Council discusses KSC internships with city

For most students at Keene State College, internships are a part of the normal college experience. What made the experience different for 17 interns over the past year, is they got to work for the city of Keene.

Assistant City Manager William Prokop introduced a presentation about what internships have done for the city with various aspects of the internship program and the benefits it has for the city of Keene at the Keene City Council Meeting on Thursday, March 4.
According to Prokop, student interns have helped in many ways, from working on a safety manual for city workers, to creating a directory for Keene residents listing all of the emergency resources available to them.

The presentation included comments from senior Jacqueline Foster, a political science major at KSC, who is working on updating the position descriptions for city workers.
“Being an intern for the city has been interesting, tough and educational,” Foster said.
After the internship presentation, the city council continued the meeting with voting on findings from various sub-committees, specifically recommendations from the Finance, Organization and Personnel Committee. With most propositions passing unanimously, two motions were discussed in more depth.

The first and most controversial was a vote to allow the city manager to write up a contract for an outside company to come and work on making city buildings and offices more energy-efficient.

Councillor Mitchell H. Greenwald voiced his opinion against this action because he said he feared the company would not hire local contractors to do the work. Despite the controversy, the motion to draw-up a contract passed with a 12-1 majority vote.

The second motion to receive discussion concerned resigning the lease for the India Pavillion located at the Keene Dillant-Hopkins Airport. The discussion came about because of the potential for other restaurants to be in the place where the India Pavilion now exists. The committee decided that, although there may be need to look for new restaurants, there has been no interest for the past few years. This motion to renew the lease passed by an 11-2 margin.

Other topics of discussion at the meeting included the recognition of March as Red Cross Awareness Month, as well as commemoration for the former Chief of Police Arthur Walker.
Finally the meeting concluded with a brief discussion about the re-assessments of property values in the Keene area. This discussion will be continued at the next city council meeting on Thursday, March 18.
   
Sean O’Donnell can be contacted at sodonnell@keeneequinox.com.