Some of last Saturday’s attendants at the school deliberative session are actually concerned with the Bigger Picture: the future health of the community. Sure, a good education is important, but at what cost?
In NH, as the law stands currently, a Warrant Articles can be amended to pretty much anything you want as long as the subject matter isn’t changed. New legislation that would protect the “intent” of all future warrants was introduced this year, but was ultimately killed on the House floor, 194-100. Without that protection, this is the sort of nonsense that can take place at our Town Hall meetings.
Many have voiced concerns over the extremely poor turnout and lack of participation in city and school politics over the years. The bureaucrats are clueless as to why. Ian nails it.
Around 80 registered voters showed up to last Saturday’s 4 hour Deliberative session, around 25 fewer than last year. Note this is .47% of Keene’s 17,000 registered voters. As usual, the bulk of the room was made up of school board members, school administrators and teachers.
Once again, local lawyer and resident busybody Ted Parent was there ready to gut my petitioned warrant articles with his own prepared amendments. I plead with the voters in the room to leave the articles untouched in their original wording and allow the voters in March to decide on them. Each amendment would require a secret vote that would take 15-20 minutes to administer. From the reaction in the room, I was led to believe that the majority were in favor of this motion. However, Parent wasn’t having any part of it.
My first Warrant to enact a budget cap of .5% was amended to 10%. 65 in favor, 25 against. Two more attempts were made to amend it to 2% and then 4.9%. Both failed.
My second article to reduce student tuition by $500 per student until tuition matched the state average was amended to “Form a committee to study whether the district should make the reductions.” Surprisingly, this only lost by 1 vote: 41 in favor, 40 against.
Parent then made an attempt to amend my “Cease participation in the Common Core program” article by instead forming a committee to study the concept. This motion failed 60 to 21. School board member Susan Hay made her own motion to amend the article to read “Shall the school district continue to be aligned with and compliant with the state education standards.” This passed 66 to 10. It will be interesting to see how the voters react to this one in March.
Parent also made an absurd attempt to amend my fourth article “to form a committee to study the feasibility of withdrawal from the bloated SAU29” to “form a committee to form a committee.” It failed 56 to 19.
In the end, one warrant survived. Three were amended—one of which I can live with and one that only lost by a hair. Comparing those results and voter turnout to previous years, I can definitely say that there is change in the winds. Stay tuned for the ballot results in March.
Last Tuesday the NH senate judiciary committee committee heard SB-498, which would give prosecutors the ability to not charge cannabis possession as a class A misdemeanor. However, it also increases the fine for a first time offense. It’s a mixed bill, and interestingly prosecutors argued in favor of it, where normally they are against any decrim. From their perspective, it would allow them to get more fine money as well as still give them the option to charge as a Class A. It’s not really decriminalization at all – just gives them the option to move it to Class B if they want.
I had a lot to say about it, then got into an interesting several questions with prohibitionist senator Sam Cataldo. Here’s the video:
The proposal on the table (HB 1612) at last week’s state house education committee was to lower the age for compulsory schooling to 17 from 18. I spoke in favor of the proposal, which doesn’t go far enough. Sadly, NH does not offer any form of emancipation to young people under eighteen.
Cointelegraph is the most recognizable news source in the bitcoin universe – each of their articles features a cartoon graphic that is custom-drawn for the piece. One of the reporters for Cointelegraph is Joel Valenzuela, a Free State Project early mover. He’s been cranking out stories that show New Hampshire as a destination for bitcoin users and his newest features yours truly!
His latest piece is about some of the difficulties and objections that business owners have with accepting bitcoin and specifically mentions the Keene bitcoin scene as a place with some level of success in getting local businesses onboard. Plus, I got turned into a cartoon. Check out the full article here.
The Keene Liberty Alliance, a nonpartisan group of people who want smaller government in Keene, once again conducted an exit poll during today’s presidential primary, exclusively at Ward 4. As people exited the Symonds School after voting, they were invited to take our one question exit survey, which asked, “Do you think government is too big, too small, or just the right size?”
Of the 322 people who responded to the poll, 74.8% (241) said it was “too big”, 22.4% (72) said it was “just right”, and 2.8% (9) said it was “too small”.
We collected nearly 30 emails in just five hours. It was an incredibly successful day, due to the high turnout for the presidential primary. Both republicans and democrats alike are frustrated with the ridiculous size of the government and the Keene Liberty Alliance exists to bring people together from across the political spectrum to help reduce the size, scope, expense, and intrusiveness of the government.
Today is the New Hampshire primary. I am asking New Hampshire residents to go out and vote for Rand Paul. Although he does not present a full Libertarian position, preferring to focus on a few important changes rather than trying to establish a Utopia in one term, Rand’s voice was the only one in the Republican primary defending ANY pro-liberty positions. Let’s let them know that more liberty is our goal, by voting for the one pro-liberty candidate!
