What's on the table
at City Council

Public hearing and adoption vote. The largest single piece is $5,000,000 for elementary school upgrades, which the City Manager's report ties to interior renovations at New Franklin scheduled for FY2027 and FY2028 — accessibility work, entrance security, asbestos removal, air handling and storage. Staff describe New Franklin as having space problems that have led to overcrowding and improvised learning areas.

The remaining $1.5 million covers district-wide capital work, playground replacement at Little Harbour and New Franklin (both about 25 years old), and pavement and roofing across roughly 521,000 square feet of roof and 903,000 square feet of pavement.

Eight projects in one vote. The biggest by far is $2,800,000 for design of the police facility and the wider municipal complex. The City Manager's report describes this as the remainder of $4.2 million identified in earlier capital plans for design work, and notes the project has grown from a police-only scope to include the City Hall municipal government areas.

See also: Vaughan Mall appears again in 10.D and 10.E, and the design itself is item 15.B. Storm drainage and The Creek reconstruction also appear in 10.D and 10.E.

Replaces Marine 1. The City Manager's report says the Coast Guard is reviewing its staffing and lifesaving missions and may need more help from local partners, and that the new boat would give crews a safer operating platform.

May be financed through the state revolving loan fund rather than a straight bond. Covers pipe replacement across a system with more than 150 miles of main, some of it 50 to 100 years old; well station upgrades; and repairs at the Madbury treatment plant, which has run continuously since 2011.

$600,000 goes to designing PFAS treatment for the Portsmouth and Collins wells, both affected by contamination from the former Pease Air Force Base. Per the City Manager's report, the Air Force has not committed funds for this treatment, and the city intends to keep asking for reimbursement. The EPA compliance deadline is currently 2029, with a proposed rule change that would push it to 2031.

Also potentially state revolving fund. The largest piece, $1,500,000, upgrades the chemical storage building at the Peirce Island wastewater treatment facility — work the City Manager's report says was value-engineered out of the original plant upgrade.

The storm drainage line includes $200,000 to set up a separate Stormwater Enterprise Fund. The same $200,000 note appears under the storm drainage line in resolution #14, so read the two together rather than adding them.

Once a year the city takes the parking changes the Parking & Traffic Safety Committee has been running on a trial basis and makes them permanent. Three changes this round:

• Daniel Street — 15-minute parking moves from the southerly side to the northerly side. Three metered spaces become two.
• Middle Street — new no-parking zone on the westerly side, 47 feet north from Cass Street.
• Brewster Street — the loading zone shifts from 7 a.m.–3 p.m. Monday–Friday to 6 a.m.–11 a.m. Monday–Saturday. Shorter window, earlier start, now includes Saturdays.

First reading only. A public hearing and second reading are proposed for August 17.

"Encumbrance" means blocking a sidewalk, parking space or street for construction. The fee increases themselves already happened — Council adopted them in the FY27 fee schedule on June 8: the per-square-foot license charge went from $0.05 to $0.10, permit fees from $50 to $150, and a new $300 extension fee was created.

Tonight's ordinance does something narrower. It adds language pointing Chapter 6 at the fee-adoption procedure in the Administrative Code, so that future fees are set through that process rather than written into the ordinance. The City Manager's report calls it a housekeeping measure and notes that if it passes, the 2018 Council policy on encumbrance license fees should be repealed as obsolete.

Pattern worth noticing: this item and item 10.I both route fee-setting authority through the same Administrative Code procedure (Chapter 1, Article XVI, Section 1.601). Two different fee areas, one shared mechanism.

Chapter 12 is deleted in full and replaced with a short administrative article. This is driven by state law: recent changes to RSA 155-A allow municipalities to keep local amendments for administrative functions but prohibit local amendments to the technical requirements of the state building code. As of July 1, issuing permits and collecting fees also count as local amendments.

The replacement chapter designates the Inspection Department as the code compliance agency, names a Chief Building Official appointed by the City Manager, makes the Zoning Board of Adjustment the building code board of appeals, and otherwise defers to the state code.

At first reading on July 13, Councilor Cook asked why the Section 1208 Green Building code was struck. Worth noting for context: in the current ordinance every provision under Section 1208 — photovoltaic, EV chargers, heat pumps, insulation, water conservation — is marked "Reserved." The section header goes away; no operative requirement is being repealed. The City Manager asked staff to work with the state board and revisit where green building provisions could live once the new chapter is in place.

This is the rate vote that follows July's mechanism vote. On July 13 Council finished the ordinance change moving parking meter rates out of Chapter 7 and into the Administrative Code fee procedure. Tonight Council sets the actual number under that new procedure.

What changes: on-street and city lot parking goes from $2 per hour for the first three hours and $5 thereafter, to $3 for the first three hours and $6 thereafter.

What doesn't: the motion leaves resident parking rates and the current $2 per hour non-resident RAPP rate unchanged.

The Parking Division memo explains the logic. Garage rates already rose July 1 — Hanover from $2 to $3 an hour, Foundry from $1 to $2. Without a matching on-street increase, a four-hour stay at Hanover would cost $12 while the same stay on-street costs $11, which staff say would push demand onto the street and undercut the point of the pricing structure. Average length of stay is 1.96 hours on-street, 3.78 at Hanover, 8.85 at Foundry.

See also: five of the twelve public submissions this cycle are about parking.

• Granite State Wheelers Seacoast Century, September 26, 2026. Roughly 800 riders passing through the city between about 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., same route as 2025. No road closures requested.
• St. Paddy's 5k/10k, Sunday, March 7, 2027, run entirely inside the Pease Tradeport.
• Eastern States 20 Miler & Half Marathon, Saturday, March 27, 2027, starting in Kittery and running down Route 1A through Portsmouth.

Staff will walk through the city's obligations under the consent decrees that settled the federal litigation designating Coakley Landfill a Superfund site in the 1990s, with oversight by the EPA and state environmental services.

The presentation is expected to cover site history, how the Coakley Landfill Group is composed and operates, current monitoring results, and a new $980,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Services and how the group plans to use it.

Verbal report; no written materials in the packet.

Portsmouth Public Media Television has asked Council to release what's left in the Cable Television Public Access Charitable Trust, so it can meet current obligations, reduce debt and continue moving to a leaner operating model.

The trust was set up in 2009 and fed by cable franchise fees: under a 2009 policy the first $360,000 of annual franchise receipts goes to the general fund and anything above that flows to the trust. As cable subscriptions have fallen, the City Manager's report says franchise receipts are unlikely to exceed $360,000 in FY27 or beyond, so there is unlikely to be any further meaningful money flowing in.

The report recommends leaving the trust dormant but open through FY27 rather than terminating it, with a decision on termination next year. The Cable and Broadband Internet Commission concurred at its July 22 meeting.

Attorney Colby Gamester, representing a buyer under contract for a vacant lot at 0 Elm Street, asks Council to authorize a building permit for a single-family home under RSA 674:41, I(d) — the provision covering lots reached by a private road.

The lot sits at the corner of two "paper streets" laid out on a 1902 subdivision plan but never built as public ways. Elm Street was never constructed at all. Part of Forrest Street was improved, first as gravel and now paved, but the letter says that work was done and maintained by the owners of 1 Forrest Street, not the city. Interstate construction later severed the neighborhood, leaving the rest unbuilt.

Rather than litigate whether the city still holds rights in those paper streets, the letter proposes treating access as a shared private driveway. It says preliminary discussions with Public Works indicate the city would not maintain or plow it, trash pickup would happen on Cutts Avenue, and sewer service would run through a private line to the Cutts Avenue main.

Under the statute, Council must refer the request to the Planning Board for review and comment before it can authorize anything. The letter asks for referral to the August 20 Planning Board meeting. Any authorization would still be conditioned on the project winning variances from the Zoning Board and conditional use permits from the Planning Board for the highway noise overlay district and possible wetland buffer impacts.

Catalogued in full in the correspondence section below.

• Considered: Wendi Alip to the Sustainability Committee. An eight-year resident with a background in visual marketing communications and decorative painting; her application cites the Great Bay Changemaker Program and attendance at recent committee meetings.
• Voted: reappointment of Stephen Buzzell to the Cemetery Committee.
• Resignation: Paul Mannle from the Zoning Board of Adjustment, effective July 1, having moved out of Portsmouth.
• Resignation: Heather Krans from the Public Art Review Committee, effective August 15, also moving out of the city, which is a bar to committee service.
• New: establishing a Working Group on Service Delivery and Technology. Verbal item; no written materials in the packet.

Context: a July 13 appointment of John "Jack" Holzman to the Zoning Board was held for later consideration. It does not appear on tonight's agenda.

Assistant Mayor Kelley and Councilor Tabor present the draft plan. The July 2026 working draft is on the city website.

