how this falls, but it is on the National Register as a historic building. And yeah, I mean, whatever your terms are that you can live with is probably not conducive to the rest of the town. Or people outside of the town and generations of people who have brought their kids and enjoyed it. And all the summer camps here at the lake, they take advantage of it too. There are a lot of people involved. And you are not the last word. Frankly, you people are not the last word.

We agree with you.

Yeah. and you're ready to hand it over to somebody that or a group that can present

The needs that will fill your... We've been saying that for five years.

It doesn't do us. It does what the Attorney General's Charitable Division and the court. If they can meet theirs, we will give it to you. We don't want it. That's what I keep hearing. We need to go through the steps that the Attorney General's office had asked us to do. You're going to come out of here with a a vote that we can't get any money. And from what you're saying, we're going to come out of here. We have people who don't want to take it down. That gives that new group information to go to the court and say, taxpayer doesn't want to pay it. The community doesn't want to take it down. We have the money. Turn it over to us. I'm 100% behind that. Yes.

At the last meeting, you were the last commenter, and you said that you had heard through the grapevine that there's a lot of money available once the trustees' selectmen were off the Libby. Is that right? Am I rephrasing this in some manner?

I made a comment that there was a group out there willing to raise funds to preserve the Libby Trust however they see fit, and that decision to rebuild, restore, is, in my mind, would be best off handed to them so they can make that decision. I don't really want to make a decision right now to do anything with the museum, but unfortunately the fact is the museum is standing there, my point was the collection should come out. If the collection doesn't get taken care of, then we have a problem in itself because that's what the whole museum is about. So first step, you have to preserve the collection. You have to clean it, get it out of the building and store it, and then you have to be able to do something with the building later on. And those people who are going to do something with the building later on are not going to be this group because honestly, as I said before, this town has not done a good job to do that, whether or not they had the funds or they didn't have the funds or they didn't have the support by the voters. And unfortunately, those are just the facts. So going forward, I do want to relinquish it to a viable group so that you guys can make the decision. You'll have a legacy and Dr. Libby's trust will live on.

So maybe, I'm not, this is not being snarky or anything. I'm not, I'm really, honestly, the Charitable Trust Unit, their phone number is 603-271-3591. Any citizen can call them. They work for you. They're state. Their address is charitabletrustunit at doj.nh.gov. Send them an email. Call them. Tell them what you want done with the building because we will do whatever they allow us to do. We've had four different people in charge of that unit who have come up to us and talked to us, and they have told us that we need to secure the collection and get it out. I tried to get it out last fall, but it didn't work. So now it's being appraised and it's coming out by this fall. They told us to make sure that the building was safe before we got the stuff out. And they told us that, as I've said, we're not lying. They told us we cannot just give it to anybody. We can't just give it to Darwood's restaurant. I understand all of that.

But you have appropriated $10,000 for an appraiser to come in and do his estimate of the worth of the collections. Yet, at the Wolfborough Library, there's five volumes, and each individual piece in that library... And that's what they're using.

They came here, they looked at everything that was in there, they took pictures and measurements. We have a very qualified company, the New Hampshire Antiques Co-op,

And that five volumes was edited in 2020, not that long ago.

Correct. And they're using that five volumes with all of their information. They're spending three months in order to get us a full value of the entire collection, which I believe is going to come out somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000. I think you're low on that. That's my guess. But we have it insured right now through our insurance company for $440,000. So we're trying to make sure that it is where it is and that it's out and it's protected. And then this meeting tonight is supposed to be about the building. Do we want to save it because it's on the historic register? Or do we want to have it rebuilt?

Or what do we want to do with the building? So if I heard you clearly, and I think it did, you're saying that the structure of the Libby building, what we see down there, and Alan Sturgis said the building itself is viable. That's what he said last, Aaron Sturgis said the building is viable.

I'm going to leave. I've made my statement.

But you're saying the structure could be a replica? or it could be the exact structure that you have. Is that kind of where you are?

Yeah. Yes, and it would be a metal building. Yeah, yeah. Yes, and it would be from ground up because, well, I'm going to let Sebastian speak. I've spoken. I've said what I needed to.

We appreciate that.

And we're going on a hamster run, and it's just going round and round.

Well, actually, I think we're not, you know, but that's a different event. And by the way, I want to... While you're there, I want to use the opportunity. I'm unaware, and I'm looking at you, Jeff, I'm unaware of anybody who said we're going to turn it into a parking lot. I've heard condos. That's a complete change of use. Where that came from, where that's going to, who said that, I can speak confidently for the people I sit. It ain't coming from here. And anybody who's suggesting that is whistling Dixie. We are not in the business of telling the court, let's go change the use and turn it into something else. That is not in our cards. So please, please, when you hear that, call Meshuggah on that one. Suzanne.

Suzanne Ryan, chair of LMPS.

After the meeting, I'll tell you who said that. Okay, good.

In confidence.

Nope.

Yes, I have something that I was going to say, but I just have to take issue with a few of the items that you pointed out. Article 12 got the popular vote. It was not mandated that you put it into a bonded warrant article. We put up a million dollars a year for roads. It could have been a million dollar Warren article. It may have still gone down, but it wouldn't have needed the 60%, my view. We've had no money in the annual budget since 2020 that I'm aware of. In the operating budget, we put 25 to 35,000 a year, and that's for staff and keeping the building open, but no. Annual maintenance. Customary annual maintenance like you would do at your home. So, my name is Suzanne Ryan, chair of the Libby Museum Preservation Society. And here tonight are my fellow board members, Vice Chair Sebastian Tornado, Secretary Madeline Long, Member Ann Blodgett, an incorporator, Cindy, she's an incorporator on the 501C3. And some of this you've already said, however, I'd like to review how you got us where we are to date. December 30th, when the board held such a meeting to initiate discussion to raise the Libby building under RSA 4114A, which I took exception with them. and still do, both the statue and the subject were reported on record as not legal under such. However, that meeting was the catalyst that provoked me to sponsor the citizen's petition law in Article 25 to remove you as trustees and form a new successor trust, which passed by 1739 to 490. That should have been a wake-up call. We, LMPS, have delivered on our forming of such a group as stated in Warren Article 25. And I am providing you tonight with the legal document that verifies our organization. However, the only plan you have publicly put forward is to vote to raise the building or not September 2nd, 2026. Tonight, could you articulate what criteria you will use to determine the raising of that building? It should be said that there is no other entity interested in taking on the trust and that LWA has just formally withdrawn. And also, there is a new charitable trust director. The changes of the dynamics greatly are in favor of our LMPS organization. We repeat, we will proceed to the Carroll County Probate Court upon petition and with the participation of the Director of Charitable Trust of New Hampshire, Attorney General's Office, seek to remove you, the board of the trustees, and become the new trustees of an undivided trust in accordance with the terms of Dr. Libby's will. We are collectively requesting you stop this decision making on demolition and either suspend this discussion or on September 2nd vote no as to demolition. And I'd like to introduce, at your pleasure, Mr. Chairman, Sebastian Toronado to discuss the building. And you just met the great-great-granddaughter. And she was an incorporator of our organization. And I'll leave the document over here.

Put it in the basket. So is this the document of incorporation of the... I just want to make sure I know what it is. Thank you, Suzanne. Barry, could you just share with us what that document is, please? Then we can vote it in.

Yeah, it is the incorporation document.

Does anybody have an objection to adding the incorporating document into the minutes? No. Any objection? So thank you, Suzanne. We'll add that into the minutes. OK, Sebastian.

Good evening. Sebastian Tornado, Wolfboro resident and vice chairman of the Libby Museum Preservation Society. Just want to address a couple of things that we've heard tonight. First of all, the collection was brought up. Barry was kind enough to get us into the museum a few weeks ago, and it was myself, Suzanne, and Madeline. We went in and found the collection in surprisingly good shape. A couple of pieces there needed some work, but other than that, it was really good shape. I just want to say that about the collection. The building, which is what I'm supposed to speak about, is another story. Kind of rough. Honestly, it's very rough around the edges. Now, the Sentimental favorite with everybody I hear is like restore the building, restore the building, restore the building. And certainly that is my desire as well. However, the engineer in me says you better hold off before you make a final decision. Yes, Brian.

Could you state so that the public knows what your expertise in building structures and anything?

Let me say that. Actually, somebody did remind me to say that I'm an engineer. Okay. And have an engineering degree. Actually, I have two engineering degrees. The second of which is a master's in applied mechanics. And applied mechanics can also be solid mechanics, structural mechanics. Those are all the same terms. So what you would call me is an expert in structural work. Okay. And I usually dealt with very complex structures.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

I kind of know what I'm talking about. So yesterday, Amy was kind enough to get myself Suzanne and Dave Bolduc into the building and he wanted to show me a few things. And some of the things I found were a little bit alarming, some of them were not so alarming. My biggest issues with the building as it stands right now is I have really a lot of concerns about the foundation. How deep is the foundation? Are there any footings under this foundation? What is the foundation comprised of? I mean, I've heard it's rubble with concrete on it and stuff like that. And so one of the things I'd like to do at some point is maybe get a radiography crew in here, x-ray what the walls look like, see what is actually in there. One of the items, we opened up one of the interior walls, and I'm seeing two by sixes embedded in the concrete foundation. That doesn't bode well. I've never heard of wood strengthening concrete. It doesn't happen. The other thing that I'm really concerned about is the back wall, yes, it's been stabilized. But if you look at the front wall, it's got a problem. It's bowing out of plane. What that means is it's bowing toward the road. So the top is fine, the bottom is fine, and the middle has got a big belly in it. And people are wondering what that's all about. Well, the issue there is, well, not to get too technical, but something called Euler's formula, which predicts the collapse of a slender column. And I did a quick calculation, made a bunch of gross assumptions, and those columns basically can support somewhere between 30 to 50,000 pounds. Now I don't actually know what the weight of the roof is, but the weight of the roof structure is quite heavy because it's all made out of six by six trusses, and then you got rafters on top of that, then you got sheathing, you got an asphalt roof, and then you got a metal roof on top of that. And the whole building is supported by columns between the windows, about nine feet on center. It's like a pole barn. but not quite. So there's no out of plane stability in this. So it's both. And I read a couple of reports from 2019 which sort of paint the picture properly. One was from HEB and the other one was Alba Architects. And basically the recommendations was you had to address the Boeing. You had to straighten that out. There's no way to straighten it out. I mean, the only way you straighten it out is you replace the column. And I would say that if you're going to do that, you might want to upgrade the steel and not keep it wooden, because the wood will eventually bend, and it'll bend inelastically. In other words, once it takes a set, it'll take a permanent set, and the more you do that, the more it shifts, the closer you come to a column collapse.

I don't mean to interrupt, but you've dug around in the ALBA study. There's a couple of others that You know, we said we'd put on the table for you guys to just open the books up for you. I think there was one from Quantum. What's the one that did the roof, John? There was a study that Ford did, you know, Dave Ford, 10 years, more years ago, that said the building was actually separating this way.

I believe it.

