TILTON — The Board of Selectmen, with the support of the Budget Committee, is asking voters to approve the introduction of a Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) program to increase the volume of recyclables collected at the curb and reduce the cost of disposing of solid waste.
Four years ago the selectmen convened a Recycle Committee, charged with recommending measures to trim the solid waste budget. Marge Bonneville, who chairs the committee, recalled that in 2011 a petitioned warrant article to introduce PAYT was rescinded when the bids for curbside collection of recyclables exceeded projections and the Concord Regional Solid Waste/Resource Recovery Cooperative shelved plans to construct a single-stream recycling facility.
"This year I'm confident we can make the case," said Bonneville. "We have the support of the selectmen and the Budget Committee."
PAYT encourages recycling by requiring residents to place the trash and garbage they do not recycle in a special-marked plastic bag purchased at local retail outlets. Bonneville said that bags will be available in two sizes, a 15-gallon bag for $1 and a 30-gallon bag for $2. The trash, together will be collected at the curbside once a week.  Trash not contained in a marked bag will be left at the curb.
Recyclables will be collected every other week. Bestway Disposal Services of Belmont, a division of Casella Waste Systems, Inc. of Rutland, Vermont, won the collection contract with a low bid of $87,000, which includes supplying 96-gallon recycling bins.
All proceeds from the sale of trash bags will be applied to a recycling revolving fund that will be applied to the collection contract. The warrant article seeks an appropriation of $45,000, representing half the cost of the collection contract, to prime the pump, which Bonneville said would be defrayed by proceeds from the sale of trash bags.
Bonneville said that only four-percent of solid waste is recycled in Tilton and expects the volume to rise to at least 30-percent or even to 50-percent once PAYT is underway. The committee projects PAYT to save $104,000 in property taxes.
If the warrant article succeeds, Bonneville said that the target date for beginning the PAYT program is June 1.

MEREDITH — In the choice between Chris Mega and Mark Billings, Inter-Lakes voters will have their pick of men who each brings a wealth of experience, both professionally and in local activism, to a Meredith seat on the school board. Both candidates declare passionate support for a high quality of public education. Both would like to take advantage of emergent technologies to transform the learning process. And both agree that, due to fixed structural costs and other factors out of the control of the school board, it's unrealistic to expect a near-term reduction in the school-related portion of tax bills even though enrollment has experienced a slow decline.
They take differing views, though, when it comes to a recently-passed warrant article that allows the district to retain unspent funds to ameliorate spiking tax rates in subsequent years, they also disagree on whether a state program that provides scholarships for parents to send their children to private schools is a good thing for education in New Hampshire.
Mega and Billings are running for a three-year term on the board. Voters in this town as well as Center Harbor and Sandwich will choose between the two on Tuesday. The seat has been held for the past three terms by Jack Carty, who is not running for a fourth consecutive term.
Mega brings professional experience in both information technology and finance. However, many voters might know him better as a musician; he served as chairman of the board of the Lakes Region Symphony Orchestra for seven years. He has also volunteered in the schools, such as with the "Weedbusters" team of seventh graders who last year participated in a national science challenge.
Billings also worked in finance, as an analyst and economist. He is currently treasurer for the town of Meredith, is a member of the town's Conservation Commission and serves on the school district's Strategic Planning Committee.
The two candidates fell on opposing sides of the question of a divisive warrant article. The article, passed at the district meeting on Wednesday, asked voters to permit the district to set aside funds left unspent at the end of the school year. The funds could be held in case of an unforeseen emergency, or applied as revenue in a future year so as to offset a steep tax rise. The measure passed, though the vote was close enough that moderator Lee Quimby had to ask voters twice to raise their hands for either yea or nay before he was comfortable in declaring a majority in favor.
"I voted affirmatively for that," said Mega. "I believe it's just a financial tool. I think, at the end of the day, it's almost irrelevant if we roll over funds or raise them again the next year."
Billings voted in the minority, troubled by what he termed a "question of misinformation." At a public budget hearing, held last month, he said he was told that a recently-enacted state law limited the amount which could be retained at 2.5-percent of that year's net assessment. This year, that amount would be just shy of $500,000. He said he was told at the public hearing that the fund could accumulate, year over year, to as much as 10 percent of a given year's assessment. At the district meeting, though, district attorney Barbara Loughman insisted that the fund could grow no larger than 2.5-percent of the assessment.
Billings was concerned about that contradiction. He also noted that the district currently has  expendable trust funds for emergencies, be they facility failures or sudden educational needs. With the new fund, those rainy-day funds become redundant in his mind, and he would like to see those rolled into the reserve. While he wasn't philosophically opposed to the concept of the reserve fund, he said, "I think there was too much misinformation up there... It's not something we have to do right now."
