An Extraordinary Year

The information contained in this article is not intended as legal advice and may no longer be accurate due to changes in the law. Consult NHMA's legal services or your municipal attorney.

An Extraordinary Year

Two Thousand Fifteen was another extraordinary year for the New Hampshire Municipal Association. From my perspective as executive director, our 2015 successes are due to strong support from our membership, an engaged board of directors, and a great staff.

We continue to thank the 99% of New Hampshire’s cities and towns that renewed their membership in NHMA. Everything we do is for you, our members, whether it is legislative advocacy, Town & City magazine, providing legal advice, or presenting workshops. We count on the support of our members so we can continue to support our members! Our membership includes village districts and counties, where we have added members over the past year, as well as regional planning commissions. Employees and officials from these political subdivisions attend workshops and webinars and receive copies of our publications.

Publications

Worthy of special note for 2015 is the update to A Hard Road to Travel: New Hampshire Law of Local Highways, Street, and Trails. Last updated in 2004, this NHMA signature publication had long been on the “to do” list for a revision, and with the help of a former NHMA staff attorney, we finally completed the task. The new edition has been “flying off the shelf” and the first workshop using the new tome was fully booked (at 100), so more are scheduled.

NHMA staff produces a number of publications throughout the year. In addition to the Municipal Officials Directory and the online Wage and Salary Survey (produced biennially), there are several periodicals.

Town & City magazine is published six times each year and mailed to over 2,500 people. This magazine contains educational articles, a legal Q&A, local official profiles, and much more.

NHMA Newslink, the electronic newsletter, is issued biweekly to over 3,200 interested individuals in the municipal marketplace. Newslink is NHMA’s vehicle to provide timely court updates about recent local, state, and federal court decisions to members. It also includes information about upcoming workshops and webinars, both NHMA sponsored and those sponsored by others.

NHMA Legislative Bulletin is emailed weekly during the legislative session to make sure members know what is going on in the general court—the New Hampshire House of Representatives and the Senate. It lists the bills of municipal interest, upcoming hearings, and most importantly NHMA calls to action on bills that will harm or help municipalities. Watch for a new feature in the 2016 Bulletin.

Staff also write and revise the handbooks which go with various workshops, including the Town and School Meeting Handbook, Knowing the Territory: A Survey of Municipal Law for New Hampshire Local Officials, The Art of Welfare Administration, The Basic Law of Budgeting: A Guide for Town, Village Districts and School Districts, and the three Municipal Law Lectures, produced by the various speakers.

Workshops and Educational Programming

NHMA offered a very broad range of training topics and opportunities in 2015, reaching more local officials than ever.

The monthly webinar series covered topics from the local regulation of agriculture to cutting trash costs to local welfare to public records, and drew an attendance of over 700 local officials from more than 130 different member entities. These officials never had to leave their offices to attend these free interactive webinars.

NHMA hosted four free regional Right-to-Know Law workshops in Plaistow, Salisbury, Berlin, and Durham, attended by over 140 local officials.

The full-day Budget and Finance Workshops, held in Manchester and Bartlett, were attended by over 220 local officials, including budget committee members, finance directors, and selectmen.

The 2015 Moderators’ Workshops drew over 90 moderators from around the state, who learned the latest law changes and shared their “tricks of the trade” with others who serve in this unique position. (See elsewhere in this magazine for information on the 2016 Moderators’ Workshops—scheduled separately for SB 2 and traditional towns.)

In April and May, we held five Local Officials Workshops, geared primarily for newly elected (or appointed) municipal officials, but which also provide a good review for seasoned officials! The 2015 workshops were held in Keene, Bethlehem, Conway, Durham, and Concord and served 138 officials. (Watch for the 2016 schedule in the next magazine!)

450 member officials participated in the Municipal Law Lecture Series in September and October 2015, offered in 5 locations around the state, including for the first time a video-conferencing option in Gorham. These lectures have been presented by NHMA for over 25 years and have proven to be one of the most popular offerings, with their focus on varying aspects of land use law and practices. Law lecture materials, for those who missed the lectures, are available in the NHMA store on NHMA’s website (www.nhmunicipal.org).

