Filing for Municipal elections closed today for anyone wishing to pay a fee of either $2 or $5 depending on the office. Prospective candidates can still file until the end of the week, if they wish to submit a petition in lieu of the filing fee. Steven Lindsey, Randy Filiault, Bradford Hutchingson, Ian Freeman, Carl Jacobs, Kris Roberts, Emily Hague, David Meader, Beverly Creamer, David Curran & Robert Sutherland have all filed for City Council At-Large, and three candidates filed for the Mayoral position. Kendall Lane has filed for re-election, while he has two challengers; Rich Paul and Darryl W. Perry. The City Clerk’s Office has not yet heard from the State Attorney General if Paul, who is ineligible to serve, will be removed from the ballot.
Of the six Council positions elected in the five ward, there are candidates in half of those races. Ward 1 is electing two councilors this year, as one position is a mid-term special election; David Crawford and Sheryl Redfern are vying for that seat. James “Robinhood” Cleaveland is challenging incumbent Mitch Greenwald in Ward 2, while Conan Salada is challenging Robert O’Connor for the Ward 4 seat.
One other race has competition. William Marcello, Kathleen Richards, Fred Parker and Matthew McKeon will face off for three Selectmen positions in Ward 3.
The Keene Sentinel reported, the Keene School District ended the 2012-13 school year with a surplus of just over $2.6 million.
Board member Kris E. Roberts reportedly “said he was frustrated by the discrepancy between the June figures and end-of-year numbers. For one, it’s hard for the district to maintain credibility when asking residents to support budget increases if there’s such a large surplus at the end of the year, he said.
Roberts also thinks the roughly $900,000 difference in surplus numbers between June and now cost the district in lost educational opportunities.”
So, he’s not so much worried about the board’s “credibility when asking residents to support budget increases”; he wanted to be able to spend the money! That’s not my opinion of what he said, he actually said he wanted to spend the money. “Roberts said if he’d known how much surplus money the district would have, he would have supported expanding the iPad program to all the elementary schools.”
The district started using iPads at Fuller School last year and officials want to expand the program to other schools. In March the board voted to spend $17,000 “for 50 iPads and training for teachers at Symonds School.” Based on my calculations, at $340 a piece; the $2.6 million surplus would purchase 7647 iPads, or 2 iPads per student with about $230,880 left over.
I wonder if anyone will remember these details in 6 months when the next budget is proposed?
The Concord (NH) PD has applied for a Lenco BEARCAT, according to the Union Leader, the application states “Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges,” in addition to organized groups, it cited “several homegrown clusters that are anti-government and pose problems for law enforcement agencies.”
The NHCLU Executive Director Devon Chaffee said, “It’s far from clear to us why an armored vehicle would be necessary to address what are generally, by and large, non-violent movements that in fact provide little or no threat to the security of our state.”
Thanks to Devon Chaffee of the NHCLU, I now have a copy of the application, which is being posted for the world to see! (more…)
For starters, patients can’t grow their own cannabis, there will only be 4 dispensaries in the entire State, and patients will be forced to pay a yearly fee to have a “therapeutic cannabis” ID card, not to mention that such dispensaries will not be open for quite some time.
Some people are making a big deal over the fact that PTSD was specifically removed, however better terminology (“traumatic brain injury, or one or more injuries that significantly interferes with daily activities as documented by the patient’s provider”) was added.
The legislation does not allow for anyone in NH who is not a “resident” to be treated as a “Visiting qualifying patient” (The law defines a “Visiting qualifying patient” as a patient with a qualifying medical condition who is not a resident of New Hampshire or who has been a resident of New Hampshire for fewer than 30 days and is not eligible to purchase therapeutic cannabis in New Hampshire or receive cannabis from a qualifying New Hampshire patient.)
One can only hope that this bill is improved in the next session!
July 18, 2013 was National Chalk the Police Day. Several Keene activists went to Central Square, and then to the sidewalk in front of the KPD “Satellite Office” across the street from the Square. Those who attended chalked pro-liberty messages, and had some pleasant conversations with people walking through the area. And, it wouldn’t be Chalk the Police without an interaction involving a Police Officer.
