In a recent Keene Sentinel article, the “city” is doing a trial run of the Park Mobile System. This move is good news for the following reasons:
First, adoption of this technology will likely reduce the 29,170 (FY13 Goal, pg 212) tickets issued by parking enforcers, their primary task, thus making enforcement more obsolete. If people use this new system, their chance of receiving a parking ticket will be greatly reduced because they can receive alerts reminding them when their meters are about to expire. Additionally, they may be able to extend their time remotely through the Park Mobile App adding more time to their session if they need it. Furthermore, the number of tickets issued because people who did not have change or enough change is also likely to go down since there will be an additional way of paying for the meters.
In the video below, Garret Ean of Keene Peaceful Streets asks Jason Short a question about the mysterious sniper teams atop city rooftops during the Pumpkin Fest celebration earlier in the day. To avoid answering this simple question Officer Short does something both illegal and dangerous.
Despite Officer Short being covered in dark clothing (except for his face) he crossed the normally busy road as an alert Penske Box Van Driver spotted him and slowed the vehicle down. Garret hung back out of harms way to document the evasive enforcer violating the law he has sworn to uphold.
Keene, NH Pre-primary At-Large City Council Candidates Forum with question from the moderator, the audience & from the candidates. I’d like to thank Kris Roberts, Bob Sutherland, Carl Jacobs & Ian Freeman for attending, and Conan Salada for filming.
The first hour of this forum will be shown on Cheshire TV, the full video in 6 parts is available in the embedded playlist.
Filing for Municipal elections closed today for anyone wishing to pay a fee of either $2 or $5 depending on the office. Prospective candidates can still file until the end of the week, if they wish to submit a petition in lieu of the filing fee. Steven Lindsey, Randy Filiault, Bradford Hutchingson, Ian Freeman, Carl Jacobs, Kris Roberts, Emily Hague, David Meader, Beverly Creamer, David Curran & Robert Sutherland have all filed for City Council At-Large, and three candidates filed for the Mayoral position. Kendall Lane has filed for re-election, while he has two challengers; Rich Paul and Darryl W. Perry. The City Clerk’s Office has not yet heard from the State Attorney General if Paul, who is ineligible to serve, will be removed from the ballot.
Of the six Council positions elected in the five ward, there are candidates in half of those races. Ward 1 is electing two councilors this year, as one position is a mid-term special election; David Crawford and Sheryl Redfern are vying for that seat. James “Robinhood” Cleaveland is challenging incumbent Mitch Greenwald in Ward 2, while Conan Salada is challenging Robert O’Connor for the Ward 4 seat.
One other race has competition. William Marcello, Kathleen Richards, Fred Parker and Matthew McKeon will face off for three Selectmen positions in Ward 3.
The Keene Sentinel reported, the Keene School District ended the 2012-13 school year with a surplus of just over $2.6 million.
Board member Kris E. Roberts reportedly “said he was frustrated by the discrepancy between the June figures and end-of-year numbers. For one, it’s hard for the district to maintain credibility when asking residents to support budget increases if there’s such a large surplus at the end of the year, he said.
Roberts also thinks the roughly $900,000 difference in surplus numbers between June and now cost the district in lost educational opportunities.”
So, he’s not so much worried about the board’s “credibility when asking residents to support budget increases”; he wanted to be able to spend the money! That’s not my opinion of what he said, he actually said he wanted to spend the money. “Roberts said if he’d known how much surplus money the district would have, he would have supported expanding the iPad program to all the elementary schools.”
The district started using iPads at Fuller School last year and officials want to expand the program to other schools. In March the board voted to spend $17,000 “for 50 iPads and training for teachers at Symonds School.” Based on my calculations, at $340 a piece; the $2.6 million surplus would purchase 7647 iPads, or 2 iPads per student with about $230,880 left over.
I wonder if anyone will remember these details in 6 months when the next budget is proposed?
