Board of Selectmen Meeting, January 22, 2024
Disruptive road closure planned. Snow plowing failures. Concerns about the voting machine warrant article. Decisions on the poisoned well and highway garage fuel tank.
Replacement of Rt 152 Bridge over North River to Cause Major Disruption
Much of the meeting was focused on a public hearing conducted by the NH Department of Transportation about the need to replace the Rt 152 bridge over North River, located between Freeman Hall and Priest roads.
The bridge was constructed in 1925 and received a major overhaul in 1970. It has been showing signs of structural deterioration and must now be replaced. The state will be paying for the replacement.
The usual approach to replacing bridges is to demolish and rebuild one side of the bridge and then the other, allowing for alternating one-way traffic so that the road is not fully closed. Unfortunately, the 1925-era masonry supports for the bridge do not have the structural integrity to allow this approach.
Further complicating matters is that the bridge is in a protected wetlands that must be disturbed as little as possible. Installing a temporary bridge would substantially increase the disturbance of the wetlands and increase the cost of the project.
For these reasons, the Department of Transportation has determined that the most practical solution is to close the road and use the fastest means available for replacing the bridge. The proposed plan is a 28-day closure, weather permitting, during the summer of 2025. A recent similar project in Deerfield was completed only 3 days behind schedule, with the delay being caused by heavy rains.
Rt 152 carries 3,300 vehicles daily, 7% of which are trucks. This traffic will have to be re-routed. The official detour signs will direct drivers to other state highways. Locals and those using GPS will know that secondary roads in town will make for a shorter detour, with Priest Road bearing the bulk of the traffic, but with McCrillis Road, Smoke Street, and Freeman Hall Road also affected.
Travel time between locations west of the bridge and the town’s Fire Station, Police Station, School, Town Hall, and Highway Garage will be greatly increased. For locations east of the bridge, travel time to the Recycling Center be greatly increased.
Response times for emergency services will be severely affected, with increased travel time also affecting workloads. Some mutual aid from Barrington and Northwood can be expected, but relying on the taxpayers of neighboring towns to take care of Nottingham needs is unfair to them, and they may not be able to assist at times.
Construction will take place during the school's summer vacation. Student travel time will not be affected.
The School Superintendent, the Police Chief, and the Highway Director were on hand. They expressed concerns about the project and answered questions from the board and the public. The Fire Department was unrepresented.
They and the selectmen pressed the DOT representatives about other options. The responses were re-iterations of why those options had been excluded.
For more information, see the slides that were presented and the DOT project page for the replacement of the bridge.
Failure to Snow Plow on Many Roads
A citizen described a harrowing story of unplowed conditions on Tremblay Drive. State highway trucks had created a large snow dam at the entrance to Tremblay. The citizen had to make four attempts to get onto Rt 4, entailing the need for a dangerous running start to break through the snow dam. The citizen presented a list of ten other roads in town that other citizens had told them were similarly not plowed.
The board thanked the citizen for alerting them about this. It was noted that the Highway Director and four of the five staff were all new to their jobs, and some of the town’s contractors and their employees were also new.
If citizens experience future problems like this, if it is during business hours they are encouraged to contact the Town Administrator’s office at (603) 679-5022. If it is after hours, they are encouraged to contact Rockingham Dispatch at (603) 679-2225. Dispatch can contact the Highway Director outside of business hours.
[Commentary: It would be useful for these instructions to be added to the town’s website.]
Selectman Bartlett reminded the audience that the town does not monitor social media.
Voting Machine Warrant Article
The Town Moderator has registered concerns about what the town will do if the board’s warrant article for buying a new voting machine fails. The existing machine’s certification ends at the end of 2024 and is not expected to be re-certifiable. The town is by law supposed to machine count. The law authorizes the board to buy a machine.
Selectman Dabrieo inquired about whether the warrant article could be removed from the ballot. The Town Administrator said that it could not.
[Commentary: RSA 32:10, i (e) contains what is known as the “no means no” clause. If the voters turn down spending in a warrant article, the board is prohibited from spending money on that item. This is also an issue with some of the warrant articles the board has proposed about roads. The board thinks the roadwork is necessary, but the spending cannot fit into the operating budget due to the 4% tax cap. Should the warrant article fail, the board will be prohibited from doing the roadwork.]
