2025 Town Election Results

What the results mean going forward.

Congratulations to all of the winning candidates and thanks to all of the candidates for volunteering to serve your community. Readers who’ve not seen the election results can find them here.

Newly elected Selectman Charlotte Fyfe and her opponent Adam Ryan demonstrating Nottingham solidarity on election day.

Voters were much more open to spending proposals this year than last year. All spending proposals except one were approved. This was very different from last year when both the town and the school operating budgets were rejected. Meanwhile, in the neighboring towns of Northwood, Epping, and Deerfield, voters rejected their town’s operating budget.

The only spending warrant article to fail was #22, for highway reconstruction on Stevens Hill Road, 484 to 782. This warrant article was by citizen petition in reaction to the voter’s failure last year to approve highway reconstruction on Stevens Hill Road when combined in one warrant article with proposed road work on Priest Road and the creation of paved aprons where the town’s dirt roads meet paved roads. It was suspected that last year’s warrant article failed due to Stevens Hill being combined with unpopular projects.

This year, the Board of Selectmen proposed a road reconstruction warrant article that did not include those other projects but did include Stevens Hill Road plus some newly proposed projects on Lucas Pond and Deerfield roads. That warrant article passed 872 to 425, but because article #22 failed, the town is now prohibited from doing road reconstruction work on Steven Hill Road this year. This aspect was thought to be confusing to the voters. The Board of Selectmen explained the issue to the public in their voters guide. Explanations also appeared in the Nottingham Blog and on social media. At the deliberative session, I predicted that the chances of this outcome were high and proposed amending warrant article #12 to remove the overlap with warrant article #22. This amendment was voted down.

The question now is how this vote should be best interpreted. The most straightforward interpretation is that the voters knew what they were doing. They did not want this work done on Sevens Hill Road. They did not want it this year. They did not want it last year. One can find plenty of comments on social media supporting this view.

Another interpretation is that the voters were just following the Budget Committee’s recommendations, and the Budget Committee recommended voting this warrant article down. However, the voters did not follow the Budget Committee’s recommendation to not restore funding to the Nottingham Community Newsletter, which the voters supported 675 to 624.

However one interprets the vote, one outcome is that the voters have now effectively awarded about $120k to the Board of Selectmen to spend on any road reconstruction project of their choice, except Stevens Hill Road. If there’s a road reconstruction project you think should be done, this may be a good time to suggest it to the board.

Other big news is that the citizen petitions to expand eligibility for the elderly and disabled tax exemptions and to increase the value of those exemptions passed. If you are over 65 or disabled and have not previously qualified for a tax exemption, new guidance on doing so should be published by the town soon. And if you already qualify, you can look forward to a roughly 20% increase in that tax exemption.

This election was the second time in three years that there was a major error on the ballot. This year’s ballot said there were two positions available on the Zoning Board when there was, in fact, only one. In 2022 there was an error in which a seat on the Budget Committee failed to be listed.

As Charlotte Fyfe won a seat on the Board of Selectmen, she must resign her current seat on the Budget Committee. The committee will soon set a date for a meeting to select a replacement from among volunteers. If you’d like to serve the town in this capacity, consider volunteering at that meeting.

Fyfe will be taking John Morin’s seat on the Board of Selectmen. Morin had served on the board for six years, and before that, he was on the Planning and Zoning boards, starting his service to the town in 2005. Selectman is a time-consuming and difficult position, requiring judgments on complex and uncertain matters, matters for which there are considerable risks and downsides no matter what one decides, and on controversial issues in which some parties are sure to be unhappy. At times this puts Selectmen into unpleasant, no-win situations. We should be thankful to anyone who takes on this difficult job. For more about John Morin, see this article in the Nottingham Observer.

Two major issues about this election were that there were offices with insufficient candidates on the ballot, and there were a large number of last-minute write-in candidates - so last minute that many absentee voters could not be aware of any of them, and the Nottingham Blog could not interview them.

As the voters benefit from having choices on the ballot and from having enough time prior to the election to learn about the candidates, I’m interested in hearing ideas for improving this situation, particularly any idea in which the Nottingham Blog could be of service. Please put your ideas in the comments section.

I have one idea that I’d like reader feedback on.

For candidates who are willing to inform the Nottingham Blog that they have decided to run, doing so before the official period for registering candidacy opens, the Nottingham Blog could do an article in which these early-decision candidates could publish candidate statements.

This would provide the public with a partial list of who is running, while allowing additional candidates to put their names on the ballot, knowing what offices have yet to have candidates and what offices have candidates that are so far running unopposed. Perhaps this would encourage other candidates to file during the candidacy period and get their name on the ballot, rather than being last-minute write-ins.

Another benefit the Nottingham Blog could offer to these early-decision candidates is that for all further mentions of the candidates in the blog, rather than following alphabetical order, these early-decision candidates would be listed first and noted that they had committed early.

The downside to the candidates running early decision is that doing so may attract opponents - but for the voters, this would be an upside.

Please use the poll below to register your opinion of the idea. Feel free to comment on it in the comments section.