Municipal primary is here to stay

LACONIA — A resolution to eliminate the municipal primary election died without debate at Monday evening’s meeting of the city council. 

No councilors signaled any support for the idea. 

A municipal primary election is triggered when three or more candidates file for election to any of the council’s six seats or for mayor. If there is a primary this year, it will occur on Tuesday, Sept. 6. The proposed change wouldn’t have come into effect until the next election anyway.

“You need public hearings to put them on the ballot, and if the Secretary of State’s Office has any changes that they want to make, it comes back to another public hearing,” City Manager Kirk Beattie said Monday night during the meeting at City Hall. “There’s a significant number of public hearings before it actually goes on to the public to be able to vote on it — a lot of moving parts in doing this.”

Councilors did support several other potential changes to the city charter, mostly procedural, all of which must be reviewed by employees of the secretary of state, then go through public hearings before they could be formally adopted into the charter. Those changes would have to be put to a vote in a future municipal election. 

The notion of eliminating the primary in future election cycles first came up at the council meeting on July 14. That motion, bundled together with other potential changes to the charter, garnered no support from councilors, who expressed serious concerns regarding eliminating the primary. They tabled the resolution in its entirety to Monday night's meeting. 

At their July 14 meeting, City Clerk Katie Gargano told councilors running a primary election is expensive and, because it’s set for Sept. 9 this year, for example, it leaves her office little time to prepare the administrative fundamentals required to run an election. The filing period this year is Aug. 6-15. 

Gargano, at that meeting, told councilors rolling the filing period back would also allow her office sufficient time to make arrangements. That notion earned more support from councilors, both at their July 14 meeting, and on Monday night. 

The motion on the agenda Monday night would have made preparations to repeal section 2.06 of the charter pertaining to municipal primary elections when three or more declarations of candidacy are filed for the office of mayor and city council — it would have eliminated primary elections in the city for mayor and city council.

No councilors made a motion to pass the proposed change, so it died on the vine. 

But councilors did approve a potential change to the municipal election filing period. In the future, the filing period would begin on the second Wednesday in July, plus 10 days thereafter, rather than the first Wednesday in August, giving the office of the city clerk nearly a month extra to prepare.

“It doesn’t give us enough time,” Gargano said. “I’d like more time to prepare for the election, for ordering materials and getting ballots out to any absentee voters and such.”

Ward 6 Councilor Anthony Felch made a friendly amendment to the original motion, suggesting the second Wednesday in July would be better than the first, so as not to conflict with the Independence Day federal holiday. 

“Fourth of July could end up being on Wednesday,” he said. 

“We would still have more time than we originally had,” Gargano said. 

A motion to change the meeting time of the city council from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. also died without support.