July 1, 2026 Breakfast Meeting Notes

Our guest today was Kevin Pierce, the Plymouth fire chief and interim town manager.

Lora won the 50/50 and donated it to Tom.

Raisa got to play the card game but selected the 3 of diamonds.

Hey did you know? Bobcat Cafe is open now and serving Giffords ice cream. They are an alcohol free restaurant. Also there is a new brewery (Dark Nebula) opening on Tenney Mountain Highway. 

Rotary updates: Next Wednesday there will be ice cream scooping after the reading of the Declaration of Independence at 5:45pm. 

July 22 there will be no morning meeting because we will have a meeting at the Sunset Grill that night. 

Whole Village would like some help with Pack-a-pack again this year. They will need a donation and a small crew to help fill the packs.

Phil introduced our speaker, Kevin Pierce, who is one of our interim town managers as well as fire chief. He has been taking the lead on personnel and public interactions. Kevin was appointed fire chief in February of last year. Born and raised in Plymouth, he is happy to be back in town. He has two boys in the school system and they are deeply into lacrosse. He also has a 19 year old daughter in town. 

Kevin noted that we do have 2 candidates for town manager. They will be coming on the 14th and 16th for the process. There will be an opportunity for the public to speak to them at 5 pm at the library in the meeting room downstairs. It will also be on Pemi Baker TV. 

Highland Street update: Apologies for the road construction. This is a Plymouth Village Water and Sewer project. It will be completed around July 15 and then they will begin paving. Some of the pipes dated to 1904 and they are finally being replaced.

The town will be having the highway crew do some paving around town themselves; they have experience doing this and it will save the town some money. They will focus on the real trouble spots in town. Broadway is one, Parker Street is another. Even some of the better areas are being repaved to preserve them, Reservoir Road will also be repaved this summer by Water and Sewer, working with Granese paving. 

Fire Department: Calls for service have increased exponentially, both for fire and EMS. They cover 300 square miles for EMS service, since another ambulance service folded last July. We have 4 fire department staffers and that allows us to have 24 hour coverage. Volunteers are unfortunately not coming forward like they used to. They get around 2000 calls per year for Plymouth and the surrounding towns. Accidents have increased 13% in just this year, particularly on the interstate and 25. Structural fires, water rescues, illness…all areas have seen increased numbers of calls. 

The town has seen a 30% decrease in young residents and more and more older, retirement age people buying houses in this area. This is a huge demographic change and the town is having to adjust. The medical facilities are increasing, while PSU is down 1300 students from its desired quota of 6000. This is largely because in Massachusetts students can get 2 years of free college (4 years ago) and that serves as a lower cost option for many. 

PSU shut down their police force in January. As a result, the town worked out an agreement to provide policing and PSU will pay for 2 1/2 positions. 

Every day at 6 am the construction company sends out a blast to police and fire departments to let them know where the roads will be worked on. This allows emergency services to access the hospital etc. even during construction. 

Kevin approached the fire chief and select board in Rumney. He told them that weekends are rough because of the campgrounds, the ATVs that crash frequently, and we are sometimes overwhelmed. He was able to reach a deal with Rumney now that if we need an extra ambulance we can borrow theirs. We also send a couple of people out to Rumney on the weekends to handle the calls that come in. Ashland also has an ambulance that operates during the day 7 days a week. 

Raisa announced that Hubbard Brook is having a cooperator’s meeting next week. All are welcome.

Greg reminded us that alcohol and fireworks don’t work well together. 

Happy dollars were shared by Denise and Russ.

Respectfully submitted,

Lora Miller, secretary