This is NHPR’s The Big Question. We ask you a question about life in New Hampshire, you submit an answer, and we feature your voices on air and online.
Town meeting season has arrived in New Hampshire. Every spring, towns across the state meet to decide on local issues. It’s a cherished civic tradition for many Granite Staters.
For February's Big Question, we asked: What’s an experience you’ve had that you think best represents town meetings in New Hampshire?
Here’s what some of you said.
Karen Shea Dufresne - Sharon, NH: My husband and I moved into our new home in a very small town in southern New Hampshire. At the time, there were 175 residents. We went to our first town meeting. The meeting was held in an old brick schoolhouse, still furnished with child sized desks. The building had no running water, but did have heat and electricity. Truly, it was still set up like it was when these little kids went to school there.
So we were, you know, sort of squishing ourselves into these little desks and just participating in voting for all of the officials and making sure that the budget was what we could afford. You don't see that in any other community where there is no town meeting. We took seats in the far back corner, intending just to watch. By the time the meeting was over, I left, having been sworn in as the new town clerk.
Marilyn Peterman - Amherst, NH: I was a selectman for 18 years. And my fondest memories of town meetings were when we had an actual town meeting before SB2. And in one particular session, the fire department had asked for a boat to do lake rescues. We have a few small lakes in our town, and I think if I recall correctly, the funding amount was $4,000. Well, there was a lot of discussion on and on and on. And finally, a neighbor of mine stood up and said, “If the town meeting doesn't support this, I will pay for it myself!” Needless to say, the vote was taken at that meeting and the town did approve the $4,000 for the boat.
Katie Paine - Durham, NH: I'm talking about the memorable town meeting in March of 1974. I had never been to a town meeting before, and had no idea what they were like or anything else. Thought it was going to be quite a quiet affair and wandered in, and there were 900 some odd people there. Every 10 feet somebody would give me a hug and say hi. And it was the day that Durham was voting on the permit for Onassis oil refinery, and there were a lot of speeches and I wasn't really paying attention to a whole lot of them because it was mostly just shouting and booing and yelling. But I thought, well, if that's the way town meetings are, I might go more often. I just remember walking into that meeting and seeing all those people and thinking, this is a very big deal and people are really out here. And I think it was my first experience with New Hampshire democracy in action.
Sandy Sonnichsen - Goshen, NH: At our town meetings we vote on big things. Almost all of them are related to spending. We're a really small, small town and trying to stay afloat on our own in this kind of new world. I think we do a really good job of it. But sometimes it's pretty frustrating. We'll rush right through a bunch of big ticket items, most of the budget, and then we get hung up and actually sometimes rude to each other about small things like $100 for the Conservation Commission, or something completely unavoidable like buying required accounting software that we can't get used. And the best part, really, of town meeting is seeing each other. We're nearly through the winter, so we haven't seen some of the people since last year. And so we watch to see how the oldsters are doing. And we look for new babies and just get a look at each other. It's nice. And then there's also the opportunity for town characters to shine. It isn't like we haven't had big disagreements. Oh, my gosh, the dump, things like that. We do sometimes have really major disagreements, but it's almost like a sporting event. So… at least for me, I actually come away kind of smiling affectionately at the people who always have the same point of view.
