Participants
Everyone the recording shows taking part. Names follow the project's dialogue file and the 2015 to 2023 roster; no minutes exist online to check spellings against, and several city names rest on garbled audio and are marked uncertain.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Brian Rapp | School Board Chair; co-presided | Ran the one-minute school board meeting; asked about bringing welding training to Claremont; proposed sharing packets and minutes with the council; volunteered for the city manager search committee. Rendered Brian Rath in the roll and Wrap by the mayor. |
| Chris Irish | School Board Vice Chair | Moved the chair's signing authority. Proposed the tech center subcommittee and named its members; argued for one shared city and school website; suggested the subcommittees would not need to be noticed as meetings, and was corrected (flag 2). |
| Patrick Adrian | School Board member | Responded to the public commenter on housing and data; argued for applied academics in vocational programs; joined the tech committee; raised coordination of nonprofit programs. |
| Michelle Pierce (uncertain) | School Board member | Recognized only as Michelle; the dialogue file marks the identification uncertain. Described her own vocational training and nursing career and urged a health care pathway; raised downtown property upkeep; spoke on poverty from personal experience; was offered the lead of the poverty subcommittee (the transcript's was fierce); seconded adjournment. |
| Brent Ferland | School Board member | Proposed a joint capital-improvements subcommittee instead of duplicating poverty work. Rendered Brant. |
| Becky Ferland; Frank Sprague | School Board members | Named in the roll (Marilyn. Becky, Frank. Spread); neither has attributed words. One unnamed school board member (dialogue file: Unidentified) speaks at 1:40:35 and 1:41:23 about a shared publicity position. |
| Charlene Lovett | Mayor, City of Claremont; co-presided | Presented the city's goals (economic development, tax base, workforce, generational poverty); proposed the marketing subcommittee and agreed to lead it; set the next joint meeting about three months out. The dialogue file also places the roll reading in her cluster; the reader is not named. |
| Carolyn Towle | City Councilor | Asked for joint work on targeted vocational training and on poverty; joined the tech committee; urged newspapers to feature students. Rendered Councilor Tol and Miss Toll. |
| Scott Pope | City Councilor; tech center instructor | Quoted George Bald's "attitude, attitude, attitude"; asked that tech center instructors and advisory members sit on the vocational committee; asked for three months, not two; asked whether the subcommittees must be noticed. A remark at 1:52:04 ("when I was mayor") sits in his cluster; the attribution report flags it for review. |
| Nicholas (surname not established) | City Councilor | Former culinary student at the center; asked about school capacity and curfew enforcement; called for a poverty task force; proposed joint cooperative purchasing and a welcome packet. The mayor's Councilor Clawson is taken by the dialogue file as this councilor. |
| Allen Damren (uncertain) | City Councilor; community college trustee | Recognized as Councilor Darren; reported a meeting with the community college system on workforce training. |
| Unidentified councilor | City Councilor | Recognized by the mayor at 1:18:45 in words the transcript renders Sister Mary Bergeron; urged publicizing good news and addressing poverty, and objected to boards backing away from action for fear of lawsuits. Not named on this page. |
| Other councilors in the roll | City Council | The roll also reads Keith. Raymond, Alexandra, Who's temple (Bruce Temple in the roster), Philosophy and John Simmons (John Simonds in the roster, spelling unverified). Their answers are not clear on the tape. |
| Guy Santagate | City Manager | Spoke near the end on infrastructure spending, revaluation, a jobs list for recruitment and "a healthy community"; referred to his own city manager search. Spelling per the dialogue file (ASR Mr. Santiago, Santa Gate). |
| Middleton McGoodwin | Superintendent, SAU 6 | Presented the district overview: poverty and expectations, full-day kindergarten results, SAT results, budget growth; supported revisiting the tech center agreement with Newport; answered capacity questions. |
| Cory LeClair | Assistant Superintendent, SAU 6 | Asked that the marketing and poverty groups connect with the Nellie Mae community engagement work rather than duplicate it. |
| Bernie Fulton | Public commenter | Spoke twice: on housing value, city data comparisons and resilience, and at the end on the Right-to-Know duties of subcommittees. Spelling unverified. |
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda for either body is posted in any district share, so this list is reconstructed from the chairs' transitions. The mayor says she "got my packet this afternoon", so a written packet existed. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:00 | School board: call to order | "So I'll call Claremont School board meeting to order." No roll call or pledge before business. |
| 0:00:09 | School board: Stevens schedule agreement | Irish moved "that we give the chairman authority to sign the agreement when it comes to pass with the teachers." No second audible; voice vote, no audible dissent. |
| 0:00:47 | School board: adjournment | Motion to adjourn called for by the chair; seconded by an unidentified voice; voice vote. |
