Businesses are going under left and right and people are having trouble making ends meet. How does the city of Keene respond? Raise taxes! The Keene Sentinel reports:
Keene’s tax rate is up — but not by as much as it has been in recent years.
The Department of Revenue Administration set Keene’s rate at $30.82 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, a 65-cent, or 2.2 percent, increase from last year’s rate of $30.17. (more…)
From superactivist Keith and Stuff at Free State Blogs:
Overall, the Keene general election results were promising. Keene is one of the more statists cities in New Hampshire. Around half of the cities in NH have spending caps. Though, there isn’t even a movement to try to get a spending cap in Keene.
The least bad candidate for mayor won. Kendall Lane, a Republican, promised to cut costs and reform government. He got almost all of the votes. Of course, the Democrats didn’t run anyone against him and I highly doubt he will even try very hard to keep taxes level. Lane said, “We’re looking at doing business a little bit differently than it’s been done in the past.” “We’re looking for more efficient, financially effective ways to do that; to be able to provide city services at a cost the city can afford.” (more…)
For years now, we’ve offered a 24/7 feed of a scanner tuned to the Keene Police Department channel. Considering the scanner needed for this costs hundreds of dollars (it has to be able to decode KPD’s APCO-25 digital transmissions ) this public service from Free Keene puts the KPD scanner audio in the hands of the average person – right where it belongs.
You’ve always been able to listen to the feed on your favorite media player on your computer and also via media players on your smartphone, but now it’s even easier thanks to the Tunein.com application. (more…)
As I’d said in my last blog from jail, I wanted to wait until I was released to tell the stories of some of the people I met in jail, both prisoners and guards. As you might expect, the jail is full of people who are peaceful and have not harmed other human beings. Many of the guards realize that they are caging good people, the superintendent is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and the jail kitchen staff is also open minded.
Names will not be used here to protect the innocent. Besides, the jail is full of people like the ones you’ll hear about, at any given time of the year.
“Honey, I’m home!”, yells one prisoner as the jail guards walk him into the dayroom. Welcome to R block in the Cheshire “House of Corrections”, or as some like to call it, the “Keene Spiritual Retreat”. Many of these guys have been here before and they recognize the gentleman who has just entered the block. This happens all the time. It’s not because they are career criminals, it’s usually because of “Violation of Probation”. (more…)
The Sentinel has posted the voting totals:
Philip Dale Pregent, who did not run for re-election as mayor, was the top vote-getter with 1,522 votes; he was followed by incumbent Kris E. Roberts (1,256), incumbent Ruth R. Venezia (1,045); Carl B. Jacobs (925) and David Meader (721).
They bested Joseph W. Bendzinski (668), Robert B. Sutherland Jr. (645), Steven W. Lindsey (594), Dorrie Faulkner O’Meara (429) and Heika Courser (208).
I am surprised by some of these results. I was using the results of the primary to predict the results of the general election, expecting that the vote totals would be roughly proportional in both cases. This was largely true, with two glaring exceptions.
Steve Lindsey (endorsed by me) did worse than predicted. Bob Sutherland (endorsed by Ian) did better than predicted.
Lindsey has suggested that the order of names on the ballet would depress his vote total. (The order of the names is decided by performance in the primary, with highest vote-getters at the top. Since Lindsey tied for fifth in the primary with David Meader, the order of the two was decided randomly. Meader got the fifth spot, and Lindsey the sixth.) If ballot ordering was the cause, then that hit him particularly hard, costing him over one hundred votes.
At the moment, I have no theory to explain Sutherland’s strong performance.
I want to know what’s driving these two exceptions. It would be helpful to have a more accurate model for future elections.
Ward 2 incumbent Pam Slack, who has had a contentious relationship with liberty activists over the years, lost the election tonight to Bettina Chadbourne.
You can see Bettina’s candidate profiles at the City of Keene’s website and the Sentinel.
Congratulations, Bettina!
The Union Leader has linked to Jason Talley’s article about the Shire Choir singing inside a Concord state liquor store!
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