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After Entire Board of Selectmen Resigns, Uncertainty in Small Town of Kensington

Magicpiano via Wikimedia

All three members of the Kensington Board of Selectmen have resigned, sowing a bit of confusion across this small Rockingham County town.

Police Chief Scott Sanders announced the mass exodus on Wednesday. Norman DeBoisbriand, Robert Wadleigh and Linda Blood all made their resignations effective immediately. While they didn’t cite a cause in their letters, local news reports, including on seascoastonline.com, show a town growing increasingly divided during the past few months over a range of issues.

“I don’t think anybody really wants to see any organization--particularly the one in charge of governing their day to day lives--suddenly crippled from not having a governing body,” said Chief Sanders.  

On Wednesday, Town Moderator Harold Bragg filed an emergency petition in Rockingham Superior Court asking a judge to appoint temporary selectmen so that municipal employees can receive paychecks by week’s end.

“With the current vacancies of all the town’s selectmen, there is no authorized individual under state law to approve the town manifest to pay town employees on its next payday scheduled for September 14,” reads the petition.

Bragg is asking the court to appoint Michael Schwotzer, a former selectmen and town treasurer, as well as Benjamin Cole, who served on the Kensington School Board, to fill the temporary posts until March, when Town Meeting is next held. Both men are described as having “good moral character and standing in the community.”

A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for 9am on Friday in Brentwood.

Chief Sanders says the town has approximately 15-20 paid employees.

In a message to the townspeople, he says he’s confident “that we will be able to stand united to see each other through this period of transition. Now, more than ever, we need to support our neighbors in order to realize the shared vision of our community and embrace the opportunities that lay ahead of us.”

As a general assignment reporter, I pursue breaking news as well as investigative pieces across a range of topics. I’m drawn to stories that are big and timely, as well as those that may appear small but tell us something larger about the state we live in. I also love a good tip, a good character, or a story that involves a boat ride.
I help guide NHPR’s bilingual journalism and our climate/environment journalism in an effort to fill these reporting gaps in New Hampshire. I work with our journalists to tell stories that inform, celebrate and empower Latino/a/x community members in the state through our WhatsApp news service ¿Que Hay de Nuevo, New Hampshire? as well as NHPR’s digital platforms in Spanish and English. For our By Degrees climate coverage, I work with reporters and producers to tell stories that take audience members to the places and people grappling with and responding to climate change, while explaining the forces both driving and limiting New Hampshire’s efforts to respond to this crisis.
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