Here’s a story that hasn’t even broken in the press yet. At Saturday’s Town Meeting in Hooksett, New Hampshire, someone advanced a motion to cut 750,00.00 dollars from the school budget, and it passed! Wait, there’s more.
Emphasis, mine.
Saturday, February 3, 2024, Hooksett Deliberative School Session Update. Hooksett, NH, citizen Todd Lizotte made a motion to remove $750,000 from the Hooksett School District budget to help taxpayers with the ever-increasing tax burden they are experiencing in Hooksett, NH. The motion passed 24 Y – 22 N, with the Moderator confirming with a raised hand count.
The people on the losing side called for a “secret ballot.”
The Moderator discussed this with Hooksett School District Attorney Gordan Graham and declared that it was ok to move forward in this direction and called for the Supervisor of the Checklist, who would be needed to register voters for the secret ballot, to return to the polls. A significant amount of time passed before the Supervisor of the Checklist could return to the deliberative session. During that time of waiting, you could see the folks on the losing side of the vote all on their cell phones begin calling friends to get down to Cawley Middle School to vote and the Moderator allowed it.
Seeing this, the scene became unbelievable and chaotic, with citizens from both sides of the vote frantically calling friends and neighbors to come down and vote. Soon, the place was then packed with voters. The secret ballot vote was tallied, and the motion to remove the $750,000 from the Hooksett School District proposed budget for 2024-2025 passed anyway….52 Y – 34 N…so from the end of the legal vote until the time the secret ballot was taken, the deliberative session attendance grew from 46 registered voters to 86 registered voters.
Hooksett, can we do better than this? It is a sad day for Hooksett, New Hampshire!
Cutting the school budget to help taxpayers with the ever-increasing tax burden…caused almost entirely by the school budget. It’s only the best place to begin the process, so congrats to Hooksett and kudos to Todd Lizotte for the motion.
I hope you stick the landing because I can do more than imagine the chaos when this goes wide.
The Croydon Budget Battle is another example of locals doing something about out-of-control school spending, and that story went national after they cut the budget in half. The schoolies lost their minds, so I’m wondering how long it will take for Hooksett’s Public School Mafia to bring an extortion or pressure campaign to get “their” money back.
They don’t like it when budgets go down, even when their budget is the most significant expense in every town, and for what? Not much. And hey, in the end, only eighty-six registered voters weighed in from a town population of just under 15,000. That likely means at least 9-10,000 people didn’t have a say (by their own choice – they didn’t show up), and someone will insist they deserve to be heard. But that’s not how elections work. You don’t get a say if you don’t show up to vote.
Sorry, that’s how elections are supposed to work.
We’ll try to keep an eye on it, but we expect the radicals to start whining about losing music, theater, or sports when what they could do is trim administrative overhead without losing any of that, even though none of what they threaten they’d lose ever has a thing to do with learning to read and write. If not, then they will say they have to cut teachers. No, you don’t. Start in the SAU. Dispense with a few admin assistants to the assistant to the whoever. I’m sure you’ve got some.
Hey. does Hooksett waste money on gender studies BS, CRT, or DEI? Being taught to be bitchy, easily triggered dependents doesn’t have any educational value, either. Cut those jobs first.
UPDATE – Video of the Deliberative Session is available below
Jump to – Highlights!
1:34 $750k school budget cut is approved on a vote of 24 Y – 22 N1:35 Seven citizens call for a secret ballot. No vote on this is taken (which could be legal…..not sure) at this point of the meeting, 46 voters are present.People started calling in voters to rush down to change the vote. Seeing this, everyone started making phone calls.2:50 A full one hour and fifteen minutes later, with 86 voters present (so 40 new voters, who heard none of the arguments for or against the motion to cut $750,000 from the budget, but were ready to cast their votes as they were instructed)The motion passed AGAIN on a vote of 52 Y – 34 N