And I think he went in there and he put turnbuckles in the bloody thing, right? To try to just tie it together.

Yeah, but that's up in the roof.

That's correct. That's where it is. I'm kind of piling on your comment. What fell out of that was an ask or suggestion by, it might have been Quantum, it's part of the phone book pile of studies that's been done, that said that building structurally needs some work. And I think The reason I asked you, John, is you mentioned that the roof, the steel roof was, what did you, how did you call the steel roof it was put onto?

Mush.

Mush. So we had an asphalt, this goes back prior to 2019, this goes back into the 15, 16, 17 era, that that roof just had another structure put on top of it, but they were nailing into pretty set. Rotten wood. Yeah, pretty set mush, his words. So you're giving us a scenario here that says this building, Aaron Sturgis said it's viable. This building, the word viable may be in big quotes.

Well, viable means he can patch it together until the next time. And again, let me be blunt about this. Can it be restored? The answer is yes. okay it can be restored it's a question of money and it's a question if you're going to restore that building what you're going to end up doing is you're going to take it apart piece by piece put it aside and then put it back together that's what's going to happen because anything that's compromised and especially the columns are going to need to be replaced and you have to support the building to replace it and the only way you're going to do that is to take it apart Yes, Brian.

Have you gone to the CTU and asked them what would be the preferential way of rebuilding the building?

Now at this point what we have to do is a financial analysis as to how much it's going to cost to restore the building properly. And the other thing that we have to consider when we restore this is in some of the reports I read that the roof is designed to carry about 20 pounds per square foot snow load. And you have to carry 80 by code. Correct. The flooring because it's a public area where you can congregate many people, has to be structurally capable of carrying 100 pounds per square foot. Although the joist can carry that, the support beams underneath can only carry 60. So to bring the thing up to code, structurally, is a big deal. The electrical is probably not that bad, and the plumbing's not that bad, but the structural bringing that up to code to carry 80 pounds of snow load and 100 pounds per square foot on the floor, that's not a minuscule task, let's put it that way.

So that takes me back to your letter. And now I understand your letter. And I think I understand your comment. And that is rebuild or replica. Because when I saw that in the letter that you sent in to us, I looked at that and I said, okay, so you're doing what I think you just said you're doing. You're trying to figure out, of course, we could fix anything for a lot of money. But now we're going to have to sit with the public and say, you're going to have to sit with the public if you get the keys to this place and say, replica building. All right? But it then augurs back to what you've said, Jeff, in the writing you put that said don't make a short-term decision on taking the thing down that could have a long-term consequence. So I hate to do this, but Suzanne, this is the conundrum we're going to have to sort out in a week and a half. We understand that. And this is what we've got to figure out. You know, one part of me personally says, do nothing. Another part may say, do something. But if I hear what you're saying, you're saying, you want to take some time, understand whether this thing can be saved as its original structure or not. It's an economic discussion.

Fine. We have to do an analysis, a financial, structural and financial analysis to see what we're going to do. And, you know, I'm not ruling anything out. And, you know, some people have written some nasty stuff on Facebook, you know. And I was like, well, I don't know how to explain it to you, but... It's not that clear-cut of a choice. I mean, yes, I can restore that. Anything can be restored, but plan on raising another $1.5 million to $2 million.

And whatever I can, me personally, us personally, whatever we can offer you is we have a lot of stuff, documents, and we'll just put them in the conference room as we've offered to you, open the books up, and you look at everything we've got. Maybe you'll pull a nugget out of that. Maybe somewhere in a study that was done 12 years ago, you'd say, that's what we need. We'll do that.

I've read two of the reports, and I know there's got to be about a dozen more. Thanks, Brian. I'll take the time to read them and try to digest them all and put them together, and that's what I have to do. It takes time.

Brian? So I've been asking for two years for this board to have the CTU come up and give us direction. Because I am not going to make a decision whether to raise the building, and I can't make a decision to pass it to a new trustee without their guidance, their input. The questions that are being asked of us, we can't even answer because we don't have control over where the trust goes. They tell us when there's a viable set of trustees that can take it over, and then we can move it to them.

In terms of your requirements for viability, the big thing is money. Are we going to have the money when it comes time? I have been assured that we will have the money when it comes time. The money will be there when it comes time. Is it all coming out of my bank account? Hell no. But I've been assured that we will have the funds necessary to do what it is that we decided to do.

We need to have your group and our group in the CTU together for some serious meetings to determine what's going to happen with this trust, this building, this collection. And I don't know why nobody wants to do that. When you want something done, you get all the players in a room and you decide. Or we can play Ring Around the Rosie, which is what we've been doing for five years. We need to get direction from the CTU, and we need to pass this off to a viable set of trustees. Absolutely. That's what needs to happen. Anybody else? Linda?

Yeah, I think you're going the right direction. I think you need that analysis and decide what you want to do. and then I think we all need to sit down in a room and move forward as you get and form what you want us to do.

I personally agree, it all depends on we as a board what we decide, but I personally agree because people have been pushing for a meeting and we've been kind of putting it off as saying it's a little premature because You know, I've got to go through these reports, the technical reports, before I can, you know, respond to my board and say, this is the way we ought to go. Fair enough. Okay? And, yes, the sentimental favorite is, yes, I would love to restore it. Am I stupid enough to commit to that now? No. Fair enough. I'm not. Okay.

By the way, your comment about floor loading was one of the reasons that – that the trustees took the decision to not have people in the building. Your comment about the bellying of the back wall and the front wall and the Turner study was another reason why we took the decision to not have the building open because Turner in their study said that building can't handle snow. So we kind of read that and took it seriously. Okay, good, all right. So you're kind of a wait, see, more work,

Yeah. I've got to do a little bit more work. Anybody else? Then we could decide if it's going to be a restoration or a rebuild. Paul.

John.

So I think what Sebastian described to us is what the taxpayers feared the most, the inconclusive costs of what taxpayers were going to end up paying. and the runaway cost once we got inside the building. There was nothing really sure that we were going to be able to nail down and say this is what it's actually going to cost. And I think that's one of the reasons why it wasn't supported by the majority of the town. Now there may be a group of people that say we put it out the wrong way, but I think what you heard from Sebastian is he's seen the building, seen what the building has for deterioration and deficiencies which complicate the problem even worse. And until you can open the building up and see exactly what's there, you can't make a determination and even when you take a part of the building apart, you see one thing that you don't see in another part of the building.

So one thing is the majority of the town did support it. It just wasn't a super majority for a bond. And we don't generally put out $2 million of taxpayer money without a bond. And it was going to be $2 million for us because it was a $4 million project and there was only $2.2 million coming from another group. So we had monies that were put aside, but they were still taxpayers' dollars. And we did have A substantial contingency built into that plan for ripping it apart and knowing that we might have issues. We put a good size contingency into it.

Wasn't that the same year that the town bonded up a couple of other big projects?

It was the same as the fire station, public safety building was the same year, which was one of the issues.

So we can get yelled at for that one. The town bonded up a whole bunch of projects.

And then the next two years we were in default budget, correct?

But the point that Sebastian is making, and I appreciate what you're doing here, is you're saying, and I think Jeff too, You're saying, listen, just give us a chance to think this thing through. And Brian's saying, or Linda's saying, and Brian's saying, once we get this all done, let's get everybody in the room sorted out. Anybody else? Thank you, Sebastian. Appreciate that. Hi, Kathy.

Hi, I'm Kathy Dragonfly, and I am not an engineer, and I will not pretend to be, but I have climbed through hundreds of barns that are close to falling down, and that building is nowhere near to falling in. I just went to Italy and went to Rome and the Vatican, and I toured a lot of medieval castles. And the thing with history is once you get rid of it, you can never bring it back. And it's on the historical register for a reason. And the materials that were used for that building came off of Rattlesnake Island. The labor that poured into that wood was locals. And a replica just isn't the same. It's a new building. You want a new building? Put it somewhere else. When you go through St. Peter's Basilica, the floor is glass. Right down to the altar, it's glass. And you can see all the years of issues that they have had. But they keep it. They save it. And I, as an antiquarian, think that's what we need to do. And the other thing about the money is that it doesn't all have to be up front. Nobody's life is like that. You don't go out and build a house and have all your money up front. You do it in steps. You restore things in steps as the money comes, as things are needed. You do things in steps. This isn't an all or nothing thing. project, and it just seems like everybody is looking at it that way, and it doesn't need to be. It needs to be saved, and it needs to be a long-term project.

Thanks, Kathy. Anybody else? Jeff.

I've been listening intently to all of this. And one of the things that strikes me, for one, there is plenty of history here.

And it can be revised one way or the other. Exactly. And so I'm not going there.

I think there were mistakes made all over the years. But I think at the end of the day, my last comment that a public-private model like this, at least this one, is broken. And it's broken not for ill will or whatever, but you guys have other priorities. You mentioned the fire department and things like that. You've got other pet projects that you want to sponsor, and you're... out there selling, and you've got the poor Libby that's the shoemaker's kid and doesn't get attention. Whatever. In a fully private trusteeship, every donated dollar goes directly and there is no question of what that dollar is supposed to do right it's supposed to support that trust dollars that are that come into the town either through revenue or donations or whatever are always being tugged and pulled and trying to be assigned to different projects and things like that so there's a built-in conflict there i think the detail that you're going through on the on the build You know, yeah, that absolutely has to be done. But that should be your decision, not the trustees that need to get out.

And I'm in full support. There's no disagreement.

You know, I don't believe, Brian, that over five years you couldn't get answers out of the CTU. I know they've had five different directors, but come on.

I've asked and asked and asked.

Well, whatever. You got nowhere, so... Correct. You got nothing to prove, no proof of that. So again, let the building be the successor trustees problem. You guys focus on getting the collection out of the building. We as the friends made multiple offers, including financial offers to help you with that. We haven't heard anything for two years, three letters. Take us up on it for crying out loud.

And we did.

And move on. Move yourself off. Get this trusteeship to the LNPS.

Thank you. Paul.

Brian. We did ask for help with the appraisal and removing. We have. We've answered yes to you twice.

Yeah.

Yeah, because twice we did. We said, yes, we would absolutely love that. And we did that because the CTU sent out a letter to us, and I believe it went to you too, that said help out with getting rid of the collection and securing the building. That was done.

Suzanne.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Jeffrey and I met with the CTU, Mary Ann Dembski. And some of the things, Brian, that you're saying, and I have asked you in writing to produce, she did not say, she did not say you had to have a million in trust to go forward for support in the building. A lot of things you're saying she didn't say, and if you can produce those letters from Mary Ann Demski, I'd be happy to read them.

It was from previous directors.

All right, so I've said my piece on that. Previous directors. We met with her. Jeff can attest. Jeff kept copious notes. A lot of what you're saying wasn't said.

But he's saying there have been four, and it was from a previous head of that department that we got that. That's why he's saying it from.

Okay. Suzanne, my best advice personally, if I could, my best advice personally, I'm not speaking for my colleagues, decide what you want to propose to the charitable trust unit. Yep. Go sit with them. Yep. Propose it.

Yep.

