Nottingham 2023 Town Election Voters’ Guide
Election: March 14, from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm at Nottingham School.
Note: the Forum published the wrong polling place. Voting is at the school, not town hall.
On the ballot this year are three contested elections - for Board of Selectmen, Budget Committee, and School Board - and a large number of warrant articles, a few of which are controversial.
Nottingham has some difficult issues ahead. We should be thankful to all of the candidates who have come forward to volunteer for these difficult jobs that pay little or nothing at all and that subject the candidates not only to public scrutiny but also public abuse.
The abuse can be pretty bad. For example, in the past year two of our public officials were subjected to personal verbal attacks from members of the public at a School Board meeting - so bad that the School Board apologized at the next meeting for allowing them to happen. At a Board of Selectmen meeting one member of the public yelled “you guys suck” at the board. The sad thing is that performing these difficult jobs well requires making many people unhappy.
Town Government Issues
Financial issues are at the forefront of concern. On one hand, the town is experiencing substantial financial needs:
Loss of employees because the town is failing to pay competitively.
Costs of essential items, such as fuel, have risen sharply.
Inflation and supply chain issues are driving up other product costs.
Large amounts of deferred maintenance have been identified. Some town buildings are at risk of becoming unusable.
Sizable, unexpected expenses associated with weather damage, equipment failure, and litigation.
Due to consumer economic woes, increases are anticipated in the number of residents eligible for town-funded relief and in residents utilizing town-funded services.
For decades the costs of services have been increasing faster than the costs of physical products. As the town government delivers services, the cost of these services rises faster than the overall rate of inflation.
On the other hand:
Taxpayers’ incomes are lagging behind inflation, producing substantial financial pain for many families.
A 2022 warrant article capped tax increases at 4% - 745 in favor versus 462 against, indicative of a strong desire by the voters to constrain tax increases regardless of the implications.
The good economic times that arose after the end of the Great Recession have come to an end. Difficult choices must be made. Nottingham owes a big thank-you to the candidates who have told the voters where they stand so that the voters can have input and give direction on these difficult choices.
School Issues
The culture war has come to Nottingham. Elected officials have pointed out that books have been put into the school library that they argue are inappropriate. In response, some citizens have defended the books and have condemned the opposing views.
In addition, as the biggest expense funded by Nottingham property tax, there’s tremendous concern about the school budget just as there is about the town budget. In particular, teachers’ wages and teacher collective bargaining have been issues.
The Candidates
Unfortunately, the town had no candidates' night for the public to ask the candidates questions. The available sources of information on the candidates are this blog, The Forum, and the Nottingham newsletter.
The Forum and the Nottingham Newsletter solicited short candidate statements from the candidates, but several of the candidates didn’t bother to provide those. These candidate statements generally provide good biographical information but are often not informative about where the candidates stand, so the Nottingham Blog asked candidates questions about key issues, but several of the candidates failed to respond.
This voters’ guide assembles links to what information is available about the candidates and provides summaries of what is available about their positions and their recent political activities, which in many cases is little or nothing.
Readers interested in the candidates’ biographies should click through to those biographies provided in the Forum and the Nottingham newsletter.
Candidates are listed in approximate order of how much they have informed voters about their candidacy by cooperating with the Forum, the Nottingham newsletter, and this blog in our respective efforts to inform the voters.
Board of Selectmen
Timothy Dabrieo
Supports repealing the 4% tax cap.
Wants to address the town’s high employee turnover due to uncompetitive wages.
Supports addressing the town’s deferred maintenance issues.
Endorsed by Nottingham Democrats.
Stephen Welch
Supports repealing the 4% tax cap.
Wants to put a cap on wages by position.
Supports addressing the town’s deferred maintenance issues.
Endorsed by Nottingham Democrats.
Roger Romeo Richard
Supports keeping the 4% tax cap.
Endorsed by Nottingham GOP Committee.
Matthew Shirland
Endorsed by Nottingham GOP Committee
Budget Committee
Charlotte M. Fyfe
Thinks the 4% tax cap is unreasonable because of the current high inflation.
Supports the creation of a code of ethics and rules of order for town committee meetings to address disorderly conduct.
Believes that some Budget Committee members have been using the committee to pursue their personal political agendas. Believes that the committee should be non-partisan.
Thinks wages for town employees are uncompetitive compared with wages provided by neighboring towns and that the town needs to address this to help the town retain good employees.
Thinks the town needs to catch up on deferred maintenance.
Endorsed by Nottingham Democrats.
Owen Friend-Gray (Incumbent - via appointment to the committee)
Thinks the 4% tax cap is unreasonable because of current high inflation.
Thinks wages for town employees are uncompetitive compared with wages provided by neighboring towns.
Endorsed by Nottingham Democrats.
