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I'd like to call to order September 11th.
Our meeting today is going to be shorter than usual.
We're going to adjourn for 8.30 a.m. at 8.46 a.m. and 9.11 remembrance ceremony marking the
25th anniversary of the September 11th. 2001 terrorist attacks are going to be held outside.
You may have seen the prep and the chairs out by the flag poles in the upper lot.
here. That ceremony is going to begin promptly at 846, which is the time the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
I sent my two high schoolers off to Portsmouth High School this week and realized that enough time has passed since 2001 that all the students in our schools were not born yet, and a lot of the younger staff that have been hired.
It was the first time I had realized that maybe it was because it's the 25th anniversary, but it's important, I think, for parents and grandparents to have conversations with the young ones in our community and remind them how fortunate they are to enjoy, you know, relative domestic peace here and also remember those who are not living in peaceful environments.
So I encourage you all to attend that ceremony. I did have a bit of old business.
a quick note on appointments, reappointments, and EDC term endings.
So we have four terms coming up on October 1st, so a few weeks from now.
And then we have one alternative, alternate commissioner, Jason. There are two city council meetings in September,
one on the 14th and one on the 28th. So all commissioners with upcoming term dates.
have submitted their forms. Thank you for being so organized. And three out of the four should be on the nine to 14th city council agenda. I checked last night.
They'll be posted today in all four. Yeah. Okay. So again, thanks to everybody for being on the ball and organized on that. The September 14th meeting is the consideration for
reappointment. Then on the 28th, there's a city council meeting where a vote for official appointment
happens. Our fellow Commissioner Anna Howard is not seeking reappointment. I want to be the first to express the
UDC's gratitude for all your service and your perspective, especially as a professional
educator. We're wishing you luck in your state representative campaign. You're in my district.
And wishing you luck in your career.
Thank you.
I'm going to miss your questions, your explorations, and topics that we've discussed during your tenure here.
And I feel like you've encouraged us all to learn.
So thanks so much, Anna.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
So on to next item, I can entertain a motion to approve the draft minutes of the
August 7th, 2026 meeting as distributed.
So moved.
Second.
All right.
Like, is there any discussion on, any revisions on that?
I guess I'd like to bring this to a vote then.
All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
And those opposed, the ayes have it.
We have it.
little tweak of a change on the agenda for our next point, which is the working group
discussion.
Josh was not able to join us today.
Anne graciously agreed to speak on Josh's behalf.
Anne and and Josh were able to have a fruitful meeting on August 28th.
I'll let Ann report out, but I'll also frame it.
by saying three potential group, working group topics were identified, so we may need
to identify a third working group lead.
Can I turn it over to you?
Yeah, Josh and I sat down to me.
I think we were going to do a coffee somewhere and it was a beautiful day and we sat on a park bench
in Market Square, which seemed so appropriate to the topic to just sit and watch the
the commerce of Marcus Square unfold the first thing in the morning.
The first thing that we talked about was the challenge of it's September.
We only have four months or three months, whatever you want to call it.
But honestly, I don't quite understand the we have to wrap in December concept because
none of our terms run that way.
The world doesn't run that way.
So I'm going to throw out topics, and we just feel like you pick a topic and you just work on it
until it's done, whatever that is, if it's March, if it's June.
if it's December, whatever.
So don't be taken aback with thinking we don't have enough time to do anything.
The first thing that we talked about, and I think we talked about this here as a group,
is to benchmark Portsmouth against other similar cities and look at challenges they're having
and see what their solutions are, see if they bring us inspiration.
I know that one that sort of floated to the surface pretty easily was Newburyport, maybe take a look there.
But to deep dive and see, not necessarily even in the room, but who has a similar kind of size and type of business that happens here.
So that would be a potential topic.
We also talked about communications between citizens, workers, and the city.
And I think that this was highlighted because of the parking program, which turned into a little bit of a communications debacle.
So we danced around while we sat on the park bench.
we didn't actually dance.
Different ways that that might be achieved and then realized actually that's a topic in itself.
Could we help the city and city council?
Not so much. What we do now is more inbound market.
We expect workers and citizens to find the information, to come to City Hall.
When the way most of us get information is it just sort of is
sent to us by text or in our phones? And are we doing that in a efficient enough way that
people learn about things like the parking program, which obviously they did not.
So that would be a topic right there of looking at all different ways of communication.
And then the third topic, I think Councillor Bagley brought up the flock cameras at a council meeting or somewhere along the line.
line. And that's a brand name and that's a one specific thing. We felt like it's a bigger topic of
privacy, cybersecurity, all of that, not just one specific camera. So perhaps that whole concept
is something that we could look at as the EDC and look at, I'm just going to call it generally privacy.
