West Street (Keene)- Ashuelot Dam

The City of Keene has been notified by the State Dam Bureau that it must perform repairs to the Ashuelot River Dam located adjacent to West Street. The City has been developing options to address the issues identified by the State. The options range from performing repairs to potentially removing the existing structure.

On Thursday, October 6, 2011, at 7 PM the City Council will hear a presentation on the options for the dam. This is an opportunity to hear the full presentation about the options but the City Council will not be taking public comment. This meeting is also broadcasted on Cheshire TV. The presentation will be referred to the Municipal, Services, Facilities and Infrastructure Committee that will meet on Wednesday, October 12, 2011, at 6:30 PM. The Committee will discuss the options and this would be the meeting to provide any thoughts or concerns about the proposed options.

Mark Fernald Newsletter

Return to the policies of the Clinton era

America’s economic golden age was the final years of the Clinton administration, when unemployment was below 5% and the federal budget was in surplus.

This was no accident. When Bill Clinton was elected, the economy was slowly recovering from recession. President Clinton announced that we needed a plan to deal with the high deficits he had inherited from Presidents Reagan and Bush—a plan that included a tax increase on high income Americans.

Republicans claimed that any tax increase would cause a recession. Every Republican in Congress voted against the Clinton plan.

The plan worked because it was a credible plan to deal with the deficit. Business confidence, investment, and employment soared.

At the same time, President Clinton worked to make government more efficient. It was called “Reinventing Government,” and it resulted in the elimination of dozens of outdated programs and commissions. The number of federal employees declined to the lowest level in over twenty years.

The gains made during the Clinton era were lost almost overnight. The Bush administration pushed through huge tax cuts and spending increases. We fought an unnecessary war in Iraq, and added a drug benefit to Medicare, but no one was asked to pay one cent for either.

Vice President Dick Cheney told Treasury Secretary O’Neil that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” but he had failed to learn the lessons of the Reagan years. Deficits and unwise deregulation of the savings and loan industry had created a borrowing binge, a real estate bubble and crash, and a banking crisis that cost taxpayers over $125 billion. In New Hampshire, the late eighties was a time when most of our major banks failed, unemployment soared, and real estate values dropped by one third.

The George W. Bush years were a repeat of the Reagan years—high deficits, a trillion dollars borrowed from the Chinese, a real estate bubble, mindless deregulation of banks, and a crash. When President Obama took office, the budget deficit was projected to be over a trillion dollars, and the economy was losing 700,000 jobs a month.

When the economy is in decline, it is folly to increase taxes or decrease government spending, because either action takes money out of the economy. So Congress and the President did the opposite, with a stimulus plan that cut taxes and increased spending.

The plan worked. The economy stabilized, and has slowly added back 2 million of the jobs that were lost. Still, the recovery has been slow, and millions of people are looking for work. Where do we go from here?

Incredibly, some are calling for still more tax cuts. Multiple rounds of tax cuts have reduced federal tax receipts to about 15% of the economy, the lowest level in over fifty years. If tax cuts were an economic panacea, we would be in boom times now.

We face three major economic challenges. First, we are spending too many dollars overseas. Second, the deficit and the threats to the long-term stability of Social Security and Medicare make ordinary citizens fearful of the future, sapping consumer confidence, which in turn affects business confidence. Third, the real estate market has further depressed consumer confidence.

The steps needed to meet these challenges are obvious. First, we need a temporary, targeted tax credit for home purchases. The cost would be relatively small compared to the economic boost that would result if people could actually sell their homes.

Second, we need a credible, long-term plan to deal with the federal deficit and the long-term finances of Social Security and Medicare. President Obama has proposed such a plan with $4 trillion of deficit reductions over the next ten years.

Third, we need to address the currency manipulation by the Chinese government that has given China a huge price advantage over the US. The result has been the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs. If necessary, we must take tariff action against Chinese imports.

Republican plans would be laughable, if they weren’t so dangerous. The Ryan Plan would cut taxes, while asking seniors to pay significantly more for Medicare. House Republicans want to cap federal tax receipts at 18% of the economy, even though federal spending over the past thirty years has averaged over 20% of the economy, so Republicans must be planning huge cuts in our social safety net, or permanent deficits.

For the sake of the nation, let’s hope the President is successful in passing a balanced plan that includes spending cuts, revenue increases by repealing tax cuts for the rich and the closing of tax loopholes, and a long-term fix for Social Security and Medicare.