Thomas Butkiewicz (Incumbant)
Thinks that prior to his joining the Budget Committee in 2020 that the Budget Committee suffered from groupthink and was just rubber-stamping budget requests.
Fought overwhelming opposition from most of the committee in an attempt to reduce the school budget.
Spearheaded the campaign last year to allow residents to pick reusable items and materials from the Recycling Center.
Led the effort to expand voter participation by moving the town to SB2 enabling more people to vote on town warrant articles while avoiding attending lengthy town meetings.
Claims to be responsible for eliminating hundreds of thousands of dollars of wasteful spending from the town and school budgets.
Endorsed by Nottingham GOP Committee.
Tom Butkiewicz has been involved in several contentious issues in the past year. He accused the School Board of “theft and extortion” because the school was funded using taxes, which are collected under threat of force. This behavior disrupted the presentation that School Board member Kathy Brosnan (running for re-election this year) to such a degree that she chose to not complete her presentation, causing the Budget Committee to be unable to complete its tasks for that meeting.
He disrupted the 2023 Town Deliberative Session so much that Moderator Dawn Fernald had to repeatedly threaten him with removal from the meeting due to failure to obey the rules of order, even once having to summon the police to take the microphone away from him, which Tom relinquished before the police got to him.
He accused the School Board of being a “threat to our democracy” on the grounds that it accepted its legal counsel’s opinion that a warrant article calling for union contract negotiations to be open to the public was not in compliance with state law about contract negotiations and as such was illegal and could not be acted upon by the School Board.
Robert Kelly (Incumbant)
Voted to pay off the debt on the Fire Station and Mulligan Forest in order to reduce taxes.
Endorsed by Nottingham GOP Committee and by Nottingham Democrats.
Alan Bershtein
Endorsed by Nottingham GOP Committee.
Alan Bershtein formerly represented Nottingham in the state legislature. His most well-known action there was to vote for NH to secede from the United States.
School Board
Lisa Heath
Supports the 10% cap to the school budget.
Supports the current selection of books in the school library.
Supports switching to an hourly calendar for the school.
Endorsed by Nottingham Democrats.
Danielle Roy
Endorsed by Nottingham GOP Committee.
Susan Levenson (Incumbant)
Endorsed by Nottingham GOP Committee.
Kathryn Brosnan (Incumbant)
Endorsed by Nottingham Democrats.
Town Warrant Articles
Most of the warrant articles are uncontroversial and are widely recommended by the Board of Selectmen and the Budget Committee. Voters wanting background information on them should read the Board of Selectmen’s comments on the town warrant articles.
Warrant articles that are controversial are as follows.
Article 18 “Shall the Town of Nottingham raise and appropriate $40,000 to create a maintenance appropriation in order to contract with a property maintenance resource for regular maintenance items including interior or exterior items at all town facilities as deemed priority by the selectboard.” By Petition, majority vote required. The estimated tax impact is $0.05 per $1,000 of property valuation.
The Select Board recommends this appropriation (5-0).
The Budget Committee does not recommend this appropriation (0-7-2).
The Budget Committee disapproved of the terminology used in this warrant article regarding what type of entity would be authorized to do the work as it was too narrow of a category and would force the town to consider only more expensive alternatives. This terminology was changed at the deliberative session to address the Budget Committee’s objections.
Article 19 “Shall we rescind the provisions of RSA 32:5-b, known as the tax cap, as adopted by the town of Nottingham, NH on March 8, 2022, so that there will no longer be a limit on increases to the recommended budget in the amount to be raised by local taxes?” By Petition, 3/5ths (60%) vote required.
The Board of Selectmen recommends passing this article. With inflation running far above 4% the town has tremendous difficulty complying with the town’s current 4% cap on annual tax increases. This year to meet the cap the Board of Selectmen had to slash the town’s highway budget, putting critical highway expenditures that would normally be part of the operating budget into warrant articles. The town has been unable to raise employee salaries to keep up with inflation, causing substantial losses of employees to other towns that pay better. Nottingham Blog articles detailing how difficult budgeting was this year due to the tax cap can be found here, here, and here.
The Nottingham GOP Committee recommends defeating this article.
School Warrant Articles
The school warrant articles are for the most part uncontroversial and supported by both the School Board and the Budget Committee. Opposing votes in the Budget Committee are largely from members who think that the town spends too much on the school already, and as such they tend to oppose articles that propose to spend additional money on the school.
The controversial warrant article is #10, which would apply a tax cap of 10% to the school budget. This cap would work just like the 4% cap currently in force on the town budget and which has caused so many problems in budgeting that the Board of Selectmen has requested that the voters remove the cap. The original citizen petition to create the warrant article specified a 4% cap like the town has, but at the deliberative session this figure was changed to 10%.