So those in a nutshell are kind of the three things that we talked about. And I would sort of entertain comment of
what do you think? Are those topics? Does that something we feel like we could give some
umph to those topics to City Hall and City Council?
I just want to clarify that he did not specify flock. I don't think when Counselor Bagley brought forward.
And next Tuesday the Police Commission is having a meeting to discuss and I don't, I believe it's open to the public, right?
Yeah, it's open to the public. This is on topic with the Police Commission as well.
So this might be it.
too much of an overlap for that. But I mean, we talked about the threats to the water treatment
plant, which we're hearing is a thing that might happen. So it's more than police work.
Unless the police are also working on threats to, I don't mean, I don't mean there's a threat to our
water treatment plant, but that's been in the news that. I think the intersection is where city-owned
buildings, right? That's where the council could weigh in. So yeah, yes, exactly. But I think
that, you know, I think there'll be valuable information at the meeting next Tuesday.
If it's something people are curious about and want to learn more, you can always watch the meeting.
Yeah, even, I'm looking through my notes here, AI, tech advancements, all of that kind of wrapped into
one big topic. Yeah. Can I ask what happened to the... Oh, anyway. Okay, I'm sorry. I don't want
to derail that, but yeah. You can go ahead and do that. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I'm just, no, I was more
I'm curious about the working group that had been put together that was talking about the CTE.
Has that been kind of tabled decidedly? And I think that was a topic, but we never did a working group.
Oh, I'm sorry. I think there was a working or thing. It was like a sub topic of the working group. Yeah, but that's a good point. I mean, there were a couple things that were under working group umbrellas that may have, may have gotten lost as we moved into other groups.
I mean, I think, so overall, that actually hits on some of the history of why we're here today.
I, you know, I really, I have the same question as Ann.
I'd really like to put this out to the group as are these topics, I guess, that go, we would make it through that intake protocol and make sense.
Are these topics that the group is generally interested in that we feel appropriate?
and then is their interest in someone taking on a lead position?
We've asked Ann, and I haven't asked Josh yet, but if you guys could continue as leads, that'd be great.
If we do take on all three topics, we would need another lead.
But I think right now, it's the question Ann asked, is this something.
Are these the topics?
Yeah, are these the topics?
And I have to admit, I didn't put these through the protocol.
I kind of wanted to feel everybody.
out or are we swapping topics out?
And I think the protocol was, the time for it was when.
Yeah, I think now that we have topics, you could run it through and see how it works.
I think for topic one, benchmarking Portsmouth against other cities makes a lot of sense.
I think for both the communication and anything around data, cybersecurity, privacy,
we would want to understand the economic impact and lens for both of those topics in order
to determine what we might work on.
For the privacy cybersecurity one, I don't know if everybody's aware, but the International Association of Privacy Professionals is based right in Portsmouth.
So I don't know if we've had anybody from there either come to speak to the city or speak to the police commissioner, but I know some folks there and I'd be willing to reach out if that ends up becoming a topic that we want to explore.
It's a topic.
Let's come speak to us.
Yes, absolutely.
And under the benchmarking similarities, were there certain topics? I'm thinking about
previous conversations about the future of work, workforce developments, the workforce
challenges we know about our unemployment rate in Portland is down at 2.4% most recently.
So those challenges aren't going away.
I think it's looking at the challenges that we could all risk in our sleep and seeing what
are other communities doing.
Are they, do they have any creative solutions that we haven't seen?
Great.
But, you know, Bennett mentioned a whole thing.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, sir, out of the three topics, I think that one's the most remained to the work plan of the EDC.
And that's something, the benchmarking one in particular, is something the Chamber would very much like to be engaged in and has talked about for years and just hasn't gotten to the top of that you do this yet.
But maybe this catapulted up there.
And if you guys identified any cities, you know, kind of just off the cuff, you know, that kind of mirror.
Obviously, we talked about Newberry report.
Any others that have kind of been on your radar that we've long looked at?
You know, I think it depends on maybe to Sean's point a little bit of what are we looking to learn.
You know, if we want to find a, if we want to take child care or transportation and make that like a focus of the research or a visit even, you know, we may want to pick cities that have tackled that issue and learn from them.
So like Portland's done some great work in child care that we may want to go and, you know, take a deeper dive on, whereas, you know, Newberryport may have done other things.
things in other areas that we want to learn about.
So I think it's a little bit topic specific.
Sure.
It was a handful of anecdotal, you know, surface level comparisons.
There was the social districting in the Savannah.
I'll go.
Yeah.
Outdoor dining.
Outdoor dining.
We got the design standards.
That, I looked at about 10 towns, 10 cities, took it down to three, took it down to three.
that made the most sense.
And all of those design standards came from other cities.
But it was picking and choosing which ones would us.
Long time ago, Skateboard Ordinance, San Diego, California.
I've always been talking about Montreal for bike paths.
That kind of, so there has been, but it hasn't been compiled.
And I think there's plenty of material for a group to dig into.
And Ben's description of the travel, you know, the travel bus and checking out other cities and other EDCs is, I don't know, it's a really attractive idea, I think.
I couldn't find an EDC on Newberryport's website. I couldn't find anything that seemed to be a similar thing.
Is that right?
Yeah.
It's also interesting, but maybe it's named something that wasn't, not to say they don't have problems that they've solved or not solved.
Yeah.
So I'm listening and I'm kind of trying to figure out is, it seems the benchmarking with our communities can apply across someone's
topic that we come up with. So are we better suited with a working group that develops the concept of how we
connect with other communities or are we better deciding on any given topic that we're going to have
benchmark component of our role, which is to find the right communities that we can draw.
So, you know, like we did in social districts and stuff like that.
If we don't know what the topic's going to be, I don't know how you narrow it down from the
thousands of cities that are of similar size.
Right.
So it's a chicken of the egg situation a little bit.
Right.
Yeah, I think my vision when we first started
talking about it was the topic drives, the city choice, and then hopefully other parallels are
discovered along the way.
Right.
Because it has been what's happened so far, but it's just that that that journey has been pretty,
has been pretty short right now.
We haven't really looked into an analysis.
I guess, for instance, I think Savannah, Georgia could have a lot more to offer.
than just the social districting piece.
Transportation.
Is this an opportunity to, for like intersectionality with other committees who are, like,
I think that's been a whole thing.
I know that came up in an early meeting after I've been elected where there's a lot of siloing
of information.
And so, you know, it was like one, you know, two committees looking at the same issue and not
communicating.
And this feels like a possible, like, because I think about transportation, but I think
about Savannah and the work there doing.
and that's an example they're always bringing up.
And I don't want to say micro-transit, because that's the wrong term, but there's a term for the kind of transit they're looking at.
But is there an opportunity there?
Well, so we had transportation as a topic, that is my topic.
And we kind of printed on it because we had other people, other committees working on it,
and then there was something afloat that the mayor was going to appoint some sort of transportation.
transportation multi-mobile task force but now I've caught some chatter that the
bike ped committee might swoop that in am I hearing right who knows about bike
pet but that's not happened yet and there are a lot of pieces moving I know
for Monday night's council meeting councilor Hopkins is bringing forward
the the establishment of the task force as it's one of the council six
goals and they're looking specifically the request
specifically asked for EDC representation.
And that was what we had asked for when we said we're not going to study that, but we'd like a seat on whatever is formed.
Right.
So that'll be discussed Monday night.
So is it including bike pad or it's going to be separate?
So I believe the name is called Shuttle Loop and Public Transit Working Group.
It will include people from Coast, any other providers of transportation,
think C&J, all those committees, bike ped, parking and traffic safety.
Okay.
Members are from all that.
Trying to tie everybody in working together because to your point, there's been lots of side conversations and how do you net them together?
I'll just say, so the Council of Flynn's point, I mean, the EEC's expertise is kind of bring their business perspective.
What is the economic impact? What is the business impact?
We have all the benefit of Ben's new data.
So, because these other groups aren't looking at it from the economic standpoint.
You're looking at it from the community standpoint or safety standpoint or things.
point or things like that.
So that's what the EDC brings to these these conversations.
Whatever the challenge is, whatever the benchmark we're looking to do is, what is the impact
to our business community?
Councilor Hopkins is bringing it under her name because she's the chair of both parking
and traffic safety and the bike pet.
She is suggesting that she and perhaps other counselors be involved as well.
Can I ask when these working groups are spun up to what extent do the other council
members or working groups or even other city boards and commissions
understand what the function of the EDC is and the services that we provide.
This seems to be a continuing conversation where something is spun up and they don't know what we're here for.
And this conversation makes me think sometimes we don't know what we're here for.
You know, that was something that Josh and I talked about that city councillors don't actually know how to use us.
And we felt like the best way to maybe educate city councillors was one-on-one.
like Josh and I or whoever wants to participate would split up the nine people and have coffee with you
and talk about what we might bring to your categories of interest or to city council.
So that's not a working group, but just a, let's make sure that city council knows what we can do.
And we didn't really know a way to do that at a city council council meeting.
That seemed...
This is what we have Councillor Blaylock and Councillor Flynn for is to state this is what the EDC does and
when something comes up to say, hey, why don't I bring that back?
So I think we need maybe the one-on-one interactions,
but also broader awareness within city council and within other boards and commissions
around what the capabilities are for the EDC.
We've been successful in being a research arm,
not just for business impacts, but policy and partnering with the city.
And I think there's opportunity for that.
Commissioner Cohen is on Zoom and he led a nice conversation about outdoor dining
at the suggestion slash request of the council.
So that's a great example of putting us to work.
Any further thoughts, I guess, on the second two.
The second two working group suggestions,
city hall communication and privacy.
It might be helpful for the chair, sorry,
if our communications director, Monti Bohannon,
came to talk about the advancements in communication
since his position was created and some of the work
that we've done.
Monday and I, we're going to bring a request
to update our ordinance.
so that we don't have to post notices in the newspaper because it's timely.
It takes a lot of time.
It's very costly because we have stood up communication channels where you can sign up by text
or by email or both, if you're me, and you get lots of both, to be notified of what's coming
on an agenda for any given board committee commission.
So maybe it would be helpful if Monty walk people through that.
People understood some of the resources we've built in reaction to the council saying
we'd like more two-way communication.
Don't just expect people to be.
seek it out. And we talked about Monty with communications of, is this a working group or is this just, let's have a little meeting with Monty?
Like we did with Shanti about inspections.
Like we did with Shati.
Do we have kind of a slot? Is Jay,
isn't going on coming on October's meeting from Torrington?
I don't know where we're out with it. Is that, I mean, Monty's right here.
Yeah, we can, we can, we can, I'm sure we can slot Monty.
We can, we can probably get them in in a quicker.
I mean, I made a note.
Our October meeting because we had that presenter slot with Jay at Torrington.
I mean, if we're going to bring Monty in, then maybe the communications isn't actually talking about making that a working group today.
It's more of let's have a conversation with Monty.
Yeah, but we have.
I was going to suggest a similar thing with respect to the privacy, flock camera issues.
It's a hot topic.
but it's very wide range.
I think five years ago we were having a conversation now we should be advocating for, you know,
laying out 5G technology throughout the city to prove services and transportation,
communications, et cetera.
And we had conversations about privacy issues at that time as well.
So I wonder if it makes sense to see if we could get somebody from that privacy, you know,
Yeah, I'd be happy to take that.
To come in and talk about the implications for the business community, for government, et cetera,
before we just simply had three or four us get together and spend a bunch of time.
I can do that.
I'll take that.
It schedules for October, November, then.
Sure.
You say, what we're really doing is laying out some speaker things here.
Back on the benchmark, yeah, I just want to say when we were looking at, when I said, when I saw,
I started scrolling around on Newburyport.
At the same time, I was having a side conversation with a friend
about Bohenko Park, and it kind of needs to be activated a little bit more.
And then I see in Newburyport, they have a waterfront walkway with art on it that's very
activated, and so we're going to go to a field trip and walk their walk and see how is
that similar to Bohenko Park and what more could happen there.
And I think that's conversation started at the last arts meeting.
Yeah, there's a lot of energy around how to activate.
in other groups that have burning a lot of energy about how to act to me.
It was kind of cool to see like, oh, wait, that's just, someone's already done that in a very close point.
Yeah, again, just the Providence, Rhode Island would be another place.
So where does that put us for topics? Are we really at one working group, the benchmark?
Yeah. So we don't need someone to step up in a leader and it could just be Josh and I,
just work together on it.
Yeah, and I've, at least for this month.
I've been, I've reviewed Sarah was the author of the intake protocol, and I've gone over that a couple times in the last month.
I think that can focus the first 15 minutes of any working group meeting really well.
If we can send that around again as we're kind of in this working group reset mode,
mode, but one of the things that pops up each time I read it is output.
It's kind of like you go to the end of the, if you're not going through those steps and there
isn't an output or if there isn't a group that it's being reported out to, then you've
got a big question mark, you know, what are we doing here? Is this a worthy topic?
Is it, you know, what is the output? Is it a letter? Is it a presentation? Is it a design manual
like the outdoor dining was, but figuring that out, literally in the first 15 minutes of the working groups' formation, I think, is really important and it really kind of can organize thoughts well.
So we can, Sean, and I can make sure that that gets back out there and in front of people as we're going through groups.
Just while we're on this conversation,
let Sarah know. So the Portsmouth High School came back with a November 6th date is best for them, for us to go.
So then the IAPP could do this. December 4th.
AAP. P. Is that how the Commission wants to leave it with hand suggestion?
It seems to me we're maybe we're on the right track of instead of trying to get groups together today and send them off and go through the protocol and come up with ideas.
that we use the next couple months to look at the couple of the ones that are suggested
and try to put together our work plan for next year instead of waiting to the retreat,
which is the end of January, and resulted in us not even starting anything until March.
So we lost the first quarter, really.
So maybe by bringing in the people communications,
Marnie and the privacy people, we can refine these and really determine it's worth pursuing.
People jump into it on December and January instead of February and March.
And the retreat could be an open discussion or working session on the topics that have been researched in this year.
And just thinking about the communications issue, maybe we could think about doing a cheat sheet, what we can do.
or counselors for the business community, something that we can pass out, so to speak,
you know, electronically, whatever.
So that people know they can come to us.
So, for instance, the individual came and said,
we ought to be looking into cruise ships.
You know, that wouldn't have come to us.
It hadn't been a member of the public suggesting it.
So if we have some way of telling,
not just to,
the counselors, but others, what the EDC can do in the community as a whole, that might be helpful.
So I'm just a one-page invitation to call us, we can help you.
That may be a good topic for Monty as well, if appropriate, where he can not only share what his services are and what he does,
but also how the communications arm of the city could use us or help promote the work that we do as well.
Yeah, I don't remember a similar effort being made before.
I think we've leaned on our city council representatives in the past.
I think that's a great idea.
I'm going to close this discussion and move on to our next agenda item,
which is the city council update on.
Councilor Flan, Councillor Blaylock want to jump in.
We even met for about three weeks, but we didn't.
On the agenda Monday, there's still a lot of items.
items around parking.
That is still very, particularly as it pertains to the workforce.
So I think that is pretty much the extent of what I would say that, you know, an intersection here.
Yeah, Monday Night's Parking Palooza, that's for sure.
I have been talking with, many of the city's been talking with Iron Man.
That's looking to come here in like 2028.
They're looking to do, I believe it's a half-ironman.
They're probably going to have the start to swim at like Hampton Beach or something,
but try to have Portsmouth, Exeter, and the surrounding communities all involved.
You know, have it be an economic driver of sorts, but it would be a fun event.
Have that contact yet. Did they reach out to...
They reached out to us, yeah.
I've been on a couple of Zooms with them and stuff, and I know they've talked to the city staff.
talk to the city staff.
They were hoping to, you know, start at Prescott Park and have the swim, like, across the river
and stuff.
And, like, it could be the hardest iron man ever.
But, yeah.
No mind about patrol boats.
Yeah, yeah, that was one of the main.
They're not up here.
And then, like, they wanted, you know, you have to keep all the bikes, so you have to have
to have, like, a thousand bikes or something, just sitting at Prescott Park, taking up all that
state.
In the summer.
It wouldn't be.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah.
So, yeah, so I think Hampton Beach was more suggested as the starting line for all that stuff.
But we would just be in the loop.
Yeah, and then I think, like, the, yeah, I mean, our restaurants, hotels.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I know they were looking at, you know,
casino or something as, you know, but, again, 2028, August.
Yeah.
There's those other organizations, Spartan, right?
Spartan race, top mutter, like, you know, obviously it's a wonderful location here on the sea coast.
It would be interesting to see.
Yeah.
It was interesting because then they're like, oh, you have to pay, there's a fee,
you had to pay like $30,000, and I'm like, hey, dude, I'm not, you know,
trying for my taxpayers to pay it for, I heard we had to come here.
But we'll figure that out.
I think I've done a long time ago.
I was part of the first Lake Placid,
which I think is the hardest still.
still for a race course.
And I don't know, my impression was they do do do a full assessment for, you know.
Yeah, they're very professional.
Yeah, very, they've done this a million times.
It's a pretty, it's a, it's a fairly clean event.
It's pretty, the participants are a pretty affluent crowd and the spin-off on, like,
Blake Placid is kind of an ideal setting for that, where you have enough lodging and
and the natural resources with a swimming event,
the cycling event, and then a running event are all there.
No, I remember like the Portsworth Criterium, you know,
there used to be a fun event.
But yeah, I think it could be a good economic driver.
I'm pretty sure the last half Iron Man was in the Augusta,
Belgrade area this summer, so they probably passed through here.
Yeah, yeah.
I wonder if we can learn from that.
that. Another one, the Sisters City Committee has created a special revenue fund.
We're trying to build that fund up just so the, we can, you know, host our sister city
community guests when they come, so the high school doesn't have to take it out of their
high school budget to go send students to Nijianan or to Sanchol.
You know, but whenever they come, we want to have gifts for them. We want to, you know, maybe have a dinner
or something.
and not use taxpayer money, you know, but we're hoping to get that going and try to promote it and, you know, hoping to try to grow it up to like a million dollars or something, you know, and just, yeah.
And then...
We'll move on to Office of Economic Development Update from Sean.
Great. Thank you.
I'd share the picture.
It is where I love you.
Just thought that this was interesting, so 35 years of who the top employers are in different states.
