Windham Taxpayers

November 26, 2008
Eagle Tribune

A stack of several hundred ballots sitting in the Salem town clerk’s closet went missing in action during Monday’s recount for the District 4 state representative race.

After a phone call from the secretary of state’s office to the Salem clerk, the ballots in question were found under a pile of unused ballots in the closet.

Windham didn’t fare too much better with accounting for all its ballots. A counting error by a Windham election worker on Election Day earlier this month temporarily robbed Republican hopeful David Bates of 105 votes.

The election recount, which has been going on since Thursday, came to a close at the Legislative Office Building in Concord yesterday.

The results didn’t change enough to unseat any of the 13 people who won Nov. 4. But counting gaffes prompted two outgoing state representatives to question whether the state should look into vote-counting practices by the two towns.

For Windham, it’s the second time in recent months that a recount caught human errors. During the state primary, about 200 votes were miscounted by an election worker.

Rep. Marilinda Garcia, R-Salem, said she called for the recount because she lost her seat by more than 100 votes, just weeks after Windham missed counting 200 votes in the primary. Garcia said despite losing her seat, she believes the recount was worth it if it exposed problems with vote counting.

“My concern is in elections when things are changed by 100 votes or five votes. The fact that it could be so sloppy is just a huge deal,” she said. “It’s disrespectful to people in a way because people assume their vote will be accounted for.”

Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said yesterday that the gaps in election results were not surprising given the size and scope of the races.

The state conducted 18 recounts — 16 for races involving state representatives. The race in District 4, which includes Salem and Windham, was one of the largest in the state, with 26 candidates vying for 13 seats. Roughly 20,000 ballots were cast in the District 4 election, Scanlan said.

“In our opinion, all of the ballots are accounted for,” he said yesterday. “There were a handful of candidates where there was a discrepancy of anywhere from 50 to 100 votes. Those seemed to be at the top of the election ticket, but they were in a position where it didn’t affect the outcome.”

Garcia was still defeated by Democrat Carolyn Webber by about 150 votes, Scanlan said.

Rep. Jason Bedrick, R-Windham, who observed some of the recount, including yesterday, said discrepancies in vote tallies should be taken more seriously by state officials.

“I’ve been involved personally with four recounts, and usually it changes by three to five votes, so to have several people off, it’s highly unusual,” Bedrick said. “It’s incredibly unfortunate in Windham that they made the same mistake twice. … I think the secretary of state’s office should look into their procedures and see what happened. I don’t think it was corruption, but there may have been some level of incompetence.”

Windham Town Clerk Joan Tuck said yesterday the counting errors during the primary and general election were made by two different people. Usually, Tuck is the person to tally the final count from the voting machines, but she left that to two other election workers on both the nights errors were made.

Tuck said she takes full responsibility for short counts and will resume tabulating the results herself.

“In all the years I’ve been here, I have never had a situation like this one,” said Tuck, who has been in office for 41 years. “I have had situations where candidates picked up one, two, maybe five votes, but never, ever something like this.”

The ballots found in Salem on Monday were actually counted in the general election. Someone placed a stack of unused ballots on top of those ballots when they were stored in a closet at Town Hall after the election, Salem Town Clerk Susan Wall said.

When it came time to gather the ballots for the recount, those ballots were overlooked because they were under a pile of unused ballots.

“They weren’t lost. They were here in our closet,” Wall said.

She said those ballots were found as soon as the state called Monday.

“Everything else went fine,” she said about the election. “Unfortunately, someone put some uncast ballots on top of them by mistake.”

Scanlan said when state workers went through the Salem ballots, it was obvious several hundred were missing. Each of the top Republican candidates was short about 161 votes from election night. Workers discovered the gap by comparing their hand count of ballots with tally sheets tabulated on election night, he said.

Scanlan said his office has not yet spoken to Windham officials about their recent miscounts, but it plans to in the near future. All votes recounted in Concord were done by hand.

“We try to explain those (discrepancies) the best we can, but sometimes there is no explanation,” he said.

