Over the last couple of months there have been several changes in the Town Offices. There was an incident that took place with documents being removed from the upstairs that should not have been taken from the Town Offices. Due to the sensitive nature of the documents and the concern of possible litigation against the Town of Nelson and some of its employees, and also the concern of any other documents being removed, the Select Board took the precaution of locking the door to the upstairs until we could speak with Town Counsel and see how best to proceed while protecting the integrity and security of not only the Town of Nelson Offices, but also all of the Town’s employees.  After consulting with Town Counsel and the New Hampshire Attorney General, who expressed no disagreement with our decisions, we found it necessary to review and update the Town of Nelson Personnel Policy and Procedure Manual.  This work took some time as we had to go over the updates with both the Local Government Center and our Town Counsel. Now that this has been completed, the key to the upstairs has been returned to the Town Clerk/Tax Collector, effective 31-January-2012. The Select Board truly appreciates the respect and patience that all parties involved have displayed during this difficult time.

We have also welcomed two new employees to the staff in our Town Offices. Please join us in welcoming our new Town Administrative Assistant, Edie Drinkwater who comes to us with an immense amount of Municipal experience.

We also welcome our new Financial Administrator, Anita Treloar. After doing extensive research for an individual who could assist the Town of Nelson with our books, we decided to do some regional resource sharing with another town for this position. Our search initially started with Towns that are in close proximity to our own, but we found no one who was available. So we extended our search and thus found Anita who also works for the Town of Ashland. She also has an immense amount of Municipal experience and comes to us not only with a strong resume, but also with high recommendations.

The Town of Nelson Select Board

His position will be filled for the remainder of the year (until Town Meeting, 2012) by Bud French. Thank Bud for stepping in!

• The Town’s consideration of purchasing The Chapel by the Lake
• A committee to study renovations to the Town Hall
• Posting of the former Geddes property

The first thing we would like to do is to thank the Chapel by the Lake Committee that with the guidance of Lew Derby who put them together, worked at looking into the feasibility of the town purchasing the Chapel by the Lake Church.

The Church contacted the Selectmen last fall advising they were interested in selling the property and wanted to give the town the first right of refusal. The Selectmen at that point contacted Lew to see if he would chair a committee to look into this. He agreed and assembled a group, which represented as many areas of town as possible. The group’s members were;
John Bunce, Joy Birdsey – Smith, Rick Church, Maury Collins, Sandy Ferguson, Leonard Fraser, Marion Fraser, Phil Hamilton, Hope Lothrop, Betsy Street, Karen Tolman and Bert Wingerson
The Selectmen instructed the group to look at all avenues and options while looking into the property.

In the end they came back with the recommendation not to pursue the property, as they did not feel it would be in the interest of the Town to own it. A copy of the report is available at the Town office.

Again we would like to thank them for all their efforts.

On the same sort of topic, if you were at this years Town Meeting you will recall we informed the townspeople that we would form a committee formed to bring a proposal to next years Town Meeting on what to do with the poor condition of the Town Hall. That process will be starting soon and we have a good feeling that this process will give us hope that we will begin some sort of renovation project to our Town Hall. We will post updates as they become available.

The last topic we want to share with you is the posting of the former Geddes property. We have heard from some of you that you would like to go there and hike the property or just put your feet in the water.

The Selectmen at this point in time are going to keep the property posted for no trespassing. The reason we are doing this is to legally keep people off the property which we do not want there. We have already seen an increase in littering from people going there and dumping beer cans and other trash. As the days get longer and warmer we expect that this type of traffic will do nothing but increase. By keeping it posted our Police Department can occasionally check the property and to show a continued presence to discourage people from going there. We understand that some of you in the community think we should not do this and open it to the public, but at this point we are
asking for your patience to see how this all works out. Nelson is lucky to have numerous places for us to hike and enjoy the outdoors without using this piece of property.

In closing we hope that you find this form of communication useful and we can keep you informed of some of the things that are going on. As always if you want to come and talk to us please contact Joan to get on the agenda.

Thanks for your support!

Mike, Margaret and Warren