On Monday, June 12, nationally renowned urban designer Jeff Speck came to speak in Keene, in relation to our ongoing discussions surrounding proposed updates to the city's downtown infrastructure. Speck is known as an expert in walkability, and the cost of his visit was crowdfunded by the Keene Downtown Group, including a contribution of $5000 from the City of Keene.

This was seen as needed because the downtown infrastructure project seems to have reached something close to a stalemate. While opponents of the project, through a vote of the City Council's MSFI Committee, have managed to remove many of the aspects of the plan that appeal to its proponents - like bike lanes, traffic pattern fixes, and added greenspace on the square - these changes leave the project in a place where it would be unlikely to draw significant funding through federal transportation grants. As a result, city residents would be on the hook for almost all of the $14+ million price tag of a project that fixes a lot of pipes underground but does little at the surface.

Jeff Specks' full presentation is worth watching if you haven't already. One point he made is that there are ample opportunities for placing dense residential development in the downtown area, particularly along Gilbo Avenue. According to the city's recent housing needs assessment, there is a need for 1400 new housing units in Keene over the next 10 years. 

Speck also made the point that several of Keene's roads, including Main Street and West Street, are currently built to support a much higher number of cars than are actually served. There are several locations where the number of lanes of traffic could be reduced without reducing the ability of our streets to support the number of cars we actually have. 

On Main Street, for example, we do not actually need to have two, and even three lanes of automobile traffic in each direction. One lane in each direction, plus appropriate turning lanes, can serve our traffic volume while creating room for bike lanes, broader sidewalks, and much better and safer pedestrian crossings. 

Speck even figured out how to do it all while maintaining parking in the center of Main Street - which is a huge priority for some, though I think its misguided. Speck's plan entails replacing the space-consuming mini-lawns and extra sidewalk of the current median with a more efficient design that creates a flexible-use parking plaza and (the good part) lots and lots of trees.

It was Speck's proposal for Central Square that I really like. I feel that the fundamental problem with our traffic pattern downtown is that it combines the worst aspects of traffic lights (the waiting) with the worst aspects of a traffic circle (the merging, the confusion, and the consumption of valuable real-estate). It would be far better to have one or the other, but not both.  

Specks proposal for a simple 4-way traffic light resolves this issue in a clean and effective way, while also creating new green space in front of City Hall and making it so that the center of the Square is no longer an island surrounded by asphalt and traffic.

I like it as a pedestrian, but I think its good for drivers too... cars on Roxbury Street will now be able to proceed straight, directly on to West Street, without having to go up and around and merge across traffic coming in from Court Street. Cars going from Main Street to West Street would simply need to take a left at the arrow. Traffic coming down from Washington Street will proceed similar to the way it always has, as it won't be effected by the reclaiming of the street on the east side of the Square.

All in all, I think these are some strong suggestions that I expect the City Council to take seriously as we consider the issue again at our upcoming workshop on July 6.

Not all the news coming out of Concord is negative, what with a closely divided legislature. Some of it actually works in the people’s favor. For instance, on April 6, the House passed a $15.9 billion budget, seeing the most bipartisan cooperation since 1989! The budget then went on to the Senate where it was passed, down to $15.2 billion, on June 7.

Today’s focus will be on the issues of child care and affordable housing, two important issues that so many young families continually face. Included was a bill sponsored by Sen. Becky Whitley (D-Hopkinton) that would spend roughly $15 million to expand access to affordable, quality child care. Child care has become such a challenge of late, what with some families having both parents working or even a single parent household. This budget will now increase funding for childcare and Family Resource Centers. A win for young families!

Also according to the Senator, nearly 6,000 children are eligible for free or reduced-cost school lunches. These children are not signed up for the program due to the application form which tends to be complicated. Among nearly twenty other amendments, that one was defeated in the Senate. 

Affordable and available housing has been another immediate issue for the state. New Hampshire is experiencing a housing shortage and the fact that the cost of a home has more than doubled in the last ten years has created a challenge to hire and hold onto quality employees. This would include those in the medical and educational fields along with city and town employees. Now with this recently passed budget, $25 million will go into the affordable housing fund with another $15 million geared towards new housing programs. The latter is designed to motivate new, workforce housing in NH. Another win for those looking to purchase their first home or to re-locate to the state.

The budget now awaits the governor’s signature which appears to be he will sign it.

Did you know that here in New Hampshire the average cost is more than $19,400 per student per year? Me, neither.

Did you know NH’s current school funding system is the MOST regressive in New England? Me, either.

