April 14, 2004
THE NH DIFFERENCE:
Dresden Voters Turn Down Fields (Alex Hanson, 4/14/04, Valley News)
A proposal to build new athletic fields for Hanover High School failed at the polls yesterday, the second such defeat in the last year.Voters in Hanover and Norwich, the two towns of the Dresden Interstate School District, rejected the fields proposal by a vote of 1,496 to 1,366. Dresden commingles the ballots from the two towns, so the results for Hanover and Norwich alone remain unknown.
The result leaves school officials in a tight spot, short of fields for a heavily populated athletics program, and in need of funding for the three fields next to Hanover High School so that work can be done when high school renovations start in fall 2005. [...]
The proposal was a scaled-back version of the one that Dresden voters rejected last May by a vote of 1,451 to 1,250. That plan would have cost nearly $5.4 million. In a sign of how high passions in Norwich and Hanover were running, yesterday's turnout was heavier than for the vote last May, which included a bond for new schools.
Nearly 32 percent of the roughly 9,000 voters in Hanover and Norwich went to the polls yesterday or cast absentee ballots, better than the 30 percent at last year's vote.
Pilchman suggested that Norwich voters were afraid that the proposal would send their property tax bills to new heights, and that some in Hanover didn't want to spend money on fields in Norwich, an attitude he called “provincial.”
Last year, Dresden voters approved a $38.4 million plan to build a new middle school on Lyme Road and renovate and expand Hanover High School. Although Hanover and Norwich residents have always been generous in support of education, yesterday's vote was another sign that there's a limit to what taxpayers here are willing to spend.
Last month, for example, Hanover voters rejected a new teacher contract at their annual school district meeting. At the polls yesterday some voters said the fields plan was too much, even for a wealthy school district.
“I grew up in Hanover and went to these schools,” said John Gilbert of Hanover. “This plan is silly, too elaborate. We used to play baseball in our front yard when I was a kid. Why do they need all these fancy fields?”
“The school board went over the deep end with this one. The proposal is too big and too fancy,” said Stephen DenHartog, an elderly Hanover parent whose daughter attended Hanover High.
People wonder why New Hampshire is so special--that's a 32% turnout for a vote where this was the only question on the ballot, in April, in pouring rain. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 14, 2004 2:49 PM
Did somebody say provincial?
It's really great that on a raining day the taxpayers of one town try to stick to the taxpayers in another town. The American Way.
Posted by: h-man at April 14, 2004 4:12 PMJeez, with those names I thought it was about Germany until about halfway through.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at April 14, 2004 5:49 PMIt's because officials in New Hampshire haven't figured out how to properly get these things on the ballot.
Here in the Upper Left Washington, first they'd not put the athletic field on the ballot. They'd cut something like the budget to heat and maintain the buldings and transfer the savings to build the field and more (like buy new uniforms, etc.). Then they'd put up a ballot measure to increase funding for school buildings, along with a campaign calling everyone who votes against it a cruel heartless right winger who hates all children but their own who attend private schools. The measure would easily pass despite the need for a supermajority.
You'd think after a few iterations the voters would wise up, but they never do.
When wealthy towns have the discipline to turn
down these mega-projects it should put some
steel in the spines of the less well-off to
stick to the basics.
In my hometown in MA they were debating a 7-9
million dollar library project (two-town region)
for a population of maybe 20,000.
It's interesting that the only thing that makes
the project acceptable to its supporters is that
the state (i.e., other taxpayers) will be footing
half the bill if it goes through. Mass has the
art of middle-class intertown income redistribution down to a science.
That's just over the top.