| 0:01:07 | Joint meeting: call to order, roll, pledge | Called to order by the school board chair; roll of both bodies; pledge. |
| 0:04:29 | City overview | Mayor Lovett. Informational. |
| 0:16:48 | School district overview | Superintendent McGoodwin. Informational. |
| 0:36:04 | Public comment | Bernie Fulton. |
| 0:43:57 | Discussion of common priorities | Members of both bodies. Consensus reached at 1:18:06 on a vocational training subcommittee; marketing and poverty subcommittees follow. |
| 1:42:41 | Next joint meeting | About three months out, in November; the leaders to circulate date options. |
| 2:05:23 | City manager search | Update deferred to the council meeting "tomorrow night". |
| 2:05:57 | Subcommittee leads | Tech center: Pope, with Irish, Towle and Adrian. Marketing: the mayor. Poverty: offered to Pierce, to coordinate with LeClair. No vote. |
| 2:07:47 | Public comment | Bernie Fulton. |
| 2:09:54 | Adjournment | Motion taken by the school board chair; Pierce seconded; voice vote. |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue CSV. Times are the start of the cited exchange, taken from the CSV's own second count. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell for the full entry.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:09 | School board authorizes the chair to sign | Chair: "we're trying to hammer out an agreement with the scheduling with Stevens, and we're still waiting on some final wording. I haven't heard from the teachers if if they have approved on their end". Irish moved; "All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great." School board adjourned at 0:01:02. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:01:07 | Joint roll call | As transcribed: "School board. Brian Rath here." then "Patrick. Adrian, here. Michelle Pierce here. Marilyn. Becky, here. Frank. Spread council. Carolyn. Tall." and council names through "And Charlene Lovett here." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:04:29 | Why meet jointly | Mayor: "We haven't done this for several years. It's something that we've heard from the public that we want to do." and "both of these governing bodies rely on same taxpayer base". | |
| 0:05:39 | City goals | Economic development "to reduce the tax burden and we want to cultivate opportunity"; population "peaked in 1980"; "we don't have enough qualified workers". Can-Am "backlogged until 2021" at "about half capacity". | |
| 0:11:57 | Valuation and tax rate | Mayor: after the revaluation "our valuation as a city dropped by about $110 million"; the sunset of the River Road TIF district returned "about $11 million". She named generational poverty, child care, housing and education as common ground. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:16:48 | Superintendent's overview | "the Claremont School District can't go forward without the city of Claremont, and the city of Claremont can't go forward without the school district." Slides from Our Kids (2015) on education and outcomes; "The public school system wasn't created to deal with children of poverty." | |
| 0:22:35 | Expectations and poverty | "When I first arrived here, there was a mindset of some" that lowered expectations; "More than 50% of the academic outcomes of school aged children is related to the teacher". Myths about poverty addressed one by one. | |
| 0:29:04 | Full-day kindergarten, SAT, budget | DIBELS: in April 2014 under half-day kindergarten "44% of the kindergarten students were below or well below the benchmark"; in January 2016 the transcript reads "January 20th 1,672% in January met the benchmark" (apparently 2016, 72%). The class of 2018 "scored higher than the state average and national mean" on the SAT. "Since 2011, over a period of five fiscal years, the increase had been less than 2%"; "this fiscal year, the budget went up one quarter of 1%." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:35:13 | Career awareness | "right now, 35 to 40% of the high school graduates go right into the workforce"; the district wants career exposure to start in middle school. | |
| 0:36:41 | Public comment: Bernie Fulton | Real estate "bargains"; market value "partially dependent on the market"; the city charter's clause allowing school and city to "collaborate on expenses"; a call for comparative city data; "correlation does not mean causation"; resilience; "running the schools is a lot tougher than running the city". | POSITIVE |
| 0:43:57 | Members respond | Adrian: downtown retailers see buyers from the Upper Valley; caution about comparing cities. Irish at 0:46:45: "this is the third time in 16 years these two bodies have met" and the first two bore no fruit; "we need to be our own best cheerleaders". | |
| 0:50:29 | Towle's two priorities | "what what can we do better for targeted vocational training?" and "what we can do to, deplete the poverty level in Claremont". Mayor: individuals below poverty "was 13.4%" in 2014 data. | |
| 0:52:35 | Attitude | Pope, quoting George Bald: "Three words in economic development attitude, attitude, attitude." City manager: "Attitude is more important than water and sewer." | |
| 0:57:01 | Welding and the tech center | Chair: "The welding program is currently over in Newport." Irish at 0:57:54 proposed "a tech Center subcommittee". Pope: include "tech center instructors and their advisory committee members". Superintendent at 1:00:57: "our agreement and the way we're doing business isn't fitting as well as we'd like". | |
