Eric Taussig: Why is moderator threatening health & safety of town residents?

To The Daily Sun,

It was good news that the Moultonborough Town Board is finally considering the health and safety of voters, requesting the town moderator postpone the outdoor Town Meeting for June 20. Unfortunately the moderator has declined to do so. This inane plan on Saturday, when the temperature will top 92, is for “social distancing” but ignores other potential health consequences for attendees locked in cars for four-plus hours.

The format and venue are fraught with problems. Rather than have a meeting in vehicles, considering the vagaries of weather, the age demographics of town’s voting population and physical requirements to spend hours at an outdoor meeting under adverse conditions, the town should hold a virtual meeting with voting as other towns have done by dropping ballots out of car windows. Such a virtual meeting will be possible assuming the House approves HB-1129, a Senate amended bill that just needs the governor’s approval.

Most troubling is that temperatures in sun drenched un-airconditioned vehicles could top 100 degrees with a senior population placed at risk. To leave a dog in such an ambient temperature is illegal, yet the Town Board would require voters to tolerate such conditions when a safe virtual meeting could be held. Just consider sitting in a sun drenched vehicle for four hours, the average for a Town Meeting, when according to state law, idling is prohibited beyond five minutes (See New Hampshire DES Regulations, Env-A 1100) and air conditioners could not be lawfully used for more than 5 minutes an hour.

This year there are two expensive petitioned warrant articles, one for $6,700,000, requiring a bond for a community center that many taxpayers want to vote on increasing attendance. If voters are to understand what is transpiring, they will have to listen to FM radios and loudspeakers requiring open windows as air conditioning cannot lawfully be used beyond five minutes. Yet the moderator and board will have a shaded tent to protect them from adverse weather and heat.

Further, the town is not in compliance with RSA 39:1-b, relating to “Meetings Outside Town” based on the premise that the town lacks a venue sufficiently large in Town. Moultonborough is a 75 square mile town with plenty of areas where it could hold the meeting.

The Selectboard has authorized the Methodist Church to hold outdoor services at the Town’s Function Hall and allow the use of indoor bathrooms, yet at the “2020 Sandwich Fair Grounds meeting, which will be much longer than a one-hour church service, voters will only have “porta-potties” that they are to self-clean.

In light of the Covid-19 pandemic requiring physical-distancing, limits on gatherings, the age demographics of town, the vagaries of weather and the physical requirements to spend hours at an out-door meeting under these conditions locked in a vehicle, why is the town moderator resisting postponing the meeting pursuant to RSA 40:4, II (a), which authorizes weather related delays as requested by a resolution approved by the Selectboard on June 16?

Eric Taussig

Moultonborough