Several cities across New Hampshire have elected new mayors. This week, NHPR is sitting down with some of these new leaders to talk about their plans for office.
Matthew Gerding is the mayor-elect of Somersworth. He’s served on the city council and is a middle school science teacher. NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa spoke with him about housing, education and more. Below is a transcript of their conversation.
Transcript
So what are your top priorities when you step into the position of mayor in January?
Thank you for asking. I would say I have two major priorities that are similar but different. The first is housing. I'm sure you are well aware that New Hampshire is lacking a ton of housing, particularly affordable housing. And municipalities like Somersworth are well suited to address this need. It's one of those statewide problems that can be best solved at the local level. And so, I'm hoping to work with the city, with our land use boards, and also by creating a committee to study this issue to hopefully change some of our zoning laws in the city to allow for more housing.
The second thing I'm really focused on is education funding. Currently, the state underfunds education to all cities and towns, not just Somersworth, but almost all cities and towns throughout the state by a lot. It's been determined time and time again that education funding is a state responsibility, not a local responsibility. But local towns and cities across the state pay about 70% of the cost for education. And so this is something I've been passionate about for years during my time on city council. But I feel like being in the position of mayor puts me in a good position to be able to directly advocate to the state and say, 'Hey, this is something that we see. This hurts our budget year in and year out, and our students are struggling because of that.'
(Editor’s note: The state is legally responsible for funding an adequate education in New Hampshire, though there is a debate in the courts and State House about what an "adequate education" includes, and how to calculate that expense. You can read more of NHPR’s coverage on school funding here.)
I'd like to circle back to housing and hear a little bit more from you about what your plans are to work closer toward affordable housing in Somersworth.
Yeah, I think zoning is the biggest impediment right now. We learned that Somersworth has some of the lowest rates of allowability for duplexes, and triplexes and quadplexes. And so even just simple changes like that, where we take maybe parsecs of land that are zoned for just single family and allow for multi-unit buildings. And I'm not even talking about large apartment buildings, I'm just talking about buildings that are almost essentially like single family homes in appearance, but allow for more people to live in them. I think that is a really straightforward, simple solution, especially knowing that Somersworth is lacking some of that allowability.
I mean, other things I'd love to see: our downtown right now has a number of properties, a number of areas that are not really being utilized to their best abilities. There are some storefronts that are empty, things like that. I would love to see more housing in our downtown, because businesses in our downtown could benefit from the people living downtown. We have people get an apartment building there, say maybe it's a 50-unit apartment building, that's at minimum, 50 more people that can go shop at your stores, go to your restaurants, things like that. So it kind of has economic benefits, too, in that way.
Any other projects that you're hoping for, dreaming of, looking forward to?
I think another fun one that's kind of already in the works, but I'm excited to see move forward, is we are currently examining and looking into whether we want to join as a community, the [Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire]. So again, a group of communities throughout New Hampshire and counties, too, I believe, are working together to coordinate buying power for energy with the goal of lowering energy costs for residents. And so we are hoping, fingers crossed, that within the next year, we're able to join up with that and then actually have lower electrical costs for our residents. So I'm pretty excited to see that one move forward. It's also neat, too, because there's options in there for more sustainable energy. So we can get our community to be a little bit more green, which is always great.
