Flag policy could be split into two ordinances

LACONIA — The city could soon have a new flag and banner ordinance to inform the display of local, state, national and other insignia.

The city’s potential flag policy was split into two separate ordinances on May 13 at the regular city council meeting: one which will govern the flag poles at City Hall and Veterans Square and a separate ordinance around the display of banners from lampposts and other fixtures.

“There are really three sections to a potential flag policy here,” Mayor Andrew Hosmer said. “It seems to me that the first two sections that we can discuss and probably have some agreement on, I hope. And then the third one is really still in development and needs to be broken down.”

The flag policy is under review by city attorneys, but councilors expressed optimism that a resolution will be met sooner rather than later. As it stands, the policy regarding sites including City Hall and Veterans Square will likely restrict flags flown to include the U.S. flag, the New Hampshire state flag, the City of Laconia flag and the Prisoners of War/Missing in Action flag.

Banners, which are displayed on light posts downtown and the Weirs, may be more permissive, although that detail has not yet been decided. Banners hung to celebrate Laconia Motorcycle Week should be allowed to remain regardless of other policy carve outs, Hosmer suggested during the discussion. 

“We requested a legal opinion and some guidance ... essentially the attorneys have looked at it in a couple different ways. They’ve intentionally broken it down into parcels, if you will,” Beattie said. “City Hall and Veterans Square flag poles is a parcel; other city buildings, lands that have flag poles is a secondary parcel, and then the third will be the banners, so the non-flagpoles.”

The second category of flag placement locations could include other city buildings and city-owned fields, like the fire and police departments, the recreation center and schools.

“The only thing the council would like to see hung on those buildings would be the four flags that you can hang on City Hall as well as any specific flags to be held, say, at a ball field,” Hosmer said. "So if there is a tournament being played at a ball field or a soccer field and they have a flag, that could be signed-off and approved by the city manager."

He added: "If it’s something to be hung at the police department, fire department, the chiefs of those departments would be able to decide, working along with the city manager, could make a determination what flags could hang from those buildings."

Employee retention

Council also instructed Beattie to work with department heads to develop a plan to pay retention incentives to employees in a way most beneficial to each group and to identify appropriate funding mechanisms. 

“As we started having these discussions, I think we’ve been a little all over the place intentionally because there’s a lot of different avenues that we can come from to try to work on a retention incentive program,” Beattie said. “We’re not the first community in the area to work on this and we’re certainly not going to be the last.”

Beattie said the best approach to working out a solution could be to allow department heads to tailor incentive programs to their specific employment situations. 

“I think that there’s an opportunity to empower us, from the city administration, to identify where the money would be coming from and our department heads to be tasked and employed with working out programs for within their departments for paying out that incentive program, for lack of a better term, as they see fit,” Beattie said.

Department heads and councilors in recent months have discussed a challenging trend of seeing city employees take positions in other municipalities, largely for better pay and benefits. The police and public works department have been highlighted repeatedly, but each department is facing the same issue. Beattie said such an incentive program could make a big difference in increasing employee retention and morale. 

“It is vitally important for us to make sure that we are taking steps, as we have on a couple of different avenues now, to keep our employees,” Beattie said. “We have such high quality, highly trained employees in all of our departments. And we’re seeing them, unfortunately, a couple of our departments are bleeding them out and we’re losing them.”

Beattie noted much of an incentive program could be funded through the use of unused winter maintenance dollars, which were not drained this year due to the light winter. 

Councilor Mark Haynes (Ward 4) said the council should investigate means of rewarding long-term city employees. 

“We talked about the middle tier and the lower tier employees. As far as those people who have been with us 20 and 30 years, ‘Thank you very much and we’re going to take care of you through longevity, not through this retention incentive,'” he said. “One of the things that we need to address when we do that is, when we say longevity and 20 and 30 years, it should be substantial.”

Councilor Bruce Cheney (Ward 1) said department heads may be able to identify specific needs within their own operations.

“There may be certain places in the particular department, public works may need grader operators more than anything else,” he said. 

Hosmer said a retention incentive should be used to improve morale and not to create tension among city employees.

Department heads "are hired to manage their departments in the best way and they’re held accountable,” he said. “This seems to me that we trust them to make the proper decisions to retain and be able to recruit, because they have great morale there, and we’re going to trust them to do that.”