So, when the folks from “Fair Funding NH” came to Keene the other day, I made it a point to stop in and listen. I would like to share a little of what I learned.

Even though the average cost is $19,400, NH calculated the cost of an “adequate” education FY 2022-23 to be $3,787 per student with some adjustments bringing the cost to $4,600! No where near the $19,400 per student, right? 

But a little history first . . .

Back in 1993, the NH Supreme Court ruled that the state has a constitutional duty to pay for all public school students, K-12 to receive an adequate education. In 1997, the NH Supreme Court ruled for the state to have a uniform tax rate, STATEWIDE, for the support of public education.

Elected officials have all but ignored these two rulings since 1993!

In 2019, the state put together The Commission to Study School Funding. The following year a report was released pointing out problems, results from those problems and solutions. This Commission report is in Concord, by the way. . .

Problem: The state’s current estimated cost for an adequate education is not reproducible by any empirically based approach.
(Empirical: relying on or derived from observation or experiment.)

What they found: Districts with greater student needs, and small districts, require more spending per student to achieve a common desired level of student outcomes.

Problem: Communities with higher poverty rates and lower property wealth are doubly penalized under the current system.
What they found: The state could generate revenue more fairly by collecting it centrally then distributing that revenue using a weighted formula.

Problem: As district poverty rates increase, student outcomes decrease – even after accounting for other district factors that may also be relative to poverty, such as district size, special education and English learner rates.
What they found: Under a weighted formula as proposed by the Commission, MORE THAN 70% of NH towns could see reduced property tax rates.

This report came out in 2020! Yet, we are still burdened with high property taxes and with some elected officials now in Concord wanting to distribute some of that revenue to private schools and home schoolers. Taking AWAY from public school students.

The NH School Funding Fairness Project advocates for changes in policy while engaging in activities to promote fair school funding in NH. To learn more about them; www.fairfundingnh.org

In the meantime, they recommend contacting your elected officials (and those running for office), and ask where they stand on the school funding issue and how they plan to address and ultimately fix it! https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/members/

Subsequent to this blog post, and associated Letters to the Editor, concerning the need for a public input on the use of opioid settlement money in Keene, State Representative Jodi Newell and I met with City Manager Elizabeth Dragon and Police Chief Steve Stewart. 

We had an engaged and fruitful discussion that reminded me of why I appreciate our public servants, and it addressed a lot of the concerns that Rep. Newell and I brought to the table. 

Based on that discussion, today I submitted a letter to the Mayor and City Council, cosigned by City Councilor Bettina Chadbourne, that asks the City to sponsor a public forum about our community response to the opioid overdose crisis.

Here is the letter:

June 13, 2023

City of Keene Clerk’s Office  
3 Washington St  
Keene, NH 03431

To the Honorable Mayor and City Council,

With the settlement of lawsuits against companies responsible for instigating the opioid crisis, financial resources are now available in our city and at the state level to put toward projects aimed at preventing overdose deaths.

As a City Council, we will need to make decisions about how to spend the money that the city is receiving as part of the settlement, and we will need to understand how the City can benefit from grants available from the state-level pool of funds. We also need to ensure that our efforts take place in coordination with those of other organizations in the region, including the County, as well as various local social service organizations engaged in the work of overdose prevention.

Further, as the Council considers these things, we must listen closely to the voices of members of our community who have been personally affected by substance use and overdose, who are in the best position to understand the reality of the challenge we have before us. That challenge is to save lives.

To that end, we – Councilors Williams and Chadbourne – are requesting that the City sponsor a community discussion on our response to the overdose crisis. This would be a public forum, at an appropriate venue and in concert with appropriate partners, and we hope that all City Councilors will attend. 

Sincerely,

Bobby Williams 
City Councilor, Ward 2

Bettina Chadbourne 
City Councilor, At Large

Being none to familiar with the term “gay panic defense”, I looked it up and then talked to my Representative, Shaun Filiault later. 

The definition first: “The gay panic defense or homosexual advance defense is a strategy of legal defense, referring to a situation in which a heterosexual individual, charged with a violent crime against a homosexual (or bisexual) individual, claims they lost control and reacted violently because of unwanted sexual advances made upon them. A defendant will use available legal defenses against assault and murder, with the aim of seeking an acquittal, a mitigated sentence, or a conviction of a lesser offense. A defendant may allege to have found the same-sex sexual advances so offensive or frightening that they were provoked into reacting, were acting in self-defense, were of diminished capacity, or were temporarily insane, and that this circumstance is exculpatory or mitigating.”

