City Manager's Report 6/18/2007
School To Career Award for Fire Department
In September of 2006 the Berlin Fire Department partnered up with the Berlin High School's School-to-Career Program. The goal of the program is to provide work-based learning opportunities to Berlin High School Students. The Department's School-to-Career student was Noah Hallgren, a BHS senior.
GivenNameNoah’s assignment from the Fire Chief was to design a program for Interns to follow when completing their internship with the Fire Department. GivenNameNoah met this challenge with great success. The program manual he developed is a 30-page how to manual for interns with objectives and goals to be met.
Because of the dedicated effort of GivenNameDonna SnCouture, the School to Career Coordinator at the BHS, PersonNameGivenNameNoah SnHallgren and all the Berlin Firefighters~this program was successful.
Last Thursday, June 14, 2007 a plaque of honor was given to the Fire Department by the School -to-Career Program.
Mason Sreet Bridge Open
The Mason Street Bridge project was completed enough to be opened on Saturday about two weeks ahead of schedule. There is still some minor work to be done at the bridge joints but the bridge will remain open.
Community Banner Services
We have received the attached notice from Community Banner Services, the company which started the banner program in municipalities across the State and in Berlin and Gorham. The notice indicates that they will not be renewing the sponsor program with local merchants and will be discontinuing the community banner program itself due to various problems they have run into with placing the banners. After a year of the program which has had more than its share of glitches, I think everyone is better off with the discontinuance of the program and was therefore happy to see the notice from the company. A year of the banners is plenty. They don't get the maintenance they should. We hope and expect that the Company will in fact promptly take down the banners at program end as a banner that is getting ratty is far worse than no banner at all.
Best of New Hampshire Event
This Thursday evening the Best of New Hampshire event will occur at the Verizon Center in Manchester. This includes recognition of Berlin's Riverfire event and being a City on the Rise. Several City folk will be attending this event Thursday June 21st from 5:30-8:30. The Best of New Hampshire logo is already on the City's Web Site at www.berlinnh.gov.
Relay for Life this Weekend – Councilors needed
The Relay for Life is a cancer fighting fundraiser which is done every year in communities across the country. Berlin's is scheduled for this Friday and Saturday at the College. They are apparently looking for some local elected officials to volunteer to be smeared in a pie throwing contest and/or for "Jail and Bail" fund raiser. They would like to start with the Mayor and Council. Sandy Lemire is Co-Chair of the 10th annual event here. Her contact information is 466-3360 and sandy.nh@verizon.net.
AVER Annual Dinner
The AVER Annual Dinner was held last Thursday at the White Mountain Chalet. Larry Kelly, Director of Tri-County Cap won for Citizen of the Year and NCIA won the Small Business of the Year award. Katie Paine was the guest speaker speaking on the area surveys she has been doing, and Story-teller Rebecca Rule entertained the crowd with some local story-telling.
Legislative Items
- SB 88 on Collective Bargaining
This bill which the Mayor and Council as well as the LGC have strongly opposed was tabled last week effectively killing it. The Bill would have cut in half the already extremely low threshold for creating a bargaining unit from 10 to 5, would have made safety items a mandatory subject of bargaining, and would have provided an evergreen clause which goes further than the existing evergreen situation which provides for the status quo when a contract expires without a new contract ready to replace it.
- HB143 on Apportionment of Damages
This is a bill strongly opposed by the Mayor and Council that would allow municipalities (deep pockets) to be on the hook for all the liability in an incident in which it had minimal responsibility. The Senate, in spite of a close split there, and strong lobbying by the trial lawyers, voted 15-8 to table the bill two weeks ago. However, the bill was amended and pulled off the table last week and then passed by the Senate. The House voted to concur with the Senate amendment and now the bill goes to the Governor for signature. The GivenNameBill will go to the Governor soon and LGC believes he can be persuaded to veto it if he hears from enough of us that this bill is basically unfair and serves no one but the trial lawyers who have lobbied so hard for its passage. Apparently the trial lawyers convinced the representatives that the amendment which was added removes the basic unfairness of the bill. According to the LGC the amendment does not change a thing and what was so unfair about the bill before (a party with 1% of the responsibility of an accident can legally get stuck with 99% of the cost) is still in the bill that they just passed. The Governor needs to hear from you.