Also on today’s digest:
Ceding Control Over Spending?
If At First You Don’t Succeed
Bringing Back Biomass
Fire Station Building Committee Chair Kevin Cate stepped down after the Tilton-Northfield Fire Commissioners paused the Request for Qualification/ Request for Proposal phase of a plan to expand the Park Street Station to between 18,000 and 20,000 square feet to house all fire and EMS operations, which would allow them to move out of the Center Street station in downtown Tilton. Instead, Vice-Chair Kevin Waldron will lead the building committee as it looks into a new option: building a 14,000-square-foot facility on Sanborn Road to house most of the apparatus, and renovating Park Street to add a meeting room, possibly a training room, and allow firefighters to operate out of that facility.
Commission Chair Jon Cilley said the new proposal, brought to them by Fire Chief Michael Sitar, involves a potential land swap with the town: giving up the Center Street lot in exchange for a lot adjacent to Tilton’s new police station on Sanborn Road.
Because there is a short timeline to present the initial proposal to district voters in March, the commissioners decided to have the building committee continue moving forward with the original plan while considering the new option.
Ceding Control Over Spending?
The Newfound Regional School Board will be considering a policy change that, according to its current wording, would eliminate one of the school board’s most important roles, that of developing an operating budget.
The new policy would cede the budget procedure to the superintendent, who would establish guidelines for its development and submit the administration’s budget recommendations directly to the Newfound Area School District Budget Committee instead of having the school board review it and make its own recommendations.
The draft policy removes the language in the existing policy that recognizes “One of the primary responsibilities of the School Board is to secure adequate funds to carry out a high level educational program.”
If At First You Don’t Succeed
Democrat Megan Murray has refiled a bill that would add protection to New Hampshire lakes and rivers from landfill pollution after the Legislature failed to override Governor Chris Sununu’s veto of this year’s bill, which had had bipartisan support in both chambers.
Murray said, “What this piece of legislation is asking for is to simply require a groundwater study so that the science follows first, and then the siting comes after.”
The bill would replace the current 200-foot setback requirement for new landfills with a setback based on the results of hydrogeological studies of the soil and bedrock below. The landfill would have to be sited where polluted water would not reach a major water body for five years, giving the operator and the state time to remediate the problem before it contaminates rivers and lakes.
Bringing Back Biomass
Supporters of biomass steam generating plants have argued that the higher operating costs are justified to ensure a diverse energy supply, as well as keeping thousands of loggers employed. Governor Chris Sununu has not seen it that way and vetoed legislation that would have kept biomass plants operating.
Now, with inflation taking its toll on electric costs, Representative Michael Vose, an Epping Republican, told attendees at an energy summit, “This feels very much to me like the year of biomass.”
Senator Jeb Bradley, a Wolfeboro Republican and long-time advocate for biomass plants, agreed, and will support Vose’s plan to introduce legislation that would bring four biomass power plants in the northern part of the state back online. Vose acknowledged that the plan may not bring energy prices down, but he said it would provide “baseload” energy that, unlike wind and solar, can always generate power.
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