BELMONT — Candidates for selectman and school board in Belmont and Canterbury had a chance to discuss their priorities during a forum sponsored by the National Honor Society at the Belmont High School cafeteria on Feb. 23.
Shaker Regional School Board incumbent Sean Embree is facing a challenge from Mark Ekberg, who expressed a need for a return to “common sense” in the district.
Incumbent Belmont Selectman Jon Pike is facing a challenge from Justin Barden, who said it is time for younger residents to get involved in local government. Similarly, Canterbury selectman candidate Calvin Todd said younger people need to step up and bridge the gap between old and young residents. His opponent, Kent Ruesswick, is 66 years old and has served in a number municipal offices, although it is his first time running for selectman.
Introducing the candidates and serving up questions were Honor Society President Chris Paré and fellow NHS members Brooke Vetter and Alyssa Edgren.
Embree emphasized the “great job” the school board has been doing, but said “there are things we still need to work on, and I want to be part of that.”
He said it is important to discuss behavior in the district, noting that the pandemic has made it difficult to determine what the real needs are.
“I want to get back to the point where we can have real data to kind of drive the decisions because COVID kind of messed those up,” he said. “It’s time to move on from it.” He wants to see a return to in-person meetings, in-person events, and building up of the community.
Discussing school spending, Embree noted that 80 percent of the budget goes to salaries and benefits.
“I think we owe it to the taxpayers to look at that each year, because a position is vacated, you don’t just rehire for that position; we take a look at, is that position still needed? Maybe there’s another need somewhere else.”
He also said the school board needs to be diligent in allocating the other 20 percent of the budget that is more discretionary.
“If we can get to a zero-increase budget, that’s gonna make a big impact on taxes,” Embree said.
Ekberg said, “I always used to joke, if common sense was so common, more people would have it. I think a lot of common sense has exited public education probably over the last 25 or 30 years.”
A 1990 graduate of Belmont High School with 22 years of educational experience, Ekberg said his goal is to get some positive movement in the district. He said the district will be dealing with the ramifications of the pandemic for years to come, but it needs to move forward.
“Now that students are returning back into the classroom, I’m seeing my own students, that they are being asked to rely on that technology. One of the things we need to do and improve on is more direct instruction within the classrooms.”
He also said the district needs to be able to teach to both low- and high-achieving students. He criticized the emphasis on unproven teaching techniques that change every few years, such as problem-solving methods in mathematics. Getting back to the basics is important, he said.
Ekberg also said the district needs to take a firm stance against inappropriate behavior, and that school board members should take more of an interest in the budget.
“Board members need to be involved in committee work with the fixed district costs, the curriculum …. The board members need to understand it, to be able to talk about it, to be able to explain it when people want to engage in a conversation about it. They can’t just defer to one person who knows knows the finances very, very well, because then it appears that the board is just rubber-stamping what’s being put in front of them.”
Discussing ways to get parents more involved, Ekberg suggested tracking their participation and offering incentives. He said programs like Strengthening Families can help with “teaching kids to be kids” and teaching parents to be parents.
Selectmen
Pike cited Belmont’s progress in building a new police station, rebuilding the town hall, and spending a million dollars a year on road projects, all without borrowing money.
“We’ve seen the Belknap Mall get sold and it’s going to be rebuilt as a mall,” he said. “The dog track’s been sold. That’s all because of the planning board and … the town of Belmont.”
The problem, he said, is with people who do not understand the budget process and think “it’s all a big pile of money, and just grab it.”
Pike spoke in opposition to a petitioned warrant article that would increase the size of the board of selectmen from three to five members, saying it would be difficult to find people able to participate on a weekly basis. The three current selectmen, he said, are retired and can conduct business during the day when they can meet with town officials during regular business hours, cutting down on the cost of overtime. If members of the public who can only attend at night have matters they want to discuss, the selectmen have always held evening meetings to accommodate them, he said.
“[The petitioners] don’t understand that, with five, you’re still going to have — whether it’ll be me or anybody else — three are going to control the vote, because three’s a majority.”
Barden said he finds that many young people do not feel they are represented in town government and that Belmont “absolutely needs younger people to be involved.”
“One thing Belmont does need is new ideas and flexibility,” Barden said, noting that increasing the size of the board of selectmen would allow younger residents to join their elders.
“My concern is that we, as most of New Hampshire, has seen an aging population. Where will we be in 15 years when there is no one left to fill these positions, and no one is here to work, or to go to school? Increasingly, we see people move out of state.”
Barden agreed with Pike on the need for a proposed $281,975 water distribution and treatment system, noting the cost continues to rise.
“This water is very rapidly reaching a point where it is becoming dangerous,” he said. “This is not a problem that is going to go away; it’s going to get worse.”
Ruesswick noted that he moved to Canterbury “when I was four years old in 1957, been there ever since except for a few years in Alaska. I have served on all boards in town, and I’ve been on the fire department, and I don’t think there’s anything I missed, but selectman has not been one of my offices yet, so I intend to do at least a three-year term and, if I like it, I’ll do more.”
Speaking of the movement by some Canterbury residents to study withdrawing from the Shaker Regional School District, Ruesswick said he still supports the district. He noted that he “worked on the Canterbury school when that was built” and said, “It was always discouraging to watch somebody that felt they had to take their kids to another district, and we lost the input of both the kids and the parents.”
He added, “Canterbury gets out of this district, we’re probably going to pay six, eight, millions of dollars to buy off this district. But we’re not going to do that.”
Todd said he sees a lot of room for improvement in Canterbury, including better communication between town boards.
Speaking of the difficulty that newcomers face in connecting with the existing population, Todd said, “I think as a selectman, it’d be very important to bridge that gap, reach out to them, make them a part of the community, to get their input, see what they need.”
Todd acknowledged, “I’m going to get a lot of flak for this, but I do support” having a committee look at withdrawing from the Shaker district. “As somebody who was a taxpayer, and seeing, unfortunately, a lot of the kids from the classes we have over the years [going] to a private school, makes me wonder what deficiencies do we have?” He added, “I’d like to see the numbers.”
This story originally appeared in the Laconia Daily Sun.