State Legislature hopefuls address housing, education at Belknap Mill

LACONIA — Candidates for state representative and state Senate met at the Belknap Mill for a nonpartisan candidates forum Thursday night, fielding questions from audience members discussing issues like voter identification, affordable housing and education.

The forum, moderated by Sue Nastasi of the League of Women Voters and organized largely by the Unitarian Universalist Society of Laconia, attracted around 80 voters and community members to hear from candidates who would represent the city in Concord.

State Sen. Tim Lang (R) said he was in favor of House Bill 1569, signed into law by Gov. Chris Sununu in September, which eliminates the use of voter affidavits as a form of identification and removes exceptions for voter identification, among other items. The law comes into effect about a week after the Nov. 5 General Election.

“I support that law. I think it’s, again, we have four qualifications to vote in the United States: you’ve got to be a citizen; you have to be age-appropriate; you have to prove your identity; and you have to prove your age,” Lang said. “So those are the four things you have to prove and I support a law that makes you prove those four things before you cast a ballot in New Hampshire.”

State Rep. Mike Bordes (R) said he voted against that bill in the Statehouse because it may present undue hurdles to voting.

“Part of my issue with that bill, at the time, was they required a passport and/or a birth certificate to prove who you are,” Bordes said. “I don’t know about you, but I can barely ever find my passport, birth certificate is locked away somewhere. If I go to register to vote the day of the election, which you may or may not agree with, if I go to do that, I guarantee you, I’m not going to find my passport or my IDs.”

State Rep. Charlie St. Clair (D) said the affidavit process is secure and he doesn’t support the new law.

“Anything we can do to make it harder for people to vote is not good and I agree with Mike [Bordes] here about the passport and the birth certificate — I don’t have a passport, No. 1, and No. 2, a birth certificate, are you kidding me?” St. Clair asked. “That means you’ve got to go and get a new one if you can’t find it, that becomes a cost to being able to vote. The system we have now with the drivers license or whatever else the city requires has worked for years and I see no reason to make it harder for people to vote, I’m totally against it.”

Richard Littlefield, who is running as a Republican for Statehouse in Belknap 5, said the State School property on Parade Road could afford the city an opportunity to address a lack of affordable housing. 

“One thing that we deal with in the city is not enough lower-income housing options. With all the property up there with the old State School, there are probably more than a handful of different parcels that could be used for lower-income housing options, where you could have privacy and access to the city all at once,” Littlefield said. “Whoever ends up buying the property, I just hope Laconia ends up with a bigger share of profit from it.”

Erika Gray, who is running for Belknap 5 as a Democrat, said she would rather see the State School property be developed into a recreational area.

“We need more low-income housing, I do not know what will happen when the property is sold. If I had my wish, it would be converted completely into a rec area for children because we do not have enough areas for children to play in this city,” Gray said.

“Obviously, they do have the right to do what they want with their property that they paid for as long as they follow the zoning laws.”

Wendy Chase, who formerly served in the Statehouse and is running to represent Belknap 5 as a Democrat, said the property should include a memorial to those who died there.

“My first thought, no matter what happens to that property, is that it is memorialized for the souls who were there, who perished there, who were put back out onto our streets. Many of them have done very well, others have not, we all are aware of that but there needs to be recognition of what was going on there,” Chase said. “I just really hope that the city is brought in and sits at the table for whatever the information is that’s given and whatever decisions are — this is a property that is right here. It’s going to be a private sale, but it’s also our community. We need to make sure the infrastructure is accessible, we need to make sure that there’s going to be enough water and sewer. Two thousand homes is an awful lot of homes — I would like to see, it doesn’t necessarily have to be low-income housing, but affordable housing for people that we’re trying to get in here to stay.”

Jon Hildreth, who’s running for state representative in Belknap 5 as a Democrat after earning a write-in nomination as an independent, said he does not support Education Freedom Accounts, and Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education Frank Edelblut is doing a poor job.

“He has undermined our public education in the dtate of New Hampshire. This takes funds for our public school system and re-funnels it to go to the parents of students who are basically already in expensive private schools. There are some really dubious other ways you can spend those Educational Freedom Accounts,” Hildreth said. “When this program was put together by the governor and Edelblut, they had a budget of $130,000. The first year, they spent $8 million, the second year they took $15 million and last year they took $25 million out of what would be our public education funds — this is a very serious matter.”

And State Rep. Steven Bogert (R), who also represents Ward 5 on the Laconia City Council, said tax policy plays a role in a growing population of people experiencing homelessness in the Granite State as consumers are priced out of their living accommodations. 

“There’s many root causes, don’t know them all, but I do know one and one is taxes. Every time we have to raise our taxes, may it be at the county level or may it be at the city level, that tax rate goes up. And the property owner, and this talk about the apartments and stuff that are going in in the city, this is a reality,” Bogert said. “Every time the property tax goes up, that is put into the rent and divided amongst all of the people living in an apartment. If you have X number of people living right on the edge of the cliff, and they don’t have $3 to put towards their rent anymore, and we raise property taxes and we raise all these taxes then it gets passed onto them and now they fall off the edge and they're homeless. As we’re trying to fix the problem by spending a lot of money that we don’t have, we are creating more homeless by trying to fix the problem.”

The forum was broadcast live by Lakes Region Public Access and a video of their discussion is available at lrpa.org.