Subcommittee recommends Human Relations group becomes permanent

LACONIA — A council subcommittee is recommending the Human Relations Committee be made permanent, councilors learned at their meeting on Monday night.

The subcommittee on operations and ordinances met on Nov. 18, and reviewed the group's mission and vision, policies and procedures, and heard public testimony in favor of making it a permanent city committee. Nobody spoke against it during that meeting, Mayor Pro-tem Mark Haynes (Ward 4) said. 

“It was the unanimous decision by the committee to send it to the council for consideration, and we also asked [City Manager Kirk Beattie] to look at it and send it to legal counsel,” Haynes said. “So that was the extent of that.”

At the meeting of the city council on Nov. 10, councilors referred an amendment to establish the Human Relations Committee permanently to its subcommittee on operations and ordinances. The subcommittee was also tasked with outlining procedures for the appointment of members. 

A public hearing must be held before councilors can approve the amendment. Councilors scheduled that public hearing for their Monday, Dec. 8 meeting, and stipulated no action would be taken about the committee on that date. The earliest the matter could come before the council for a vote would be during their meeting on Monday, Dec. 22.

The Human Relations Committee has been around more than 20 years, and its primary obligation is to the Laconia Multicultural Festival. They’re also involved in the planning of an annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day event. 

The committee confronted controversy when, earlier this year, a group of citizen members of the Real Life Church, located downtown, presented their concept of temporary shelters for unhoused people they called “God Pods.” 

Though no action was taken by any city body regarding the shelter pods, members of the public were angry about the proposal, and have since criticized the Human Relations Committee more generally.  

On Nov. 12, in the auditorium at Laconia High School, the Human Relations Committee organized a forum regarding homelessness in Belknap County. At the forum, representatives of city departments and local businesses sat on a panel, provided their thoughts and taking questions and comments from the audience. Hundreds of Belknap County residents attended the forum, where tensions flared. 

“It was well-attended and interesting,” Ward 3 Councilor Eric Hoffman said during the council meeting on Monday night. “I think there’s probably a broader conversation about the role of local government in this issue — we’ve all heard it 100 times, this is a multi-pronged problem that needs a multi-pronged solution and all that — but what struck me listening to people talk at the forum is that I think there are some things that are our responsibility to handle, I think we need to address this from a public health perspective.”

It’s clear the city needs more places for people to drop off trash, Hoffman said, and may need some sort of city-wide needle disposal program, too.  

“I think it is incumbent on us to try to get these things off of the street,” Hoffman said.

If there’s an issue, like people defecating outside the storefronts of downtown businesses — which was discussed at the forum — city staff may need to provide bathroom amenities, Hoffman said. Councilors referred the matter to the public works committee. 

“This isn’t a solution to the whole problem, but I think there are things that it is clearly our responsibility to start to address, for the residents, for the businesses,” Hoffman said. “I’d like to see us do something about these things.”

Noting the cost to clean up encampments is high, he said it may be more responsible for the city to provide a way for people experiencing homelessness to throw away their trash themselves. 

“It would probably be cheaper than cleaning it up in the first place,” he said.