Monday night was the first business meeting of the City Council and the agenda was thick. With the holidays, the Christmas Eve meeting and the Inauguration there was a lot of business that ended up being put off until this meeting. We struggled through an agenda that contained 3 Presentations, 10 Consent and Action Items, Committee Reports, Manager’s Report, New Business, Unfinished Business and Council Comments, but accomplished a lot.

The presentations started off on a good note with the presentation of Debra Bieniarz Award for Outstanding Service to the Youth and Children of Laconia to Bert Decormier and Bill Tuttle, who have been involved with Laconia Little League since its beginning. The way they were tricked to attend the meeting was wonderful. City Clerk Ann Kaligian came up with the idea to have them come to the meeting to argue against the MMS construction encroaching on Colby Field in a way that would affect the upcoming Little League season. Mayor Matt Lahey continued this deception by unrolling a piece of paper that was going to show how the field would be affected. When he unrolled the paper and showed it to the audience it was blank. He then began the presentation, which was a surprise to the co-recipients and their look of shock and surprise was priceless.

The next presentation was by Jody Connor, from NH DES and Brian Wolf, from the Lake Winnisquam Association. It concerned the growing plumes of Milfoil on Lake Winnisquam and a request for $5,000 to help pay for chemical treatment. There was some good discussion about this topic and some good questions asked. There is a fee on boat registrations that is supposed to help fund the eradication programs in the state but that money is also used in other boating programs, not leaving enough money to maintain the lakes. I discovered that last year there was a bill to require out of state boaters to pay $10 to use our lakes. I understand that this bill passed the House and Senate but was killed by the Governor. The end result is that we all agreed that this is just another example of the state shirking their responsibility to maintain New Hampshire Lakes from exotic vegetation. This request will be reviewed in the normal budget process and prioritized with the other items in the budget. I feel that some Corporations are working on helping local environmental programs and that there is grant money available for this program. I will be looking for ways to help this effort.

The last presentation was from Shanna Saunders, the Planning Director concerning the EPA report on “Smart Growth”. I haven’t had a chance to read all of this report but what I have read is wonderful. The Planning Department is going to use this report in updating the Master Plan and the Council will use the Master Plan to monitor the implementation of the report. Attorney Pat Woods mentioned that he is sharing the Downtown portion of the report with businesses in the Downtown area to help get support in implementing this part of the overall project. I plan on sharing the Weirs Beach portion of the program with the Weirs Action Committee to get the same results. Shanna said that her department will be posting the report on their web site soon and I will let you know when that happens.