It's pretty amazing, although there we are as New Hampshire little outlier, not health care.
It's interesting.
What's that?
What's that?
Who is the top employer that's retail?
Well, it goes by segment.
So in 1990 for us, it used to be manufacturing, and now it's retail.
And most other states have switched from manufacturing to health care as the largest employer.
It's just a very high-level look at that, with the exception of Las Vegas, right?
keeping Nevada where they are.
But it's just, you know, all the things we read about, but this just really put it on.
So I caught this and there's a website that has all kinds of naps and lists.
So anytime I see something, and I'm always watching for one of those national trends that we're also feeling here,
and is there something we can learn from that?
But really just informational there.
Can I just ask, is Portsmouth in, from your perspective, is Portsmouth in trend with the retail being the dominant sector,
or is Portsmouth an outlier from the rest of New Hampshire here?
of New Hampshire here?
No, I think it is just because of our tourism piece.
That really kind of falls in.
Would you repeat?
Yeah, I mean, when you factor P's into the equation, it does skew us.
So whether I got long as it's considered healthcare,
I'm not sure in this case.
But, you know, I would say, if you certainly take peas out of mix,
retail is probably the number one.
because of P's and what?
Right, so Lonsa is considered advanced manufacturing.
Yeah, I think so.
But we also are large in healthcare.
So I feel like the sea coast looks different than the rest of New Hampshire.
And I'm sure there's retail that's driven by the border,
the border, the big cities and towns on the border that draw the Massachusetts folks
for research.
Sure enough research.
Okay, there would be number two, certainly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah.
As I see more information, I'll share that, but a little closer home, a couple things.
We had a meeting with the businesses on Congress Street, Congress Street, renovations will start up on Monday,
and that's to work on the sidewalks.
All the work was done under the road to separate water, sewer, etc.
So the sidewalk is going to be cleaned up, the curving is going to be raised,
and everyone, the folks who came to the meeting understand that.
The idea is to work, is to finish the, is to wide,
the sidewalk, I guess that's on the south, south side of Congress, to get down to the two lanes that has been approved by city council.
And the goal is to start Monday and be done by the 30th of October.
To Sean's point, only impacts, I'll say the music hall side of the street.
The other side will remain on touch.
Right. Although I did learn that they are going to raise the curving on the other side.
It would be a little bit of impact, but most of the impact is on the music hall side.
And they've known that since January. We just wanted to remind them that we took a break.
never took a break and now we're coming back.
So that's official it's going to get out of two lanes, I guess.
Okay, go to the two lanes, right?
And the wider sidewalks, which could support additional outdoor dining in the future.
So there's that one.
The Hanover Garage RFP is out for public art.
It's not inside of Hanover Garage, I think murals and such.
There's a walkthrough, an invitation to artists on Monday morning.
We're going to take them through, let them see what's,
what's available.
Another one in the art is going to be a change out in the Portsmouth room,
so the next art exhibition will be coming towards the end of September.
There'll be a small reception probably before the city council meeting on the 28th.
That's for me to plan.
And that'll be four more local artists that the public art group is soliciting and will curate.
Lastly, there was,
Lastly, there was, not lastly, there's some New Hampshire information about the labor market.
A couple things wanted to bring some trends to this group.
This is from the New Hampshire fiscal policy institute.
Employment growth is improved by 1.1% January through July of 2026.
You might recall it was pretty flat to down in 2025.
So we're up 1.1% in the state of New Hampshire versus the national employment only rose 0.2%.
And interesting, not.
I mean, you expect small companies contribute most of the net job growth.
Companies with fewer than 20 employees added 79% of new job growth.
So we continue to just be a small employer state.
I mean, we have big employers, but mostly.
Another one to the point about employers, health care and social assistance
continues to grow in New Hampshire in terms of employment, whereas wholesale trade,
manufacturing, and retail trade have declined in the first.
part of 26. And here's the other demographic we talk about.
Labor constraints have ease, but the labor force participation fell among people ages 20 to 34.
The 34 participation fell, whereas older workers is increasing.
So we continue to struggle with younger employers, if you will, employees entering the workforce.
So this is just some information from regarding New Hampshire.
I wanted to pick up on Council of Laylark's comments on the Iron Man.
I've been invited to that group as well, so there's a lot of excitement about that.
There's also, if you haven't heard, a group that wants to bring a professional soccer team to the sea coast.
This means they start enforcement, but certainly the sea coast.
The hearts of pine in Maine, if you haven't heard of them.
They have an 8,000 ticket waiting list.
They sell out all their games.
And I was away over the weekend.
I saw them on the ESPN.
Hearts of Pine.
Yeah.
So people are pretty excited about, we should do that down here.