If you want us to come along and we'll have tape over our mouths, we'll do that, but decide what you believe is the right thing to do Propose it. And if the charitable trust unit says, now it's time for us to get all you characters in a room and square the circle, we'll do that. And we'll give you the keys instantly. Just hang on, just hang on. I think, not to sound too overly optimistic, we're not having a conversation here about we're out of money, you're bad people, we suck. We're not having that anymore. We're not. Actually, we're having a conversation that says, We're trying to find a way to save the bloody building or make it a replica. We're trying to find a way to get you inserted and us extracted. And I really would like, Tom Goodwin's not here. Tom Goodwin has punctuated this many times. The voters have said, get the selectmen out of this thing and we'll, this is the John Thurston comment, get the selectmen out and we'll come in. I'm all about that. My personal advice is sit down with them with your idea, get them bought in, and we go. We go. My turn? Yes, sir. Ma'am.

Okay. So I ended my comments with a suggestion that comes September 2nd, or prior to you abandon this discussion about demolition. But I will say again, Sturgis said... and so we can rely on, the building will stand for a while, with the work that he's done in the back. So what I'm asking, and I'm only one member of our board, but I would ask that, as Tom Goodwin suggested, you pause, and that come September 2nd, you vote no on taking that building down, and that you give us 18 months with a six-month extension to put together a package that will satisfy the court, not you, the court. Correct. Thank you.

Thank you. So I'm a little confused because Sebastian is saying that he wants the building down. It's cheaper to do it that way.

No, he didn't say that.

He didn't say that, Brian. He did not say that.

But we're saying we want it to stay. I think that you need to go to the CTU. You've got to give them clear direction on what you want to have done and then come back to us and say the CTU said if we do this, this, this, this, we can take over trusteeship. And I think this whole board will say absolutely. Go ahead.

We have a guest at the speaker.

Go ahead. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Trisha Griffin. I'm the great granddaughter of Dr. Henry Forrest Libby, the granddaughter of Madeline Libby, and the daughter of Priscilla Griffin, who was the founder of the Friends of the Libby. The Libby Museum has been part of my family and part of my life for as long as I can remember. I still remember the first time my grandmother took me there. She said, we're going to see your great grandfather's Museum of Natural History of New Hampshire. I was intrigued. We walked through the door and one of the first things I saw was an alligator. I looked at my grandmother and I said, Graham, what does an alligator have to do with New Hampshire? Without missing a beat, she replied, he likes alligators. That was my introduction to my great-grandfather. And in a funny way, that little story says something important about Dr. Libby. He was curious. He was passionate about the natural world. And he wanted to share that curiosity with other people. He created this museum more than a century ago, not simply as a place to keep his collection, but as a place where people could discover, wonder, and learn. My grandmother understood that, my mother understood that, and I grew up understanding it. Our family has been involved with the living all of our lives. So when I hear the word demolition, this isn't simply about losing an old building. It is about losing something that can never be replaced. Buildings can be repaired. Problems can be solved. New partnerships can be created. Money can be raised, but once you demolish a piece of history, it is gone forever. The Libby belongs to my family's history, certainly. But after more than a century, it also belongs to the history of Wolfboro and to every child who has walked through those doors and looked at those animals with the same sense of wonder I had as a little girl. I believe we owe it to Dr. Libby and to the generations that come after us to find another way. There are people who want to help. My family wants to help. Please give us the opportunity. Please do not demolish the living museum. Give us the chance to preserve it, restore it, and allow another little girl or a boy to walk through those doors, see that alligator, and ask the very same question I asked my grandmother so many years ago. Dr. Libby gave Wolfboro an extraordinary gift. Please help us make it still stay here for another 100 years. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I want to make a motion.

I just want to clarify a point, Brian. I didn't say I wanted it down. And in fact, what Suzanne's asking for, the 18 months, number one, to raise money, number two, for me to do a more thorough evaluation as to whether it can be restored for a feasible and reasonable amount of money. which is what the actual objective is. But if it can't be restored, then we move to the replica phase. So as I said, the sentimental favorite is to restore the building. Personally, I wish to restore the building. If it can't be done because it is structurally compromised at this point, then we have no choice but to go to a replica. But before you knock it down, I have to be able to study it. And that's what we're asking for, time to study, the 18 months.

Thank you. Brian? So I made a motion last time to pause and not have this second hearing. I'll make the motion again tonight. So my motion is to pause all discussions on the raising of the Libby Museum for 18 months. and to have the new potential successors bring us a report from the CTU with any information that they have for them to be able to take over as new trustees.

I have a motion from Mr. Deshaies.

It fell flat last time, too.

I'll second it for a discussion. My feeling is I would like to vote on September 2nd. I'm very clear where I'm gonna vote, and I think the public needs to hear that. We spent the time to hear you and to listen, and I think we need to follow through with this.

Anybody else?

I think, Paul, you brought a good point to say you guys go to the CTU, you have a discussion with them, come to us. If they give you the blessing, then that message is gonna be sent to us. It makes our decision that much easier, and you can move forward.

John, the motion that's on the table by Brian, I don't know if you spoke to it, he's saying pause now. Are you speaking in favor or not in favor of the motion?

I'm not in favor of the motion. I want to hear more information from you guys going forward. I'm not going to move forward with a demolition, I can tell you that, but I need more information.

Well, that was my motion. My motion is to pause the discussions of demolition for 18 months and to have them come to us with more information from the CTU.

I don't know why we have to move forward with a motion if we basically, they can just go ahead and go do it.

So I'm going to, Dave, do you want to say something?

I'm going to vote against it.

I'm not in favor of the motion at the moment. Let me tell you why. This is a, this bid is, That's what you did. You put a bid on the table and said 18 months. My first, in my mind, which I'd like to talk to my colleagues about is it's intriguing, and I mean that sincerely. Give you some time to do your thing. What do we need to ask the voters to do in the next 18 months? And I don't want to get into that debate here tonight, but I think we'd have to ask the voters for something because we're at $110,000 and running out of money quickly. So God forbid something happens, what do we do? So I would want to talk to my colleagues about that on September 2nd. There's no question there's a compelling argument being made here that, and Jeff, you must have been salt in the audience, you know, don't do something tactical that has strategic consequences. That's what you've said, and I've heard this now from you as well. But I'm not going to support pausing now. I want to hear the rest of you speak, have at us, Tell us what you really think. And we'll get together on the second and we'll do it. So do you want to withdraw your motion or do you want to prosecute it?

I want to discuss it. So by me asking for a pause, I don't think that stops the discussion of what's going on. I'm not telling anybody to not talk to us anymore. What I think it does is I think it gives them... A show that we are giving them good faith, that we're saying, okay, we've heard you. We're going to give you the pause that you've asked for. I made this motion last time and just let them have their 18 months that they want to get to where they need to. and let them know that on the second, there won't be a vote that changes course, that they have their time to do what they need to do.

Okay. I'm going to ask that we call this question. Any more conversation before I do that? I'm going to call the question. Roll call vote, John?

No.

Linda? No. Dave?

No.

Brian? Yes. Paul? No. Motion fails. We'll get back, we'll keep going, and we'll, more public input, please. You've got to come to the microphone, please. This is good for your exercise.

One more time into the abyss. I believe that what Suzanne asked when she was up here momentarily ago is that you vote no on September 2nd and then give us 18 months. She didn't call for a motion to pause at this point. No, I understand that. She said vote no and then give us 18 months.

I did not hear you ask us to do that now. My colleague did. Please. How are you, Madeline?

I'm good. How are you?

Good.

My name is Madeline Long, and I'm speaking tonight as a Wolfboro resident, a local business owner, and a member of the Libby Museum Preservation Society. I am urging the select board to leave the Libby Museum intact and allow a successor trustee the opportunity to take over its care and continue Dr. Henry Libby's legacy. The August 5th meeting made something very clear. This museum matters. It matters to people who grew up visiting it, to families raising children here today, and to generations who deserve the opportunity to experience it in the future. The Libby Museum is more than a building. It is an iconic part of Wolfboro and a symbol that this community values its history and heritage. Several members of this board have expressed a willingness to transition the trusteeship to a successor organization, such as the Libby Museum Preservation Society. Our organization is prepared to raise the funds necessary to preserve, reopen, and reimagine the museum while honoring Dr. Libby's collection, mission, and legacy. If the building is demolished before a successor trustee is given that opportunity, it only makes the work of preserving Dr. Libby's legacy more difficult. There are people ready and willing to take on this responsibility. I respectfully ask the Select Board to leave the museum intact, allow the trusteeship to transition, and give us the opportunity to do the work. Once this piece of Wolfboro's history is gone, we cannot get it back. Please give us the chance to save it.

Thank you. Thank you, Madeline. Thank you. Anybody else? Anybody else?

You sure? Okay.

Thank you for this. It was well-mannered, at least my opinion it was. I think it's good. We will get together on the 2nd. Offer stands. I think I now understand why you've been kind of not wanting to get together because you're trying to get your ideas together. You just tell us when you want to do it. I personally would be very curious as to what your thoughts are as to how you intend to spin up the fundraising activity. The reason I want to know that is I don't want to know who you're going to get money from. I want to be able to feel comfortable in this board as to whether we have to go to the voters and say we need some maintenance capital in the event that a you know what happens to the building. And I'll quote you by saying that building may have roof issues, it may have issues. And if we haven't got any liquidity to do anything about that, that's a problem. That is a big problem. So I'd like to hear more about your timeline, my personal belief. I'd like to hear more about what you think, whether 18 months makes sense, how that works, and all that stuff. And you may not have that ready by the second. But on the second, I think we need to chew on this one a little bit and determine what the next steps are. So with that, I'm going to close this public hearing. public hearing is closed thank you very much for those of you who came and spoke and for those of you who offered your passionate thoughts and I appreciate it very much okay thank you thank you thank you thank you Brian okay next item on our agenda all right we'll give you a couple of minutes to adjourn yep please next item in the agenda is unanticipated funds The town of Wolfboro is going to hold a public hearing on Wednesday, August 19th, 2026 at 6 p.m. for the acceptance of unanticipated funds of less than $10,000 in accordance with RSA 31-9B-A3 for donations received for repairs and upgrades of the old firehouse community center from the following individuals. John Kay in the sum of $100. Sally and Kenneth Murray, $50. Sally and Kenneth Murray again for $100. Matt Horvitz for $40. Nancy Delisi for $1,000. Carol Ann Vaughn, $500. Maxfield Real Estate, $108.75. Bonnie Dale, $5,000. Joyce Chandler Smith, $50. $50. I'm going to open the public hearing on this. Anybody want to make comments about this? Hearing none, I'll close the public hearing. Board members? Do you want a motion? Any comment or a motion? Any comments? How about a motion, please?

I'll make a motion that we accept the funds for the old firehouse community center as listed on the agenda in accordance with RSA 31-95B3A.

I have a motion to accept these funds. Do I have a second?

Second.