The plan is organized around four moves: update the rules, encourage redevelopment, broaden housing choices, and track progress. Its action table lists each item with a responsible party and a timeframe. Among the near-term ones (0–6 months): allowing conversion of office and commercial buildings to residential, rezoning Office Research and General Business districts for mixed use and housing, and establishing an in-lieu fee program feeding the Housing Trust Fund. Longer-term items (1–2 years) include expanding multi-family zoning, reducing minimum lot sizes and setbacks, adjusting height limits, allowing live/work units, and simplifying the form-based code.

The plan is explicitly tied to the Master Plan update — most zoning actions would be advanced through that process rather than separately.

Two motions from Councilor Cook. The first accepts the Vaughan Mall re-design plan in substantially the form presented, with language making clear that changes on Vaughan Mall do not preclude later implementation of the 2017 plans for Vaughan Mall, Worth Lot and Bridge Street Lot.

The design, presented at a July 22 public meeting, aims for a flexible space with more pedestrian accommodation, lighting and shade, multiple public art locations, and visual separation between the pedestrian mall and the parking lot. Construction documents are due September 2026, bidding in October or November, and landscape work in spring 2027.

The second motion supports a Public Art Review Committee recommendation to designate a location near the Congress Street end for a donated "City of the Open Door" artwork. The committee's memo explains the project grew out of donations raised for a Pride crosswalk after a series of racist and homophobic incidents downtown; the organizers and the committee agreed a Portsmouth-specific permanent work would be more durable than a painted crosswalk. The medium is undecided and would be chosen through an RFP. The group needs the location commitment before it can begin fundraising.

Money link: the $1,500,000 for Vaughan Mall restoration sits in resolutions 10.B, 10.D and 10.E. The capital plan sheet puts total FY27 funding at $2,000,000 — the $1.5 million in bonds plus $500,000 shown as a public-private partnership contribution, which is not part of tonight's votes.

One action item for Council: a 25 mph speed limit on Shearwater Drive. The street had dropped out of the ordinance after a name change years ago; residential development followed, signage came down, and neighbors asked for it back. A speed study supported 25 mph.

Also in the minutes: a speed and pedestrian video study at the Maplewood Avenue crosswalk at Dennett Street found no basis for additional signage or changes, and was placed on file. The committee voted to form a working group with the Bicycle/Pedestrian Blue Ribbon Committee to re-examine the Complete Streets design guidelines.

$776,653 — State opioid abatement program. A two-year sole-source award funding an additional civilian social worker embedded in the Police Department, an additional social worker in the School Department, and recovery-related housing assistance through Welfare. The state paperwork shows $379,864 in state fiscal 2027 and $396,789 in 2028, running through June 30, 2028, with an option to renew up to two additional years. The award is contingent on Governor and Council approval; the packet includes the request going to them.

$24,100 — State highway safety grant to the Police Commission, supporting six highway safety initiatives. The Police Commission memo notes the grant will only be accepted if specific language appears in the Council minutes, and that the vote must be a majority vote.

Historic marker — Ranger Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. A donated marker near Stoodley's Tavern on Hancock Street, commemorating it as a meeting place for local Patriots planning the raid on Fort William and Mary. The marker would be produced at no cost to the chapter and become city property, with Public Works recommending the exact location.

$4,500 — Portsmouth Lodge of Elks No. 97, covering American Red Cross lifeguard training fees for the Portsmouth Indoor Pool.

• New Public Works projects dashboard. A central online place to track project details, timelines, updates and presentation materials, built with the city's IT and communications teams and local firm Bowst.
• Plain-language land use guides. Following Councilor Bagley's July request, staff have produced an online guide plus five one-page guides for residents approaching a land use board or the permitting process for the first time, available in both interactive and PDF form.
• Vaughan Mall design status. The project is in final design with construction pending funding authorization — which is item 10.B, 10.D and 10.E tonight.

Production note: the informational items section is printed twice in the packet, on consecutive pages.

Three pages of the packet contain a marked-up amendment to Chapter 10, the Zoning Ordinance. It appears between the building code ordinance and the City Manager's report. It is not listed anywhere on the agenda and the City Manager's report does not mention it.

What the redline would do, if adopted:

• Section 10.234.50 — abutter notice. Deletes the local requirement that everyone owning property within 300 feet of a Zoning Board appeal receive notice, along with the clause exempting Character Districts 4 and 5 and the Downtown Overlay District from that requirement. In its place, notice would simply follow state law.
• Section 10.246.10 — conditional use permits. Where a permit is approved alongside a site plan, it would stay valid as long as the site plan does. Where it stands alone, the Planning & Sustainability Director could grant a first one-year extension administratively; any further extension would need a Planning Board public hearing and could not exceed one more year.
• Section 10.1017.72 — wetland permits. Extensions would follow the same rule as above rather than the current separate process.