It’s Not Just a Bad Budget — It’s Bad Economics

Everyone knows how to grow the state economy: bring more money into the state by attracting new tourists, shoppers and businesses.July 17, 2011 2:00 AM
Every nonprofit knows how to maximize its budget: qualify for matching funds whenever possible.

The biggest source of money for New Hampshire is the federal government. Dozens of federal grants are available to states, but a state must put up its own money to receive the federal money.

The new state budget rejects over half a billion dollars of federal matching funds because the Legislature was unwilling to come up with state money to qualify New Hampshire for those matching funds.

The cut in the state budget exceeds the entire payroll of BAE Systems in 2009. If BAE left the state, it would be recognized as an economic calamity. Not surprisingly, the new state budget is equally calamitous:

The budgets of our hospitals have been cut by over 5 percent due to reduced payments for care delivered to those without insurance. Layoffs and declining services are inevitable.
The state government, and agencies that contract with the state, are cutting hundreds of jobs.
State aid to the university system has been cut 45 percent. Tuition that was already the highest in the nation will increase by nearly 10 percent. Staff and course offerings will be cut.

The loss of $500 million will ripple through New Hampshire’s economy, affecting not only the agencies that ran those programs and the people who benefitted from them, but also the businesses that prospered as those dollars were spent. Economic growth may be cut 1 percent, at a time when we are struggling to grow by 2.5 percent per year.

In their zeal to cut the state budget, legislators overlooked the purpose of government, which was eloquently explained by Abraham Lincoln:

“The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or so well, for themselves. . . . There are many such things . . . roads, bridges and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools . . . the criminal and civil departments.”

The ‘Party of Lincoln’ has made its deepest cuts in . . . roads, the helpless, education, and the court system.

Governing is about making choices. Our Legislature has cut the cigarette tax, and created a waiting list for the severely disabled. It cut the budget of the community colleges by 20 percent, and increased funding for charter schools. It cut the auto registration fee by $30 — a loss of $90 million that will cut paving, road repairs, and the rebuilding of dangerous bridges.

Last winter, the Republican leadership announced that everyone would have to sacrifice in order to balance the budget, but as they hacked large chunks out of our state government, they did not ask anyone to pay one cent more to maintain state services. In a recent UNH poll, 73 percent said we should consider both spending cuts and tax increases to balance the budget. Voters value our state services, and are willing to pay for them. The Legislature is not.

The Republican leadership says they had no choice other than draconian cuts because the state was “broke.” Nonsense.

New Hampshire has the highest median income in the nation. Our state and local tax burden is the second-lowest in the nation. We could pay a little more and still be the state with the second-lowest tax burden.

We have no general income tax, no retail sales tax, and no estate tax. The wealthy enjoy nearly the lowest tax burden of anyone in the industrialized world.

Instead of cutting the state budget by 11 percent, we could have asked our wealthiest citizens to pay their fair share of the cost of government through a capital gains tax or an estate tax. Every dollar raised would have been matched by the federal government, bringing new money into the state.

The $125 million cut from hospitals may actually end up costing New Hampshire citizens more. Hospitals will probably increase rates for those with private insurance to make up the shortfall, and if those without insurance are turned away, they will go to town welfare offices for assistance in paying their medical bills.

The city of Manchester has a new budget that reduces police and fire department positions, but avoids other draconian cuts. Republican Mayor Ted Gatsas understood the wisdom of a small tax increase to maintain essential services. The Legislature does not. In Manchester, city taxpayers will pay 3.5 percent more. At the state level, we could have maintained state services and the federal government would have paid nearly half the bill — if we hadn’t turned the money down.

Mark Fernald is a former state senator and was the 2002 Democratic nominee for governor.

Foster’s Daily Democrat

Foster’s Daily Democrat
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Scaling back too far can damage the whole
By Cathy Silber
Executive Director Granite State Fair Tax Coalition Concord

