Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting, April 24, 2018

Joint session of the Claremont School Board and the Claremont City Council, reconstructed from the attributed dialogue transcript of the CCTV recording; no agenda, packet or minutes were available. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording.

Bodies
Claremont School Board (seven members) and Claremont City Council (nine seats under the city charter), meeting jointly; Mayor Charlene Lovett and Board Chair Frank Sprague shared the chair
Date
Tuesday, April 24, 2018, per the file name, MAP.md and the Cablecast eventDate. The recording's own content points to Tuesday, April 17, 2018, the date in the Cablecast title (“4-17”): the mayor announces April 21, 22 and 23 events as upcoming (0:03:14, 0:04:01, 0:05:00); the Turning Points speaker says a House committee vote set for “the 18th. So maybe tomorrow” (0:56:26); and the mayor lists a pet lead clinic “in Lebanon this Saturday” plus another on the 28th (2:11:26, 2:12:10). Unresolved; the page keeps MAP.md's date.
Start time
Not stated in available records. The mayor says “it is 830. We try to end these meetings at 830.” at 2:00:27, which puts the call to order near 6:30 p.m. Adjourned on a voice vote at 2:13:42.
Location
Not stated in available records. The mayor refers to a past presentation in “this very room”; the room is not named.
Recording
Cablecast: JOINT MEETING- COUNCIL & SCHOOL BOARD 4-17 (dialogue runs to 2:13:43 by the last CSV row; the Cablecast API refused requests from the build environment, so the run time was not read from it). The recording opens at the call to order and closes after adjournment.
Minutes
None located. The district's public Drive shares hold nothing older than July 2022 (MAP.md, checked 9/26/26). The city clerk's records, where a joint meeting's council-side notice and minutes would be kept, were not inspected.
Quorum
Council: the transcribed roll covers seven of nine seats, six with an audible “here” (Councilor Stone's answer is not audible; one councilor is not named); a quorum is a majority under charter sec. 21. School board: all seven members' names are read; individual answers are not audible except the chair's.

Participants

Participants as heard on the recording. Names follow the dialogue file's attribution and the project roster; transcript renderings of names are shown where they differ. No minutes were available to confirm spellings or attendance.
Name Role Participation
Charlene Lovett Mayor; co-presiding (City Council) Gave the announcements (0:02:06), ran the agenda items, argued that the city's “online presence is abysmal” (1:07:01), proposed a joint Medicaid-expansion letter (2:05:31) and set the June meeting. Her early turns are merged by the diarizer with the Turning Points speaker's cluster and were reassigned in the dialogue file.
Frank Sprague Chair, Claremont School Board; co-presiding Called the joint session to order (0:00:07), took the citizens forum and the January 30 minutes, described the “Zillow effect” (1:02:50) and called for adjournment (2:13:30).
Allen Damren Assistant Mayor (roll: “Assistant mayor Damron”) Said he would wait for the city manager's budget before acting (1:34:39), asked for a central community calendar and better web platform; moved to adjourn (2:13:31).
Jonathan Stone City Councilor Proposed a joint subcommittee returning full-time, part-time and other options (1:42:30); asked about additional school resource officers (2:04:24). Identified from one recognition plus topic (attribution report).
Abigail Kier City Councilor (transcribed “Council care”, “Keir”) Supported a full-time position and said the salary was “right on par with what the national average is” (1:09:58).
Scott Pope City Councilor (“Councilor Pope”; first name from cross-reference only) Gave the salary breakdown (1:22:02), recalled a prior PR firm paid about $110,000 (1:22:42), asked that the proposal return to each board (1:48:21).
“Nick” (surname not on the record) City Councilor Asked about Explorer posts (0:29:08), said of the earlier proposal “It wasn't shot down because, I mean, we we asked for this information.” (1:11:29), pressed for a sense of the table (1:40:37), suggested police dispatch access to school cameras (2:01:56).
Rebecca Zullo Vice Chair, School Board; also answers the council roll as “Councilor Zullo” Opposed the position “as it is right now” (1:42:17); clarified that the security upgrades are technology, not officers (1:52:13); asked about lockdown protocol research (1:56:28). Her seat on the council rests on this roll call only.
Jason Benware School Board member (roll: “Jason. Benwell”) Asked for measurable goals for the position (1:04:27).
Michelle Pierce School Board member Questioned a full-time position and the $80,000 cost (1:06:01), suggested volunteers and adding a board member and a councilor to the drafting group (1:44:44); named by the mayor as seconder of adjournment (2:13:34).
Carolyn Towle School Board member (roll: “Carolyn. Tall”) Favored a subcommittee on joint marketing (1:29:37); asked about intruder training (1:53:29). Honoree at the Scouts' Claremont luncheon (0:19:28).
Steven Horsky School Board member Asked whether the position must carry benefits and questioned “$23,000 just in health insurance” (1:30:59).
Michael Petrin School Board member (roll: “Michael. Peterson”) Name read in the roll (0:01:06); right after the call for a motion on the minutes the chair says And then Mike. (0:01:53). No speaking turn identified.
Middleton McGoodwin Superintendent, SAU 6 Presented the draft communications position (0:59:32) and the security update (1:50:20); proposed June 21 (2:09:54).
Cory LeClair Assistant Superintendent, SAU 6 Explained Affordable Care Act limits on benefits across about 400 district employees (1:31:26) and active-shooter drills (1:55:04). Medium-confidence attribution.
Mary Woodman School district clerk Read the school board roll (0:01:06).
Russell (first name not on the record) City clerk (“Miss Russell's our council clerk”) Read the council roll (0:00:49).
Ryan McNutt City Manager Named as co-author of the communications draft; no speaking turn identified.
Terry Tolle Head of development, Daniel Webster Council, Boy Scouts of America Presented scouting programs and invited partnerships (0:06:35).
Deborah Mozden (transcribed “Deborah Mostyn”; the mayor says “Miss Mason”) Turning Points Network Presented TPN's services for Sexual Assault Awareness Month (0:37:18). The spelling follows TPN's published history, which names a Deborah Mozden as its executive director; that she held the post in 2018 was not independently confirmed.
Citizens' forum No speakers The chair called for citizens at 0:01:18 and closed the forum with none.