Mr. Senekel seconds. Conversation? All those in favor? Board members, aye, please. Aye. Okay. We have two temporary event permits. One is for the Wolfboro Select Board to consider a temporary event permit application for the Chamber of Commerce to hold the Wolfboro Great Pumpkin Hunt. The sidewalk sale day is downtown September 25th to 27th between the hours of 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Permit 2026. We've done this in the past. No event, no issues here. Second permit. is a request to extend the Cape Park Band evening performances by one week to September 2nd, 2026, originally approved to end August 26th. Scott Lounsbury called. They would like to extend for a week due to a weather night. Board members, do you have any objection to these temporary event permits? Linda?

Yeah, I just want to point out that the Wolfboro Great Pumpkin Hunt is part of the Parks and Rec fall festival, so it's bringing a bunch of events together, which is fantastic.

Can I get a motion to approve these temporary event permits?

So moved.

I have a motion by Brian. Second. Second by Mr. Senecal. All those in favor, aye. Aye. We're good. The next item is the bulk vote. Barry, could you be so kind as to put the bulk vote up on the slide? People have mentioned they don't like me reading all this stuff into the record, and I agree with them. I don't want to do this. There it is. That's our bulk vote. First item is our manifest. Property tax refunds, credits and exemptions, current use, intent to cut wood. Can I have a motion to approve bulk vote items A through E inclusive, please?

So moved. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor, aye. Aye. We're good. Next item on the agenda is Mr. Rossinger. wants to speak about Stoddard Road. And just for background, he said he wanted to come up and do it during public comment, but he knew he probably would exceed the three minutes, and asked if he could have a meeting, and we're glad to have you here. So Claude, come on up and please speak.

Should I put my name here?

You gotta. I think you and I still have a conversation about when gas prices are going down. Thank you, Claude.

Evening, Claude Rossinger, Wolfboro, 63 years. That's not my age, that's how long I've been here. I believe I'm correct in supposing that you all know why I'm here.

You do.

All right. So let me ask you a simple question in deference to everybody's time. If our purpose is to aggravate the situation, it's best to stop right now. If it's to resolve it, I can proceed. Please tell me what you want to do.

We'd like to have your input, Claude. We most likely want to discuss this at a board in the future, and then we'll make a decision.

It's curious that all discussions previous were refused.

I'm not sure of that. You've made a public document request. We'll take it up and review it in public.

My purpose here is to resolve the matter. If you join me in that, we can do it. It's pretty simple. But when a wrong has occurred, it must be made right. It's better to begin this, and I will be brief. It's better to begin with the root cause of the problem. The root cause is the roads.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that one.

The root cause is the roads.

The road.

Because the roads are in the worst state that they've been in in years. Roads in an historic neighborhood and in some sense all of Wolfboro is one as well. but this happens to be in a historic district, the roads are the neighborhood. And their preservation speaks to keeping that neighborhood, keeping a rural area of Wolfboro, and maintaining property values. Because the roads we live on right now are a shambles. You don't have to take my word for it, drive them. Now, clearly, Wolfboro has already expressed an opinion on this. The community has expressed an opinion. Because at town meeting, there was a vote on Article 24, which voted for the preservation and maintenance of the rural and gravel roads. You know it perfectly well. That vote was three to one in favor. So the town of Wolfboro has expressed its sentiment about this. You don't have to worry about having the people in support of this. We have seen, and it's a matter I've raised, we've seen the scenic road RSAs violated, and I've been told they don't really matter.

Okay? That's one opinion.

We've seen the protocol of the 2018 Rural Roads Committee ignored. Why? Nobody knows. When one speaks of it, you look as though you've come from Mars. We've seen the guidance of the 2019 Master Plan just set to the side, overlooked. Why bother? And every undertaking that the Public Works Department made to us, I'm talking about in this case the residents of North Wolfboro through their association, has been violated. Now that doesn't feel good if you're a citizen and a taxpayer. I've said the roads are the heart of the matter and I'd like you, if I may, I'd invite you to give attention to the next five words. and see if we don't agree. Do we, as citizens and taxpayers, as residents, have a right to good repair, traffic calming, and aesthetic? Anybody disagree with that? Silence.

I was just trying to write the note. Good repair, traffic calming, and what else was it called?

And aesthetic.

And aesthetics.

Isn't that a reasonable thing to desire? Is there anything contentious in that? I don't think so. So we don't have good repair. You can go see it for yourselves. Haven't had it for years. We don't have traffic calming because it's not even understood by our public works department. Traffic calming is not a traffic speed sign. Traffic calming is design of the road. All traffic engineering speaks to that. I'm not going to bore you with that. I can do so if anybody desires it in the future. And aesthetic speaks to a vision. And I'll just remind you that some meetings ago, maybe Mrs. Murray remembers it, Brad Harriman stood and said, it all begins with a vision. That's right. It begins with a vision. Our PW department has no vision except to transform the roads to some kind of engineering standard. That's it. Now, I could make you a long list of the deficiencies in these roads. I know my roads, and I know road construction. So the list is long. I'm not going to make it tonight. I'd be glad for that. But I can do it, and I could do it in a helpful way as well, because I know it's wrong. I want to give you five clear examples that will surely speak, I think, to each one of you. In 2023-24, the Public Works Department spent a lot of money ditching the rural roads. They didn't do it correctly, the ditches were too deep, they were dangerous, but never mind, put that aside. 2023-24, two summers, machines were out there working, people working, money was getting spent. 2025-26, they filled in all the ditches. How do you explain that? Somebody didn't know what he was doing. There's no other explanation, really. Second, the fines. You all know, I suppose, what fines are on a road. The fines are an absolute hodgepodge of materials. There's no consistency. There's no standard. There's no objective. Two. Three, irregularity of the roads. A well-engineered road, I assume we all believe that, is a regular road. Regular means a regular width. We have specified widths. Curiously, one of the widths was changed on the list. But anyway, we have. And I remember a meeting at which Mrs. Murray put forward to make North Wolf Road 19 feet. And the reason was that the gravel roads are 18. Somehow gravel roads now have ended up on a list where they say 20. When did that happen? Who did that? But let's carry on. I'm going to cite you Stoddard Road as an example. The widths vary from 18 to 24 feet. Does that sound regular to you? And if you drive it, it looks a mess because it goes back and forth and it's just totally irregular. It's haphazard. It's inexpert. It's not the way you'd build a road. Next, I'm just giving you a few examples of why I'm telling you these things. I'm not making them up. Gravel roads need to be treated for dust control and erosion. They can be maintained in good order. This is done with magnesium chloride. The magnesium chloride must be applied when the road is wet so it percolates down through the surface layers. We get magnesium chloride on a completely random basis, or not at all, last year almost never, and then a truck comes through and drops it down on a dusty, dry road. That's a waste of money. Within days, it's gone. But if you do it correctly at the end of winter, when the roads are wet, you consolidate the surface of the road. It makes a much better road. One of the reasons we've had the pothole hell that we've had is that the surface of the road is incorrectly maintained. Drive the road. You'll see. Last, just points, and I'll move on. Stone walls. The RSA, Scenic Roads RSA, says the stone walls are not to be touched. But they've been undermined so that all the rocks are falling. That constitutes touched. Can we agree? So they violated the Scenic Roads RSA, which does matter. But in various discussions, I would say, well, that's just something that's in the way. It doesn't really matter. That's what I was told. No, it does matter. OK. Those are the five. All of this discussion, what we're doing today, what has occurred in actions by the town against my property, could have been avoided had the town gone forward and reconstituted the Rural Roads Committee, which I believe you voted on April 1st. Because had that committee sat and spoken about the issues, they might all have been resolved. But instead, we ended up in court. Didn't we? And we may do so again. Do you really want that? I don't. I don't like litigation. So how much sense does that make? Because really, by discussing these matters, they could have been solved. And I don't wish to point a finger to Mr. O'Brien, but before this came to a head, I requested a meeting. The answer was, it's in the hands of our lawyer. What kind of an answer is that when you could sit together and find a solution? Now, I've been a little bit hard.

Do I get to speak to that?

Sorry?

Can I speak to that? Sure. It was in the hands of your lawyer.

Sorry?

It was in the hands of your lawyer.

It was what?

It was in the hands of your lawyer. And so when your lawyer gets involved, our lawyer gets involved.

The answer I received from you when I requested a meeting with you was that it was in the hands of Mr. Fennessy. That's the answer. I have it in writing.

Me too.

So let's leave it aside because we won't solve the problem. I ask whether we're sitting together to aggravate the problem or to find a resolution to it. I'm here to resolve it if we can. If we can. Now, What would resolve it? You perfectly well know what was done to my property. And that is an offense against every citizen in the town of Wolfboro because what was done to mine can be done to any property in town. If you applied the same standards to Sewell Road, you can remove half of what's on Sewell Road. Just send those big machines down there and rip it all up. But you won't do that. We're the lower class people. We live out in the back country. That's what it comes to. There are people you touch and people you don't touch. That's not acceptable to any citizen of any means. So restitution must occur for the wrong to be made right. You have seized my property. I simply made a simple request to Mr. Muccio. Just leave the posts that you ripped out. I say ripped out because that's what was done. Just leave them by the roadside on my land. Nope. Taking them away.

Why was that?

Sounds like retribution of some kind, doesn't it? Vengeance. I don't know why. It's mean-spirited in any case. Why would you do that? That's one. Now, why do I say it must be returned? There was no hearing. There was no due process. There was no court order. It's in question whether the town acted legally in doing what it did. It's a reasonable question. Could it come down in a court that it was? It could. Could it come down that it wasn't? It could. Do we want it to go there? I don't think we should. So how did this all come about? Then I want to tell you, because I'm trying to move quickly, when it came to the granite posts, because I did two posts. I did the granite posts because I wanted them. I did the wood posts to prove a point. True confession. What's the point? That every time we put plowing stakes along the road, they get completely smashed up. Not I, the town puts them out. Now, granite posts. Six of those granite posts were placed six or seven years ago. They were placed with the presence and approval of Scott Pike, who was then the supervisor. I had asked him to come up and look at it with me. He kindly did so. Then I heard something back, maybe Mr. Muccio can confirm that, I'm not sure, because I don't have it firsthand, that he was told by Mr. Pike that this meeting never happened. It's not that strange. Scott Pike's a good guy. He's of sound mind. I called him up. And he said, no, no, absolutely. You and I met. I went over where the post would go. I said it was OK. And then I saw when you put them in that they were OK. I called that authorized. I'm sorry, Clyde. You call it what? Authorized. Authorized, meaning Scott Pike authorized? The town. OK. He acted on behalf of the town. He was the town's employee. It was his responsibility.

I was just trying to hear you.

