March 12, 2025 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Guests today were Steve, Raisa, and Jake.
The 50/50 was won by Ken Evans.
Alicia won the chance to draw for the ace of spades but was unsuccessful. The game continues.
Tony opened with signup sheets for removing the decorations from the Common. We will do this on Monday at 9 am and afterwards we will take items from Steve’s storage area down to Meredith Village Savings Bank. Bring wire cutters. We will be working with the Holderness School students again.
Time was short so we will forego Tony’s famous NH trivia this morning.
Tony and Denise went to Northeast President Elects Training Seminar. This was a well-run meeting and very informative. They had the opportunity to meet the new president of Rotary International. Tony bought back some items for Alicia, including a Rotary Beer Cozy, as well as a can of lager from Mighty Squirrel Brewery in Waltham, MA. He also gave hear an apron with a heart logo that explained that HEART stood for Humanity, Empower, Aspire, Readiness, and Together. At this same meeting, Mike was recognized as trainer of the year. Sign up for the Rotary Leadership Institute to learn more.
The speech contest for our district will be March 26 and we are hosting. We will need a judge from our club and an official timer, as well as a greeter. Denise will be happy to take any of those roles but encourages others to volunteer.
Denise passed a card for us to sign for Omer, who is having a serious surgery this week, and is no longer able to drive.
Rabies clinic will be at the end of the month. Our next board meeting is next Friday.
Speaker Steve Whitman
Greg introduced our speaker, Steve Whitman, whom he met through the trails program. Steve works with community development.
Steve has lived here for 25 years. His wife works for Campton Elementary and he was working for the State Planning Department and then he went into consulting. He and Greg started the Pemi-Baker trails initiative, communicating to the public where the trails are and working to develop new ones. He is a new board member of Transport Central, and is an active member of Mill City Park in Franklin and has worked with the development of the river park there. The latter has led to tremendous redevelopment of downtown Franklin and the old mill has been renovated as apartments. His company is also working with the Oxbow Project and is working with various towns and conservation commissions.
When Steve moved here in 2002, he went into consulting with another recently-terminated state employee. They would work out a master plan for communities, address questions and help plan development. He also worked as an adjunct at PSU. In 2014 he founded Resilience Planning and Design and now works with 3 other partners, all PSU alumni and former students. One is Zak Brohinsky, president of PAREI.
The work that they do is project based. They respond to requests from towns to help develop master plans, facilitate public messaging and other planning/developing activities. They finished plans recently for Bar Harbor, as well as Williamstown MA and Jericho VT. They also do local and regional land conservation, including town and city based conservation plans, They work with regional organizations in inland NH and individual town plans along the seacoast. They have also worked with landscape conservation in Pennsylvania. They try to work with towns for economic development as well as conservation.
Right now they are working on housing, which is a huge issue in New Hampshire. Both young homeowners and older folks looking to downsize are looking for smaller homes and there just are not many of those. They have worked on grants to collect data on housing in Moultonborough (which has one of the highest percentages of second homes and lowest percentage of rentals). At the state level they are seeing a legislative push to change rules (smaller minimum lot sizes, for example) to free things up so that more appropriate housing can be built.
Resilience Planning also is working on transportation. There are two aspects to this: infrastructure (roads, trails, etc) plus bus routes or individual drivers. They hope to continue the volunteer service here in town but also set up a fixed route shuttle service.
Phil noted that there is a push at the state level to reduce minimum lot sizes in towns. Allowing duplexes, triplexes or quadplexes is one way to do this. One of these buildings on a large lot would help to keep the character of the neighborhood while allowing for greater residential density and more affordable homes.
The anniversary grant committee will meet right after this meeting.
We typically get scholarship applications after PSU’s spring break, so they should be here soon.
Circle is looking for an assistant chef for camp and a nurse to do a 24 hour shift.
The Common Man for Ukraine is holding a concert in Waterville tonight. Go early as it should be close to sold out!
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary
