Concord votes to remove Memorial Field bleachers as talk of single city-wide school district surfaces

The Concord City Council voted Monday night to tear down the aging bleachers at Memorial Field for $385,000, but not before the meeting raised questions about whether consolidating the city’s two school districts into one might be the right move for the community.

The removal of the bleachers is just one piece of a sweeping Memorial Field renovation. 

The current proposal calls for $31.7 million in improvements to the city-owned field, with costs expected to be split evenly between the City of Concord and the Concord School District.

But that funding arrangement has stirred frustration among residents of Penacook, a neighborhood within Concord’s city limits that pays taxes to its own school district, the Merrimack Valley School District.

Since the city is partially funding the project, Penacook residents will be on the hook for a portion of the costs through their municipal taxes, even though their students don’t utilize the facilities at Memorial Field.

At Monday’s meeting, a group of Penacook residents made their feelings clear: The arrangement simply isn’t fair.

Mayor Byron Champlin said it’s unusual for a city of 45,000 people to have two separate school districts.

“This has really created a balkanization of Concord,” he said. “It’s not healthy for the city when portions of the city feel that they’re being treated inequitably or that they’re lesser persons than the other part of the city, when we’re all one community with one common goal, which is the success of the community.”

Penacook residents already pay a higher total tax rate. In 2025, they paid $30.74 per thousand dollars of assessed value compared to $29.11 for those residents in the Concord School District. 

Jessica Wheeler Russell, a Merrimack Valley School District board member, said there is a “50-50 shot” that Penacook could eventually be folded back into the Concord School District, but that it would ultimately come down to voters bringing the measure before the school board and approving it at an annual meeting.

“I’m not going to say that it’s necessarily a bad idea to look at every option, and that is mostly what I hear from folks in Penacook who have an interest in this,” she said. “It’s not necessarily that they’re like gung-ho on it. It’s that the idea might be valuable.”

The wooden bleachers at Memorial Field were deemed a safety hazard and needed to come down regardless of the broader renovation timeline. 

Councilors who backed immediate removal argued that the structures posed a clear liability, providing no benefit to the school district or the city, whether fenced off or left as-is.

Steve Largy, director of physical education, health and sport for the Concord School District, said that one of the key factors in attracting new students — or retaining student-athletes — is the quality of the facilities a district offers.

Beyond the bleachers, poor drainage has long plagued the fields. 

Concord students have been using tracks maintained by the Merrimack Valley School District once a week.

Russell said the solution to the issue should be “community-minded.”

Councilor Stacey Brown of Ward 5 made a motion to table the demolition until the city and school district could have a broader conversation about the complete renovation plan and its impact on Penacook residents.

But the motion failed.

“I think it should not come from Penacook residents. It should come from the Concord School district,” she said. “I’m not comfortable that [school district] put all their eggs in one basket of ‘We have to do the Memorial Field complex, and that’s it.’”