November 21, 2008
Eagle Tribune

Our view: Keep public informed on access road options

Windham, N.H., residents still don’t know how they will pay for a required secondary access road to the new high school.

But now, at least, they have some options to review and can see what those options would cost.

Twice before, voters rejected bond issues to pay for a 24-foot wide paved access road at the former site of London Bridge Road. Perhaps now, town officials can decide on a road option the voters will support.

Action is needed soon. The new high school is scheduled to open in August 2009 and it could take as long as eight months to build the secondary access road. Fire Chief Tom McPherson, citing safety concerns, has insisted he will not permit the school to open without the second road.

Having been twice rebuffed by voters on a $1.25 million bond for the road, the Board of Selectmen solicited bids on four alternatives without having a definite plan in place to pay for any of them.

This actually is something the selectmen should have done long ago. It gives the public the opportunity to see what the alternatives are and how much they would cost. At least some of the opposition to the bond proposals could be attributed to a lack of faith among voters that town leaders had looked at other options.

Now, thanks in part to a sluggish construction market that produced a higher than expected number of bids, town officials and voters have some hard numbers to consider.

The four proposals were:

A 24-foot wide, paved road with drainage and conduits for future utilities — essentially the same proposal defeated twice at the polls. The bids ranged from $728,510 to $1.3 million.

A 24-foot gravel road with drainage and conduits. Bids ranged from $570,772 to $1.1 million.

A 24-foot gravel road without drainage or conduits. Bids ranged from $357,500 to $857,000.

A 20-foot gravel road without drainage or conduits. Bids ranged from $331,000 to $856,700.

Town officials will analyze the bids in the next few weeks before deciding to take any action. We urge them to keep the public informed and involved in the process.

That’s the only way to win public support for financing the road, whichever option they choose.

November 12, 2008
Eagle Tribune

Committee favors modular classrooms on rented land

WINDHAM, N.H. — Kindergarten students may start their public school careers in modular classrooms on rented land near Golden Brook School

That’s if the School Board accepts the recommendation of the committee charged with formulating a plan for the school district’s first kindergarten students next fall.

That plan would suffice in the short term, according to committee members, and the state would reimburse the district for the modular building and furniture costs.

Taxpayers would pay for, in part, seven teachers, seven classroom aides, an administrator and bus service. The state would reimburse the district $1,200 for every kindergarten student.

The state requires all school districts without public kindergarten to have at least a short-term solution in place by the start of the 2009-10 school year. The School Board has approved kindergarten for August.

The district has yet to decide on a long-term location for the kindergarten program.

Meanwhile, the modular building would house at least seven portable classrooms to accommodate 258 students, the estimated number of children eligible for kindergarten next year.

Kindergarten’s location, schedule and other considerations will ultimately be decided by the board as soon as next month.

The Kindergarten Committee recommends students attend half-day sessions, five days a week.

The morning session would last from 8:45 to 11:15 a.m. The afternoon session would last from 12:30 to 3 p.m.

This recommendation met opposition from one parent and support from another when announced Monday.

Parent Cindy Diener said full-day sessions — two of them plus one half-day a week — would better prepare students for first grade, and be more acceptable to other parents of kindergarten students.

“(It) is going to sell a lot better than half-days,” Diener said.

Parent Gordon Campbell said five-hour days would be too long for some kindergarten children.

“We only have one chance to start them off right,” he said.

Campbell said he wished parents were given more information about the plan earlier.

Assistant Superintendent Roxanne Wilson, who is on the Kindergarten Committee, said she would return to the School Board next month with an estimate of the cost for full-day kindergarten.

Wilson said the committee is recommending no outdoor recess under the half-day plan because time spent getting children into and out of their boots and coats would take too much time away from instruction during a 2 1/2-hour session.

The Kindergarten Committee includes school administrators, teachers and parents.

Golden Brook Elementary School is on Lowell Road near Windham Middle School.

The district is negotiating with the landowner to lease property so it locate the modular building next to Golden Brook School.