Highway Department Fuel Tank
Highway Director Steve Rollins presented his case for why a diesel fuel tank should be installed at the department’s garage on Flutter Street. While the town has a tank at the Smoke Street gravel pit, this adds travel time and is often far out of the way when the trucks are out working, in which case the trucks must go out of town to obtain fuel, which they’ve needed to do during the recent snow storms. The funding for the tank would come from federal grant funds available to the town but restricted to new highway projects.
After discussion, the board narrowly rejected the proposal with Selectmen Welsh, Morin, and Bartlett opposed and Shirland and Dabrieo in favor.
Poisoned Well
The board deliberated on what to do about the residential well that a citizen has, in four separate appearances, complained to the board that the town has poisoned with road salt.
Selectman Dabrieo reported that he had researched the citizen’s claim that the Department of Transportation has a policy of replacing wells that had been contaminated with road salt. This policy exists, but is limited to wells constructed prior to 1965. The state makes its determination based on two years of water tests conducted by the state. Dabrieo thinks the town should create a similar policy and use that policy to decide the issue, noting that so far the town only has resident-provided tests, and for less than one year.
Selectman Shirland noted that the well in question is nonconforming and in a nonconforming location.
The board was unanimous in deciding that this case did not qualify for town-funded well replacement.
Appointment of Fire Chief
The board unanimously approved the Fire Department’s election of Matt Curry and officially appointed him as Fire Chief. Curry was not present to take his oath of office.
Public Comment
A citizen asked several unrelated questions, which were mostly answered by the Town Administrator.
Q: Is there a particular time the roads are to be plowed by?
A: Town policy is to begin plowing once there are two to three inches of accumulation, but the Highway Director has discretion about this depending on the weather forecast.
Q: Is there a priority list of which roads are to be plowed first?
A: All roads have the same priority. Each plow driver has a list of roads to plow.
Q: How many salaried employees does the town have?
A: The town has 44 employees on the payroll, including both full-time and part-time.
Q: How many positions are vacant?
A: Three in the Fire Department, two in the Recycling Center, one in the Police. Selectman Shirland noted that the Fire Department has per diem staff and on-call members who provide coverage. Selectman Morin pointed out that the town is having difficulty finding employees because the town does not pay well. This could be solved by the town becoming one of the higher-paying towns, but [asking rhetorically] do the voters want this?
Q: For transparency, is there any place online where one can see what positions are vacant?
A: With the exception of inferring it from the job postings, no.
Q: How much of the $2.6 million unrestricted fund is from unpaid taxes?
A: Some, but it is only a small amount. Nearly all of the fund is from funds budgeted but not spent. There’s almost always some because the town by law cannot spend more than what was budgeted, which means that the town must err on the side of underspending the total budget.
Q: Where are these plans for a new police station that the board keeps talking about but which neither the public nor any selectman has ever seen?
A: They are at the Fire Station. The architect probably also has a copy.
Q: Then why haven’t you obtained them?
A: They are not important. They’re not building plans. They’re just an architect’s rendering of how an addition could be made to the Fire Station to house the Police Station. We have no idea whether this will meet our current needs or whether this is a good location. That Fire Station was built in 2007. It’s all outdated. No information in them would change anything we are doing. The purpose of the warrant article is to determine a location and to provide building plans for that location.
Q: If you’re not going to go get those plans, may I get them?
A: Selectman Shirland asked why they’d want to do this. The citizen said, “because you’ve been talking about them for a month and no one has seen them.”
Q: What about this highway utility truck you say isn’t being used?
A: It is being used. It is equipped with a plow. The issue is that it is not being used to carry and spread sand and salt. That was a deliberate decision. This reduces a truck’s lifespan. We wanted a truck that could be used for many years. Where did you hear that the truck wasn’t being used? The citizen said, “from the Budget Committee.” Selectman Morin said, “the Budget Committee has a way of looking at things that’s different from how we look at them. The truck is being used for what we purchased it for.”
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As a Priest road resident, our road took a heavy hit when the bridge on Freemen Hall bridge was repaired after a huge flood several or more years ago. Our road was a nightmare. The police were no help for speeding cars. This road became so dangerous and when a large number of us went to the selectmen’s meeting, they made promises to help and did nothing. Second nightmare on priest road.