Order of business (reconstructed)

No agenda was available. The chair and mayor refer to one (“the first item under new business”) and to a packet, so this order of business is reconstructed from their transitions on the recording.

Order of business reconstructed from the presiding officers' transitions
Taken up Item What happened
0:00:07 Call to order; Pledge of Allegiance Sprague calls the joint session to order.
0:00:35 Roll calls City clerk reads the council roll, the district clerk the school board roll (0:00:49, 0:01:06).
0:01:18 Citizens forum No citizens came forward; closed.
0:01:27 Minutes of the January 30, 2018 joint meeting Chair: “Your missing from your agenda is approval of the minutes from our January 30th meeting.” Motion and second are garbled (Make a motion, Michelle. / And then Mike. / Second. Michelle.). Approved on a voice vote at 0:01:58; no opposition audible.
0:02:06 Announcements Mayor: Healthy Vibrant Claremont lead-paint task force; Child Abuse Prevention Month; community cleanup; Congresswoman Kuster's visit.
0:05:34 New business: Boy Scouts of America programming Presentation by Terry Tolle; questions from Councilor Nick, Pierce, the mayor and the superintendent. No action.
0:36:48 Sexual Assault Awareness Month Turning Points Network presentation and questions. No action.
0:59:05 Strategic Communications Plan presentation Draft job description for a shared communications officer. No motion or vote; the drafters are to revise it and “have the communications, proposal come back for a second visit” (2:10:41).
1:49:25 Security updates and response procedures to threats Superintendent's overview of the warrant-article security work and emergency operation plans; questions. No action.
2:04:51 Action steps Medicaid-expansion letter (2:05:04); next joint meeting Thursday, June 21 (2:10:14); pet lead-testing clinics (2:11:05); a joint Stepping Up team (2:12:10). No votes.
2:13:30 Adjournment Damren moved (2:13:31); the mayor names Pierce as seconder (2:13:34); Aye.

Discussion timeline

Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/9734 SchoolBoardCityCouncilJoint042418.mp4.CSV) and link into the recording. Quotations are the transcript's words; bracketed text is an editorial insertion.

