The Wright stuff

At last week's TC meeting, Mr. Wright brought up a concern about councilors meeting with Green Power Management. He was pretty vague, but the discussion centered around councilors meeting with this "group" two at a time and he mentioned a conflict of interest.

The council basically danced around this, not fully explaining the issue for people at the meeting or watching from home. They talked about not excluding people from committees who might also have ideas to save the town money. They questioned when and where someone might approach a TC or other committee member and discussed their need to be available to the citizens of Newmarket.

It sounded like a pretty good argument. I certainly want to have access to the council. But the conversation made me wonder, and with very few specifics given at the meeting, I ended up spending a little time researching Green Power Management the next day.

The issue seems to be that Bob Coffey is the CEO of Green Power Management and he is also the chair of the Efficiency Committee. Unfortunately for me I don't read minds, so I'm going to have to make some guesses here. Bob Coffey wants to pitch an idea to the council and rather than doing it once, in front of the entire council with the public viewing, he is choosing to meet with councilors a couple at a time.

I can see where some people might have a problem with this. Personally, I'm conflicted about this. I don't have a problem with someone using their connections to pitch an idea. I don't see anything wrong with someone talking to a couple of councilors to take the temperature of the council as a whole. But something about the way Mr. Wright brought it up made it seem more ominous than that---he mentioned this group meeting with councilors 2 at a time. It sounded organized. Again, I'm not a mind reader, so I don't know exactly where he was going with this, but it seems... questionable.

To confuse the issue, a councilor compared this to meeting a citizen at a cocktail party and that citizen mentions an idea. The question was raised, should we not talk to that person? C'mon. I'm pretty sure that's not what Mr. Wright was saying. Listening to ideas from your constituents is one thing, but organizing a work-around is something very different. And trying to compare those two situations is, in my opinion, dishonest.

Again, I'm not sure where I stand on the (alleged, by me) work-around. What I do know is that it is really easy to bend the rules when you think you're right.

Q & A

There have been a few questions raised about my last post and I would like to address them here.


1. Am I biased?


I will point you to the line under the blog title to answer that question. "One resident's thoughts about Newmarket politics." These are my thoughts, my opinions, my biases. I hope that clears it up.

2. Is the website Defending NH Public Education biased?


While I can't speak to what any organization believes or doesn't believe, I will again point you to the title of their website. My guess is that they are biased toward public education in NH, but I could be wrong.


3. How did DNHPE come up with these scores?


This is an important question and I thought it would be helpful to point out some of the votes that led us here. For example, Joshua Davenport voted in favor of lowering the dropout age, in favor of repealing universal kindergarten, in favor of repealing compulsory school attendance, and in favor of disbanding the Department of Education.


Adam Schroadter did also vote in favor of repealing universal kindergarten as well and to override the governor's veto to repeal comulsory school attendance. But I'm not sure if this is an accurate reflection of his score because he did not vote at all on many of the other bills mentioned above.

It's simple: Public education is important to me and I want people like Marcia Moody (who received an "A" from DNHPE) to represent me in Concord.

Animal House?

Thanks to the website Defending NH Public Education, we can view our state legislators' grades on their support of education in our state. The news isn't good. If it were a movie, I imagine it would look something like this:

Adam Schroadter earned a D

Joshua Davenport received an F-

Russell Prescott got a C

Newmarket deserves better.

If it's good for the goose....

Impact fees came up twice at the TC meeting last night.

The first time was in reference to a public hearing about releasing impact fees for studies on the MacIntosh well. A little background--- the DES has threatened to impose a moratorium on all new building if we don't figure out a solution to our water supply problem.  I wrote about it here back in May. (Now just switch DES for DoE and water supply problem to fire and life safety deficiencies and you might start to see a pattern.)

No one spoke at the public hearing last night and the council didn't take any action after that hearing either--I'm not sure why, but it is probably procedural. My guess is that they will vote on it at the next meeting.

The second time impact fees came up was when Dr. Hayes approached the Council to request that they release approximately $30,000 in impact fees to be used toward the purchase of the Carpenter property. The discussion that followed was about what happens if a school doesn't get built and the councilors questioned impact fees that were used back in 2007 when the golf course was being pursued. Dr. Hayes expressed the need to turn over every stone while looking for funds to put toward building a school and also suggested that the council should show it's support for the project by voting for this.

The council did support it in the end--the vote was 6-1 with Mr. Nazarro voting against.

This brings me back to the well. As Mr. LaBranche pointed out last night, there are no guarantees that the Macintosh well will be developed just as there are no guarantees that a school will be built. Both have been brought to vote in the past, and have failed to get a majority among Newmarket residents. But that doesn't change the fact that we need to fix the problems.

The well will be on the warrant again this year because Newmarket has been backed into a corner---we have to solve our water issue. (Again, I see little difference with the situation we are in with our school facilities.) Using the impact fees that are available and designated for exactly this purpose just makes sense to me.

So, when the council votes on the use of impact fees to conduct studies at the MacIntosh well, I sincerely hope that the vote is the same.