| 1:06:38 | Health care pathway | Pierce: vocational training made her a CNA; "I've been a nurse for over 20 years. We're going to be in crisis not too long from now with the nursing shortage". | |
| 1:09:43 | School capacity; curfew | Superintendent: "we could double the size of Stevens High School and have room." Nicholas raised an unenforced curfew; the city manager said lawyers think curfew and loitering rules "may violate the Constitution". Irish at 1:14:49: "If it's if it's on the books, we should be." | |
| 1:15:51 | Community colleges | Damren: meeting the community college system "at 130 on Thursday"; "I'm on the board of trustees for the community colleges." | |
| 1:18:06 | Consensus on a vocational subcommittee | Mayor: "I think we have consensus from both parties that we want to do the subcommittee on the, targeted vocational training." No vote of either body. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:18:47 | Good news and lawsuits | An unidentified councilor: "publicizing the goodness"; poverty "It's been growing for a number of years"; "boards are backing away from a possibility of somebody taking us to court". Mayor: "At the very least, we have to do a." / "Risk assessment." | |
| 1:21:26 | Marketing | Mayor asked whether the district has a strategic marketing plan; superintendent: "Yes, if the answer is no." Mayor: "Can't market the city without marketing the schools." Pierce at 1:23:10 on downtown upkeep; mayor: a full-time inspector now enforces property maintenance codes. | |
| 1:29:56 | Follow-ups requested | Pope asked for follow-up on the assistant superintendent's March presentation on homelessness. Towle at 1:30:26: "challenge the newspapers" to feature students. | |
| 1:32:22 | Poverty | Pierce: "you don't know what the poverty really is until you've lived in it." Mayor: "perhaps a third subcommittee would be about the poverty." Nicholas at 1:37:17: "a task force on poverty in this community made up of stakeholders". | |
| 1:39:37 | One website; shared publicist | Irish: "Why not one citywide website?" An unidentified school board member recalled a proposal to share a publicity person; the superintendent at 1:41:39 said budgets made it unrealistic then. | |
| 1:42:41 | Next meeting | Chair suggested two months; Pope at 1:44:28: "I would actually suggest three"; settled on November. | |
| 1:45:54 | Cooperative purchasing | Nicholas asked what the bodies buy together. Chair: "I know it's fuel oil." Damren: electricity. Superintendent: the city adjusted its plans when the "$12.5 million bond" for the high school passed. | |
| 1:47:28 | Avoid duplication | LeClair: "I wouldn't want you all to form yet another subcommittee working on the same thing"; the Nellie Mae engagement grant already addresses marketing, poverty and early childhood. Brent Ferland proposed capital improvements instead; the chair preferred to rely on "our executives". | |
| 1:51:21 | Sharing packets and minutes | Chair: "would people be open to sharing minutes and not the nonpublic parts of the packet". Mayor: "The minutes are online, right?" The superintendent agreed to send the council the packets. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:54:24 | City manager | Infrastructure first ("we're going to fix the water and sewer pipes under there before we pave"); revaluation is "revenue neutral" but shifts burden; a recruitment list of local jobs; "I'd like to see what I call a healthy community." | |
| 2:05:57 | Subcommittee leads | Irish: "So it'll be Scott, myself, Carolyn and Patrick on the tech committee." Mayor: "So I'll lead the marketing committee." The poverty lead offered to the member the transcript calls was fierce. | OBSERVATION |
| 2:07:11 | Must the subcommittees be noticed? | Pope: "Of these subcommittees, when you were actually having an official meeting, I believe they need to be noticed." Answer: "Yes. That's correct." Irish at 2:07:28: "they won't have a quorum" and "That will be the non meeting". Mayor: "It has to be." | POSITIVE |
| 2:07:47 | Fulton on subcommittees | "you might want to check with your attorneys" because "subcommittees of public bodies are public. So your subcommittees have to do all the good stuff." and "which is minutes." He called it "a very forward looking and productive one". | POSITIVE |
| 2:09:54 | Adjournment | Chair: "Take a motion to adjourn." Pierce: "Second." Voice vote. | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the law in force on August 9, 2016. RSA 91-A:2 was amended effective January 1, 2017, and each flag cites the text as it then read. They are not findings of violation, and nothing here is legal advice. Where no verified rule applies, the flag says so and is recorded as an observation. Five flags follow, ordered by severity.
OBSERVATION The school board gave its chair authority to sign a schedule agreement whose final wording did not yet exist, in a meeting of about one minute
Six days after the August 3 meeting tabled the Stevens High School schedule question (see the August 3, 2016 page), the chair called a separate school board meeting to order at 0:00:00, explained that "we're still waiting on some final wording" and that he had not heard whether the teachers had approved, and Irish moved to "give the chairman authority to sign the agreement when it comes to pass with the teachers." No second is audible, and the vote is a voice vote with no audible dissent (0:00:47). The board then adjourned. Nothing on the recording states the agreement's terms, whether it took the tabled motion off the table, or whether it carried a cost.