Discussion timeline
Time Topic What was said Flags
0:00:07 Opening Joint session called to order; Pledge; separate roll calls for council and board.
0:01:18 Citizens forum “Do we have any citizens that would like to address the joint session?” None. POSITIVE
0:01:27 January 30 minutes Item missing from the printed agenda, taken up anyway and approved by voice vote. MEDIUM
0:02:06 Announcements Healthy Vibrant Claremont task force “to study the lead paint and poisoning laws”; Child Abuse Prevention Month; cleanup projects April 21 and 22; “Congresswoman Kuster will be in Claremont on April 23rd”.
0:06:35 Boy Scouts: programs Tolle (Daniel Webster Council): “We serve over 11,000 Scouts and with the help of 5000 adult volunteers.” Cub Scouts open to girls from 2018, a parallel girls' program to Eagle in 2019, Exploring as workforce development; a new district executive will cover Claremont.
0:29:08 Explorer post Councilor Nick asks the closest post; Tolle: “the Claremont Police Department will have an explorer post short order”. Nick offers to advise one.
0:33:00 Project Challenge revival The mayor suggests recreating Project Challenge with the Scouts. Superintendent: “Next year's budget is $22,000 less than this year's budget.” He is open to a feasibility look (0:33:46).
0:36:48 Sexual Assault Awareness Month: TPN Turning Points Network goes to the Child Advocacy Center “somewhere between 100 and 150 times every year”; K-12 prevention programs; Green Dot bystander training with SAU 6. “We will work with about a thousand survivors every year”.
0:46:26 TPN finances “of that $750,000. So we have to raise about $250,000 ourselves.” Stepping Up walk May 5 at the middle school; the Changes thrift store raises about $35,000 a year.
0:54:46 Legislation: Marsy's Law Speaker describes the proposed victims' rights amendment (transcribed “Marcy's law”) (“It passed the Senate and it's before the House.”). How to send material to the board: Sprague, “Things go through Middleton. He communicates with the board.”
0:59:05 Communications plan: the draft Superintendent says the boards have discussed communication for five years and he sent the draft electronically the week before (0:59:32). “Now the salary is almost $80,000.” He calls it a draft for editing.
1:02:17 Measurable goals Benware asks about monetary gain and wants measurable results (1:04:27). Sprague: the position would counter low online school ratings built on a single standardized-testing data point.
1:05:02 Affordability Pierce recalls an earlier community-coordinator proposal and says “$80,000 is a lot of money, considering everybody is concerned about how we're going to fund schooling.” The mayor: the only fix is to broaden the tax base (1:08:10).
1:08:45 Support for a full FTE Kier, a newcomer to the city, says online information is thin and “you need a full FTE for this, without a doubt”; the salary is in line with national figures.
1:10:44 History of the PIO idea Councilor Nick: the council had asked for details and was handed a fully city-funded position with a tax-rate effect (1:14:07); asks about outside firms and shared models.
1:15:55 Shared models Superintendent knows of Lebanon's partial model; recounts briefing local real estate agents with LeClair (1:16:56).
1:19:04 Cost against other needs Zullo: “$40,000 for each of us when we're all saying we don't have money for textbooks”.
1:20:38 Salary breakdown Pope: “The proposed salary is 45,000 benefits package, $33,000”. A prior PR firm: “We paid them, I think, $110,000.” “We can't get out of our own way and trying to publicize ourselves.”
1:28:18 Joint marketing Towle: an earlier joint marketing subcommittee “never got off its feet”; “I would be in favor of having a subcommittee work on this”.
1:30:11 Benefits Horsky asks whether it must be a benefited position; superintendent: “Does it have to have benefits? Absolutely not.” LeClair: ACA affordability rules across roughly 400 employees (1:31:26).
1:33:11 Retirement and web platform Damren: same cost either employer; state retirement mandatory; he will not act before seeing the city manager's budget (1:34:39) and wants a central calendar (1:36:54).
1:39:14 Direction Chair moves to wrap up. Mayor: the drafters already form the working group. Councilor Nick: “For me, this issue right now dies in this room” without a sense of the table. Sprague: “I don't think anybody's thinking about approving funding for it.”
1:42:30 Options requested Stone: a joint subcommittee with “full time, part time, and maybe another option”. Pierce asks that a board member and a councilor join the drafters (1:44:44). Pope: “come up with this and bring it to each board”. No vote.
1:49:25 Security upgrades Superintendent: under warrant article three “the school district is receiving over half $1 million, and so we'll have a little over $700,000 in security upgrades costing this community 141,000”. Emergency operation plans are being revised with city departments (1:50:58).
1:52:13 What the upgrades are Zullo: “So just to be clear on that, this is technology upgrades.” Not bulletproof windows or officers.
1:53:29 Drills Towle asks about intruder training. LeClair: work with Officer Simons and the State Police; “I think we've done two active shooter drills now in the schools.”
1:59:19 Cameras Monitors at the main offices; recordings governed by “a policy that was recent, that process recently approved by the school board, dealing with the recordings”. Councilor Nick suggests dispatch access to camera feeds (2:01:56) and asks whether the district's parent calls and the city's Code Red are linked (2:03:28): “I don't believe they are.”
2:04:14 Additional officers Stone asks about more school resource officers. Superintendent: “we do not have any immediate plan where we're going to be adding personnel for security at this time”.
2:05:04 Medicaid expansion letter Mayor asks whether each body would “want to sign off as both a school board and superintendent, as well as the city council and city manager”; cites “about 913 people in Claremont alone”. Draft to go out the next day through the council clerk and the superintendent. Response: “I think that's okay.” No motion. OBSERVATION
2:07:37 Next joint meeting June 21, a Thursday, with legislators invited so that new bills can be filed as legislative service requests in the fall (2:08:05, 2:10:14).
2:11:05 Pet lead testing; Stepping Up A student lead-testing project for pets is now ready: clinics in Lebanon and at the Sullivan County Humane Society (2:11:26); a possible joint team for TPN's May 5 walk (2:12:10).
2:13:30 Adjournment Motion by Damren, seconded by Pierce per the mayor; voice vote (2:13:42).

