Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting — January 30, 2018
Quarterly joint meeting of the Claremont School Board and the Claremont City Council, summarized from the Claremont Community Television recording and its speaker-attributed transcript; no agenda or minutes for this meeting are posted in the district's online shares, and the city's records were not inspected. The bodies heard a Kimball Union Academy proposal to test pets for lead, announced the governor's February 8 signing of SB 247 in Claremont, agreed by consensus to make the community's online presence a joint priority, asked for costs of an in-town program for out-of-district day students by April 17, and heard the mayor's plan for joint letters on HB 413 and HB 525. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording.
Body
Claremont School Board and Claremont City Council, meeting jointly (two public bodies)
Date
Tuesday, January 30, 2018 (the school board chair refers to "our meeting tomorrow night"; the board met on Wednesday, January 31)
Start time
Scheduled time not stated on the recording. Call to order and pledge at 0:00:12; adjournment vote at 2:01:59; the dialogue file ends at 2:02:07. The mayor says she "promised everybody two hours" (1:55:49). No nonpublic session on the recording.
Location
Not stated in any available notice or agenda, or on the recording.
School board side: none located in the district's public shares; neither Drive share holds a year folder older than 2022 (MAP.md section 57, checked 9/26/26). City side: the city clerk's records were not inspected for this page.
Board composition
School board (seven members): only "Michelle Pierce here" and "Brian here" are separable in the roll (0:00:53 to 0:01:11); Rapp, Pierce, Zullo, Herzog and Sprague speak, and the mayor names Petrin as mover of adjournment, so at least six members were present. Chris Irish is not heard. City Council (nine seats, quorum five under the charter): the council roll (0:01:17) names Councilors O'Hearn, Stone and Zullo, Assistant Mayor Damren, a councilor heard as Post (probably Pope) and Mayor Lovett, with further unnamed answers; Councilor Kier also speaks.
Participants
Everyone the recording shows taking part. Names follow the project's dialogue file and the 2015 to 2023 roster; no minutes are online to check spellings against. Where the dialogue file says Unidentified, this page does too.
Name
Role
Participation
Brian Rapp
Chair, Claremont School Board (opened the meeting)
Opened the meeting and citizens' forum; gave the school board update on the deliberative session and filing period; thanked the mayor for the lead work; spoke on ratings, mental health beds and the state adequacy cuts.
Charlene Lovett
Mayor (ran most of the agenda)
Led the lead, SB 247 and priorities items; took consensus by going around the room; set April 17 for the next joint meeting; announced joint letters on HB 413 and HB 525.
Ryan McNutt
City manager
Described removal of lead water components; tied housing and code enforcement to mental health; framed a day-student facility as an investment; described the Boston Federal Reserve's Working Cities Challenge.
Abigail Kier
City councilor (transcript Councilor care, Kerr)
Urged claiming review sites and upgrading the city website; proposed a joint culture week. Attribution medium-high.
Scott Pope
City councilor; first name from the superintendent's address "Scott" (1:40:49)
On small rating samples; asked for real costs of the facility idea by April 17; spoke at length on workforce development and the tech center, noting his "other hat" in the school district.
Rebecca Zullo
School board member, also a city councilor (answered the council roll)
Suggested involving Stevens students in the online-presence work; asked for specific goals on health; asked about the tech center and city-owned buildings.
Michelle Pierce
School board member
Proposed student reviews on the city site; raised mental health and substance abuse resources; noted the board's March turnover; seconded adjournment.
Alex Herzog
School board member
Urged a climate survey and more "quick facts" on the website. Attribution medium-high.
Frank Sprague
School board member
Described the "Zillow effect" of GreatSchools ratings built on one test; proposed a Brattleboro Retreat partnership to bring out-of-district students back. Attribution medium (one direct address).
Michael Petrin
School board member
Named by the mayor as mover of adjournment (Mr. Patron); no voice is confidently his.
Middleton McGoodwin
Superintendent, SAU 6
Offered to partner on the lead project; argued for a communications plan; described the four-year search for an in-town facility; urged making the tech center a joint city and district topic.
Mary Woodman
School district clerk / recording secretary
Called the school roll; gave the filing deadline; spoke about her grandchildren's extended learning opportunities. Her cluster absorbs fragments of other voices.
Dan Kelly
Veterinarian, emergency clinic in Lebanon
Presented the proposal to test pets for lead as a public-health marker.
Mike
Kimball Union Academy faculty member (surname heard as Van Andel, unverified)
Presented the student research project's design, dates and outreach.
Unidentified
City councilors not named on the recording, and others
The council roll-caller; a councilor and business owner on review sites and welfare inspections (0:49:59, 1:27:26); a councilwoman on marketing (1:08:55); a councilor asking about out-of-district numbers (1:34:06). 46 of 536 rows (8.6 percent).
Named, not speaking
Others
Isabella, the KUA student whose project it is; Cory LeClair (absent); Derek Furlan, county manager; Dora, council clerk; Mr. Benware (heard as Benoit), who had filed for school board.
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda for this meeting is posted in any district share, and the city's copy was not inspected, so this list is reconstructed from the presiding officers' transitions. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
Online presence adopted by unanimous consensus (1:11:13); superintendent and city manager to return with a plan. Health, housing, an in-town day-student facility and workforce development discussed; costs requested for April 17. No motion.
Petrin moved (as the mayor names him), Pierce seconded; voice vote at 2:01:59.
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.
Rapp: three three-year seats and a one-year seat, Herzog's: "He's filling in for Patrick Adrian. So technically four seats will be up." Woodman at 0:03:17: Mr. Benoit [Benware] "had signed up".
Kelly: a technician's dog tested "with extremely high lead levels" and her daughter had too. The mayor at 0:19:50: "Here in Claremont is 84.1%, because we are one of the 21 highest risk communities in the state." Mayor at 0:23:51: "you have this full support of the school board in city council."
