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Keene City Council adopts pavement-setback rule and reclassifies city positions
Summary
The Keene City Council on second reading adopted ordinance O2025-29 to permit cross-site access between commercial properties and ordinance O2025-32 to adjust class allocations and create an assistant city engineer position; both measures passed with unanimous support (O2025-29 recorded one recusal).
The Keene City Council adopted two ordinances on second reading Tuesday, approving a measure to formalize cross-site access for commercial properties and updating municipal job classifications to aid recruitment.
Councilor Philip M. Jones said the adopted O2025-29 removes an obstacle for businesses by allowing movement between adjacent commercial entities without requiring users to return to the public street. "It's just making it legal," Jones said, explaining the change follows a prior public hearing and was intended to facilitate routine commercial operations.
The council approved O2025-29 by roll call; every voting member present supported the ordinance and the clerk recorded one recusal.
Councilor Thomas F. Powers then moved for adoption of O2025-32, describing the ordinance as largely housekeeping to reflect labor-market realities in the public works department and to improve pay and classification for hard-to-fill roles. The ordinance establishes a new Assistant City Engineer position and reclassifies the assistant city attorney role to a deputy city attorney, among other title and class adjustments tied to AFSCME-covered positions.
"It's a little tough to get folks to apply for positions when the category doesn't pay quite what everybody else pays," Powers said, arguing that the reclassifications should improve recruitment.
The council approved O2025-32 by roll call; the motion carried with unanimous 'Yes' votes.
Both ordinances were presented to councilors as committee recommendations following Planning, Licenses & Development and Finance committee review. The measures take effect according to the city's normal codification and scheduling processes; no implementation date was specified at the meeting.
