CONCORD, NH — The Concord City Council on Monday approved increases in fees for some city services, created several new fee structures, and left some alone during its regular monthly meeting.
About 40 different fees, fines, and penalties for community development, the fire department, general services, and the legal department were eyed by the councilors. Recommendations by city staff included no increase, 100 percent increases, and smaller amounts between about 4 percent and 25 percent. Some fees have not been increased since 2007; others were last increased in 2015.
The proposal also included new fees such as several nonrefundable application fees for building and code services for staff time spent processing an application ($30); $445 to $890 annual monitoring charge radio box by the fire department for building owners that have not installed wired master boxes systems by July 1; $5 and $6 fees for plan copy per page fees and digital USB files for code administration and building codes, now that the department can print large format plans; and a $20 maximum fine for library of things, since the library has increased its collection.
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The Proposed Ordinance & Non-Ordinance Based Fee Changes can be found linked here on the city’s website, in PDF.
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City Manager Tom Aspell said departments look at all the ordnance and non-ordinance fees annually and make decisions on whether to leave them alone or raise them based on inflation, market conditions, or other factors.
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Ward 5 Concord City Councilor Stacey Brown asked Aspell if developers were required to pay for traffic studies as part of the fee structure.
Matt Walsh, the deputy city manager of development, said, if the real estate project requires a traffic study, the city would review it and the developer would have to conduct one. If an outside review is required, the developer would be charged a fee, he said. The city also charges transportation impact fees, particularly for residential projects.
Roy Schweiker, a resident who regularly participates in city council meetings, said he was surprised at how few and how small the increases were, including some that were not being increased at all. Some, he said, were increased as little as 4 percent, and it was his general impression that the cost of doing business in the city was much higher than 4 percent. City departments where employees were getting bonuses were seeing a lot higher costs, too, he said.
“The problem is,” Schweiker said, “to the extent that we don’t collect the money in fees, it’s got to be paid out of the property tax. So, I guess, I would say, raised all these fees and raise them some more to make sure we are getting our expenses recovered and not getting them stuck on the rest of us.”
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Schweiker said the fee for sewer hookups should also include the costs of expanding the sewer, which should be paid for by developers.
During the action phase, Ward 3 City Councilor Jennifer Kretovic said there were 12 new fees and was not sure if Schweiker’s comments were accurate due to those new fees.
Brown asked for clarification about sewer hookup fees, and Walsh said there were fees — including tiers. The city, he said, does not have impact water and sewer fees, per se, but did have water and sewer investment fees that were collected, but the council moved away from them years ago. It could, however, be revisited.
The proposal was then approved unanimously.
Other Public Hearings, Actions
The council approved a transfer of $65,722.88 from the wastewater fund to the capital fund.
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The council approved reorganizing the general services highways and utilities division due to a long-time employee retiring. Aspell was asked by Ward 1 Councilor Brent Todd why the issue was being brought up now instead of when the budget hearings start later this week. Aspell said it was an opportunity to save money because of a vacancy. Todd also asked about the pavement painting and whether this would be sped up due to the changes. Aspell said it would vary between after street sweeping was completed, whether the weather was appropriate, and the need for better fog lines and markings when school starts in late August. Brown asked if there would be an updated budget, and Brian Lebrun, the deputy city manager of finance, said the changes would be reflected in the fiscal year 2025.
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While Democrats are riding an internal wave of enthusiasm in the wake of switching out presumptive nominees, the chairmen of both major parties in New Hampshire said they expect the presidential race to revert to a close, hard-fought contest.
CONCORD — Out of Joe Biden’s shadow, Vice President Kamala Harris’s historic campaign to become the nation’s first woman president began well here this past week, though she didn’t lack for detractors.
“I think Granite Staters are really excited to have Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket,” said Craig Brown, who was state director of her 2020 presidential run.
“She is someone who has really been a fighter her entire career. … She has what it takes to be president,” Brown said.
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But to win New Hampshire this November, Harris will need a script vastly different from the one that received lousy reviews during her first presidential bid four years ago.
Harris never got to the 2020 presidential candidate filing gate in New Hampshire, dropping out in December 2019, weeks after her campaign said she would “mail” in her candidacy papers rather than show up in person.
“To call that campaign an epic failure is a gross understatement,” said Greg Moore, regional director for Americans for Prosperity, a fiscally conservative group that backed Nikki Haley’s 2024 White House run.
After a successful New Hampshire visit, Harris infamously said on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah that New Hampshire journalists acted surprised that a woman of color would spend so much time campaigning in mostly white New Hampshire.