So stay tuned.
And the last thing, I'd be remiss by invention, our Italian artist friend, Vito DiBari, wants to bring a global art exhibit to Portsmouth that revolves around the metaphysics of food.
There you go.
So Ben is convening a group to see who wants to host such a thing.
But point is.
We continue to be in demand for all these different types of events.
We continue to attract this type of attention and opportunity.
So that's what I have for the group today.
I think we have enough time for me to ask this question.
Can you, are you able to tell us more about the mural art project in the Hanover garage
in terms of like timeline and funding and...
So it's a result of the percent for art?
So city council voted to fund that.
There's an RFP. You can see it. It's online. It's in our new, our new online procurement system.
Can you tell you more about it?
How are you feeling about the topic of communication and communication and going on participation?
Well, participation, do you think a lot of it?
Because this is a project of Park, the Public Art Review Committee, very energetic about this, they actually used, they actually
worked with Monty on a flashbook. Yeah. Towards the end of the year.
And talking about what would you want to see more of? And guess what came back?
Murals. Yeah. So rather than ask what people want to do, they took that data and they
created the RFP for murals, specifically inside of Hanover now that all of everything,
renovations are done. Do artists know about it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what the way it works with the procurement is that
Park provides a list of artists and it goes out. It also goes out publicly so anybody
anybody can take a look at that and bid on it.
It made me think of the snow band text alerts.
But it's not just Portsmouth residents or workers.
I mean, some of the artists like the sailboat thing in Pohanko Park, that brought submissions probably.
Yeah, it's very strong.
We're going to have a walk through Monday morning.
On the morning.
Interested artists.
Interested artists.
To view the space to ask questions.
and then what we do with RFP walkthroughs and we will compile all the questions
but all the answers to the questions on the website.
Right.
That's the standard process.
We won't be able to answer questions while we're there because the process is all questions
must be public, all answers must be public to anybody who's looking at.
So you can't do kind of one-off.
So from a communication standpoint,
Brian Murphy, who is in the communications team, is going to be there to videotape
so that we don't miss any of the questions.
so that we don't miss any of the questions.
So that we bring them back and be able to answer the questions
and post them online to stay within our protocol
to make sure we are being transparent.
That was a great answer.
Thank you.
I'm going to jump over to Ben and the Chamber Collaborative Update.
Yeah, good morning.
Last night we held our annual street life event, so I'm a little tired today.
So bear with me.
But we had a great evening at Water Country for the event,
and they were a great host at 325 or so business leaders together over there,
and that was just a fun evening of celebration.
And nobody went in the water, which was a big plus for me.
Just a couple other things.
I think we all know that the city had a working group that focused on child care
that wrapped up based work a month of June.
two ago. The chamber is trying to pick up that baton and continue that work forward.
So we've received some grant funding to hire a consultant to take that data, that report,
and turn it into some action items and start some conversations with some key larger employers
in the region to talk about child care and what role they might be willing to play in supporting
that. So that is an RFP that is out there.
Those applications or proposals are due back, I think the 18th of September,
and we'll pick a contractor to work with that this fall.
And it's for the winter, probably about two to three months of work there.
And from what we have heard from primarily New Hampshire Charitable Foundation is that they are very excited about this work.
And although our first grant from them was relatively modest, that if we come back with some really
innovative and unique and meaningful programs and ideas and maybe some pilot projects
that they will work with us to find some funding to help support those initiatives. So
we see this as the first step of many steps in the child care journey of trying to support
our workforce with that effort. So we're very excited about that work. Recently Catapult,
our young professionals organization, just celebrated their 20th anniversary.
So we're very thrilled about that. And they also have their annual 10 to watch awards coming up.
So if you know a young professional, that should be highlighted and honored. Please go ahead and submit that.
It's on the catapultsecoast.org website. We're always thrilled about that.
Define young.
Yeah, young at heart.
No problem. It's generally what I say. In this particular case, I'm looking for folks that are 40 years or younger.
All right. Yeah, I know it hurts me a little bit too.
So coming up in early December, the chamber hosts its annual awards. So if you know of a small business or a large business or a nonprofit that should be honored at that time. We have awards nominations available on our website as well. So please generate some ideas. You can just email them to me too and I'll get them into the
you. Some other things looking forward, we have now that the primaries are done and
through our straight life event, we'll be putting together the candidate forums for a lot of the races
that are coming up, primarily state level races coming up and hopefully the congressional races and things
like that. So that's on today's suit list, start reaching out to those campaigns and starting to
look at calendars and when we can get those folks in here. So our business community can
meet them and make some good choices when it comes to the ballot box in November.