According to The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law gay and trans panic defenses have been appearing in public court opinions in roughly half the states since the 1960s. As an example, in 104 cases, murder charges were reduced about 33% of the time for defendants using this particular defense. This usually resulted in shorter prison time and some ended in aquittals. Well, who knew?

In 2013, the American Bar Association denounced gay and trans panic defenses, noting gay panic is not recognized as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.

Then I had a conversation with Shaun who further enlightened me.

In 2021, Rep. Joshua Query (D) introduced HB238, “This bill is entirely constitutional, does not dismiss traditional self-defense lawsuits, and does not deny existing due process defenses. This legislation will correct a dangerous and life-threatening oversight that is needed to protect the safety of LGBTQ+ people in New Hampshire.” The bill passed the House but not in the Senate.

When the House seat in Keene’s Ward 2 was up for election, Filiault found the defeat of that bill motivation to run. He tirelessly went door-to-door, talking to voters, asking for their votes. 

He ultimately won the election. The first bill Filiault filed as a new Representative was HB315 which was, in a nutshell, to abolish the gay panic defense. Through hard work and perseverance, he was able to get it through the House Criminal Justice Committee. However, as with all things political, compromise was expected. 

An amendment was proposed and accepted to change the original bill to include what basically amounted to “all lives matter.” The bill passed as amended, then placed on the House Consent Calendar. While Filiault acknowledges the amended bill is not a bad thing, he feels it diluted the message of his original bill. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee then received the bill and voted 3-2 for the full Senate to “kill the bill” or Inexpedient to Legislate. Not willing to see his bill die on the Senate floor, Filiault got to work contacting all Republican Senators urging them to support his bill. According to Filiault, “Defeat wasn't an option. Not this year. Not in this environment which is so hostile to LGBTQ people. A loss would cost lives.” The Senate vote on HB315 was then delayed for a week, along with three other bills. 

During that week’s reprieve, Filiault reached out to Sen. Daryl Abbas (R) who had previously voted in favor of abolishing gay panic defense. Now we need to back up a little . . .

In January, Abbas introduced a bill, CACR9, into the Senate. This bill is designed to amend the state Constitution to enshrine the “first in the nation” presidential primary. It was “shelved” by the House Election Laws Committee. After being approached by Filiault about HB315, Abbas went to leaders in the House seeking to combine the two bills, his and Filiault’s. 

Rep. Matt Wilhelm (D) who is on the Rules Committee did not want to go along with the offer. In response, rather than forfeit all the work that had been done to get his bill to the floor for a vote, Filiault became an Independent and pushed for it himself. How many of us would have had the courage of our convictions to go ahead and push for what we knew was right? On Thursday, June 8, the Senate voted to pass the bill as re-amended back to its original form by Sen. Sharon Carson (R), before being sent back to the House. On Thursday, June 15, the bill goes back to the House for it to “concur” on the Senate changes. According to Filiault that’s usually a “non-controversial voice vote”. The CACR9 was tabled and never got a yes or no vote.

“I guess in my very small way, pushing HB 315 over the finish line was my contribution to the legacy of Pride.  In the end, it cost me more than I could ever know. And I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. It was all a labor of love.” Rep. Shaun Filiault (I)

According to the ACLU, the last few years have seen states advance a large number of bills attacking LGBTQ rights, especially transgender youth. The ACLU is tracking these attacks and working with our national network of affiliates to support LGBTQ people everywhere. To learn more about what the ACLU is doing on this issue: Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures | American Civil Liberties Union (aclu.org)

Last month I wrote an article addressing the steady rise in number of mass shootings here in the United States. It has gotten so bad that other countries have issued travel warnings to their own citizens about traveling to this country. 

Australia and Canada warn that violent and gun-related crimes are much more common here. France warns its citizens which major cities (right down to certain streets) to avoid because of high crime. Uruguay and Venezuela had issued travel warnings in 2019, urging their citizens to postpone travel to America, if possible, because of the increase of acts of violence and indiscriminate hate crimes. The United Kingdom and New Zealand have issued similar warnings.

How embarrassing!

On Saturday, June 3, Franklin police responded to a home after gunshots were reported and discovered 35 year-old Nicole Hughes and her year and a half old daughter, Ariella, dead from gunshots. Another child, five years old, was shot but survived. The suspect, Jamie Bell, father of Ariella and Nicole’s partner, was found about six hours later, dead from a self-inflicted knife wound.

Another town is left stunned, shocked and reeling from such unexpected, but what has come to be an almost daily occurrence of senseless gun violence in America. We just don’t ever know where or when it will happen again. No wonder other countries have issued travel warnings to their citizens who may want to visit our gun crazy nation!

