As I wrote here: “who serves whom? Do the townfolk serve their employees?” Let that set the table for this. It’s not quite a Tale from the BudComm but it has financial ramifications. If it passes.
There will be a petition warrant on my hamlet’s ballot which would move the Second Session (the actual voting) from March to May which is perfectly legal according to State statute:
We, the undersigned duly registered voters in the Town of Gilford, New Hampshire, hereby petition and apply for the insertion of the following petition warrant article in the Town Meeting
Sidenote: and a similar one for the School District
Warrant Election schedule for March 12, 2019:
“Shall we change the date for elections and the second session from the second Tuesday in March to the second Tuesday in May, which would change the date for the first session to a date between the first and second Saturdays after the last Monday in March, inclusive?”
If this passes, it would take effect in 2020 and it will take a majority of voters to pass (and not a supermajority). A motion during our last BudComm meeting was made to Not Recommend – all the Democrats voted for this motion. It failed and it will be represented on the ballot as Recommended by the BudComm.
Norm Silber, past Chair of the BudComm was one who signed the petition (I and TMEW did as well), sent this into the Selectmen who are not in favor of this (more from me on this in a moment) with the legal basis for doing so:
As a follow-up to my telephone call to you yesterday about the concerns apparently voiced by the Selectmen regarding the petition warrant article to change the date of the Town Elections, I provide you with the following information:
The provision for changing the Town Election date is expressly set forth in RSA 40:14-XI. The language of the petition warrant article (with 71 signatures) follows the statutory language precisely.
The provisions governing the fiscal year of the Town and changes to its fiscal year are set forth in RSA 31:94 & 31:94 a-e.
I spoke at length twice yesterday and today with a staff member of the DRA and he concurred with my interpretation that the change of election date in RSA 40:14-XI stands alone and can be adopted by an SB2 Town irrespective of what the Town might do with its fiscal year. If the change of election date is approved by the voters, it will then be up to the Selectmen and Budget Committee whether to use the procedures in RSA 31:94 & 31:94 a-e to change the Town’s fiscal year and to deal with the expenditures required from Jan. 1, 2020, until adoption of a new budget or the default budget becomes operative, depending on the vote at the new Town election date in May of 2020. He also indicated that the Town election date had previously been changed in Sanbornton and Conway, although I believe that Sanbornton later changed the date back to its original March position on the calendar.
The underlying rationale for the petition to change the date of the Town elections is to increase voter turnout, based upon recent experience indicating that (a) many seniors and others have been reluctant to risk their personal safety to go to the polls in bad winter weather; and (b) very few (about 100 at last count) registered voters who might be snow birds and out of town for the March election date have taken advantage of the opportunity to obtain and send back absentee ballots- but they are likely to be back in town by May.
I am taking the liberty of forwarding this to the other Selectmen, the Town Administrator, and others who seem to be especially interested in this matter.
The bottom line as I see it is that if the voters decide to change the election date in order to encourage higher voter turnout and to give some protection to our seniors concerned for their physical safety in the winter, I am sure the Town will be able to work out how to make any required changes in its fiscal year and to keep operating during any transitional period.
Naturally, please feel free to let me know if you have any questions.
Best personal regards.
Norm
Full Disclosure: Norm has become a writer at GraniteGrok in the recent past but this is my post, not his. He also was quoted in the Laconia Daily Sun here concerning this petition.
My take? From above, again:
After all, who serves whom? Do the townfolk serve their employees?
Or is it supposed to be the other way around? The key word is “employees” – while many would say they are employed by the Town (or the School District), the Employer is really everyone that is paying taxes in the town (and even if you rent your house or appartment, yes, you are helping to pay property taxes even if indirectly). Again, go read that other Tales from the BudComm with the thought of “who serves whom” in reading my thoughts about the BudComm Chair giving away his Power to an employee of the Town.
Who serves whom? Do we exist to provide the employees with jobs or employ them to do things on our behalf and make life easier for ourselves? I’m not talking about being high and mighty about it, or selfish, or any other kind of negative adjective. We simply employ people to do that which we either can’t or don’t want to ourselves. Sure, I could plow my short road if I wanted to – but part of my taxes goes for that purpose. Sure, I could have homeschooled the Eldest and the Youngest when they were young but I outsourced that to the school district (and a private Christian school for a while) employees (and the way I handled their homework probably made the two of them glad I didn’t – TMEW and I are in discussions about doing it for the Grandson going forward).
In short, they make life easier for us in a lot of ways. But as a long term reader would know, that comes with strings attached as often, as it seems in government, that relationship often gets turned upside down. I keep hearing this more and more from my neighbors: “why is it that they (govt workers) get more money and benefits than I do doing the same or similar job?”. They look at the compensation levels and go “what the heck am I working for – them or me?”. Especially with the retirement plans they get compared to the private sector and the costs to provide them (and yes, here in NH, our govt pension fund is underwater by $5 Billion in a small state of only 1.3 million people). But I digress.
Already I heard from the school board and the town admin and selectmen that this is a terrible thing to do. Why?
It will be a headache for them come budget time. There will be too many changes. Too much paperwork. Too much hassle. Just a royal pain in the neck.
In short – it upsets the status quo and the “that’s gonna make us change up some stuff”. For a town that has a pretty well funded “rainy day” fund, well gosh, they won’t be able to use it for other goodies – it might have to go for operational stuff. You know, the mundane stuff that happens all the time. And they might even have to take out a bridge loan for that 60 days ONCE while things reset to the new date.
Thus, “It will be too difficult!” is what I am hearing already.
I come back to “Who serves whom”? Is it the voters that should be served? I think the answer, at least the public lip service agrees, would be a yes but the grumbling I hear already is a “Who do these f-ing people think they are?”. Yeah, this is a problem and it definitely tells me what (at least some) government workers believe how that question should be answered. No, perhaps not outright but during the Public Hearing, the emotion was palpable…
Sidenote: yes, I won my under/over bet that the audience attending the meeting, where the BudComm presented their two budgets (Town and School District), that less than 15 non-governmentally employed people would show up.
It’s the same attitude that gave rise to the TEA Party. Then it was Brexit. Now its the “Yellow Jackets” in France. People are tired of their “betters”, the “Elites” telling them how they will live their lives – how DARE the peasants / deplorables / irredeemables have ideas of their own!
Again, we have employees for our convenience. This petition is for voter convenience. It is not up to the employees to railroad this. And frankly, I really don’t care if the Town one passes and the School District doesn’t or the other way around.
Who works for whom? We know legally which is which – the question that will be answered is who EFFECTIVELY is the employee of whom?
And how is it in your town?
