City Manager's Report 1/19/2009
Main Street Fire
The devastating fire downtown over the weekend was another blow that we did not need. The Berlin Fire Department clearly did a superb job in what could not be more difficult conditions to contain the fire to just the two buildings. Captain Coulombe suffered some broken toes and and Lt. Viens suffered a bruised shoulder from their efforts at attempting to bring the conflagration under control.
At the most recent Master Plan meetings, the need for the development of a strong Downtown Master Plan has become very clear. The fires simply increase the need to re-commit that the center of the community will be a major focus of attention as housing has been and must continue to be.
DES Stimulus Funding Meeting Fri Jan 9
On Friday January 9th, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services held a session for municipalities from all over the State in Concord on their take of the developing stimulus funding matter in the new federal administration. Needless to say, the session was well attended with local officials from all over the state anxious to hear whatever they could about the expected funding process.
The officials from DES went over the various bills which are being considered by Congress. They also went through how they expect to handle any funding that they receive which will get funneled to the localities. Basically, DES said they would handle the additional funding the same way they handle the current programs that they operate, which are basically the State Revolving Loan Funding for both Drinking Water and Clean Water (sanitary sewer and WWTF) programs as well as Storm Water under the State's so-called 319 Program. In other words, DES will attempt to distribute any such funding they receive through the same programs they currently operate. They said that if a certain amount is allocated nationwide for certain facilities such as Clean Water, they would in NH expect to get roughly one percent of the nationwide allocation.
The one common theme in all the stimulus funding discussions is the need for projects to be "shovel ready" which presumably means all permitted and ready to go out to bid so that actual construction could occur within somewhere between 90 and 180 days. One of the largest difficulties will come in sorting out just what that means and how it will be interpreted by the State agencies through which municipalities will obtain any funding they receive.
District Heating Meeting
The third of a series of meetings on District and Institutional Heating was held on Wednesday January 4th at Plymouth State. These meetings which have been well attended have been organized by Richard Demark of the North Country Resource Conservation & Development Area, NH USDA/Natural Resource Conservation Service in the hope of generating more interest in these types of alternative energy programs as a means of making us less dependent on oil and gas for all of our heating needs. Because of Berlin's central density, it may be in a good position to encourage a district heating type of program. Most of the effort at this point however, is to try to get these alternative types of biomass heating plants into schools, hospitals college campuses and other similar institutions.
Berlin Gaming Meeting
This afternoon, Mayor Bertrand, Councilor Goudreau and I attended a meeting at the Dairy Bar with several other members of the community and the Chamber of Commerce. This meeting was hosted by a group called New Hampshire Charitable Gaming (NHCG, LL) which is already licensed and operates a so-called card room in Milford, NH. The company is proposing an operation in Berlin which would include slots and table games which would be introduced in phases (should NH law be amended to allow it) in phases. The company which indicates that it wants to work with any community it goes into talked about a kind of 3 phase approach in Berlin if the community wants it and the legislation is approved.
The overall project is described as essentially a night club type of operation. The first phase would be in 12-15k sq ft building size range and would include a 70 seat restaurant, about 250 slot machines and about 10 gaming tables. In this phase they would be shooting for about $10M in annual revenue and the cut for the locality would be about 3% or around $300k plus property taxes. This phase would require about 155FTE jobs.
The second phase would depend on the success of the first and in this phase the building size would be increase to about 25-30k sq. ft. with 500 slot machines and 20 tables. The third phase, again dependent on the success of the second phase, would increase the building to about 40k sq. ft with 1000 slot machines and 25 gaming tables and would amount to a full-fledged night club and hotel.
NHDOT Ten Year Plan
The New Hampshire Department of Transportation is again asking all of the regional transportation agencies to review transportation projects in each region of the State to determine relative need for the state's next 10-Year Highway Plan. The Regional Planning recommendations will be reviewed by the Governor's Advisory Committee on Intermodal Transportation GACIT) and will be discussed at public hearings around the state. The North Country Council, Inc (NCC) is looking for the comments of the Mayor and Council by the end of March so they can be included in their report to the NHDOT.
Legislative Matters
Hide your heads. The Legislature is again in session and one of the early bills (HB 197) is back before them. This bill would allow a party such as a municipality to have to pay the majority costs of a damage suit even if its contribution to the liability was minimal. Obviously, this makes sense if you are trial attorney, which is all that need be said….
Also, there is a bill in the hopper, HB 223, which would defer the municipal obligation under last year's comprehensive retirement reform bill to the end of this calendar year for municipalities which fall under the 125% "spiking" provision with respect to paying the actual pension benefit up front in the NHRS. Presumably this is because the legislature didn't realize the impact on some municipalities that this requirement would have. Fortunately, so far from what we have determined from the retirements we have so far seen, Berlin would has not fallen under this obligation because it has not padded its retirements to the extent that some other municipalities have.
Time Warner Communication
Attached is another communication from Time-Warner with respect to its negotiations for programming in its services.