Also on today’s menu:
Manchester Police Kill Person With Gun
House Committee Approves Weakest Landfill Bill
Memorial Day Schedules Hard To Come By
Senate President Jeb Bradley (R-Wolfeboro), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, offered an amendment to House-passed legislation that would have reduced the amount of money going into the Education Trust Fund by $222 million in fiscal 2024 and by $225 million in 2025, while increasing the general fund by that amount. Bradley’s amendment would maintain the current funding for the Education Trust Fund.
The committee also offered a new education funding plan, earmarked for discussion today, that would increase per pupil adequacy grants while reducing targeted aid. There is a “hold harmless” provision for school districts that decreases existing aid by 20 percent a year, and it would increase education funding by 2 percent a year. The new education funding formula would provide greater funding for Manchester and Nashua, based more on student enrollment than the one passed by the House, that allocates greater funding to so-called “property-poor” communities with higher poverty levels.
The amendment that the finance committee approved returns the funding for special education, building aid, and tuition and transportation costs for students attending regional technical centers to the Education Trust Fund. The House plan would have those areas compete for state general funds in the two-year operating budget.
Manchester Police Kill Person With Gun
The Attorney-General’s Office is investigating an officer-involved shooting that occurred about 3:25 a.m. today in Manchester. The unnamed officers, who had body-worn cameras, responded to a 911 call about a person with a firearm at 1143 Mammoth Road. During the ensuing encounter, several officers fired at the armed resident, killing him.
The identity of the deceased individual is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. An autopsy has been scheduled for later today.
No law enforcement officers or other private citizens were physically injured, and Attorney-General John Formella said there is no threat to the public.
House Committee Approves Weakest Landfill Bill
This week, the House Environment and Agriculture Committee voted “ought to pass” on an amended version of Senate Bill 61, directing the Department of Environmental Services to hire a consultant and embark on a rulemaking process to revise setback requirements for new solid waste landfill proposals. While the vote was 12-8, Representative Kelley Potenza (R-Rochester) complained about the influence of waste management lobbyists and state agencies.
Representative Peter Bixby (D-Dover) agreed that House Bill 56 was a “much better bill than what we just passed.” That bill would have used science-based hydrological studies to make sure that landfills were sited far enough away from bodies of water to ensure that any contamination would take five years to reach streams and tributaries, providing adequate time to mitigate potential pollution. The House passed that bill, but Mike Wimsatt, waste management director at the Department of Environmental Services, persuaded the Senate to kill it in favor of SB 61.
While New Hampshire continues to study the issues around solid waste, other states have enacted regulations placing limits on their landfills, creating a demand to ship their waste to other states. Steve Poggi of Waste Management said states with diminished waste capacity are asking his company’s Turnkey Landfill in Rochester to accept more out-of-state waste. Turnkey is one of three landfills in the state that can accept waste from anywhere, and the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution makes it difficult for states to explicitly ban out-of-state waste. Data show that about half of the solid waste going into New Hampshire landfills comes from out of state. Both the House and Senate have voted to form a committee to study the amount of out-of-state waste coming to the Granite State.
Representative Karen Ebel (D-New London), chair of the legislatively created Solid Waste Working Group, called the continued discussions around new landfills “sad,” as “other states are focused like lasers on how to stop landfilling as much as they can.”
Memorial Day Schedules Hard To Come By
Like many other holidays that used to occur on specific, meaningful dates, Memorial Day has been moved to a Monday from its traditional May 30 date, turning it into just another day off. While the date change is not as significant for Memorial Day because May 30 was an arbitrary date to begin with — unlike Washington’s birthday and Lincoln’s birthday, which were rolled into a nameless Presidents Day, or Veterans’ Day, which was pegged at November 11 because it marked the end of World War I but now gets celebrated on a Monday — Memorial Day nevertheless becomes less significant with each passing year.
This year, for instance, it has become very difficult to find information about Memorial Day observances. Bristol has announced that it will observe Memorial Day on Monday, May 29, beginning at 9:30 a.m., but no other details are available as the Memorial Day Weekend gets underway.
Center Harbor is the only local exception, announcing that its Memorial Day parade will begin at noon, with additional information at centerharbornh.org.
This mostly forgotten holiday — except for being known as the start of the summer tourist season — originally was known as Decoration Day, starting after the end of the Civil War when families placed flowers on the graves of those lost in battle. It became an official federal holiday in 1971, and has served to honor the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military, as well as all family members who have departed.
This year, it appears that the holiday itself has departed. So we hold our barbecues and put our boats in the water, and think about everything except for the reason for the holiday.