City Manager's Report 03/05/2007
Summary Judgment in favor of City for Tax Deed Case
Although it is still subject to appeal, we have a copy (attached hereto) of a Judge's opinion providing summary entirely in favor of the City with respect to the Regina Realty case (113 Merrimack Street) where the City was sued because it collected the 15% assessment penalty provided for in the law before selling the tax deeded property back to the former property owner. The attorney for Regina Realty tried to argue that the state law was unconstitutional and that the City's notices to his client were defective. The Court found these arguments to be without merit.
HB 588FN
On Thursday February 22nd, I testified in Concord in favor of the HB 588FN which is the bill that would have the State take over Jericho Lake Road as a Class III State Recreational Road and the City would take over the full maintenance of Cates Hill Road as a Class V road in the City. Cates Hill is currently a State road but the City already does the winter maintenance on it. There did not appear to be any significant opposition to this bill.
257 Main Street Demolition
Attached is a bid summary of the bids for the demolition of the front portion of the building the City owns next to the Fire Station. John Gleason Const. Co. was the low bidder at what appears to be a very competitive price. That demolition is currently underway.
$60K Tillotson Grant Awarded to Berlin
The City has received the attached letter from the NHCF of the award of a $60k Tillotson grant for master planning in the City. This will help the City greatly in its effort to properly update its Master Plan. The award letter is attached.
HB 882; Follow up to HB 143?
Sometimes you think you have to just duck and cover your head when the legislature is in session. We wrote in opposition to HB 143 which would have municipalities paying for 99% of damage claims even if they were only 1% at fault. Now we have HB 882 which would eliminate the existing damage limitations of $150k per person and $500k per occurrence in actions against cities and towns and other governmental entities. If this were to pass, municipal liability for personal injury actions would be unlimited.
HB 163FN
City Welfare Administrator, PersonNameAngela Martin-Giroux points out that this bill is being backed by the Welfare Administrators Association because it would provide additional TANF monies to those not on HUD or other housing programs making it less likely that they would be coming to municipalities for local welfare assistance.
Vacant Building Markup
Chief Trull has for some time been pushing to develop an ordinance for the regulaHeading 2tion of vacant buildings in Berlin. We were encouraged when recently an attorney from the LGC said he felt this could be done without having to pass a state law to authorize it, because he felt current state law already authorizes. Accordingly, the staff is currently working on such an ordinance which we hope to be bringing to the Mayor and Council in the near future for your consideration.
Tax Shift of Tax Exempt Properties
Attached hereto is a completed list of tax exemptions for 2005 by municipality for the entire state provided by DRA. It is interesting that a Town like CitySnBedford has total exemptions of $214k while placeStateBerlin has total exemptions $323k. Needless to say, the amount of the exemptions is picked up by the remainder of the property tax payers in the municipality.
The amounts of most of these exemptions are adopted by the municipality so one might say the levels are basically chosen by the municipality. However, one particularly unfair and onerous one is the one labeled Air & Water under RSA 72:12a. This is one in which the municipality has no say at all. Instead under this law NH DES makes a determination that some private facility like the old Fraser WWTF is a pollution control facility and therefore decides to make it exempt because the state wants to encourage pollution control facilities. This is fine except that the Federal government already encourages and regulates these facilities under Federal law and the State is foisting the whole cost of this incentive it chose onto the unlucky municipality which hosts the facility which would otherwise be paying property taxes to the community. Berlin is foregoing $92k in property taxes because of this non-sensical state law and Bethlehem (its private landfill) is foregoing $382k in property taxes because of this law.
Follow Up DES letter on 80% of design capacity flow and DES inspection
Attached is a second letter we received from NH DES relative to the design flow capacity of the Berlin WWTF. According to their records, Berlin's plant probably mostly due to Infiltration and Inflow has been at or exceeded 80% of its permitted design flow as the Council is already aware. We are not sure why this second letter came from DES saying essentially the same as the first a month or so ago. In any event, the State will be monitoring any new sewer connections applied for in the City.
Ironically, Plant Superintendent Mickey Therriault sent up this past week an email indicating that February's flows were down to a record low of 1.28MGD, a long way below the 2.11 80% of design flow that the State is referring to.
Finally, just to keep us honest, the State carried out a surprise inspection of the WWTF on January 31, 2007. Attached are the results of that inspection as well as the WWTF response to it.
Rockingham Fire Thank You
Attached.
Manager's Time Keeping
Attached.