Town Meetings in Tough Times

By Laura Knoy on Sunday, March 15, 2009.

Last week, most New Hampshire communities wrapped up their annual sessions, and the poor economy was a major player. Many budgets were voted down, union contracts rejected, and voters said no to items they deemed unnecessary. We’ll recap the meeting season and look at how federal stimulus money might change the discussions.

Guest

We'll also hear from

  • Shir Haberman, editor of the Hampton Union
  • Meg Heckman, reporter for the Concord Monitor and coordinator for the paper’s town meeting coverage
  • Paul Inderbitzen, town moderator for Hudson
  • Cotton Cleveland, town moderator for New London
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Comments on Brentwood town meeting
Marty, Brentwood - Mon, 03/16/2009 - 08:52

The major issue was a new Fire House, sorely needed, but for the third year voted down by a few (3) votes. There are 2634 registered voters, and 323 showed up, about 12%. The vote was 212 yes, 111 no, and it needed 2/3 majority, so 3 votes short.

Some points: we are in a major recession, with deflation, so prices are going down for everything. (We will almost certainly be down another 20% by next year, before the economy turns around.) The Fire House this year was priced at $1,750,000 approx, last year, $2,300,000, so a big savings by waiting one year, and if they try again next year, we can expect to save more, in my opinion. There was little acknowledgment of how grave our economic situation is, that people were hurting or broke. For example, the Budget listed late property taxes at $1,790,000, compared to $580,000 last year at this time, over 3 times as much, indicating something. (Different deadlines for the most recent payment may account for some of that disparity, but it was unclear and perhaps incompetently listed for that reason.)

Nobody wanted to count on Stimulus money, and the selectmen were not informed about whether there could be another town meeting to consider such new monies, and said things like that unless a budget was approved, we couldn't even apply! Makes little sense.

And, the main overall operating budget, $2,700,000, was approved without discussion! I think that's because we couldn't have a "line-item veto" on individual items, it was all or nothing. Now if it's hard to get many people to come to the one town meeting, they're not going to have time to attend all the budget committee meetings through the year, so maybe a line-item vote on the main budget would be appropriate.

And, as a microcosmic example, it shows how hundreds of town meetings are like hundreds of Hoovers; cutting government spending now is exactly the wrong thing to do for the economy, and therefore a reason the Federal government must take up all the slack, spending on behalf of all the local governments, and local businesses, and people.