People like to compare the state or federal budget to a family’s budget, and base suggestions about what government should do on the habits of regular people. For example, Rep. Bill O’Brien, the likely next speaker of the N.H. House, plans to switch the order of New Hampshire’s budget process, looking first at revenues and then at spending, because this is what families do.
Is this what families do? Add up the amount of money they have and then figure out what to spend it on? In one sense, especially in our consumer economy, people do spend based on how much they have at their disposal. A lot of people do choose a bigger TV, more features on a cell phone, or a fancier house, just because they have the money to pay for it.
Or, all too often, even when they don’t. Personal debt is the norm: mortgage debt, car debt, credit card debt. Our economy runs not just on meeting our needs, but on the stoking and instant gratification of our desires. The way we understand our needs actually promotes
overspending and debt.
Perhaps the reason it’s easy to assume that governments spend recklessly is because so many people do. The American norm is not to spend only just as much as one needs to and no more, but to spend as much as one can afford to, or even more than that.
Yet to my mind, responsible family budgeting works more like this: add up the cost of basic needs—food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health care, education—and weigh the total against income. Some families will have something left over, some will break even, and some — more and more these days — won’t have enough.
People — and governments too- — have been known to save when they have extra, for college, for retirement, to fill a rainy-day fund, to end a recent decade with a surplus. Both people and governments are known to spend to the break-even point too, perhaps crossing an unexamined line between needs and wants, because the money was there.
But what does a family do when it doesn’t have enough? It re-examines every need, scales back as much as possible and keeps trying to bring in more money somehow.
This is where the comparison between regular people and governments gets interesting.
Individually, people can scale back a long way, depending on where they start, from eating out to eating in, from steak to hamburger, bologna to beans, three meals to two, to the food pantry, food stamps, the dumpster behind the supermarket. The health effects of moving from a four-bedroom home to a small apartment to a relative’s basement probably don’t start setting in until the move from the basement to the car, or the tent to the underpass.
Beyond the comforts of a warm bed and a full belly, all that individuals lose when they don’t have enough is the chance to reach their fullest potential, to make their fullest contribution to the world. People can survive quite a lot before it kills them.
But what about a state, a society? Is there a point in the scaling back at which damage to our whole becomes greater than the sum of harm to our parts? We already accept a certain level of harm to our parts — that’s not the main question here. It’s OK with us, for example, that certain children, veterans, neighbors are cold and hungry, that some people who get sick will suffer without care or die before their time, that it might take a state trooper an hour to respond to someone’s emergency, or a year or two for somebody’s court case to get resolved.
The question concerns the pillars of our society, the infrastructures of our economy, the foundations of our future. Somewhere, there is a point beyond which the scaling back incurs irreparable harm, harm beyond the human toll we’ve already agreed to accept. Have we reached it? Have we passed it? Would we know it if we saw it?
Is that point set at exactly the amount of revenue we generate in any given year, in good times or bad, whatever that amount may be?
A recent conference in Manchester, sponsored by the Concord Coalition and the Whittemore School at UNH, explored the conflicts between investment and consumption, between short term solutions and long-term sustainability. One of the panelists noted that conservatives believe that government should be a certain percentage of GDP, from which spending priorities follow, and that liberals believe that government should set its priorities first and then ensure sufficient revenue to pay for them. The panelist offered a third way, a simple test for determining the viability of government spending: is it an investment whose benefits exceed its costs?
A family without enough re-examines every need, scales back as much as possible and tries to bring in more money somehow. A family without enough will try to get another job before eating its seed corn or burning its furniture for fuel.
Individuals do act on impulse and governments can be reckless too. But not being able to make ends meet isn’t always the result of reckless spending. Cuts can be reckless too — of the nose to spite the face, for instance, or the legs right out from under you. When ideology is reckless, cuts become more about ax grinding than pruning for new growth. And just as sometimes it may be irresponsible not to take a second job to provide for one’s family, so too can it be irresponsible for a state not to raise sufficient revenue to meet its basic obligations. If not because we care about the bodies in the streets, then because it costs so much more in the long run to rely on them for a workforce, to stack them in prisons, or to shovel them away.
On the web: www.nhfairtax.org

Allow Local Taxes

Now that New Hampshire state government is firmly in the hands of the Republican Party again, it’s time to start a dialogue between those who believe in local control and those who will end up paying for services. The question is: Should municipalities be allowed by state statute to raise it’s own taxes and fees beyond what is allowed today.

Municipalities are required to provide certain services through state and federal mandates. If the state or federal doesn’t want to pay for them, shouldn’t the municipality be able to raise enough money to fund them? The only major source of revenue allowed by NH state statute is the property tax. Self-funding user taxes are allowed for motor vehicles and utility bills. Fees such as permits and licenses are allowed.

To the arguments :
“Local taxes will demean the viability of a city resulting in lower vibrancy.” – That won’t necessarily be the case. Let the city decide if they want to take the chance.
“Cities with more services attract welfare and homeless cases.” That’s a falsehood… a fallacy. All cities, towns and county governments are required by state law to provide those services. Allowing them to create a self-funding fee wouldn’t attract any more or any less welfare and homeless cases.