Belknap County Archives - Page 3 of 3

September 26, 2018March 6, 2013 Skip

As with many towns, the Counties around New Hampshire are also constructing their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. Here in Belknap, two Republicans (John Thomas and Steve Nedeau) and a Democrat (Ed Philpot) crafted a budget that would raise the County’s portion of the property tax by approximately 9% – this in a time still beset economically with rising taxes at the State level (certainly, the Democrats are already hard at work doing that in Concord), rising taxes at the Federal Level (again, thank you Democrats), and the people looking at their thinning wallets every time they fill up their cars and see how few bags of groceries are bought for $25, $50, or $100 (inflation – the hidden government tax on us all). However, the County Convention (the 18 elected NH House Representatives from all of the districts in Belknap County) has the final authority over that budget – and new Conservative leadership elected to head that Convention (led by the Chair Collete Worseman) reduced that percentage to 0.3%. What did it take?

Simple – Leadership, a “say what you mean, do what you say” attitude. A political courage to go against the grain of those that have no problem in spending other peoples’ money, the rent-seekers called social services that live at the teat of Government and have transformed themselves from being charities to mere outgrowths of that Government (or many as many levels and parts of Government they can latch onto), and the biggest Special Interest of all – Government itself. Sticking to ones guns and Conservative values. A willingness to put themselves between the hard working taxpayers and those that would spend their money by ensuring that essential services would be present – but not extraneous expenditures or “pet ideas”.

Government above people. The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen.

Here is the final vote:

The full meeting (chopped into approximately 15 minute chunks each) after the jump. And yes, there were heated words said, for not only has this been about Dollars but also about Power and Political Turf.

Guest Post by an angry Belknap County taxpayer

September 26, 2018March 2, 2013 Skip

I have to say that I have been quite happy with the leadership of the Belknap County Convention this year in setting a “protect the taxpayer outlook” in examining and correcting the budget that the Belknap County Commissioners set at the beginning of the budgetary cycle. Yes, I said correcting! Even though they are elected officials, they showed a Statist’s view of other peoples’ money – spend it! Even as they couched it in terms of “Oh, needs have risen so much but we have carefully cut to bone – and we are giving the taxpayers of Belknap Conty an almost 9% tax hike in their property taxes“. In other words “screw you – we are taking your money for our purposes”.

That is, until what I consider the conservative wing of the Convention stepped in to protect taxpayers – as they are promised to do. The running rise now is 0.3%. My take is why is it always the taxpayers that are on tap to take the haircut – let the County Commissioners, County Admin Debbie Shackett (whose antics apparently haven’t improved all that much since being Evans Juris’s sidekick here in Gilford – remember that wonderful Code of Ethics you and Evans spent “hours” working on – only for me to discover you both had plaigerized it from Sunnyvale, CA?) and the rest sit in the barber’s chair….but I digress. Here is the guest post from an interested reader from the Budget meeting for the County this past Monday:

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The meeting on Monday, February 25th was nothing but a disgrace. The County Commissioners, who believe they are all high and mighty treated the delegation and Representative Worsman with disdain and disrespect. They are the first to yell point of order, and make faces to the public. Their conduct is unbecoming elected officials. As I sat and listened to the antics of whom I now call the Three Stooges, I wonder how three grown men, can treat a lady, who always treats them with respect with such disdain. When Chair Worsman, told Rep Holmes he could not abstain from the vote, the stooges along with their cohort County Administrator Shackett, asked what parliamentary procedure she was using, and said it it Chair Worsman’s rules. I almost became unglued, because during the last budget session of 2012 when then Chair Millham, told members of the delegation they could not abstain from voting, not once but twice (review the videos) they never said a word. This just shows that they have no intention of being civil, no matter what the delegation does.