Shop and Stroll, looking forward to the holidays a little bit. The retail community, we've tried
the last couple years to coordinate a shopping event with the parade the first weekend of
December. They're going to go a different path this year. I think just so much happening around
that parade day that they get lost in the shuffle they feel like. So shop and stroll is going
to be on the 17th. It's the normal Thursday thing that they've been working on for a long
time, and they have a lot of great ideas and are really coming together. And I will just say that
the local retail community, particularly downtown retail community, is working together in a better
way than I've ever seen in my 10 years here. So there's a lot of collaboration going on, a lot of
synergy, a lot of partnerships, and we're really thrilled to see that connectivity happening.
with that group. And then my last thing is we have moved forward, as Sean indicated earlier,
with the Placer software product that we talked about previously. And just out of that,
I'm happy to share a little bit of data, and I can probably provide this in a road of report each month.
But just for today, you know, looking at our tourism trends, year over year, we're looking
pretty healthy from a tourism and visitation standpoint, with trips being up just about 4%.
3.9%. And monthly visitors being up 4.4%. Visit nights are up about 3%. And total
visitors spend for the year. This is July 25 to June 26th is up 8.3% at $63.2 million in visitors spending. So we're really thrilled to see those numbers.
Just do want to point out the only kind of weak number in the numbers that come out of this report.
are retail being down a little bit. And if you talk to retailers downtown, I think
that you won't be surprised. They won't be surprised by that information is down about 4%.
And the length of stay is down just a touch about 1%. So instead of people spending, which our
average duration stay is about 2.6 nights is what that works out to be. So it was probably 2.7 nights
last year, just down like less than 1%. So a little soft there.
That's a great data, though.
Great data. We're still kind of kicking the tires on this,
trying out the best ways to use it. But it's really helpful tools to see where folks are coming from,
how long they're staying, you know, all those good information trends.
So we're actually changing up some of our like marketing strategy. So restaurant week's coming up
and we're making decisions on how we market restaurant week. And this gives us a really great data
to work off of where our visitors coming from. And we can target.
those markets using electronic, you know, meta and social media advertising really
specifically. So this is a really helpful analytics to be able to really get to the right
customers for us. I think that's all I had this morning.
Good, Tom. How's your calendar program coming? Oh, yeah. So great, great, thank you.
Yeah, the revision and the redo, if you, if you
will of the go portsmouth n.h.com website is in its final weeks of development here. We have
approved all this design work. So the look is done. They're doing all the magic behind the scenes
now to make the website function the way it should. So there is a tool built into that new
website that is an AI bot that will go out and pull it in calendar events from who we tell
it to pull in calendar events from.
So no longer does any of our music venues have to go and like enter in their shows and
their comedy and their authors and speaking and all that sort of stuff into our calendar.
It goes to the music call. It goes to 3S. It goes to Jimmy's and it pulls that information
in from their calendar into our calendar. And so it'll do that for all of our members. So it is not
live yet. That website will go live contractually by the end of the
this month. So we're in the final weeks here of waiting for that to the launch. So there is
one piece that may be a later addition. We had another AI tool that would, is like a trip
itinerary builders. You go there and say, I want to visit Portsmouth for three days. I like art and
craft beer. What should my itinerate be? And it'll basically say, you know, day one, you should
visit Kennedy Gallery and then go out of a beer at Earth Eagle or whatever.
it is. And that's a state, it's a state tourism office has kind of built that tool,
and they're not ready for it to come down to the local level just yet. So that will maybe be a
fall addition to the website later in this fall. So we're just waiting on the state to be ready
for it to come down to us. But other than that, the website should launch. You'll have online
bookings. So you can no longer, do you have to like come to our site, find the whole site, find the
hotel you want and then go to that hotel's website to book your reservation. You can do all
that right on our website now. We also are integrating with things like Resi and Open Table. So if you want
to book that reservation at any of our great restaurants, you can do that right through our website
now. So a lot more functionality built right into our site so people don't have to click to another
site and get lost in the shuffle. That's going to give you a lot of data on the back end as well, right?
And we'll give us a lot of data on the back end. That's great. Yeah. All right. Thanks, thanks, Ben.
witnessed the street life event last night was fantastic Ben and his team. I really feel
like you guys are knocking it out of the park. And that was on a rain date event as well. So just
kind of the level of loyalty, I think, with the members and those who came and great hosting by
water country as well. I think we have one member of the public. Our next agenda is the
public comment.
I don't know if Zach wants to take off.
Future meetings are October 2nd, November 2nd, November 6th, and December 4th.
Sean Sarah and I will make sure we have the new presentations and arranging those for those meetings.
and the CET visit.
So I can entertain a motion to adjourn the discussion.
I'll bring that to a vote.
All those in favor of adjourning sign a