January 1, 2015 Minutes

Pittsfield Planning Board
Town Hall, 85 Main Street
Pittsfield, NH 03263
Minutes of Public Meeting

DATE: Thursday, January 1, 2015

AGENDA ITEM 1: Call to Order

Chair Clayton Wood called the meeting to order at 7:00 P.M.

AGENDA ITEM 2: Roll Call

Planning board members present:
Clayton Wood (CW), planning board member and chair;
Pat Heffernan (PH), planning board member and vice-chair;
Jim Pritchard (JP), planning board member and secretary;
Bill Miskoe (BM), planning board member;
Larry Konopka (LK), selectmen’s ex officio planning board member; and
Roland Carter (RC), alternate planning board member.

Planning board members absent: Gerard LeDuc (GL), alternate for the selectmen’s ex officio planning board member.

Members of the public appearing before the planning board: Carole Dodge, Daren Nielsen, Eric Nilsson.

“Members of the public appearing before the planning board” includes only members of the public who spoke to the board. It does not include members of the public who were present but who did not speak to the board.

AGENDA ITEM 3: Agenda Review

CW said that the board had expected to open tonight’s meeting and adjourn it immediately with a continuance of the meeting to January 8, 2015. CW said that a board can continue the business of a meeting to another meeting, but CW said that whether continuing a meeting itself was possible was not clear. (See RSA 91-A:2, I, defining “meeting.”) CW asked whether, in light of the preceding considerations, the board wanted to postpone possible adoption of new rules of procedure until the regular meeting in February.

The consensus of the board—LK, BM, and PH—was to proceed with consideration of new rules of procedure tonight.

LK asked that CW add a members’ concerns period to the agenda.

AGENDA ITEM 4: Changes to the Rules of Procedures

BM moved “that the planning board adopt the rules and procedures as described in the 13-page handout which is currently in the folders of each of the board members.”

JP said that he had not received a copy of the rules-of-procedure proposal.

CW made a copy for JP. The rules-of-procedure proposal is town administrator Mike Williams’s proposal.

PH seconded BM’s motion.

Discussion:

LK asked BM to revise his motion to make adoption of the rules of procedure effective on April 1, 2015. LK was concerned that the new rules provision “The secretary shall be a separate person hired by the Board of Selectmen and not be a regular Planning Board member” (section 4, 5) would interfere with JP’s one-year term currently in progress as board secretary. (See RSA 673:8, and RSA 673:9, I. JP was reelected secretary and recording secretary on April 3, 2014.)

CW agreed with LK on the question of the secretary’s one-year term. CW also said that the board was throwing away 2+1/2 years of work on rules designed to address specific problems that the board had faced during the past 3 years.

BM thought that the new rules should become effective immediately because they would correct problems that the board needed to correct immediately, such as eliminating the recording secretary office that JP now holds. But after some discussion of the secretary’s term, BM agreed to revise his motion to make adoption of the rules of procedure effective on April 1, 2015.

PH seconded the revised motion.

Vote to adopt the rules and procedures as described in the 13-page handout which is currently in the folders of each of the board members, with the adoption to be effective on April 1, 2015: carried 3 – 2 – 0. (Voting “yes”: PH, BM, and LK. Voting “no”: JP and CW. Abstaining: none.)

AGENDA ITEM ADDED: Members’ Concerns

LK suggested that the board have a public input period at the beginning of each meeting in addition to a public input period at the end of the meeting.

LK referred to JP’s question at the December 18, 2014, meeting about the selectmen’s plans to propose a town meeting warrant article to expand the planning board to 7 members. LK said, “Nothing’s been finalized. It’s just being discussed. There’s a lot of things being discussed right now. That’s why I didn’t really want to speak too much of it, because nothing has really been done.”

LK referred to the minutes of November 6, 2014, and November 20, 2014, which the planning board has not yet approved. LK said that he wanted those minutes reviewed and redone. LK said that those minutes had a lot of material that did not need to be in the minutes. LK moved “to direct the secretary to rewrite the minutes of the planning board of November 6 and November 20 in a manner that is acceptable to a majority of the board and that such revision be completed within 30 days.” LK said that he wanted more condensation, more like the selectboard minutes, and less assumption.

