City Manager's Report 4/16/2007
Pandemic Drill
The pandemic drill in Berlin occurred on Saturday morning starting at 7:30 am for the many volunteers, evaluators and emergency personnel who participated. Technically, the drill started on Thursday when a call came in that people in Berlin and other parts of the State had been exposed to anthrax. This required that people in Berlin be given vaccine en masse. The Point of Distribution (POD) for this was Berlin High School.
The exercise itself, including the Just-In-Time training and the "Hot Washes" (debriefings) afterward, ran from 7:30am to about 3 in the afternoon. Approximately 50 victim/actors participated and approximately 80 volunteer workers created a positive POD drill.
The State of StateNew Hampshire called for this drill and even hired contractors who came in from StateTennessee and Arizona to assist and evaluate. Yet, on Saturday morning, one would not have known that the State of New Hampshire had anything to with the exercise. There were no calls from the State Office of Emergency Management on the Status of anything. Even the serum that arrived from the State ended up being two little boxes of bottles which couldn't have begun to serve anyone in a real emergency.
At the other end of the spectrum, Laura Viger, as usual, with an active committee made up of representatives from a number of towns in northern New Hampshire, saw that this drill which involved a very large number of volunteers coming together to accomplish a fairly complicated exercise, was able to do so about as smoothly as anyone could possibly expect.
Randall Trull served very competently as the Incident Commander; Andre Caron saw to all the communication and technology issues; Blandine Shallow oversaw the financial end of things and Angela Martin-Giroux was involved in the transportation of the public to the High School for vaccination. Needless to say, there were many others too numerous to mention who played their parts well and made this exercise something to be proud of. More importantly, such exercises should greatly improve the area's ability to deal with real emergencies, should they occur in this area.
Infiltration and Inflow Kick-Off Meeting
Field staff from Wright-Pierce have been here this week to begin checking the flow in various manholes in selected areas for I&I. In some ways, it is like looking for needles in haystacks, but the weather sure is cooperating. Now would seem to be as good a time as any to be doing this. Hopefully, with some luck, they may be able to identify some low-hanging fruit which can be identified and dealt with in a fairly expeditious manner. The BOP is expected to add some 255K gpd to our sanitary sewer flows. At minimum we would like to be able to identify and remove and equivalent amount of I&I from our system.
Wind Damage at Airport
Eric Kaminsky has reported some wind damage to some of the hangars at the airport which we have yet to have any real assessment of because he is dealing with it as we speak. Attached are some photos which give some idea of the damage.
LGC Bills of Interest
SB 88, which would lower from 10 to 3 the number of positions needed to petition the Labor Board for a bargaining unit and make safety issues and staffing mandatory issues of bargaining, is set for another hearing on Wednesday April 18th at 10am in Room 307 of the LOB. Apparently this bill sailed through the Senate and now is being heard in the House. At the behest of the LGC, I wrote to our representative Ed Mears, who is the Chair of the House Labor Committee, a short letter covering the first letter to the Senate Committee expressing the opposition of the Mayor and Council to this bill.
HB 107 is an NHMA policy which has significant implications for Berlin. We have talked about the possibility of charging a fee to commercial properties for the solid waste pickups we provide each week. We assumed, apparently incorrectly, that we had the authority to do that. Apparently, we were wrong because it appears that this bill would do just that for all municipalities in the State. The bill came out of the house with a unanimous "Ought to Pass". It will be voted on in the Senate this week and hopefully will have a similar outcome.
HB 588 with respect to the exchange of Cates Hill and addressStreetJericho Road will be heard in the Senate on the 19th. That is a blessing as apparently there are some major washouts on addressStreetCates Hill Road as a result of this storm which the State will have to repair before the exchange.
SB143 which would allow waiver of the "fine filter" requirements for the development of trails at Jericho Mountain State Park has been referred to RR&D and is being watched closely by GivenChris Gamache of the Trails Bureau for the next hearing on it.
Governor Acknowledgment
Attached is a short note from the Governor thanking us for keeping him informed our legislative concerns.