“The first line of questioning I got was, ‘You’re in New Hampshire, and we heard you’re not going to come to New Hampshire. We thought you weren’t going to compete in New Hampshire,’” Harris said at the time.
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“And what no one said, but the inference was, well, the demographic of New Hampshire is not who you are in terms of your race and who you are.”
Since being elected with Biden in 2020, Harris has been in the state once, for an April 2021 visit that was well-received. Her husband has been here twice.
A wide open race
Pat Griffin, a Republican media strategist who worked on the ground here to help elect both Bush presidents, said, “She truly has been thus far a terrible candidate — the cackle, the prancing around, it’s difficult to watch.
“All that said, she has one important thing Joe Biden did not have. She behaves 24/7 like she’s truly alive, and against Donald Trump, with all the baggage he has, that counts for a lot.”
Academics and political insiders agree Harris has a brief window to cultivate an image that offers a contrast not just to Trump but to her current boss.
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Then-candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris spar during a 2020 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit in August 2019. Some observers say Harris’s performance then makes them look forward to a debate with Donald Trump.
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Lucas Jackson/Reuters File
“This race is now wide open both here and nationally,” said Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
“If she takes this moment to sort of change things, it could really have an impact. Whether she does it or not is the question. She is not brand-new, she’s a known commodity, but there is the potential to reshape her image as someone other than a West Coast left-wing liberal.”
As if on cue, a new University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll of New Hampshire voters has Harris leading Trump 49% to 43%, with a solid 45% to 33% edge among independent voters.
In a UNH poll in May, 84% of Democrats were solidly backing Biden. In the new poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, the party base support for Harris was up to 94%.
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Dante Scala, professor of politics at UNH, believes this quick sprint to Nov. 5 will work in Harris’s favor.
“They don’t have to worry about overthinking it,” Scala said. “So many times we see candidates and campaigns try way too hard. This is going to be all about impulse and instincts. If she has the right ones, this could go real well.”
Scala said her 14th-place showing in the New Hampshire primary after she quit the race won’t matter a whit.
“You remember all that, I remember all that, but most voters don’t even have a memory of her as a presidential candidate,” Scala said. “In that respect, she’s a clean slate.”
Appeal to youth
There’s no disputing that young Democratic-leaning voters are energized by the prospect of nominating Harris, 59, rather than Biden, 81.
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New Hampshire has 11 young delegates going to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, one of the largest groups per capita of any state in the nation.
“Young people know what’s at stake this fall because our rights are on the ballot,” said K.R. Epstein of Manchester, one of those younger delegates. “We also know that young people have the power to sway presidential elections and Vice President Kamala Harris is focused on earning our votes. I know that VP Harris has the ability to take on Donald Trump and win.”
Another young delegate, Prescott Herzog of Claremont, said he’s confident Harris will reunite the Democratic Party.
“This will be my first time voting in a presidential election. and I couldn’t be prouder to cast my vote for Kamala Harris,” Herzog said.
“Her work with President Biden enacting legislation on the issues young voters care about, from climate to gun violence, shows that she will continue the Biden-Harris administration’s effectiveness.”
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After fiercely fighting to preserve the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said he was determined to put together a delegate slate that looked like America. He did it with many minority delegates and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley conducts a press briefing with fellow democrats including Sen. Becky Whitley (D-Hopkinton) at a party office in downtown Nashua on Wednesday.
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DAVID LANE/UNION LEADER
Concord lobbyist Jim Demers, who has been a pledged delegate to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, said this may prove to be his most memorable convention.
“I’ve never been this stoked for a convention before. They are all fun, but this one is one for the history books,” said Demers. “I am really thrilled for the youngest members of the delegation, because this is a great story they’ll be able to tell their grandchildren.”
State Rep. Latha Mangipudi, D-Nashua, a superdelegate to the convention this time and a leader in the state’s growing Indian community, said “it’s long past time” for a woman to ascend to the nation’s highest office.
“We have even had Third World nations that have had women presidents. This is the time, this is the election, this is the candidate,” Mangipudi said.
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Delegate Sumathi Madhure, a physical therapist, said she had doubts there would be a South Asian on the presidential ticket in her lifetime. Now there’s an even shot one becomes president.
“Fairly or not, there was some apathy out there with President Biden at the top of the ticket,” Madhure said during a news conference this past week. “Now, all that is gone and wiped away.”
State Rep. Latha Mangipudi, D-Nashua, talks with then-U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris during Harris’s presidential campaign stop in Nashua in May 2019.
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Kimberly Houghton/Union Leader File
A surge of energy
Despite her stumbles as a candidate in 2020, Harris had her moments, including her comments at the first presidential debate about Biden’s past support for forced busing.
