Councilors continue to wrestle with Dive lease; public hearings set

LACONIA — City councilors, anxious over the terms of a proposed lease of city-owned dock space at Weirs Beach to a floating bar and restaurant, pressed Tuesday for a more ironclad agreement.

For close to an hour at Tuesday’s council meeting, some councilors reiterated the qualms they have about leasing an expanded section of the city docks at Weirs Beach to the Dive.

As currently proposed, the city would lease space to the Dive for an initial period of three years, while the Dive would pay to construct an addition to the docks where the barge-like vessel would be tied up.

The council voted 4-2 on May 11 to approve the lease with the understanding that concerns raised by some councilors – including responsibility for maintaining the Dive’s utilities and repairing any damage to the nearby swimming beach – be addressed in the final version of the lease. The vote required that Mayor Andrew Hosmer and Councilor David Bownes review the lease to ensure any concerns raised were addressed before City Manager Scott Myers signed the lease on behalf of the city.

However, after that vote was taken, the city learned the City Code prohibited any new dock leases, and that the code further prohibited the consumption of alcoholic beverages on the docks, or on vessels tied up there. Therefore, the City Code needed to be amended before any lease could be finalized.

On Tuesday the council was asked to give an initial approval to both the amendments to the code and the lease — the first step prior to scheduling a public hearing, after which the council could give second and final approval of both measures.

Instead, Councilor Bruce Cheney said even the latest version of the lease needed to be more airtight. In particular, he said, it needed to state unequivocally that the city could never be made a party to a suit against the Dive.

Councilor Bob Hamel, raised concerns over handicap accessibility. Hours before Tuesday’s council meeting the Winnipesaukee Flagship Corp., operator of the MS Mount Washington, sent a letter to the city stating the business owns the ramp which provides the only handicap access to the City Docks, and therefore would not allow Dive customers to use that access. Hamel said the issue of handicap accessibility needed to be resolved before any lease is signed.

Bownes and City Councilor Henry Lipman also expressed misgivings about the proposed agreement.

On Wednesday, Bownes said the issue of who owns the ramp and pier needs to be verified.

“I don’t know where the claim of ownership (by the Flagship Corp.) comes from,” said Bownes, who noted the Mount Washington has been tying up at The Weirs for more than 70 years. “We need to resolve it one way or another.”

But Hosmer urged councilors to see the economic opportunity which the Dive represents to the city, and especially Weirs Beach.

“We have a big opportunity,” the mayor said. “We don’t want to dissuade people from trying to get into an arrangement with the city.” And he further reminded the council, “These are precarious times for all businesses.”

After considerable parliamentary maneuvering which included the defeat of one motion and a subsequent successful reconsideration vote, the council voted to schedule two public hearings during the June 8 council meeting.

One hearing will be on the amendments to the City Code to broaden the city’s ability to lease dock space, and also to allow consumption of alcoholic beverages to licensed businesses that have a lease with the city.

The second hearing will be on the lease itself.

Councilors will be able to introduce amendments to either proposal following the hearings, Myers said. If there are no amendments, or only minor ones, then the proposals could receive a second and final vote at that meeting. However, if the amendments are more substantive, any vote would have to be put off to another meeting.