“A year of saying ‘No’ to more town spending”
Concord Monitor
March 14, 2008
Economists and politicians can argue over whether the economy is in recession, but town meeting voters know the answer. With few exceptions, they are saying “no” to needed projects, adopting default budgets and deferring maintenance on buildings already badly in disrepair.
“I don’t believe any of you would work in it,” Steve Lucier, Bradford’s road agent, said of his town’s leaking, un-insulated highway garage at Wednesday’s annual meeting.
“Sorry,” voters said.
Weare voters rejected a plan to replace a transfer station rendered unsafe by water leaking onto electrical boxes. The town, which spends less per elementary school pupil than any other, is exceptionally frugal. It will soon be operating on its ninth default budget since it adopted ballot voting a dozen years ago.
“It’s a little depressing, but it goes beyond Weare,” Selectmen Tom Clow said.
It certainly does, and it’s not hard to see why voters are rejecting raises for town employees and saying “no” to more police and fire personnel and to road repairs. They’ve been pushing bills around on kitchen tables and making stacks of which to pay and which to put off. The state Office of Energy and Planning pegs the price of heating oil at $3.62 per gallon, $1.20 higher than one year ago. Gasoline prices have topped $3 per gallon and food costs are up some 10 percent while wages, by and large, have been flat.
There’s another, more insidious force at work that’s leading voters to reject spending on what in many years would be considered necessities. Property tax bills in many places are increasing at a rate that will double them in five to seven years. That’s unsustainable, and it’s manifesting itself in the growing fear that people on low or fixed incomes will be taxed out of their homes. It’s also responsible for the widespread adoption by town meetings of a resolution calling for an end to the state’s irresponsible pledge to veto any broad-base sales or income tax.
Voters’ angst is palpable and their unwillingness to spend understandable. But needs put off this year will only be more expensive later. Unless the governor and Legislature solve the school funding mess in an honest way and renounce The Pledge, the projects put off this year won’t be approved next year either, which means New Hampshire’s vaunted quality of life will decline.
Source: Concord Monitor