Finally, 2015 was the second year of the NHMA On Demand program, a fee-for-service training option where staff travel to requesting municipalities to present two-hour sessions on a predetermined list of topics. (See page 11 for more information.) In 2015, staff provided 14 NHMA On Demand programs.

Advocacy and Legal Advice

In addition to writing publications and articles, presenting webinars, and conducting workshops, NHMA staff handled close to 3,000 legal inquiries from elected and appointed municipal officials. While some of these questions can be answered “off the top of the head,” many require considerable research into state and federal laws and regulations. A new legal services feature appearing on NHMA’s website is a series of FAQ’s—Frequently Asked Questions—on hot topics (medical marijuana, elections, sign ordinances, and body cameras, so far). Many questions simply don’t have a clear answer and require working through the ins and outs of a situation with the inquiring official. That’s a challenge for all, certainly, but who else better to do that analysis with than an NHMA attorney who lives and breathes municipal law!

On the advocacy front, 2015 saw the introduction of more than 900 bills, of which NHMA followed about 250. Some bills are easy to follow—they have a public hearing and an executive session and are killed! Others require constant monitoring after the public hearing, and have multiple subcommittee meetings, need amendments drafted or reviewed, involved a contested floor vote which requires municipal outreach to legislators—and then the process starts all over again in the other body. Further, 2015 was a state budget year, which always consumes hours of time working to protect municipal revenues and prevent thoughts of downshifting. At the State House, NHMA’s advocacy staff is well-known and well-respected, and also very effective on behalf of local government.

Annual Conference

Navigating the Waters of Municipal Government was the theme of NHMA’s 2015 Annual Conference, and it was the best attended conference since 2010. This conference also received rave reviews from both attendees and exhibitors alike—no easy feat, although our engaging and inspiring keynote speaker, Captain Richard Phillips, no doubt set us off on the right foot! Many changes have taken place since 2010, when the Local Government Center’s 12 member communications staff produced the annual conference with the help of NHMA staff who made session presentations and staffed the NHMA booth. These days, NHMA’s staff of nine does it all—from recruiting speakers, organizing the exhibit hall, and making quality presentations to stuffing conference bags, decorating the NHMA booth, and schlepping boxes and conference paraphernalia back and forth from Concord. We even provide the piano bar players at the Exhibit Hall Reception! New this year was a “Conference App” which attendees could download to create their custom conference schedule and get up to the minute changes and alerts.

Engaged Board

The conference is a perfect example of how fortunate NHMA is to have such an engaged board. With over 50 sessions, over 100 exhibitors, and more that 525 attendees, we count on the incredible conference support provided
by NHMA’s Board of Directors. Those of you who attend have surely noticed that the registration booths are staffed by board members—even the 7:30 am shift! Session evaluations and raffle tickets are collected and dispensed by board members, and board members staff the NHMA booth. We’d have a really hard time doing the conference without them and we are grateful for their support.

Not only does NHMA’s board engage during the conference, they are front and center year round. We have nearly full attendance at board meetings (with the furthest director always the first to arrive!), where the board closely follows the progress of the legislative session and provides feedback on legislative issues not covered by official policy. At board committee meetings, they review finances and programming, making sure NHMA stays member-focused. Board members are responsive and forward thinking and encouraging of NHMA staff. 

NHMA Staff

None of the above could happen without NHMA staff, who are all talented, knowledgeable, dedicated to NHMA and its members, collaborative, innovative, and fun-loving, yet serious about the work they do on behalf of NHMA members. The amount of work they produce is incredible, high quality, and on target. As executive director, I am extremely grateful for their capabilities and capacities, and for their commitment to NHMA.

Judy A. Silva is the Executive Director for the New Hampshire Municipal Association. She may be contacted at 800.852.3358 ext. 3408 or at governmentaffairs@nhmunicipal.org.