City awards longtime youth coach Rodney Roy, takes up sewer rate increases and revisits Elm St. parking

Roy has also served on the Laconia Parks and Recreation Commission since 2010. Upon retirement from his career at the state prison, he became a paraprofessional at LHS.

“Not only is he the coach but has been heavily involved with the kids, their teachers, and making sure the players maintain sufficient grades to earn their playing time on the field,” read Mayor Andrew Hosmer, who presented the award at Monday’s city council meeting. “He has been supportive, strict, and very structured for the success of the kids in the classroom as well as on the field.” 

“He has been, and continues to be, an important part in shaping many of the youth of Laconia, and there is no end in sight,” Hosmer continued. Roy’s father, Hosmer noted, was the first recipient of the Bieniarz award 35 years ago.

A committee comprised of a member of the city council, school board and police department selects a winner from among submitted nominations. 

“I’m humbled and honored to receive the award,” Roy said in an interview. “It’s always been a goal of mine to receive [it], since my dad had gotten it.” 

“I just love what I do,” Roy responded when asked what fuels his commitment to youth sports. “The goal is to make good people, to help kids learn the work ethic that goes into being successful ... and then the final goal is for them to be successful athletes.”

In the meeting’s remainder, the council took up an array of items, voting to sell two lots in the Lakes Business Park, to reclassify a former water department storage property and make way for its sale, and to approve a tenancy change at 17 Church St., among other actions.

There will be a public hearing at the Feb. 13 council meeting about a revised sewer rate increase. Demands on the sewer budget are climbing, as the Winnipesaukee River Basin Program’s water treatment services become more expensive, inflation accelerates cost increases and debt payments to cover significant sewer maintenance across the city rise. The rate originally proposed by the Department of Public Works in December included increases of between 14% and 21% for each of the next five years.

Councilors, most vocally Councilor Henry Lipman, bristled at the steep increase and hoped to engineer a way to spread cost-coverage over future ratepayers for projects that would have long-term benefits, rather than square them on current rate payers.

After working with the finance committee, which Lipman chairs, the new proposed rate increases have been cinched to 6%, 9% and 9% for the next three years. This means that, for an average user of the city water and sewer, annual rates would climb from $426 to $452 — compared with $486 under the originally proposed jump. The city would use three bonds of $3 million each to cover the difference. 

A property near the dead-end of Lafayette Street has been owned by the city water department since the late 1990s, according to property records, and was used as a water tank site before becoming a stockpile area. After some complaints from neighbors on the residential street, the city decided early last year to discontinue use of the site for that purpose.

Per a request from the water department, councilors voted to declare the lot “surplus property,” which city code requires before it can be sold. 

In the last few years, “We were met with a lot of complaints there and so we decided not to use that for stockpiling purposes anymore, so it doesn’t make sense for us to keep the land,” Water Department Superintendent Ben Crawford told the council on Jan. 9, when it held a public hearing on the reclassification.

With the council’s approval of a tenancy change, the Laconia Housing and Redevelopment Authority renovated space at 17 Church St., which will become a second downtown location for Healthfirst. Healthfirst, with its first location near Busy Corner, is a federally qualified health center providing primary care to Lakes Region and Twin Rivers residents. A majority of those Healthfirst serves are of low or moderate income, and it also has a center in Franklin.

Two adjacent lots of the Lakes Business Park, a joint venture between Laconia and Gilford, were sold to 83 Airport Rd. Solar, LLC, which plans to put a solar array there. The sale of the adjacent lots on Hounsell Avenue had already been approved by the Business Park Commission and the Gilford Selectboard.

Before the conclusion of the public meeting, the council discussed and then re-tabled a request from 51 Elm developer Scott Everett to consider parking options in front of the project, set to open this spring. The council is weighing whether to include business-exclusive parking designations for spaces on Elm Street or to favor other parking restrictions.

Everett presented his parking proposal at the Dec. 27, 2022, council meeting. At a Jan. 9 public hearing on the issue, community members expressed both approval and skepticism about Everett and his development. At play in the parking question are ideas about how the city supports new local businesses and incentivizes investment in the city by developers while also balancing the interests of local residents who have voiced opposition to parking limitations.

“I think we’ve heard what the public has had to say about devoting parking spaces to a private interest,” Lipman said. “The approach we’re trying to work through, taking into account public comment, is something you’d described as a limited license for patron use.”

Lipman noted that, both downtown and in the Weirs, the city has a precedent of making financial investments in parking to support merchants in the area. The council is aiming to “strike a balance here in terms of what would allow for successful businesses to be available in the Lakeport area,” he continued. Because of in-process legal questions councilors are working through, they did not make any proposal and placed the matter back on the table.