Mayor: the governor comes to Claremont to sign it; "that will happen on February 8th at 10 a.m." McNutt at 0:29:11: "we've spent about a half $1 million" removing lead components from the water system.
Mayor: online presence, stabilizing state funding, a culture of equality, health, the economy. At 0:38:01: "Claremont was given a grade of C." McGoodwin at 0:39:48: "frustrated by a rating of C minus" for the district.
Kier: "I think that's like a very simple first step, low hanging fruit that we can grab." Sprague at 0:44:50: "I've been calling it the Zillow effect"; GreatSchools is "based on smarter balanced test results, solely one data point."
Unidentified councilor: "it's very simple. As Councilor Kerr said, to identify these sites and claim ownership to them". At 0:53:53: "I think that at some point we should be discussing a public information officer shared responsibilities again."
McGoodwin: Lebanon "have a full time communication person." "I can promise you there's a correlation with that investment in communication and perception."
Pierce: "everybody's on a waiting list or can't get help". Rapp at 1:16:58: "There's just there are no beds anywhere." Zullo at 1:21:37: "we really hone in on what specifically we're going to target".
Pope: "I want to speak from my other hat that I have in the Claremont School District, have to be a little bit careful as to how I speak". Mental and emotional health issues "cross all socioeconomic boundaries" (as transcribed).
McNutt: housing "is the basis for 86% of our tax base"; the city's code enforcement task force targets "the worst offenders that are taking advantage of the most vulnerable people".
Sprague on "a partnership with the Brattleboro Retreat". McGoodwin at 1:29:54: "it's been a four year journey attempting to find a local residence". At 1:34:25: "I think it's close to 20. But I would like to I don't want to guess." McNutt at 1:38:26: "even if it costs $750,000. We would eventually be whole on that and returning positive money."
Pope: "I'd like to maybe for our next meeting, actually get some real costs nailed down". Mayor at 1:41:50: the April 17 analysis should also address staffing.
Pope: "we've had task force since 1995 and right on through just a few weeks ago." McGoodwin at 1:48:38: the district and city are "at a crossroads with this center". McNutt at 1:52:52: Working Cities Challenge awards of "$400,000 over three years".
Mayor: if HB 413 passes "the city would save $124,097 on an annual basis. The school district would save $217,718 on an annual basis." At 1:59:19: "the city manager, the superintendent chair and I will be signing it." HB 525 "was a 4% annual reduction in state" adequacy grants. McGoodwin at 2:00:31: the adequacy reduction "is adding $0.38 per thousand to the tax rate".
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the law in force on January 30, 2018, cited 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. 3 flags follow, ordered by severity.
OBSERVATION Two public bodies met; both quorums appear present, and the district posts no record of the meeting
A joint meeting is two bodies, each with its own quorum and its own duty under RSA 91-A:2, II as it read in 2018 to keep minutes naming members and "persons appearing before the public bodies", open to inspection "not more than 5 business days after the meeting". On the school side at least six of seven members are heard or named. On the city side the council roll (0:01:17) names six members and carries more unnamed answers, and Councilor Kier also speaks, so the charter's quorum of five for a nine-member council appears met. The district's Drive shares hold nothing older than 2022 (MAP.md section 57); the city's notice, agenda and minutes are kept by the city clerk and were not inspected, so this page makes no city-side negative. Nothing on the recording shows a lapse; the project's missing-records rule is applied on its online-availability limb.
OBSERVATION The bodies adopted priorities, gave staff direction and approved joint letters by consensus, without a motion or vote
Every outcome of the evening was reached by consensus: support for the lead project (0:23:51), online presence as a joint priority with a plan requested from the superintendent and city manager (1:11:13), cost analyses for April 17, and joint letters on HB 413 and HB 525 to be drafted by the mayor and signed by the city manager, the superintendent, the board chair and the mayor (1:58:53, 1:59:19). No motion was made and neither body voted on any of them. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to record the "final decisions" of a meeting; whether a consensus that directs staff or authorizes a letter in both bodies' names is such a decision is not settled by the statute's text, and no rule verified for this page requires a formal vote. The observation is that the record of what the two bodies committed to exists only on this tape.
POSITIVE Public comment was invited first, the deliberative session was set to be televised live, and a councilor flagged his school district role before speaking
The meeting opened with a citizens' forum before any business (0:01:34), though no one spoke; no statute then required either body to take public comment (the school board duty in RSA 189:74 dates from September 6, 2022). The school board announced that CCTV and Comcast had tested a live telecast of the deliberative session so that residents unable to attend could watch (0:02:17), and used the joint meeting to publicize the candidate filing deadline (0:02:51). Councilor Pope noted his "other hat" in the school district before speaking on school matters (1:22:31), a voluntary disclosure of the kind a joint meeting of overlapping bodies benefits from. (Councilor Zullo also sits on both bodies, as the two roll calls show.)
Sources: the recording at the times cited; RSA 189:74 (public comment at school board meetings), in force only from September 6, 2022, per the project's verified anchor catalog, cited only to show it did not apply; current text.
No Drive material: neither the Claremont nor the SAU 6 share holds a year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023 (MAP.md section 57, checked 9/26/26). The City of Claremont's own records (city clerk) were not inspected.
Related recordings (pages named by recording): the school board meeting the next night (show 9586); the next joint meeting, which MAP.md dates April 24, 2018 (show 9734); the deliberative session, announced here for February 7 and dated February 8 in MAP.md section 59 (show 9602).
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
New Hampshire statutes, as in force on January 30, 2018.RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes; 2017 codification). RSA 189:74 (public comment; not in force until September 6, 2022, cited only to show it did not apply).