So this is a little bit of a strange story. Then the claim came that Mr. Pike didn't have the authority to authorize that. How would a citizen have known that when the supervisor of the roads comes, meets with him, looks at a project, and says, that's OK? How would you know that? So did he or did he not? I don't know. I would say he did, by his actions and by the fact that nobody opposed them for six or seven years. That story having kind of failed, I was confronted on the, I believe, the 30th of July at a meeting in Mr. Muccio's office with a smiling Mr. Fennessy who says, ha ha, but do you have it in writing from the selectmen? So first story doesn't work. Second story doesn't work. So now we tell a third story. But again, how would any citizen have known that Mr. Pike was not authorized? You couldn't know it. So those posts went up. And then when I did the work adding granite posts in that line, I specifically told the contractor, let's move them back an extra foot, just to be good guys. We're not going to provoke anybody or anything. We're just going to move them back an extra foot. We did that. You, I believe, have a photograph of this. And most people thought they looked very nice. And there was a reason for them. It was to regularize the road, which had been an absolute shambles for years. Frankly, I was tired of looking at that. Most people who live on a road like to live on a nice road. So the basis, what I'm proposing to you, Return my property. Legitimately, you should return the 40-plus cubic yards of high-grade loam that I had put down as well. Why that was taken away, nobody can explain, because they put down lousy loam, which is there now. Could have used the same loam, really. But let's stay reasonable and look for a solution. Maybe I'll say keep the loan. God knows where you put it. It was taken away, maybe dumped somewhere, I don't know. Too bad. 2,000 bucks worth. Now, so return my property, that's the post. Two, acknowledge that I have a right to put the granite post back. That's an acknowledgment. It's not an allowance or permission. It's an acknowledgment, because that's what it is. Three, which I shouldn't have to ask, and it's really part of your supervisory duties, I should think, or the town managers, interim town managers. I don't know exactly what the duty range is. You should see to the good maintenance of our roads. They're not well maintained. They're poorly maintained, very poorly. Simple guidelines. Those five words I told you. Good repair, traffic calming, and aesthetic. And is that something that anybody would disagree with? I don't think so. That's what we want. That's what this whole discussion's been about. You may think it's about Rossinger hates the town or something. I don't hate the town. I live here. It's my home. I've done a lot of things for this town over the years. Not everybody agreed with everything, but that's OK. It never happens. It doesn't agree with everything you do either. So our objective was always to work together. That has proven impossible with this regime at the Public Works Department. Because everything that's been discussed and has been agreed to or assented to or said, yes, that's a good idea, we'll do that, never done. Contrary was done. And in addition, there's simply something that cannot be rectified. It's the lack of experience and expertise. It's just not there. And again, I don't say it. The roads say it. Have a look. What puzzles me is that your board have not stepped in and seen what's not done correctly. That puzzles me. And maybe Mrs. Murray can speak to that, Mr. Senecal. I sat with Mr. Senecal on the Rural Roads Committee, I believe, in 2018. We gave a simple protocol. What puzzles me is that when we had a similar problem with Mr. Ford, the board gave a nod to Scott Pike and said, why don't you take care of those roads? And Scott did for several years. David Ford was not qualified to look after rural roads. Maybe not roads at all. By the way, I'm not saying anything about the qualifications of these people for their other public works functions. I don't know. They may be great for water. They might be great for such things. But for roads, I do know. They don't know what they're doing. And in this case, we're seeing the destruction of a neighborhood. I would say the willful destruction. And yes, that's why I'm standing before you and why I've done the things I've done. Why exactly a policeman had to come to prevent me from doing violence on June 1st, I don't know. That's a very strange thing. But I did learn that it was a public works director who asked for that. What is that? A citizen who's been here peaceably for all of his adult life, and you send a cop, a young cop, who by the way is aggressive, you know, stand back, you know, this kind of stuff. You know who asked to ask him to settle down? Steve Randall had to ask him to settle down. That's how bad it was. But put that aside. It's an anecdote. I don't care about it. I had an apology from the chief of police. I accept that, and I appreciate it. So what I ask you is, can we make this right? It's in your hands. Thank you.

Thanks, Claude. Appreciate it. I think we owe Mr. Rossiger an answer. I'm going to send out to the board just a little something I dug up at the New Hampshire Municipal Association about am I conflicted in the event that anybody feels on this board that they are. So I'll let that go out to folks. But we do owe Claude an answer. I think we'll try to get you something in the next couple of weeks, Claude. We'll probably ask questions. Would you mind if we ask questions of you directly through the town manager? Clarifying questions? You want to be cooperative. We want to be cooperative. Yeah, okay, great. Just come on up there if you wouldn't mind. That's okay.

Please note that I'm available by phone or by video conference, but from September 1st to the 4th of October, I'm overseas. Email? Email, absolutely fine.

Yeah, okay.

Telephone, absolutely fine. Any way you want.

We want to make sure we get it all written down. Okay, good. All right, thank you, Claude. Appreciate it. Next item on the agenda is new business, and it's a discussion of the Thomas Dambo troll. on talent property follow-up. So is it Brian, Linda? Linda, Brian, want to speak to this? How do you guys want to do it?

Go ahead, Linda.

This is a big old way.

Yeah.

All right, here we go.

Brian and I met with Peg Mangiello and Catherine Dragofly. And we looked at, well, let me start this way. First of all, we talked about what we as a board would need, and we needed to know the cost of the project, the layout of the area, we'd need to know about insurance, and as we talked about the layout of the area, we expressed that we did not think that the board would support the area That we had they had chosen out at the wastewater treatment plant. So we started to look at other sites and the picture Of the Ridge Falls path that area was one of the areas we went down and thought that that was a better location and we started Kathy took some pictures and And we were hoping that the board would move in that direction. And then some of the things I was mentioning before was things that we would need in a MOU with them. So in other words, the MOU would kind of lay down what we needed. And then if they raised the money and did the things that we had in the MOU, then we would look at or we would do a license agreement after that that no construction could happen until all funds had been raised were kind of the things that we would need in the MOU. So what we're really here right now is to see would you consider this board taking a look at the Bridge Falls path and the rock outcropping that is in the picture as a another location or a better location for the troll. Brian, do you want to add anything?

No, I think that pretty much covers it. We walked the whole Bridge Falls path. We talked about the field at Foss Field down in the corner of the field where the kids play soccer, which could be prettied up with some benches and some trees around it. We actually walked down to what's on tax map as lot 15 that comes right down off of... Willow Road. And I actually reached out to that owner who said that if we had nothing else that he's going to be up in a couple of weeks and he would sit and talk with us and consider using that lot for it. But... This is town property. Therefore, we don't have to worry about anything ever happening to the property, it being developed, it being shut off. So it seems like that this is, I would say, the best location that we've come across so far.

Comments? Board? John?

So I'm glad you mentioned the other lot because there's one major hurdle here. This is in the 50-foot no-touch buffer zone to the lake.

You're looking at me?

No, I'm just looking at anybody else that wants to make comment. Do you have a copy of that buffer zone law? The state's regulation is no touch within 50 feet of the shoreline.

No touch. What?

That's their regulation.

This isn't a permanent structure. This isn't a building. This isn't a shed.

It's a piece of art.

I hear your question. and we did not in any way look at that. We were looking at sites. I think that's something we could get clarity in, and I think we should.

I agree. I have a question, Paul. How did we build the trail?

The trail was a railroad track that was already there.

It was, but we ripped up the track.

No, it's still there.

Or we covered it over. We touched that area. No touch zone. We touched that area within 50 feet.

Hang on. John's making a point, and it's a point that we have to just get clear on. There is no touch buffers next to wetlands. That's a fact. Can't touch them. No touch means no touch.

Just hang on a second.

Just time out for a second, Brian. And so we'll take that as a we've got to figure out whether that exists or it doesn't exist. It's either a yes or it's a no. We'll take that one forward. Okay?

Are we having public comment right now?

Not yet. Hold on. So, Paul, I have a question again. I can take and I can get a permit through DES and I can put a platform on the shorefront at a waterfront lot. When I just recently built a log cabin out on Cow Island, we cleared the lot and move boulders and did things that was all part of our DES plan, and there was points that we could take down. So we did touch within 50 feet of the waterfront. We couldn't put our structure within 50 feet of the water, but you had to clear a zone to be able to build the house, so you were closer than 50 feet to the water. So we need a definition of what no touch means.

Sure. Linda, before John goes, before you go, can I ask John a question? John, were you on the planning board when the development was proposed behind blacksmith printing?

Remember that development?

Yes.

Did that encroach on the no-touch buffer?

I'm not sure what the parameters were.

I understand your point, Brian. The reason I'm asking is a few years ago there was a there was a proposal for condos or something like that. There was.

I think he was back behind the 50-foot line.

We should check that.

So the allowance for inside the 50-foot is a six-foot wide path to your dock and a six-foot wide path to the beach. And those are the only two... So there's an issue there may be an encroachment.

Yeah, there's no point in us arguing here. Nobody has the total facts. Good point. We should check it. And that we can need to do that. That's okay. Let's see what else there is.

The second issue was on that deed, wasn't there something on the deed that said build a structure? No permanent. No permanent structure. So that's the second item on the deed. Permanent.

So the other aspect, the town has a has a regulation, nothing within 75 feet of the rail trail. So what you've done is you've had people that have other lots that go out Albee Beach, and that was Rob Hausman who put that in.

We'll have to get that. Do you know where it is?

That's in our planning department. So I know when Randy Tetra was doing a development for the Smith River one that was – down off of Wittenack that we did the road for. What was that?

Governor's Landing?

No.

The old Dinty Moore property, Dinty Moore's mother's property.

Well, if it is, it's another one that we have to look up.

They had to make sure that they were 75 feet away from that property.

I don't remember.

The rail trail.

Again, I was on the planning board, but I don't remember that one. So is this an ordinance?

That's a town setback from the rail trail.

A town setback, and it's in an ordinance someplace.

So when we did the lighting on the Bridge Falls path, I did get, and we went and had to go through and get a DES, shoreland protection permit, setback permit, to do the trenching in the trail. I do know that.

Okay, so there's three here. One is there's a, I don't even know how to reference it, but what you're referencing.

A rail trail setback.

Okay, there's a 50-foot no-touch. We have to see if that works. And then there's this permanent structure in the deep. Those three items. Okay. What else? Other than that, do we think it's a good place to locate it?

Yeah. Is it worth us going through this? Is it worth us going through the...

So we did get another letter from the... We did. From the rail trail people that take care of the... Cotton Valley.

Cotton Valley. Who have asked me to come and read it.

Yeah, just hang on a second.

Okay.

On the rail trail, which is across the way. Is this the time?

Yeah.

Hang on a second.

Okay. I would give Sabet the time to read the letters.

I want us to make sure we realize this is the Bridge Falls Path. Then comes Route 28, and then comes the Cotton Valley Trail.

Okay. Okay. So you're in a butter, technically speaking, to the Bridge Falls Path. What do you got?

I don't know that I would say they're, well, I'm not an expert, but are they in a butter when everyone that's on the path goes right through there?

It's own, it's different. They're different ownership.