I will remind all our readers again of Gov. Sununu’s recent speech at the NRA Leadership Forum in Indianapolis, Indiana, this past April where he proudly and gleefully proclaimed, “Yeah, well they gave me a red-flag law and I gave them a red veto pen”.

Would this young mother and her baby be alive today if Sununu hadn’t so cavalierly vetoed a law that could have saved their lives? It can’t be said often enough, Sununu needs to be shown the door in ’24!

As a reminder:

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages. 

Did you hear there is a border crisis??? A CRISIS!!! EVERYBODY PANIC THERE IS A CRISIS AT THE BORDER!!!!

Actually, that’s not true. Illegal border crossings are actually down 70% at the southern border since the end of Title 42 in May. It turns out that when you give people a legal way of crossing the border they stop having to do it the illegal way.

Its worth noting that we could have had the same benefit if we had dropped Title 42 a year ago. Alas, our immigration policy continues to be designed to appeal firstly to the xenophobic prejudices of the very worst people in America. 

Meanwhile, the same New Hampshire Republicans who believe that local police departments should never ever be involved in enforcement of federal firearms laws now also believes that local police departments should be deeply involved in enforcement of federal immigration rules. And they are trying to spend $1.4 million to make it happen.

I am referring to the “Northern Border Alliance Program,” which is a proposal by Governor Sununu to spend on state and local cops for police training, equipment, and overtime to assist federal agencies with border patrol.

Overtime! As in, time-and-a-half overtime! To chase away immigrants who probably aren’t even out there!

Great use of public resources there, Governor.

When this budget item came before the New Hampshire house, a solid majority of Representatives voted to take it out of the budge, That was part of a well-executed, bipartisan negotiation that achieved through good-faith give and take from both left and right. 

That Democratic good faith was clearly wasted, however, as the Norther Border Alliance Program was put back into the budget when the Republicans got to it the Senate.

I’ll say this does nothing but reinforce the dim view I take of the value of bipartisanship. Why should Democrats continue to reach across the aisle to a party that never does anything to deserve a modicum of trust? 

I digress. Back to my point.

If the Republicans are so really eager to spend money on police, I wish they would do it in a way that actually enhances our public safety. As a local City Councilor, my suggestion would be to take that $1.4 million and put it into a pool that understaffed police departments can draw upon to spend on hiring bonuses. 

A resource like that might really be helpful in filling out the ranks of the police department in Keene, for example, which is currently nine officer's short. The labor market for police officers has been tight, and city police departments across the state need all they help they can get in finding good new people for the job. 

Of course, it would also help if city departments didn’t have to compete for officers with small departments that can offer super-easy overtime, like patrolling the northern woods for imaginary undocumented immigrants on the taxpayer’s dime.

After weeks of running for President – touring the country, media events, raising the money – Governor Chris Sununu now says he’s not running for President. 

Which is great, because Chris Sununu should not be President. Four years of his abortion double-talk, ballooning fossil fuel subsidies, sabotage of the public education system, and generally insufferable smugness is not what this country needs.

No, Chris Sununu now says that he’s not going to run for President because “beating Trump is more important.”

“If he is the nominee, Republicans will lose again,” Sununu wrote in the Washington Post.  “Just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight.”

He's not wrong about that, but its interesting to me that Sununu’s objection to Trump is not that Trump is bad for the United States of America. Rather, his objection is that Trump is bad for the Republican Party. 

Sununu has not changed the position that he has stated all along, which is that he’ll support Trump if Trump is the Republican nominee. And Trump undoubtedly will win the nomination, because the bottom line is that Republican voters love the guy.

If top Republicans were really opposed Trump, they would make it clear that they will oppose him no matter what – that they would support even Joe Biden over Trump – because country is more important than party.

But no Republican will do that, because party loyalty always comes above patriotism. And so it is the case with Chris Sununu. 

Did you know that New Hampshire taxpayers spend $3.55 BILLION to educate the roughly 165,000 public school students? Students who are CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED a right to an “adequate” public education. The state provides about one billion of those dollars through state taxes. The remaining amount comes from property taxes. This translates to what an individual district is able to offer can oftentimes vary from district to district. It also means the tax burden can vary for property owners in the same regional school district where students from different towns attend the same schools. 

Our elected officials in Concord are still trying to figure out a formula for what they want to spend. Unfortunately, that formula only covers about a third of the state’s CONSTITUTIONAL requirement to public school students. The rest of the required funding goes to the property taxpayers. 

For more than thirty years, the state has repeatedly lost lawsuits for failing to live up to its CONSTITUTIONAL requirement to adequately fund public education. 

