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City Manager's Report 2/19/2007

Governor's Visit

The devastating fire which occurred on Friday on Rockingham Street coincidentally turned out to include one of the locations the Governor visited only a few hours earlier on his tour of housing in Berlin accompanied by the State Fire Marshall's office as well as the Mayor and City Fire and Inspections staff. The Governor is certainly now directly aware of some of the types of housing issues the City is dealing with.

Again it appears the Fire Department did an outstanding job in dealing with a difficult fire under very trying circumstances.

ATV legislation hearing

Mayor Danderson, Councilor Lafleur and I attended a legislative hearing in Concord last Wednesday on a SB 143 bill which would reduce to current criteria required for siting ATV trails to criteria more in line with those required of other state activities. Currently the ATV criteria are unique and much tougher. Under the current requirements, only 50-60 miles of trails of a Master Plan proposed 139 miles of trails would ever be able to be developed. This is clearly not enough trail development to make placePlaceNameJericho PlaceTypeMountain PlaceTypeState Park a major destination for riders. We learned when we got there  

It was much clearer at the hearing than we were originally led to believe that the legislature, because of opposition groups, is not going to readily reduce the criteria. However, it does appear that there is a great deal of sentiment among the committee members to make an exception for the placePlaceNameBerlin PlaceTypePark to allow it to go forward.

Berlin to receive a Veteran's Center

Attached is a letter from the Secretary of the Veteran's Administration indicating that Berlin is slated to receive one of 29 new Veteran's Centers which are being added across the country. These are mental health counseling centers for veterans. Also attached is an email from PersonNameGivenNameTim SnBeebe, who is the regional manager and will be the person responsible for getting it going.  

Dead River Channel Project

We met on Thursday February 8th, with representatives Leon Wendte and Jerry Lang of the US Natural Resources and Conservation Service to review the issues surrounding why the City should sign off on the closing of the project that built the Jericho Lake Dam in the late 60's. We had hoped that these officials might be able to assist us in finding some mechanism to assist with the channelization of the PlaceNameplaceDead PlaceTypeRiver where it runs behind the buildings on addressStreetMain Street.

We left the meeting agreeing to take the matter of the City signing off on the closure of the project once these gentlemen get to us the documentation of why the channel work that had been part of the project was ultimately decided to be not necessary and therefore not undertaken. They promised to provide us with this documentation.

President's Budget

Attached is a breakdown provided by the LGC of the President's Federal Budget Submission as it relates to municipalities. This summary was put together by the National League of Cities.

Day in Government

I met with High School teachers Tammy Watson and Dave Morrisette of the Sociology Department at the High School to review the possibility of a day in government type of program that Councilor Lafleur has talked about. We agreed that it would be good to experiment with such a program and will probably be shooting for an initial program some time in May which would consist of some or all of the following over two days:

  • City official(s) address class(es)
  • Students attend structured Council Work Session and Council Meeting
  • Students attend Staff Meeting
  • Students spend time in various Departments

They will continue to work with us to develop this event which could perhaps be carried once or more each year.

DES Public Education Meeting on Former Chlor-Alkali facility

NHDES will be holding a public education meeting at the Berlin City Hall on Tuesday February 27th from 4-6pm to review and educate the public on the clean up project as well as the fish advisory they have issued. Citizens will have the opportunity to meet one on one with DES staff to discuss any concerns they may have.

Primex Training on Risk Management

Primex, our property liability, health and Worker’s Comp. insurer will be providing a training workshop to the City’s Joint Loss Prevention Committee (JLPC) on Thursday March 1, 2007, in the City Hall auditorium. The workshop which will put on by Nick Manolis will be on Building and Maintaining a Positive Risk-Management Culture.