By JOHN KOZIOL
Staff Writer

LACONIA — Mayor Mark Fraser went into Wednesday’s meeting with the board of directors of the Laconia Motorcycle Rally and Race Week Association with a smile on his face and a goal of getting the group to work more closely with the city to improve Bike Week.

And while Fraser got some support for a better relationship with Rally and Race, including the suggestion to reactivate a city committee to work on the event, he also got an earful about the "mass hysteria" that he, the City Council, the media, and above all, Police Chief William Baker, created about the potential for violence between rival motorcycle clubs at Bike Week.

Fraser said he came to the meeting, which was held at the Weirs Community Center, in large part to clear up some rumors he had heard coming out of The Weirs in the days before and during Bike Week.

The rumor that really burned him up, however, was one that the police officers — because the violence that Baker had expressed concerns about had not happened — had been instructed to pick fights with Bike Week patrons.

Naswa Resort owner Peter Makris later threw out a rumor he had heard making the rounds recently: that Baker was stepping down.

Fraser said that was news to him and Baker, who was reached after the meeting, said he had heard the rumor, but that there was no truth to it.

The mayor said he was upset to hear that some people in The Weirs would actually think the Police Department was going to instigate trouble and stressed that the only Bike Week-related matter the council took up this year was to discuss public safety in light of the possibility of violence between outlaw bike clubs.

"You can agree or disagree with what the council did," he said, "but no one" tried to restrict or eliminate Bike Week as the back-channel scuttlebutt would have people believe.

Neither did the City Council have anything to do with the state Liquor Commission’s decision to deny licenses for Bike Week beer tents, "yet we got the blame," said Fraser.

If there are to be successful Bike Weeks in the future, he continued, then the city as a partner in them has to be treated with respect. When respect breaks down, then the demise of Bike Week may follow, Fraser cautioned.

The mayor swore that should the council put discussion of Bike Week on its agenda — and to date, no councilor has asked to do so, he noted — then "you will be the first to know."

For the past two council meetings, however, rumors that the council would take action on Bike Week-related items — when no such action was called for on the council’s agenda — caused a number of citizens to needlessly attend the sessions, said Fraser.

The mayor dismissed the notion, as some Bike Week supporters proposed to him in e-mails, that "the city is making a killing on this event and how dare we restrict it."

"We all know that is not the truth," said Fraser, as the city does not want to compete with property owners in The Weirs, but only wants to break even.

"Let’s work together," he told Rally and Race members, adding that Ward 5 Councilor Rick Judkins, who also sits on its board of directors, keeps Bike Week on the council’s Public Safety Committee agenda year-round to permit open discussion.

Fraser went on to suggest that maybe a promoter could step in to operate Bike Week, possibly Race and Rally itself, and that there could also be a sliding scale for vending permits based on the size of a given applicant’s booth and offerings.

Ron Meade, who is director of new projects at New Hampshire International Speedway and a Rally and Race board member, said there is a "misconception" that Bike Week is a Laconia event when in actuality it is more properly a statewide happening.

Biker Week is a "godsend" to many New Hampshire businesses, Meade said, in urging Fraser to try to enlist the city’s legislative delegation to get more money transferred from state coffers to the city.

Rally and Race President Paul Lessard questioned Fraser’s assertion that as in Manchester, the party that "promotes" an event should post liability insurance for it.

In the Queen City, the promoter of a series of public concerts was charging admission, whereas no admission was charged to get into Bike Week, Lessard said.

He added that what Rally and Race does is to take a variety of information about Bike Week events and collate them into the official Bike Week magazine.

As to Fraser’s published remarks that Rally and Race "owns" Bike Week because the Bike Week magazine lists dates for Bike Weeks though 2007, Lessard said NHIS sets those dates which are actually the dates for the series of motorcycle races at the track.

Rally and Race promotes the Lakes Region and the state year-round, said Lessard. "We’re like the Chamber of Commerce for this area, in a way," he said, while the city controls the vending permits and some other aspects of Bike Week.

Cynthia Makris, who is the Naswa’s general manager, said the negativity created by city officials and the media has continued to batter her family’s business.

One would-be guest recently called and asked her if it would be safe to come up with her family in July or August given the reports of a "gang war," in Laconia, said Makris.

The entire threat of Bike Week violence was "blown out of proportion" because of Baker and the media, she said, although Fraser earlier observed that no one from Rally and Race wanted to admit that the fact was that the motorcycle clubs were slugging it out, sometimes with fatal results, in other parts of the country.

Lessard said if Fraser wanted a "partnership" with Rally and Race, the mayor would first have to recognize that Rally and Race’s role is the one he referred to previously.

Later, Lessard, who was himself a reporter, took a swipe at the local media for its biased Bike Week coverage.

"It’s like a bunch of high school press in this area," he said, adding that the media focuses on the negative aspects of Bike Week and even in its reporting of Wednesday’s meeting, it would focus more on Fraser’s comments than that of other speakers.

Rally and Race would like to move forward with the city on Bike Week issues and to form a partnership, but, Lessard insisted, his organization’s role "has to be accepted."

Charlie St. Clair, who is Rally and Race’s executive director, interjected that there already is a partnership because the city, in the form of Judkins, is represented on the association’s Board of Directors.

In his parting comments, Fraser told Rally and Race members that he wanted to eliminate the negativity surrounding Bike Week and to work to make it a great event.