Towns will decide, is SB2 for them?

Thursday, February 25, 2010

To SB2, or not to SB2? In several New Hampshire towns, including Amherst and Mont Vernon, that is the question this election season.

Ever since the 1995 passage of Senate Bill 2, which gave all towns and school districts the option to change the Town Meeting and School District Meeting form of government, residents and civic leaders have been debating which is best for their community: the traditional method, at which debate and voting happens at one meeting, or SB2, in which debate happens at Deliberative Session, and secret-ballot voting happens on Election Day, about a month later.

Mont Vernon voters will decide at the polls on March 9 whether to adopt SB2, after three residents spearheaded a petition drive to get the question on the ballot. State SB2 guidelines require that all warrant articles calling for a change in a town or school district’s SB2 status be voted on at the polls, not in the town meeting.

The petitioners, Tom and Norma McKinney and Jan Miller, presented their petition at the public school district hearing this month, saying they garnered 46 signatures but “probably could have gotten 200 or 300 more” in support of the measure.

The situation is opposite in Amherst, where a petition article presented by resident Jack Kunkel asks voters to decide whether the town should ditch SB2 and return to traditional Town Meeting format. Amherst voters adopted SB2 shortly after it passed into law for the town as well as the Souhegan Cooperative and Amherst school districts.

Kunkel, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said he filed the petition as an individual, but that many of his fellow members and other residents he’s talked to are in favor of scrapping SB2.

“SB2 has many good goals, but I’ve spoken with people who have been in town politics off and on for 20 or 30 years, and most feel that it’s downgraded the quality of the conversation and decision-making we had with Town Meeting,” Kunkel said.

As of last year, 63 towns and 73 school districts in New Hampshire have adopted SB2, according to state Department of Revenue Administration figures.

Locally, towns in which voters adopted SB2 for both town and schools include Amherst, Hudson, Litchfield, Milford, Merrimack, and Pelham.

Lyndeborough is in an unusual situation of having dropped SB2 as a side effect. It had adopted SB2 for the Lyndeborough School District, but that district has joined Wilton and Wilton/Lyndeborough school districts to form a new cooperative district schools, which is operating under traditional annual meeting rules.

This change may make a difference to a proposed addition to Lyndeborough’s only school, an elementary school. In past years the addition has twice gotten majority approval but fallen short of the 60 percent needed in SB2 voting; this year it only needs to get 50 percent.

In Mont Vernon, Tom McKinney said his belief that SB2 is a considerably fairer and more accessible process for a wider range of town voters led him to circulate the petition.

In recent years, he said, “a typical (school district) meeting draws somewhere between 75 and 150 people in a town that has around 1,800 registered voters.”

McKinney told attendees at this month’s school district public hearing that SB2’s secret-ballot format would encourage more people to take part in the process. “It’s very difficult for a lot of people to fit a Friday night school district meeting into their schedules,” he said, adding that he believes shyness or a desire to “not rock the boat” prevents many people from asking questions or offering opinions in a public forum.

But several people at the hearing, including selectman’s chairman John Quinlan, said a number of towns and school districts have begun to consider leaving SB2.

“It hasn’t been working out as well as it was intended to,” Quinlan said, speaking from the audience. “It looks good on paper, but a lot of (other towns’ officials) I’ve talked with are wanting to go back.”

School Board member Kim Roberge agreed, saying she’s aware of “a number of towns and school districts who want to go back to the Town Meeting/ School District Meeting format.”

School Board Chairman Leo White said that because the article is going to secret ballot vote, the board isn’t taking an official stance on whether to recommend the article. He said that members’ personal opinions on the issue are mixed.

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 31, or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph. com.