This past week the Senate Finance Committee acted on an amendment to the budget, changing the formula once again. This new Senate formula increases the pupil adequacy aid just a little, increases aid based on students receiving free and reduced fee lunch and to towns with low property tax bases for each student who receives the free or reduced fee lunch. While this is seen as an improvement, it still falls short of the funding formula the House passed earlier. It also comes nowhere near what is needed to fund what students need and deserve in the public schools. 

Again, this budget fails to ADEQUATELY fund education but at the same time looks to expand school vouchers (also known as the “education freedom account”)! A large majority of students in the voucher program are either already homeschooled or attend private schools. This proposed expansion could cost $48 million each year in new state spending. Will that come from property owners again? NH families and students deserve a fair funding formula for the roughly 165,000 public school students. They deserve to have schools that are safe, fully stocked and fully staffed.

On Wednesday, June 7, the full Senate will vote on HB 367 and this is where you come in. Please click the following link, CONTACT YOUR STATE SENATOR, and ask them to vote NO on HB 367!

New Hampshire can do so much better for public school students and property owners! 

There was a lot of steam coming out of my ears after last weeks meeting of the Keene City Council’s Municipal Services, Facilities & Infrastructure (MSFI) Committee, on which I sit, in which most of the good and useful things were stripped from our city’s planned downtown infrastructure project. 

I’ve been on the losing end of votes before, but this one hurt. The project, under the plan adopted by the MSFI Committee, will spend $14+ million to dig up and disrupt our downtown for three years, replace a bunch of pipes, and then cover everything up and leave basically everything exactly the same as it was before.

The proposed expanded greenspace and pedestrian access to our Central Square? Dropped from the plan.

A new traffic pattern that keeps cars from stacking up on Main Street? Nope! Under this plan we may continue to appreciate the sounds and fumes of automobiles at any of Keene’s parking-adjacent outdoor dining opportunities.

Protected lanes for bicycle and scooter users? Oh no, we can’t possibly allow that. We might have the alleged widest paved main street in the world, but it’s just not wide enough to cover four lanes of traffic, three to four rows of angled car parking, AND protected bike lanes. 

We mustn’t inconvenience drivers at all, you see. Its more important for drivers from Swanzey to have a heavily subsidized place to park in the center median of Main Street than it is for bicycle riders living in Keene to be able to transit the center of their community safely.

What’s really rubbish about this whole thing is that, if MSFI’s plan is what the City Council eventually adopts – excluding whole emerging categories of inclusive, low cost, environmentally friendly transportation – it’s going to cost Keene taxpayers a whole a bundle of money.

Today, we live in an era – perhaps an era that won’t last much longer – when there is a great deal of development money on the table that is available to pay for projects that support non-automotive forms of transportation.

In particular, RAISE grants, available through the Department of Transportation, exist to “communities build transportation projects that have significant local or regional impact and improve safety and equity.” If Keene were to attract a RAISE grant, that could easily be expected to cover $8 million or $10 million of the eventual price tag – and possibly more.

The city of Berlin, NH got $19.5 million from a RAISE Grant, which it is spending on a pedestrian-focused plan that includes heated sidewalks. Take a look at the complete list of 2022 RAISE grant recipients, and the common theme in the 166 grant awards to municipalities across the country is that these are creative, innovative projects that benefit more than just automobile drivers.

In comparison to these projects, I think the project that was originally proposed – and recommended last year by a committee that spent six months looking at the issues – stacks up nicely and would make a good case for attracting some of the $1.5 billion that has been set aside to fund these grants.

RAISE stands for Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity, and ideas like protected bike lanes, better walkability, and expanded greenspace fit well into the goals and purpose of the grant. There is significant money on the table, and we are in a position to get it.

By contrast, I am confident that the plan outlined by the MSFI committee would attract zero dollars, leaving Keene taxpayers on the hook for the vast majority of that $14 million bill.

Fortunately, the MSFI Committee does not have the final word. While the gutted version of the plan that passed through MSFI is currently what’s on the table, the City Council voted on Thursday to delay the final vote until after we have a chance to listen to a presentation by Jeff Speck, a renowned expert on walkability, who has been invited by the Keene Downtown Group to speak at on June 12.

I sure hope Mr. Speck has some novel and convincing ideas, because its going to take the votes of 8 City Councilors to get the downtown project back on track. If you live in Keene – support having a downtown that’s built around the needs of people, rather than the needs of automobiles, and if you would rather not have the city be on the hook for the full price of a $14 million project – now is a good time to make sure you City Councilors know how you feel.