Okay, but it's continuous. It's not like they're just a buddy. But at any rate, I'm Syvette Strowman and Noreen McDonald, who is the president of the Cotton Valley Rail Trail Committee, asked me to come and make sure that this letter was read into the record. You all received it today, because I guess she heard about this just the other day. She writes, in April, the Troll Committee requested to have the trail placed along the Cotton Valley Rail Trail, which is within a New Hampshire state right of way. That request was forwarded to the New Hampshire Bureau of Trails. The Bureau was opposed to the idea due to the fact that the trail was designed specifically for pedestrians and bicycles. To suddenly have groups of tourists standing in the middle of the trail with bicycles and pedestrians traveling in the same space is an accident waiting to happen. The section from the train station to Witten Neck Road is the busiest section of the entire 12-mile rail trail. This is due to the number of rooms and cottages for rent, the density of housing, the closeness to the lakes, and the large parking area by the train station. Adding a tourist attraction to this congested area will prove to be a safety issue. The Cotton Valley Trail Committee has been improving the trail from Center Street to Fernald Crossing this past year. But there's so much traffic that we cannot finish the causeways until mid-October, when the tourists, the summer residents, and the snowbirds begin leaving. While working on the trail, we need volunteers to stop trail users so our tractors can move safely along the trail. One of the biggest challenges with trail users is how many of them are not paying attention to what is in front of them. They have earbuds in their ears or headsets on. They're listening to music or talking on the phone. They can't hear bike bells or people calling out. The second challenge is bikes going over the speed limit and swerving around walkers and runners. The next challenge, especially between the train station to Center Street, is the number of people who, number one, walk their dogs off lead, number two, who don't pick up after their dogs, a little different, and allowing their dogs to jump on people. Another issue of concern is vandalism. In Austin, Texas, and in Australia, their trolls have been burnt to the ground. Wolfboro needs the trail to be in a protected space, not on a trail with easy access from two directions. CVTC is not opposed to the troll, but we do want it in a safe area for tourists and safe from vandalism. And as a note, they're saying they're also working with the Lakes Region Planning Commission for July 27 to get a real foot bicycle traffic count along the trail. So that is Noreen's note. I have a comment. It seems to me that we have spent, or this board has spent, a disproportionate amount of time on something that I'm not sure everyone in town wants. This hasn't gotten, there's been no vote taken, no survey taken that I know of, and I've been following this pretty closely. And I appreciate the Katherine Dragon, I appreciate her initiative, but it seems that approving the troll opens the door to future random art installations that don't really hang together. I'd much prefer us as a town to use Meredith as a role model and perhaps take a more strategic approach to art around the town. The Meredith art installation that includes sculptures from New Hampshire artists is powerful, it relates to New Hampshire, and it has proven to be an attractive addition to the town. Those are my comments.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay. So we have... I don't know whether... I don't know whether I'd call them in a butter or not. But they mentioned in their note that they're improving things from Center Street all the way out. So that is the Cotton Valley Trail. This segment is the Bridge Falls Path. Noted that there is an objection to traffic and other things that could happen. So appreciate that. The question, though, the hard question, in addition to your comment, the hard question is, do we have a touchback, no touch issue? We've got to research that. Do we have a DES issue? And is this thing going to trip a permanent structure? Brian.

I can respond to the permanent structure.

Brian's up.

The rear yard setback for the town is 20 feet, 75 feet if the rear property line borders on the rail corridor. So that means you're talking about a property that borders the rail corridor. This is not a structure on a separate property that would have to be 75 feet from the rail corridor. This is a piece of art that's just going to be on the rail corridor. Now, DES will probably want us to have some kind of permit to put it on. I don't think it's anything, because it's a temporary structure, that they're going to care too much about. They're going to allow that. So what was the third question, Paul?

So it's the no-touch buffer.

It's the deed.

It's the DES.

Yeah. And she also, and I was going.

Yeah, it's the permanent structure.

Yeah, and she also.

It's not a permanent structure, so I don't see that as a good term.

I think we want to ask the question.

We want somebody smarter than me figure out whether that's a permanent structure.

But I think they had talked to, and the reason I'm getting the phone is I didn't have.

Are you researching on your phone?

No, I'm trying to read. They had spoken to a group who didn't like it. I'm trying to find it on here. The New Hampshire State Right-of-Way. the Bureau of Trails, and they didn't like the idea of pedestrians and bicycles. So that I think we would probably want to check with that too.

All right, board members, what do you want to do here?

So there is a second location that could be used, and that's in the corner of Foss Field behind the Bridge Falls path. Where the troll would be looking across the Bridge Falls path out into Back Bay. It's all on town property. We could make sure that it was, well, it's on the other side of a set of trees.

And it would be this side of the fence that keeps people out of the drainage. Correct.

We could plant some trees around it and some benches beside it to make it its own little cordoned area in the corner of the Foss Field, and it would still leave plenty of room for the kids to play soccer.

Board members, this is getting teed up as a too hard, can't do. Are we saying that this proposed current site is too hard, can't do, or do we want to move this one forward a little more? Or do we want to jump back and then go find another place?

Well, what I would do is I would make a motion to approve the Bridge Falls Path based upon meeting the contingencies, and if not, move it to the corner of Foss Field in the grassy area by the fence. Linda? Linda?

Yeah, I'd like to hear from Peg. She had some information from us. And I'm concerned about the number of issues with this site, and I would like us, if we're going to look at that site, to also investigate the Foss Field site, if you'd be interested in that.

Before Peg comes up, my mind is a little mushy here, so I'm hearing a representation of where it could go. If we're going to do this, you get a little hunk of Mercator map, and you put it on it, you say, right there. And then you kind of do the... The boundaries is the touch points and all of that. That would be my preference. Linda, go ahead.

I could draw you a map, but we're sitting here. They have a time frame. That's why we brought this site. There are some good issues and comments about that site. There's another one not that far off the bridge false path in the same area. If we're going to investigate any zoning or issues with that site, do you guys want us to investigate also the one at Foss Field? I don't know where you are. Yes.

The comment that I wanted to make was in the contract that we will be signing with the artist, it says it is a temporary structure. We get a 10-year lease, and then we can have a renewal for one more period of time. So he states it is a temporary art installation. It is not a permanent structure at all. nor the other 192 of them around the world. So the other thing I did want to comment on was the troll and the fact that we have people with dogs that don't clean up after themselves and bicycles that go too rapidly do not have anything to do with each other. That happens without the concept of a troll anywhere. So I think that some of the arguments don't stand with the comments that were just made.

Mr. Senecal?

I think we need more information. I think we need some information from the planner as far as the setback situations for this type of temporary structure. It's not a permanent structure, at least in my mind it's not by definition. So I would like more information.

So Dave, are you looking for more information on the existing site or are you looking for more information on the existing site plus an alternative?

The two sites that we just talked about at Fossfield and at the ledge area in Bridge Falls.

So I'll remove my motion. But I will make a motion that we take this up next Wednesday at a special meeting.

So, John, do you have any objection if we take a look at two sites?

I don't mind. Again, I'm not making a final decision. I haven't I haven't made a final decision. If there was a third site that would come up, I would look at that one also. If there was a fourth site, I would look at that one also.

Linda, you're in the same space.

Yeah, I guess what my feeling is, did I read it right that this board was not in favor of the site at the wastewater treatment plant parking lot and that to see if there was another site, and we're not saying this one's going to pass or the, or another one's going to pass. We're just trying to get you the information on other sites.

I'm kind of in that space. I think mentioning it two weeks ago would be almost a non-starter for me not to have a public hearing on the wastewater side. And I see boat traffic. So I'm beyond that now. The question for the board, though, it sounds like, we are, and I think that probably feels in a different way, but we are thinking that it should It might want to fit a troll somewhere in this neighborhood. Did I hear anybody say that's a dumb idea? I didn't. But what we're trying to figure out is where best to do it so that we're not shoehorning this thing and creating downstream whatever other issues could come forward.

So one reason that Thomas likes the place on the path is there's a huge extension of granite there. And this is the granite state. And he tries to make the troll connect with either the town or the state or the history and mythology that goes around it. So that's why he liked Filterbed Road, because the giant ancient granite stone. And then we found that when we walked the rail trail as well.

So who takes the action here to sort out the three questions on the proposed site? Does Nathan have to get involved?

Paul, I have some done extensive work down there. I think I could get an answer pretty quick. That court has been studied, surveyed. I could probably get a turnaround on the proposed site. On the setback in regards to setbacks from the shoreland. I think it's important.

No touch stuff is important. You can't mess with that. So you can take that one and run it to the ground?

I'd be glad to do that.

The second one is on the proposed, next proposed site, which is, what would you call it, Brian, Linda?

It's going to be in the corner of Foss Field.

Foss Field corner. Who can lay that out? Can the planner do that for us? Tell us whether you have any impediments, Barry?

Is that by the tree warden's plaque?

You know where the fence is that keeps you out of the drainage ditch? And it goes, it's brown, and then there are trees, and it's way over in that corner, which I think is away from any kind of tree.

So you'd have to walk into Foss Field to actually witness the... And all the way down, or you have to cut through.

There's some path there.

In regards to the permitting side of that, I think because it's so close, I'd be happy to look at both of them. If somebody pinpoints exactly where it is, I'll look at it. All right. Okay.

Okay, so I think that there is... We'll have a comment here. I think that there is a... Is there any disagreement that we... want to do this, John?

So I think Sabet brought up a good point. Does the town need to accept this with a vote?

Did you have a public hearing, maybe?

Or a town vote to say, do you want this on the town's property? Is that what I heard from you?

I just raised the question.

I'm relaying the question to the board.

I mean, I just raised the question. I would like to see a more comprehensive approach taken to art installations in general. One quick thing about the Foss Field location, and I'm not against the trolls. I like the location if it's somewhere out and it brings people to a different place. I personally think some of those trolls look kind of scary. I don't think they're necessarily charming. And you're talking about putting a pretty scary-looking thing right next to where a lot of people play, a lot of kids play. That's just a small note. Another thing is I don't know how stable they are. You're also talking about inviting kids to climb, and maybe they were intended to do that, but you put it in that location, it's like a playground place.

accessory so you might want to just consider those two things thank you appreciate it okay so um and brian's ask is can we do it at the next meeting barry can you give us a turnaround um that might be tough if it's next wednesday you're talking about are you talking about the next scheduled selectman's meeting or next wednesday next next i was hoping next wednesday brain can you fall through i i can't i got my daughter getting married he's got a wedding so i pass it all off to you

Okay.

So I know that the DES will probably require a shoreline permit, but it would be a slam dunk easy shoreline permit because it's a temporary structure and it's nothing that's going to have, especially when you put it on a rock, it's not hurting an impervious surface because you're already on an impervious surface.

My personal opinion is I want somebody smarter than me to tell me that. And that would be DES would tell me that.

