GILFORD — while School Board challenger Doug Lambert and Budget Committee challenger Barbara Aichinger verbally danced for their supper at last night’s student-sponsored candidate’s forum, most of the rest of the candidates were given a free pass from the tough questions.
The format of the forum was designed to prevent conflict – questions were submitted to the students who asked them without revealing the name of the person who asked the questions. There were no follow-up questions allowed.
Despite the format or perhaps because of the anonymity it provided, some of the questions were tough ones — most tellingly one person wanted to know how much time Aichinger spends in Gilford and another one wanted to know if Lambert supports all students – including the gay ones.
“I did a stupid thing, I apologized and I paid the price,” he said, referring to his 2009 tirade against the openly gay leader of the state’s Democratic Party on his former blog Gilford Grok.
His rant, for which he did apologize, cost him his spot on the Budget Committee – he stepped down – his weekly column in the Laconia Daily Sun, and his prominent position on Gilford Grok – a conservative blog he partially ran.
As to the direct question of whether or not he would support all students, Lambert said, “When the mission is education and community, I don’t see how anybody could be discriminated against.
“We’re all God’s children,” he said, adding that, if elected “every child in this building would get his support and protection.”
Aichinger said she travels frequently for her job as a vice president and engineer for a N.H. owned tech company and spends about seven months a year physically in Gilford.
A resident since 2008, she said her husband is still a legal resident of Bedford, N.H. and the youngest of their three children, the child is a senior, remains in Bedford Public Schools so she could stay with her friends.
“I plan on retiring in Gilford,” she said, allowing that because she was asked the question twice that “it was an issue.”
She also said her residency in Gilford was settled when she fought, successfully, to overturn Gilford’s land use laws on involuntary lot mergers.
“If my residency was an issue, my neighbor who sued me would have gotten it out there,” she said referring to her prolonged court case that was triggered when she tried to build on an abutting lot she owns on Governor’s Island and realized the two lots had been made into one by the town without her knowledge or consent.
She and Lambert both have a history of citizen’s advocacy. with Aichinger’s victory in 2010 when the state law that disallowed involuntary lot mergers was passed by the legislature and became law and Lambert’s N.H. Supreme Court victory regarding the public’s Right-to-Know, both are proven and effective advocates for what they believe.
Aichinger also fielded one question from Atty. Peter Millham – the audience knew it was Millham’s question because the student moderator couldn’t read his handwriting and asked him to read it aloud – who wanted to know if she still intended on separating Governor’s Island from Gilford because she testified to the same last year before a legislative subcommittee.
“If you read my testimony…” she began.
“I read it,” Millham replied, providing the only public exchange of words during the event.
“The problem we have is we pay for services we don’t get,” she said, without skipping a beat.
“When we dial 9-1-1, Laconia shows up because we’re so close to the Weirs,” she said. “Maybe we could contract with Laconia (for some of those services). Our own municipality isn’t plan a.”
She also said the people who supported the bill, that would have created a study committee that would allow the island to form its own perfect union (or plan B as she called it), didn’t have their own municipality as their goal.
“Plan a (the creation of Village Districts within existing municipalities) is why I’m here,” she continued. “Before I stand before the legislature (and ask them for the permission to form their own municipality), I want to make sure I did everything I could to keep Governor’s Island in Gilford.”
(The bill was determined to be Inexpedient to Legislate or, in English, it didn’t make it out of one of the legislative committees that considered it.)
For Aichinger, the goal is to lower the town’s tax rate to $15 per $1000 evaluation within three years by cutting spending and making better use of the resources the town already has.
Long range, Aichinger said lowering the tax rate would preserve property values, adding that many elderly people, in the pre-IRA and 401K investment days, bought property as an investment for their retirement.
Lambert said his main goal for both running for School Board and for suing the School Board over it’s decision to hire a superintendent despite two separate votes of the people for a different administrative structure, was because the School Board has a habit of ignoring the people and his desire to “empower the parents.”
Along with the decision to hire a superintendent, Lambert was also asked if he supported full-day kindergarten. He answered that the decision to create a full-day kindergarten after the people voted “no under any circumstances” was another example of how the School Board does what it wants regardless of what the people who elected them want.
Current School Board Chair Kurt Webber – a candidate for reelection – was also asked about the kindergarten decision and he said that after conducting a pilot program that determined the value and learning that it would save the district money, by eliminating a noon-time bus run, the School Board unanimously supported full-day kindergarten.
Webber was also asked why he hired the superintendent the day before the vote, he said the Board had said all along that would continue the process for hiring a superintendent and timing of the decision to offer the job to existing Superintendent Kent Hemingway was made because one of the three finalists had been offered another job in another district and it wasn’t fair to leave the three candidates “hanging in the breeze.”
He said the lawyers said it was “advisory only” and the members of both the Gilford and the Gilmanton School Boards was that it “makes no sense to move to a management structure with no one in charge.”
Election Day is March 13. Voters vote at the Gilford Middle School.
There are three candidates for two 3-year seats on the School Board – Webber, Lambert and incumbent Susan Allen.
There are nine candidates for the three -3-year terms on the Budget Committee – incumbents David “Skip” Murphy and Phyllis Corrigan; Eichinger, Richard Grenier, Stuart Savage, Joe Hoffman, Allen Voivod, J. Scott Davis, JoEllen Space and Stuart Savage.
Davis, Voivod and Grenier sent position letters that were read to the public while Space and Hoffman were no shows. a couple of questions were directed to Murphy, who said he remains a fiscal conservative who is dedicated to reducing the size of the government.
He said New Hampshire is a place where government is still small enough so one person can make a difference and that his goal is to keep Gilford’s government small, open and dedicated to serving the public.
