The pull of the presidential primary, the senatorial race, and the reelection of our progressive congresspersons is compelling. However, I believe that DFNH, because it focusses on the political inside NH, should take some time to brainstorm how we can help get more progressives involved in local government. Now I am going to tell you why this is so difficult. First of all, politics on this level is non-partisan, so that much of the organization that has been done by progressives in the Democratic Party is difficult to translate to the local level, where races are at least nominally non-partisan. I can tell you that most of the more progressive people in my town will not register as Democrats and will not get involved in the party organization. I am not saying they are wrong, they have very good reasons which they share with me. The point is that we need some other organizational vehicle that will keep these groups together over time. We also have an issue with the, I almost hesitate to say it this way, “class warfare” that the property tax issue brings to our towns. This year in Northwood that we have a couple of people who either don’t own property or who don’t pay their taxes period, who use the burden of the property tax on certain segments of the population as a campaign issue, distorting the facts in the process (see my recent article on the DFNH website regarding the use of statistics). They imply that the people who volunteer to run or be appointed to town boards are all rich and don’t worry about paying their property taxes, while in fact we have many retired folks and young people with families who help run our town. They are simply willing to pay their fair share. This can get very nasty. We are called “elitist leftists,” or part of the “old boy network,” when in fact many of us are not natives, and have moved here within the last 10-20 years. That this horrible year has brought together the people who have retired from town service with the younger people who have recently stepped up tells me that there is a groundswell of resistance to the tax-cutters. The question is how to keep this group together and how to overcome the message that town government is run by a small group who are ripping off the taxpayers. I am including a portion of a letter written by one of our planning board alternates, and a Deaniac from 2004, as an example of what this all feels like:

“As someone who has lived in Northwood for many years but who only in recent years became involved with town government, the politics this year was almost enough to send me heading for the hills again. But I stayed informed and stayed involved, in large part, because I found that most of the people I served with were thoughtful people who were stealing time from their busy lives to work for the greater good of the town — and were not doing this to further their own selfish interests. 

Right now (and always), Northwood needs Board of Selectmen and Planning Board members who are knowledgeable, fair, open-minded, courteous and, perhaps, even visionary — given the many long-term issues facing the town. We simply can't afford another year, financially or otherwise, like this past year. The extremism on the Board of Selectmen, and the level of discord and personal attack that developed from this, resulted in a significant waste of resources — not the savings to taxpayers that had been predicted. Staff turnover, time spent arguing at meetings and not on making sound decisions, disenchanted citizens — all of these things are very costly for a town.”

I urge DFNH to take up this cause, because local government is the seed bed for democracy in NH, and we need to tend our garden.