I have seen 37 of the trolls. I am leaving on August 30th and we'll see another 24 of them. I have six meetings set up at different locations where trolls are located from Tupper Lakes, New York, through Clinton, Iowa, to Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. be following all of this and asking them some of the same questions. A few of the trolls are funny scary. Like there's a guy who's going like this, but he looks like he's staring at you. And we can make a special request when we finally get the answer to Thomas that we want something that's more engaging. He is hoping, as I said on that stone wall, he would most likely have a troll either lying down, maybe waving at you, or something like that. So in terms of the trolls being scary, many of them are vertical, many of them are just lying down. Some of them make funny faces at you, others kind of weird faces, but I have not seen any that I would say is scary. There was a fire, there was an arsonist, two of our friends from Texas, austin we've all seen them uh we went to that one and now it has been burned i talked to the austin department they had a camera they have the person we also would have a camera on there and we would do a lot of education both in the schools and through the town um communication system to let people know what this is and that you know we would be going after anybody that would do there was not one burn to my knowledge in australia i saw all five of them in australia

All right, folks, let's agree to do this. Barry and Brian are going to try to run down the two sites, get them laid out, my words, address the issues that could be non-starters. Come back to this board, ASAP, if we can do it next Wednesday, because we are going to try to have a Wednesday meeting. If we can do it next Wednesday, fine, but you two guys have got to tell us whether you can do that. In consideration of the fact that someone wants to take it out to public vote, and John, I'll defer to you because you're on our board here. If you think it should be a public hearing, I think, please Kathy, because we're going to try to wrap it up. If you think it should be a public hearing or a public vote, I'll ask you to ponder that and weigh in on it. My perspective would be a public hearing would probably be in lieu of a public vote because that would delay this thing until March. But if you think that's the right thing to do, It's up to you. You'll have to convince the rest of us. I would support a public hearing to get people in to say, this is a good idea, it's a bad location. I'd support that. All right? That's the plan. Brian, last word, last call.

And to follow along with that, when we've approved monuments like the one that we just had installed, they have never gone to a vote. They've always been just a public hearing.

There's a concern out there that this thing doesn't make sense. It's not the right art. Got it.

So was the monument in the right of way?

Which monument?

The one that you're talking about?

That doesn't matter. That's a non-sequitur. I was just asking the question. It's a non-sequitur. Let's not go there. For benches, for monuments, for anything like that that we have received, they have not gone to a town vote. Linda, last one?

Yeah, I don't think we need a town vote. I'm thinking it probably is good for us to do a public hearing.

Yeah.

I would like to get it scheduled quickly. Yeah. because I think this is going to bring a lot of people into the town, and I think we should.

So that's point is right. It's a novel piece of art. It's new to us, you know, and all that stuff. I'd want to get the public to give us some input. All right. We all cool with this? Pencils down?

I just want to thank you all for your consideration. Well, thank you. Linda and Brian were really great to meet with us, and we're very positive. We know this is going to be a wonderful thing for the town. It's very magical, and we're going to convince you, John.

I think coffee, that'll help John. All right, Lenore, you're up. Conservation easement tax map 46 colon 4 Lang property. Lenore, let's watch our time. Okay, thank you.

Good evening, everybody, and could we sign in?

Please do.

My name is Lenore Clark. I am the chair of the Conservation Commission. And yeah, I had brought along a map, a little visual and everything, but in the interest, and that was mostly for your benefit, Mr. Thurston, This is circling back to a project that was started two years ago that was unanimously approved by the Select Board on July 24th of 2024, but Mr. Thurston was not part of the Select Board at that time. This was to acquire Tax Map 46-4 for the conservation easement purposes, and the only way to protect a piece of property in perpetuity is to place a conservation easement on it. I had mentioned it in my presentation to you two years ago. we would seek Moose Mountain Regional Greenways as a potential easement holder. They have agreed. They have applied for and been successful in achieving some grants. So I am now here to formally ask you to authorize yourselves to give yourselves a little bit of hand cramp because there's going to be a lot of signatures needed from each one of you and a lot of initials. I'm asking you, there is a suggested motion, but I don't know if that quite made it to you or not.

And I really don't know where TaxMap 46-4 is.

It's a back lot off of Stoddard Road, about 87 acres in size. Do you want me to get the map?

Well, I was kind of hoping that there would be something in here that would describe the location, but I didn't see it in here.

There was a link that I sent you to the slideshow that I had presented.

I don't

That was emailed, yeah, back on August 5th. Do you know Ginny Panashoni? Does that name mean anything to you? No.

Do you want me to get the map?

Yeah, Barry wants to get it and then show it off. Absolutely. It's kind of sandwiched between Stoddard Road and Trask Mountain Road, and it abuts corner to corner the Bridger Conservation Easement, which in turn abuts the Whiteface Conservation Easement and the Meisner Conservation Easement. So it's adding another piece to the puzzle. And I didn't want to mark up my new NRI map too badly, so I just put a couple of arrows honing in on where the parcel is. This piece in green, right here in between the two arrows, about 87 acres.

You're pointing it in the wrong direction. Show it to him.

This is the guy.

Show it to this guy.

This, by the way, is one of our new natural resources inventory updated maps that has also been in the works for about three years and are almost ready for prime time.

Board members, have the rest of you had the opportunity to brief yourself on this?

Yeah. We own the parcel. We do. All we're doing is giving a conservation easement. The conservation easement moose mountain will come in and yearly we'll walk the property to make sure that we haven't done anything to violate the conditions of the conservation easement that is correct my my husband and i did a bunch of our land each year the the far society comes we walk through the property and that's it we can do all those things that we're allowed to do we can't build a house on it we can't build some other stuff but Correct.

So does the public have access to it?

The grantors of the original property, the lands for which this is named, did not want it to be accessible to the public. um so we did not apply for any LCHIP grants because that is one of the conditions of an LCHIP grant is that it be open to the public so we sort of we agreed that we would not post the property against public but we're also not going to build any trails and invite the public and because there's no road frontage on it it's not exactly and there's no real um It's not like a hike that takes you up to a summit that then has a nice mystic view. It's not like that kind of a property.

So does somebody go up there and go fishing? Do they go up there and look at mushrooms? What do they do?

They could. My husband would be up there looking for mushrooms 100%. All right, let's cut that out. You will probably ask to join us on one of the boundary walks.

But the answer is that there was an original... In the original ownership of the property, there was no rights conveyed to the public for access. Correct. That is transferring through, and you're basically saying you're just going to kind of hold your head and not post it as no trespassing. But if somebody were to trespass en masse, that could be an issue.

But that doesn't have anything to do with the conservation easement. Correct. Right. The easement does not specify. That has to do with the property. One way or the other. This has to do with the easement. So you've got to separate.

So I move to authorize the Wolfboro Select Board members to sign a conservation easement deed baseline document report and closing documents as grantors of the town-owned property identified as tax map number 46-4 said easement to be held by the Moose Mountain Regional Greenways. Second.

I have a motion on this. Do I have a second? I have a second. Okay, John, I think you had a...

I'm still trying to understand the posting, what it's going to be. So you're not going to post it, but people can't go on it.

So New Hampshire has what's called a presumptive right of trespass, which means I could go onto your property unless you have it posted in a very specific manner, I could walk onto your property and be within my rights to do so.

Okay.

So we're going to leave it at that.

I'll call the question.

I have a motion, a second. And the question's been called. Roll call vote, John.

I just have one more question. So what's the acreage?

Well, I'll let him do it. Just get your question out.

Slightly over 87 acres, much of which is classified as high-ranked habitat for wildlife by the updated Fish and Game Wildlife Action Plan.

I'll vote yes, Brian.

Following your accord. You say yes, Linda. Yes. Dave. Yes. Brian. Yes. Yes. Good. Thank you, Lenore.

Thank you, Arthur. Sorry for the rush.

Sorry for the confusion on the map.

Do you have one little bit of just, the Moose Mountains Regional Greenway staff I've been working with is hoping to pick up the signed documents Monday morning here at Town Hall at 9.30. Is that, and these all need to be notarized, all of your signatures and initials?

I think Barry's got the deck here. We'll sign them. Okay, thank you.

So I can come in and verify that you have everything correct because there was a lot and it came in kind of piecemeal. We'll sign them. So I will get together with Barry on that. We'll sign them.

Thank you, folks. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is Michelle, personnel policy update. Michelle, thank you for being patient and sitting here with us.

Let's be nice to Michelle.

Good evening. Good evening, Michelle Chamberlain, HR. I'm here tonight to ask for approval for the amendments to the personnel policy for an effective date of August 24th. So as you can see with the packet in front of you, I have made some highlights in yellow. and those would be additions. And then in red, those items would be removed. So the accrued leave time has been updated to reflect language for a clear understanding of payment of accrued leave time upon separation of employment. This is the same language that is in the union contracts. I don't know if you want me to go into detail or not, but on page 17 is the language for the removal of the longevity. That's the old policy from the union contract, and I'm recommending that we use the same language for the longevity, which is in yellow now. And then on page 19, that is the addition that we're talking about, the accrued leave time that was in the personnel policy prior that we needed to add back in. And then the last recommended change is on page 32 and that's the health opt out program. That's when an employee decides not to take our health insurance and we pay them out for that amount. It's $4,500 for the annual year. So $8,652. Is the

Was the payout significant between what was before in our...

It was $2,500 before. It went from $2,500 to $4,500.

Right. And so what this is going to do is make it the same as all the union workers. Right.

There's only one employee currently right now that is only getting the $2,500. The other seven are getting...

I just wanted to point that out.

I'm fine with this. Can I ask a question? Sure. I recognize myself. Thank you. Didn't we have 2018 as the date for length of service stipend? Or was it 2019? Because you have it as 2019. Employees hired after 1 January 2019. It was 2019. So confirming that. Okay. I have no other questions.

I mean, I'll double check, but Paul, I'm like 99.999% sure.

I think it came up in our discussions with... the fire department or somebody. And so what you're basically doing again at repetitive is you're just copying over what we agreed to with the bargaining units. Correct. For the compensated employees, the salaried employees.

All right. Correct. So move to approve the amendments to the personnel policy as recommended by the HR Administrator, Deputy Finance Director, Michelle Chamberlain. Effective August 10, 2000. August 24th. August 24th. August 24th, 2000.

I couldn't come to the last meeting because you guys were booked, so I got sidetracked to this meeting.

August 24th, 2026. I have a motion.

I have a second. Conversation, anybody? All those in favor, please aye. Aye. Aye. We're all good with that. Michelle, thank you for your patience.

All right, thank you. I signed that.