JP agreed to write new minutes with more condensation. JP said that he would have to vote against LK’s motion as stated because JP cannot know in advance what the board will approve.

Vote to direct the secretary to rewrite the minutes of the planning board of November 6 and November 20 in a manner that is acceptable to a majority of the board and that such revision be completed within 30 days: carried 3 – 1 – 1. (Voting “yes”: PH, BM, and LK. Voting “no”: JP. Abstaining: CW.)

LK referred to the discussion of Shaw Road on December 18, 2014, and wanted to clarify that discussion. LK had said that the beginning of Shaw Road had been very bad but has since been repaired in September. The Wood subdivision on Shaw Road was approved (on November 6, 2014) after the repair. LK said, “Shaw Road now to me is perfect. It’s only a band-aid, because it’s going to need to be fixed right, in my opinion, this is just my opinion. But the only problem, from what I have been told from the highway superintendent he has, is the drainage. He has questions. But what I didn’t say was Shaw Road, since George [Bachelder] has gone down there and done some work to it, I think it’s beautiful. And there is a statement in there that I wanted Shaw Road paved. I do not want to see the scenic road [RSA 231:157 and :158] paved. I like my road. I just did not like the beginning of it.”

AGENDA ITEM 5: Public Input

Eric Nilsson asked about the board’s practice of listing in the minutes changes being made to minutes being approved.

CW said that this practice had been the board’s practice for 4 or 5 years. CW explained that both the draft minutes and the approved minutes must be preserved and made available upon request, and, for that reason, the changes are listed. Usually, the changes are just typographical errors.

Daren Nielsen asked why it matters who does the minutes if the board can change the minutes in the approval process, if the recorder at least tries to do a good job.

Carole Dodge said that “we’ve tried and summarily been dismissed. It just doesn’t happen.”

Daren Nielsen noted that JP had been the recording secretary for 4 years. Daren Nielsen asked whether problems with the minutes were a new occurrence or had they happened before.

CW said that there had been concerns “several times. The board has put him back in that position every year. There were concerns early on, then they go away. The minutes usually get approved unanimously. The changes have always been part of the public record.”

JP asked to clarify that Daren Nielsen was asking whether there had been complaints before.

CW said, “there have been some complaints. But the other side of the coin is that there have been some minutes that have been fully approved.”

Daren Nielsen said that the minutes are very detailed. If the minutes are inaccurate, then the board should correct them.

CW said that all changes that board members request have always gone into the minutes. The public does not get to request changes to minutes.

BM explained the process by which draft minutes get approved. BM said that the board sometimes finds inaccuracies, omissions, or something that the board dislikes. The board then approves the draft minutes as changed.

JP said that he wanted to speak directly to Daren Nielsen’s question. JP said that he had been the recording secretary for a year in 2011 on probation. JP was not an elected officer then. JP said that the minutes are almost always approved on BM’s motion and PH’s second. Because the corrections are always listed, anyone can determine who proposed the corrections. JP said, “Probably fewer than 5 corrections have been proposed by anybody other than me. Usually, if there’s a problem in the minutes, I’m the one who finds it. Almost always.” JP said that he had insisted on being an elected recording secretary after the 2011 probationary period and that there had been very few complaints during the past 3 years. JP said that the board had had 2 difficult meetings on November 6 and November 20, that the board had not liked JP’s minutes of those meetings, but that JP had done his best.

AGENDA ITEM 6: Adjournment

CW moved to adjourn the meeting.

BM seconded the motion.

Vote to adjourn the planning board meeting of January 1, 2015: carried 5 – 0 – 0. (Voting “yes”: JP, PH, CW, BM, and LK. Voting “no”: none. Abstaining: none.) The planning board meeting of January 1, 2015, is adjourned at 7:47 P.M.

Minutes approved: January 8, 2015

______________________________ _____________________
Clayton Wood, Chairman Date

I transcribed these minutes (not verbatim) on January 3, 2015, from notes that I made during the planning board meeting on January 1, 2015, and from a copy that Chairman Clayton Wood made on January 2, 2015, of the town’s digital recording of the meeting.

____________________________________________
Jim Pritchard, planning board recorder and secretary