Billings does not, however, have misgivings about the state law that leverages payments made in lieu of business taxes to provide scholarships for lower-income parents who wish to send their children to a private school. "The education tax credit program, to me personally and philosophically, is about one thing: parental choice." If the district truly values a parent's role in education, Billings said, then it followed for him that the parents should be empowered to find the school that best suited a child's needs.
Asked whether he thought the program could be seen as a threat to the well-being of public schools, he answered, "Not at all."
Mega disagrees, though, and has said so at recent candidates' forums. "In order for that to happen, funds will be diverted from public education." By his estimate, most families would receive a scholarship of around $2,500 to be applied toward tuition at a private school, and he questioned whether that would be enough help to make the choice possible for the families it's designed to help. "A private school is going to cost well more than $2,500," he said, and that's before considering ancillary costs, such as travel.
If he's wrong, and many students begin to leave the district, Mega said, the quality of the public school they leave behind will suffer. The size of the teaching staff will be reduced, leading to limited curriculum options. Sports teams may struggle with fewer athletes, he also gave as a possible outcome. 
In general, Mega said he rejects the sentiment that the private sector can provide better education than the public. "I'm still a believer that public education for most is still the way to go." Pushing for greater privatization, he said, would be detrimental for local education. "The long-term effects are going to be devastating... A strong public education system is crucial to a vibrant and rich community."
Making a final case for his candidacy, Billings said he'd bring a balance to the Inter-Lakes board. "Retired teachers and current teachers dominate the board," he said. Mega is not an employee of the district, Billings said, "but he's married to one."
Billings said his opponent is a "good man" and "a man of integrity," and praised Mega's wife Diane, a math and computer science teacher at Inter-Lakes High School, as "one of the best teachers in our school system." Referring to Mega's pledge to recuse himself from matters that could directly affect his wife, Billings said he could vote on all board business.
"Where is Meredith's representative if someone is recusing himself? We pay 73.5 percent of the bill, don't we deserve representation?"
On a website he set up for his school board campaign, Mega discloses his spousal relationship and speaks to the question of conflict of interest.
On his website, Mega states, "There are some who think this is a conflict of interest. I, and the New Hampshire Senate, do not. While it's true if I were to be on the salary negotiating committee there could be a problem, but the reality is we are just one year into a 3-year contract. Negotiations won't happen for two more years, at which point I will recuse myself from that situation. Conflict can arise at any time, with any board, in any situation. Boards have conflict-of-interest policies which a) recognize conflict could arise at any time on any topic, and b) allows boards to function effectively in all situations."
He also refers to a NH Senate bill that would have prohibited family members of a district employee from serving on that district's board. The bill was unanimously killed in committee earlier this year.
Extrapolating on the subject, Mega said in a phone interview that two recent board members, Carty as well as Dan Cunningham, were married to teachers. "The board operated just fine. I don't see any issue there."

BELMONT — After a half hour discussion and a secret ballot vote, the warrant article that would have created an official budget committee for the Shaker Regional School District failed last night by a vote of 106 to 71.
Article 2 had been placed on the ballot by a petitioned vote spearheaded by Belmont School Board member Richy Bryant, who was one of two people on the board who supported its passage.
A number of people at the school district's annual meeting spoke for and against a budget committee, including the town of Belmont's Budget Committee Chair Ron Mitchell.
"Having a budget committee helps the accountability of the budget by having other people at large look at it," Mitchell said.
Also speaking in favor of it was Ken Knowlton — a former Belmont Budget Committee member who resigned two years ago after the town reduced its municipal budget but the school district meeting voted to add an additional $250,000 to its budget.
He said another layer of oversight was a good thing and even though it is one more layer of government, he "thinks its time for this."
Many of those who opposed it said the School Board members were elected and they are familiar with how a school district works and what federal and state laws must be followed and how to budget for them.
Others feared the goals of a district budget committee would be inconsistent with education and it would be just be another layer of bureaucracy.
The chair of the Canterbury Selectboard, Robert Steenson, said the district has a group of people who develop the budget and that group is the School Board, which is held responsible by the voters of both communities.
"We don't need another layer that can't solve the problems that the school board can't solve," Steenson said.
The voters also passed a school district budget for the 2013-2014 school year of $20,907,009 — up $33,000 from what was originally put to the voters.
After listening to a number of parents and teachers tell residents that cutting the elementary school Internet technology teacher's hours from full time to part time would hamper the students transition to IT and computer technology in middle and high school, the voters adopted added the money by a show of hands.
The overall Shaker budget passed by a vote of 118 to 20.