Claremont
At Wednesday night’s City Council meeting, Assistant Mayor Vic Bergeron said two submissions have been received so far.
Bergeron said he and Councilors Carolyn Towle and Scott Pope would review the submissions and recommend their choice to the council. The selection will be based on qualifications, not price. Once a firm has been chosen, the city will then negotiate a contract.
The current schedule puts the council behind its original plan, announced in late March, to have a search firm hired in May or June; advertising for the position was to begin this month.
In March, Mayor Charlene Lovett told the council that one company that conducts searches told her it takes about four months to have someone ready to start work. The council has said it wanted the new city manager on the job by Nov. 1 so he or she could spend at least two months working with Santagate.
The sense of urgency was expressed by some councilors on Wednesday night.
“I would like to complete the selection (of a search firm) as soon as possible,” Councilor Allen Damren said.
Also Wednesday night, the council approved a resolution to build a new hangar at the airport for $365,000. Of that figure, 90 percent, or $328,500, will come from the Federal Aviation Administration; 5 percent, or $18,500, from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation; and 5 percent from the city’s airport reserve account.
Fire Chief Rick Bergeron said construction could begin in the fall in a different location than the current hangar, which is the airport’s original structure. The airport opened in 1927.
The current hangar includes a pilot’s lounge, office and maintenance area. The new hangar will house only planes. A second phase, for which another grant will be sought, would demolish the old hangar to make way for construction of a new terminal building, Bergeron said.
Police Chief Alex Scott told the council that his department’s plans for a Facebook page to provide information to the public is taking longer than expected because of the comment aspect of the social media site.
“It is not as easy as we thought about our ability to control what can be posted,” Scott said. “But we have not given up.”
Scott said the department accepts the reality of the comment section and is trying to balance that with the benefits of providing accurate information about police activity.
“We don’t want to spend time monitoring it because we don’t have the staff,” Scott said, promising another update in late September.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