“I for one can’t wait for that debate or debates with Donald Trump,” said former state House Speaker Terie Norelli, D-Portsmouth, and the first female Democrat to lead the 400-person House.
“What’s most amazing to me was that this surge of energy came flooding in literally in an instant. You can’t manufacture that.”
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Scala believes the election here may be determined by the middle-class male vote, which Trump won decisively in 2016 but Biden securely captured in 2020.
“How they vote will determine if this is a nail-biter like it was for Hillary Clinton (who narrowly won here) in 2016 or a pretty easy ride like it was for Biden four years later,” Scala said.
“Yes, we’re a swing state, but a Democratic-presidential leaning state.”
Griffin, the Republican media strategist, said he just doesn’t know where the small but pivotal number of truly undecided voters will move here and in other swing states.
“I think she’s got a better shot at them because so many have looked at Trump and decided they aren’t eating that dog food,” Griffin said. But, he said, “She has to make a very strong sell.”
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Buckley, the state Democratic Party chair, thinks his party’s secret weapon is its ground game. Democrats have 16 field offices and counting. Trump has a single headquarters and only has started to bring on a few dedicated staffers.
The reality is the Trump team nationally views the Granite State and its four electoral votes as a luxury — one they don’t need to get to the 280 needed to clinch the victory.
“Trump’s not going to play here,” Buckley said.
Scala said the 2024 race is all about Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona.
But New Hampshire still could be telling.
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“Come September, if New Hampshire is still a toss-up, very much in play for Trump, then that’s a very bad look for Harris,” Scala said.
Kamala Harris has a significant lead over Donald Trump in New Hampshire, according to new polling data.
In the first public survey of New Hampshire voters since Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Harris has a lead of 6 points over the former president.
The poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire between July 23 and 25, shows Harris with a 49 to 43 percent lead over Trump. The poll surveyed 3,016 people and had a margin of error of 1.8 percent.
In a Saint Anselm College Survey Center (SASC) poll of 2,083 New Hampshire registered voters conducted between July 24 and 25, Harris had a 50-44 percent margin over Trump. The poll had a 2.1 percent margin of error.
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Harris was not previously leading in the state. In a poll conducted by the New Hampshire Journal and Praecones Analytica after the Republican convention but before Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 campaign, when Harris was matched up against Trump in a head-to-head, her Republican rival was leading her by one point, on 40 percent to her 39 percent.
In the same poll, Trump and Biden were essentially tied, with Trump on 39.7 and Biden on 39.4 percent.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in Houston, Texas, on July 25, 2024. She is leading Donald Trump by 6 points in New Hampshire. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in Houston, Texas, on July 25, 2024. She is leading Donald Trump by 6 points in New Hampshire. Montinique Monroe/Getty Images
New Hampshire has voted Democratic in all but one election since 1992, but it is considered a battleground state in most election cycles because control of its state legislature and congressional seats have switched back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.
In 2020, Biden won the state with 52 percent of the vote to Trump’s 45 percent, while in 2016, Hillary Clinton was able to carry the state by around 2,700 votes.
Neil Levesque, Executive Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, noted: “With President Biden’s endorsement and the Democratic campaign’s shift to Harris, she has emerged with a consolidated party support, which enhances her standing against Trump among New Hampshire voters.”
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Levesque added: “Harris has achieved a level of partisan enthusiasm that Biden did not, especially among the liberal base: 94 percent of Democratic voters now support Harris, a noticeable increase from Biden’s 82 percent in June. As Harris takes the lead in the campaign, shifts in voter perceptions are expected to continue.”
Multiple polls have put Harris in the lead over Trump since she became the front runner for the Democratic nomination.
In a poll conducted by Morning Consult between July 22 and 24, Harris was leading Trump by one point, with 46 percent supporting Harris to Trump’s 45 percent.
And a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Monday and Tuesday showed Harris with a 2-point lead over Trump, with 44 percent of those polled supporting her in a head-to-head contest with the Republican, while 42 percent backed the former president. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
However, not all the polls are favorable to Harris. In the latest poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College, Trump was leading Harris by 2 points among registered voters and 1 point among likely voters.
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Another poll conducted by Morning Consult after Biden ended his reelection campaign showed Trump had a 2-point lead over Harris, with 47 percent supporting the former president compared to 45 percent backing Harris.
The poll also showed that Trump’s margin over the Democrats had decreased. The former president was now only 2 points ahead of Harris, after a previous survey by the same pollsters put Trump four points ahead of Biden—46 percent to the president’s 42 percent.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.