All right, the next one is me. About a month ago, one of our neighbors who's sitting in the audience patiently asked us to look into something. For those of you who have been cutting your cord, have you noticed that once you cut your cord, all of a sudden access to either Boston TV channels is now main channels and And you can't get WMUR because you have to go do something unnatural like do you local. Well, this actually came from Wendy to Linda, and Linda being the person who says, Paul, you're good at this Internet stuff, pitched it over to me. I'm going to just read something, and I'd like the board to consider adopting this to send to our two senators. It's a letter, and the letter will explain what's going on, hopefully. At its August 19th meeting, the Wolfboro Select Board voted to ask you, and that would be Senator Haas and Senator Shaheen, for your help with the Federal Communications Commission to grant a market modification request for the designated market area in which Wolfboro has been arbitrarily assigned. As you know, designated market areas are the Our proprietary market area is set up by the Nielsen Company to collect and sell viewer data to television and advertisers based on market demographics. Wolfboro is assigned to the Portland, Auburn, Maine DMA, meaning that our residents are now assigned TV stations to watch from that area. Channel 9, WMUR, is assigned to the Boston, Manchester DMA, meaning that only access to that channel is via TV antenna, I put in brackets OTA, meaning over the air, or by signing up for the news chronicle only stream. Wolfboro will see no advertisement or community news any longer. We see this as very unfair. In a similar fashion as our neighbors in the central and southern part of New Hampshire, Wolfboro residents wish to watch MUR along with its programming and advertising without the extra expense of a television antenna, really old technology, or limited streaming choices. We ask that Wolfboro residents be given the access to WMUR and also be given the customer's choice of being assigned to the Boston Manchester DMA or the Portland Auburn DMA. Let me just conclude by explaining something. In the United States, there's over 200 of these designated market areas done by the Nielsen Company. We all remember Nielsen, right? They do ratings. And what they do is they collect information about us, our viewing habits, our purchasing habits, all that stuff, and they sell it to advertisers. Now, our little bubble at DMA has been assigned by Nielsen to Portland. And so Channel 13 in Portland is what I get to watch on TV. However, if I were to move to Alton, or just run a wire into Alton, I could get Boston. Or if I were down in Brockton, I could watch Channel 9 from Brockton, Massachusetts up here. It's an arbitrary, it's an artifact. All of these TV stations, primarily ABC affiliates, are owned by one company, Hearst. Boston WCVB, MUR, and the ABC affiliate in Maine. So we're not taking any data away from them. We're just simply asking the FCC, through our senators, to give you the choice when you sign up for YouTube or FUBU or all those UBUs that you sign up for, to give you the choice to decide whether you want to get your television programming from the Boston-Manchester market, which would include MUR, or if you want to go watch Portland Main TV, that's up to you. That's the sum and substance of the letter.

So I'd like to make a motion that the board support this letter and have it sent to both of our federal senators.

Second. I have a motion and a second. Any questions, John?

Yes, a lot of questions. So if you get FUBU... you would get WMUR.

For a while.

And then the other question is, if you have a leaf antenna, like my neighbor, he has rabbit ears at the end of the street, he gets WMUR. Yeah, of course. But I don't get WMUR. I only get ABC and NBC. So the people, I don't understand who's going to get it for free.

There's no free in this world. What you're observing is, that if you want to get WMUR in this town and you don't have FUBU, you got some other service, you got to climb up in your roof and stick an antenna up in your roof. That's to me, that's, A giant step into the past.

So if you decide you want to do Starlink or if you want to do Dish Network or DirecTV, you will not get WMUR from those three services.

So, John, watch this. Here's what's happening is a little bit of technical, and I don't want to get too techy. You're probably still getting MUR by the person with FUBU. But at some point in time, that stream that's coming across the internet, some smart little box is gonna say, wait a second, that's coming from 03894. And it's gonna shut you off. And I think, Wendy, you've observed, that one day you got it and the next day you didn't, I'm putting you on the spot. So, John, it's just a matter of time until Wolf Road goes dark.

So, are you trying to get people like T-Mobile to provide it through your streaming Wi-Fi?

No, I'm trying to get the FCC to agree that when you sign up for YouTube television or FUBU or whatever the UBUs are, that you will be given an option when you put in your zip code when you sign up for these TV services. And when you put in your zip code, it should ask you, do you want Boston or do you want Maine? That's it. You're going to pay. You're still going to pay the monthly service. Do you want Boston or do you want Maine? The problem we have is Wolfboro is right at the edge of the Boston and Maine DMA. Again, I could move to Alton and bang, I can get anything I want out of Boston. I could move a little further up into Carroll County and I can't get a bloody thing. So what I'm saying here is we just want people to have a choice.

Call the question.

So I understand your point, Paul, but I don't see how it's going to force people, force providers to give you that choice.

They're just going to... Not the providers. It's Nielsen. Nielsen. Nielsen's the one that manages those bubbles.

So how's Maggie Hassan and Gene Shaheen going to force these people to do it?

Because they will write a note to the FCC and say those designated market areas have to have optionality for Wolfram.

Are we thinking that's going to happen?

Who knows? Likelihood is probably low, John, but if you don't ask, you don't get.

Okay, I support the letter.

Thank you very much. Call the question, you? Yes. You're good. Linda? Yes. Dave?

Yes.

Brian? Yes. I support it as well. We'll sign the letter. We'll get it out the door. You're exactly right. But if you don't ask, you ain't going to get it. Okay. All right. Next item on the agenda. I lost my agenda.

It's the minutes. What do you want to attach to your minutes?

I'm going to let this languish here for a bit. We put up a basket for people to deposit items into the basket. Technically speaking, we should vote. to let things go into our board minutes. It's our board, it's our minutes, we get to do that. But yet, there are some people who want to leave stuff off for us. Amy has reached out to the Municipal Association to get us some clarity as to how we can go about doing that. And there may turn out to be, there's just some stuff that customers, you leave behind, that we're not going to put in the minutes, but then the question is, where should we put it? Should we send it to the round file, or should we create a a cloud capabilities for people to look. So I'm going to ask, unless the board wants me to do this for it, I'm going to ask that we table this for a bit. Are you okay with that?

All set.

All right, good. All right, budget review schedule. Hard to believe that the time has come. We've got a budget review schedule to look at. Barry, you want to talk about it at all?

I don't have a lot to add beyond... Any changes that you folks need? I mean, this is a tentative schedule, but we try to hold it to keep it moving.

So the capital improvement plan kicked off the other day. They're doing their thing. This budget review schedule means this is what we're going to start looking at. At least at the moment, I'm comfortable with the schedule as is. We may want to adjust it given other things that we want to do. All right, but right now, Linda, Brian, John, Dave, you good with it? Yep. You cool? All right.

I'm cool.

Old business, community center update. Brian is going to update us.

We've had meetings with both the new 501c3 that's being formed and with Jordy Hutchinson, with Sue Bunting, and Wendy from the Quilters Guild, where about... We're about 55% of our way to completion for funding. There's a chance that we may, if direction goes a different way, we may do a phased-in approach and start with an exterior build of the building this year and continue fundraising for an interior build next year. That is still to be seen. Other than that, they had a booth up at Lake Winnipesaukee Day or a table up, and they got a lot of good, positive feedback from the community on the project. So I don't know if Linda has anything else to add.

Yeah, I just think that we saw our first quote of a possible fee, and it was about $500,000 give and take. A construction estimate. Correct. Construction, correct. And so that's one, and we're hoping we'll get two or three. So it's starting to move, my feeling.

Board members, comments, questions? So when will we see, roughly speaking, I'm not trying to pin you guys down, when will we see something that says, here's the construction estimate, here's the construction timeline, here's the funding status, here's the plan of record, whether it be phased or unfazed. When does that all get, what do you think, 60 days, 100 days?

I would say hopefully in 60 days we'll have a pretty good idea.

And we're clear that all of this has to go through building permitting and all that kind of fun stuff, right?

Yes, we have a stamp plan, which we wanted, and we have that. So it will go through the process.

So I think that, at least for me, I think that's fair, right? You lay out what we're going to build, how much money we've got to build it, what the time frame is going to be, and then here's the building application. John?

So you do have the stamp plan? We didn't see that. You haven't passed that out yet.

It was in the beginning. Jordy, last year we got that. He showed it to you.

With the engineers?

Yep, yep. I'll get you another set. There definitely is.

I thought Paul had a question on something there. That's what I was referring back to.

Well, I'll kind of go with you on this one. If the existing, if the original stamped plan, which I think is a foundation plan as well, is good to go, we just want to see that again. I don't need to see it. But if anything has changed, which would modify the plan, the structural integrity of the building, you just want to see it all laid out when they see it in the next 60 days. Unless you want to see something.

No, I was just going on what you were saying early on in the year. That's what I was doing.

I'm cool. I'm cool with it. All right, so 60, 75 days, you guys. And we'll report back to you as we move forward. All right. Next one is commercial, yeah, I can say it right, commercial vessel permits. John requested to speak to this.

Okay, so when we issued the commercial vessel permits, I voted against them. And the reason I vote against them, because this dock was a drop off and pick up dock for the people. And I know that people drop off. They're families. They go in. They shop. They get food. And we decided with this board to issue commercial vessel landing permits to individuals so that they could have a business. And what I thought understandably was that these vessels were going to hover out in the water. When their clients came, they would come into this dock. They would pick them up. And I have to say that I appreciate the gentleman coming to the board this evening and apologizing. And what was he apologizing for? Well, that's what I'm going to say. So at 11.29, I came from another meeting I was standing at dockside reserving. I noticed a boat with a couple people handling money to a driver of a boat parked at the pick-up and drop-off dock next to the Millie B. The shirt on the young man and the young lady said, Wake Winnie. As I watched the visitors and local patrons walk around, a family walked up to pick up and drop off at the dock. The lady said to the Wake Winnie boat, My husband wants to come in to pick us up. The young man with the Wake Winnie shirt says, we're waiting for a customer to arrive at 12 o'clock. The lady waiting for her husband with her family says, the sign says 15 minutes parking. The Wake Winnie young man says, we aren't moving. Seeing this interaction was disturbing for me and just what was wrong with disrespecting pick up and drop off boaters. I said to the Wake Winnie boat driver, I was the selectman and they should pull out and allow the boat to pick up the family. The time was now 1152. The boat coming in picked up the family and the wake winning boat pulled back in. Another boat came with another family looking to drop off and I mentioned to the wake winning boat that another boat wanted to drop off a family. The young man in the wake winning boat looked at me and said, we have a permit to be here. The agreement was to allow pick up and drop off for these commercial operations and they were not to be docked but to wait off the docks until their customers were ready to be picked up. And after this interaction another gentleman came to me who saw what was going on and he said I want to come in and drop off my kids so they can get four hamburgers for $100. And that's what the whole idea of this was, for commerce, for our people. And I appreciate him apologizing. And again, I don't know as if we got the message across that this was a pick-up-and-drop-off dock for people to pick up and drop off. And our vessels need to understand there's more to it than just them. Board members. Linda.

Yeah, and I agree with John that the behavior was unacceptable. But I do want to point out, and I've pointed out this a number of times, and it's the ordinance that we are under right now. It's H, and it says the area on the north side, dock side, dock G, opposite where the fire boat is located, and the north side of dock F, which we don't ever mark, where the municipal electric boat is located, shall be designated for areas for loading and unloading of passengers provided, however, that the potential loading and unloading would not exceed 10 minutes. And that was the second spot that Adam Dow was looking for. But we don't have it marked. There's no way anybody would know that that's the spot. And we should get to the business of doing that, because I think it will help.

So to that point, I was down there with the dock hands, and they said, well, nobody should be coming into the dock that you just described. Because the police boat and the electric boat is at that dock and there's not enough room.

It's on the other side.

It's on that side.

No, those boats, it's on the other side of the electric boat.

Other side of F. But there's people docking there.

Because there's no sign. Because we've done nothing to say that is the same as G, this side of F. So we did want two, which would help with some of the issues we're having at G if there was a second one.

But do we want a business?