Behind the scenes at the Lions Club property

The following letter from Town Administrator Carter Terenzini to a member of the MCA was in response to inquiries about what is happening behind the scenes at the town owned Lions Club property. Apparently, a lot has been going on and as is typical it seems with our Town Administrator, out of the public eye.

MCA

I write in response to your document request for (a) "All the staff members of the team that is developing the Lions Club property Sonya, Donna, Tom ect" (sic) and (b) "Also the reason all the staff meetings since 2008, time and dates, why they do not come under RSA 91 A, meetings to be posted and minutes." I will respond in the order you raised the issues.

a.) I am managing the project. I include the user agency (Recreation) and the maintenance agency (DPW) as appropriate to each discussion. I also draw upon those with experience and institutional knowledge of the history of the proposal and those who I believe can give me insight as to various volunteer efforts that might be undertaken. To date that has been Mr. Tom Howard and Mr. Larry Cotter. The project is being designed under the direction of Ray Korber, P.E. Principal in the firm of KVPartners LLC which is the Town Engineer. He draws upon those professionals on his team as he needs.

b.) RSA 91-A was crafted to ". . . ensure. . . public access to the actions, discussions and records of all public bodies. . .". A "Public body" means ". . .Any legislative body, governing body, board, commission, committee, agency, or authority of any. . . town. . .or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto." [RSA 91-A VI (d)]. Simply put, the appointed staff of any community is not a Public Body. The staff is not engaged hi a "meeting" as defined by RSA 91-A. Such a convening of staff and others thus does not trigger the requirement to produce and maintain minutes under this statute.

Notwithstanding that the Staff is not a public body for the purposes of RSA 91-A, we do and will provide substantial opportunity for the distribution of information and public discussion of the major construction projects being proposed or undertaken. For this recreation fields project I expect this meeting will be sometime in November.

I trust this has, again, answered these questions.