By JOHN KOZIOL

Staff Writer

LACONIA — Following some acrimonious debate, the City Council on Monday rejected creating a Bike Week committee as proposed by Mayor Mark Fraser.

Several of the councilors who voted against the plan, however, indicated they might support a committee to study the event if the committee were configured differently.

The plan was rejected 4-2, with councilors James Cowan, Rick Judkins, Armand Bolduc and Bob Luther voting against the proposal, and councilors Paul Bordeau and Fred Toll supporting it.

Fraser’s plan would have created a 13-member, ad-hoc advisory committee made up of a member of the Laconia Police Commission; a Belknap County commissioner; six residents; three business people from Laconia, and/or neighboring communities; and one representative each from the Greater Laconia-Weirs Beach Chamber of Commerce and the Laconia Motorcycle Week Rally and Race Association.

Two city councilors would serve as ex-officio members of the committee.

James Cowan, who represents Ward 4, said the committee should be made up only of regular Laconia citizens, later elaborating that the committee members should not come to the task with preconceived notions about Bike Week.

Ward 5 Councilor Rick Judkins, who represents the council on the Rally & Race board of directors, said the committee could not be objective with the members Fraser sought to appoint to it.

Peter Makris, who owns the Naswa Resort in The Weirs and is also a Rally & Race director, asked the mayor point blank: "What are you looking for?" in forming a Bike Week committee.

The event has been around for 79 years, he said, and has "had very few problems."

There have been suggestions, Fraser replied, that maybe Bike Week is too long at nine days in duration and that maybe its cost is burdensome on the city and the county. There was also a perception that some of the bad behavior at Bike Week gives the city a bad reputation, he said.

Jose DeMatos, who is also a business owner in The Weirs, said the city should concentrate its efforts on getting more money from the state, which is the real beneficiary of Bike Week, and on expediting its Bike Week site review process.

Ward 1 Councilor Paul Bordeau said he appreciated hearing from Makris and DeMatos, but was disturbed by the tone of what they were saying in that it implied to him that they did not want the voices of Laconia’s 16,000-plus other residents to be heard in the Bike Week discussion.

"This is not a witch hunt," Bordeau said of the attempt to form the Bike Week committee, nor was it an effort to shut the event down.

Judy Krahulec, president of the Weirs Action Committee, attempted to calm things a bit, but instead may have fanned the flames by charging that Bordeau, whose ward includes most of The Weirs, has never sought the input of the WAC or of residents in The Weirs on Bike Week.

For that reason, Bordeau should not be appointed to a potential Bike Week committee, she said.

Makris then added that Ward 6 Councilor Armand Bolduc, whose ward also includes a part of The Weirs, was similarly unresponsive and "never once" has visited the Naswa to ask how business is or what can be done to try and help improve it.

"I don’t drink so I don’t have to go to your place," said Bolduc, prompting "oohs" from the audience and an admonition from Fraser against those types of comments.

As a citizen, Cowan said he would tell members of a Bike Week committee that "this is an exercise in futility" because the committee would be lacking a crucial piece of information — a cost/benefit analysis of Bike Week.

The council last month rejected giving $10,000 to the Belknap County Economic Development Council toward the estimated $30,000 cost of such an analysis.

After the council voted not to form the Bike Week committee, Fraser asked the council for alternative motions on a different committee make-up, but got none.

Judkins, did, however, ask the mayor to provide him with his written reasons for forming the committee and said he would study them and possibly come up with his own recommendations at a future council meeting.

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