Items flagged for review

These flags are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each rests on the rule it cites, read as it stood on the meeting date; where no rule is confirmed the item is an Observation.

MEDIUM No agenda, packet or minutes of this joint meeting are publicly available from the district

The record shows an agenda and a packet existed: the chair says “Your missing from your agenda is approval of the minutes” (0:01:27) and the superintendent says “the presentation is what's in your packet” (1:51:43). The joint body also keeps minutes: it approved those of its January 30 meeting at 0:01:58. None of these documents is in the district's public Drive shares, which do not reach back before July 2022. A joint meeting is two public bodies; the council side's notice and minutes would be held by the city clerk, and this page did not inspect the city's records, so it makes no finding about them.

RSA 91-A:2, II, in the 2017 codification that governed all of 2018, requires minutes that include the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, and a brief description of the business, open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting. The mover-and-seconder requirement did not exist until January 1, 2019 and is not applied here.

Severity limb: MEDIUM, not HIGH, because the record mitigates the absence. The meeting was agendaed and packeted and the body demonstrably makes minutes; what is missing is a public copy reachable today, not evidence that the minutes were never written.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2017 codification; minutes within 5 business days)

OBSERVATION A joint Medicaid letter was to be signed off outside the meeting, with no motion or vote

At 2:05:04 the mayor proposed drafting a letter to the House Finance Committee supporting Medicaid expansion funding and asked whether the bodies would sign off once they had seen it; the draft would go out the next day through the council clerk and the superintendent (2:06:55, 2:07:16). The only response on the recording is an unidentified “I think that's okay.” No motion was made and no vote taken by either body.

RSA 91-A:2, I(d) excludes from the definition of a meeting only the circulation of draft documents which, when finalized, are intended only to formalize decisions previously made in a meeting, and RSA 91-A:2-a, II bars communications outside a meeting, including sequential communications among members, used to circumvent the chapter. Neither body recorded a decision that the letter would formalize. Whether the letter was sent, and over whose names, is not in the record, so this is an Observation, not a finding.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I(d) (2017 codification; draft documents formalizing prior decisions); RSA 91-A:2-a, I-II (deliberation only in meetings; no circumvention by outside communications)

POSITIVE Citizens' forum offered at a joint meeting, years before RSA 189:74

The chair opened the joint session with a citizens' forum (0:01:18) and closed it only after no one came forward. The statute that now requires a public-comment period at school board meetings, RSA 189:74, was not enacted until 2022 (2022, 333:1, effective September 6, 2022). Each body's roll was also called separately by its own clerk, which lets a reader test each body's quorum on its own membership.

Sources: RSA 189:74 (public comment; 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022; not in force in 2018); Claremont City Charter secs. 16 and 21 (nine councilors; majority quorum)

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.

Laws and rules cited on this page