No statute identified requires a school board to approve the final text of such an agreement itself, so this is an observation. It matters for a reader because the August 3 debate turned partly on money (the superintendent on show 8558 spoke of "the 8% additional compensation of $157,000" for high school teachers under the A/B schedule): if the signed agreement contained a cost item, RSA 273-A:3, II(b) sends cost items to the legislative body. The agreement and the school board's own minutes of this meeting are not posted anywhere this project could reach. On the joint side, the subcommittees were likewise formed by consensus, with leads named but no vote of either body (1:18:06, 2:05:57).
Sources: RSA 273-A:3, II(b) (source note ends 2013, 244:1, so in force in 2016): only cost items go to the legislative body; August 3, 2016 page.
POSITIVE Members and a citizen put the new subcommittees' notice and minutes duties on the record, and a suggestion that they would be non-meetings was rejected
Before adjourning, Councilor Pope asked whether the subcommittees "need to be noticed" (2:07:11) and was told "Yes. That's correct." Irish then suggested that because none would include a quorum of either full body, "That will be the non meeting" (2:07:28); the mayor answered "No" and "It has to be." Bernie Fulton closed the public comment by reminding both bodies that "subcommittees of public bodies are public", with minutes and notice (2:08:38). That is the rule as it stood in 2016: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) made "any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto" a public body, so a quorum of the subcommittee itself triggers RSA 91-A:2, II notice and minutes. Whether the joint subcommittees then met with notice and minutes is not in any record this project could inspect; the November 15, 2016 joint meeting page is the next point in the story.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (source note ends 2008, 354:1, so the same text governed in 2016); RSA 91-A:2, II (2015 codification, in force through December 31, 2016): 24-hour notice; minutes within 5 business days.
OBSERVATION Headline figures on achievement, budgets and valuation were given without supporting documents
The superintendent told both bodies that the class of 2018 "scored higher than the state average and national mean" on the SAT, that kindergarten DIBELS results moved from 44% below benchmark in April 2014 to a figure the transcript garbles as 1,672% meeting it in January 2016, that district spending had grown "less than 2%" over five fiscal years since 2011 including the $12.5 million high school project, and that "this fiscal year, the budget went up one quarter of 1%" (0:29:04 to 0:33:31). The mayor cited a $110 million drop in city valuation and a 13.4% poverty rate from 2014 labor data. None of the underlying documents is in the record here, and the page has not verified them; they are the speakers' characterizations. The public commenter at 0:40:28 made the same caution about correlation and causation.
Sources: No statute applies; the figures are the speakers' own, unverified.
OBSERVATION No agenda, packet or minutes for either body are posted in the district's shares; the city side was not inspected
MAP.md records that neither district Drive share holds anything before July 2022 (checked 9/26/26). That is a limit of what the district posts online, not by itself evidence that minutes were never kept. The recording shows written materials in use (the mayor: "I had got my packet this afternoon"), and at 1:52:02 the mayor assumed the school board's minutes were "online". For the City Council, the notice, agenda and minutes belong to the city clerk's system, which this page did not inspect, so no city-side negative is stated. The garbled joint roll call means the council's quorum rests on who speaks rather than on a clean roll (see the facts panel). Under the project's missing-records rule this is an online-availability observation for 2016, applied to each body separately.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2015 codification): minutes open to inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting; Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 12.
POSITIVE A member of the public was heard twice, including on the bodies' own open-meeting duties
The presiding officers opened the floor after the two overviews (0:36:04) and again before adjournment (2:07:43), and Bernie Fulton spoke for about seven minutes the first time. Members answered his points directly. No statute required a school board comment period in 2016; RSA 189:74 was enacted by 2022, 333:1, effective September 6, 2022.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (source: 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022): public comment period, not in force in 2016.
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/8568 SchoolBoardCityCouncilJoint080916.mp4.CSV (615 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/8568 SchoolBoardCityCouncilJoint080916.mp4Input/Transcripts/8568 SchoolBoardCityCouncilJoint080916.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/8568 SchoolBoardCityCouncilJoint080916.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 12
Laws and rules cited on this page
- New Hampshire statutes, as in force on August 9, 2016. RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (committees are public bodies; unamended since 2008). RSA 91-A:2, II (notice and minutes; 2015 codification). RSA 273-A:3, II(b) (cost items to the legislative body; last amended 2013). RSA 189:74, cited only to show it post-dates this meeting.