City Manager's Report 02-04-2008
HB 1573
Last week Chief Trull, Andre Caron and I went down to testify before the Municipal and County Government Committee of the House on HB 1573. This is the bill that contains basic tools which all municipalities in the State should have when dealing with burnt out properties or other situations where the municipality is left to clean up properties which landowners basically abandon. The letter from the Mayor and Council, signed by the Mayor was distributed to the whole Committee.
The Bill would allow municipalities to lien all the other properties in the state owned by the landowner to cover the costs of the municipality in the clean up. It would allow the municipality to lien any insurance proceeds which might be available to the owner of the property as a result of a fire.
While these basic tools should be available to any municipality in the State, they are critical for Berlin where property values are so low that landowners are much more willing to simply abandon properties than to take responsibility for them after a fire. Where property values are higher, this is less likely to happen and it is more likely that there is enough remaining value in the property that the municipalities costs of clean up will more likely be covered by the lien on the property itself, which is the only lien currently available to municipalities in New Hampshire.
We have been unsuccessful in the past couple of years at getting even these minimal changes through the legislature. We are a little more optimistic this time around. The committee is chaired by Robert Theberge from Berlin which is very much to our advantage. The committee from the questioning also sounded relatively sympathetic to our arguments. In addition, Chief Trull was able to get Chief Murphy from Hudson who is the President of the municipal Fire Chief's Association to testify in favor of it. Finally, the Local Government Center has also, at our request, taken a position in favor of it and Cordell Johnston of the LGC testified in support.
Nevertheless, the Bill attracted the attention of the Banker's Association and the Realtor's who sent their lobbyists to testify against it. The objection of the Banker's Association was that the municipal lien might end up taking precedence over their secured mortgages and they couldn't have that. Cordell Johnston of LGC offered language which helped clarify that that was not the intent. Therefore it seems that the Banker's objections can be completely overcome by simple language amendment.
The objection of the Realtor's was a little harder to understand. They were concerned about the municipal ability to lien the insurance proceeds and that municipalities might through this new lien tool just automatically freeze the insurance proceeds after every fire, and that some poor owner might not be able to obtain their insurance proceeds to live on after losing everything they had in a fire. It is hard to know how convincing this argument was with the Committee. It was pointed out that under State welfare laws, someone who loses absolutely everything in a fire has to be supported by the municipality anyway.
Other Legislative Matters
As you are aware from following the LGC Legislative Bulletins, there are a number of bills which may affect municipalities. Every year there are bills to require binding arbitration of interest issues in collective bargaining. This year one of those bills is coming up in the form of HB1364 which instead of simple arbitration has set up a so-called neutral impasse panel after mediation instead of the current fact-finding process. It appears to amount to final and binding arbitration, but the process appears to be much more time consuming and cumbersome. According to the LGC, this is in fact arbitration because the decisions that the neutral impasse panel makes after the process of mediation are final and binding on the municipality. In other words, if the municipality and the union are negotiating over whether a pay increase is to be 3% or 7%, this panel will decide what it should be and impose that on the municipality.
Vehicle Registration Transition
The Tax Collection Division is in the process this week of transitioning over to State Motor Vehicle MAAP software which should be a great convenience for local residents. Some of the benefits of this new system include the ability of our Tax Collection Division to actually issue motor vehicle plates for new vehicles and to issue registrations for vehicles of a weight up to 26,000#, thereby saving the local resident the need in many cases to travel to the State DMV. I have attached the posted sheet which explains the new system to the public.
Jericho Lake Deed and BIDPA Easement
The process of donating approximately 300 acres of the land around Jericho Lake to make it a part of the Jericho Mountain State Park has been lengthy to say the least. However, it is finally complete in that we finally did last week receive from the State a signed copy of the deed we provided the State for the donation of the Jericho Lake land.
DRED had also requested from BIDPA a trail easement on the approximately 300 acres of land that BIDPA owns on the northeast side of Rt. 110 adjacent to the State Park land there. We finally received the signed copy of that as well.
BOP Interceptor , SRF, flows and loads, and Utility Coordination wed 1/16
On Wednesday January 16th, a first meeting to begin to try to coordinate the provision of utilities to the BOP site was held at City Hall. In attendance were PSNH, Verizon, Keyspan, NHDOT, BWW and the City. Another such meeting is likely to occur this week. There was a lot to talk about and a lot to coordinate in order to provide these utilities to the prison site in the short amount of time remaining to get them installed. The contractor Bell-Heery is saying that they must turn the project over to the BOP by July of 2010, and Bell-Heery is saying they need to have all the utilities installed by July of 2009. This means everything is going to have to move right along from here.
We are trying to pull together all the material needed to follow up our State Revolving loan pre-application for $15 million with an actual application. Because this is such a large involved project, I hope soon to schedule an informational update session with our Engineers Wright-Pierce here to review the details of the whole matter of sewer and wastewater treatment facility improvements.
Master Plan Meetings
There have been three Master Plan meetings thus far which have been well attended. Three more are scheduled. The first is for the Steering Committee this Wednesday evening at 6pm in the Mount Washington Conference Room at AVH. The next two are sessions for the general public and are scheduled for Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 7pm at the College cafeteria and Saturday, May 3, 2008 from 9am to noon at a location to be determined.
Green Street Project
The concrete pouring of the last wing wall for the RR bridge is still being carried out by the contractor, RM Piper, and should be completed this month. Piper will then shut down operations for the remainder of the winter and open the bridge for traffic. Piper will then come back in April or May to complete the final utility and paving work during the remainder of the summer.
Budget Review Meetings
Budget review meetings City Departments have been held with most City Departments. A few more are scheduled to occur this week. We will then get down to the business of preparing a budget for submission to the Mayor and Council by early March.
LGC Legislative Dinner on Retirement Issue
Don't forget that the LGC Regional Legislative Dinner is next Tuesday, February 12th, at 6:15pm at the T&C.
Proposed Wireless Antennae in Flagpoles at Mount Washington Hotel
Attached for your information is an official notice from Town of Carroll Planning Board in connection with proposed extension of the flag poles on top of the Mount Washington Hotel in order to accommodate Verizon wireless antennae.
PSNH Rates
Attached is a rate sheet being publicized by PSNH indicating that PSNH's rates in New Hampshire are lower than the average of electrical rates in New England.
Telephone Service
The City has been obtaining its phone service from MetTel under a three year contract which expired this past month. We have been taking proposals from other providers with an eye to where telephone and data services may be going in the future. No decision on a provider has been reached at this point.
Manager's Timekeeping
Attached.