Voting Guide to the 2023 Oyster River Cooperative School District Election, Tuesday March 28 [was 14]

Breaking News: [3/13] Weather forecasts have delayed municipal elections in the three towns to Tuesday, March 28, 2023.

This is my annual voting guide to the ORCSD election.  Election Day is Tuesday March 14 28, 2023.  I usually try to remain unbiased up until a certain point in the guide, but this time there's not much choice on the ballot, so I won't bother to be coy.

TL;DR: The Oyster River school district election is pretty boring this year, with no contested seats and no controversial ballot questions. I'm voting for Tom Newkirk, Denise Day and Giana Gelsey for school board; they're the three candidates for the three available seats, so they're all virtually certain to win.  I'm voting YES on both warrant articles, which are the $53.2M budget and a $125K set-aside to purchase the middle school solar array in a few years.

I'm also voting for current chair Michael Williams for district moderator.  I incorrectly reported in a previous post that the moderator seat was contested; sorry about that.  Long time moderator Rick Laughton has decided not to seek reelection. 

In Lee, I'm voting for newcomer Erik Johnson over long time incumbent Scott Bugbee. I've got nothing against Scott, who I've supported in the past, but given Lee skews about two to one Democrats versus Republicans, I think we should have some Democrats in power at the top for a change. I know Erik is a good Democrat, and that Scott ran for State Rep as a Republican in 2020 (and lost).

Voting Mechanics

If you're a US citizen at least 18 years of age who lives in Lee, Madbury or Durham (including UNH students who live in the district), you can just show up on Tuesday at your town's polling place and vote. Like almost all elections in New Hampshire, same day registration is available. So even if you've never voted or registered to vote in New Hampshire before, you can vote Tuesday. It's easier if everyone brings a state photo ID and if new registrants also bring proof of address (a utility bill), but under New Hampshire's voter ID law you can vote even if you don't bring those by signing affidavit forms at the polls.  

New Rule: Under a 2022 law that has been challenged in court but I think remains in effect, affidavit ballots have become provisional; voters must follow up with proper documentation within 7 days or their ballot will not count.

Your election day polling place and voting times depend on where you live:

Durham: Oyster River High School 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Lee: Public Safety Complex 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.  Recent elections have been at Mast Way but this one says the Lee Safety Complex.

Madbury: Town Hall 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. Madbury also has a genuine town meeting, 7 pm at Madbury Town Hall [sorry, this incorrectly said Moharimet for a few hours], where they vote on the majority of their warrant articles, but the school district stuff is in the daytime Town Hall election. 7 pm Town Hall appears to be a change; in the past they'd start at 7:30 at the elementary school.

The School District Ballot

As always, voters in each town are given identical school district ballots. Let's briefly go through the ballot questions, also known as the warrant articles.  

Article 1 elects the moderator.  The current Chair of the school board, Michael Williams, has decided not to seek reelection for school board.  Instead he's running unopposed for moderator.  For the first time in decades, Rick Laughton won't be seeking the position. Thank you Rick for your many years of service as moderator. Thank you Michael for your years of service on the board, and good luck in your new role. 

Over a one year term, the moderator generally works two days.  The moderator runs the Deliberative Session in February and oversees the school district election and ballot counting in March. The moderator's goal is an unbiased election process in accordance with New Hampshire law. The Town Meeting and School Meeting Handbook, mostly instructions for moderators, runs 101 pages. It says moderators have two year terms; I'm not sure why ours has a one year term.

Article 2 chooses two at-large school board members for a three year term and one Durham specific school board member for a one year term. Three seats up for election, three candidates, no drama. Congratulations, Giana, Denise and Tom.

As a whole, the ORCSD school board consists of three town-specific seats, one each for Durham, Lee and Madbury, which is held by an eligible voter from the specific town, and four at-large seats, each open to candidates from all three towns.

The one year term is the remainder of board member Yusi Turrell's term; Yusi resigned effective March 3.  Thank you for your service, Yusi.

Given the lack of a real race, it doesn't seem the candidates did much campaigning, nor did the usual institutions do their usual thing.  I didn't see a questionnaire from the Teacher's Guild or from any other groups.  Usually one of the PTOs hosts a Meet the Candidates night, lately a virtual debate, but I didn't see anything like that either.  Just because the election isn't contested doesn't mean we should skip the annual discussion of district issues with the school board candidates.

 

Denise Day and Tom Newkirk are well known, having both served on the board the past decade, Tom as chair for most of that.  Tom didn't seek reelection when his term expired in 2022, but he's back now.  Denise has been vice-chair, and with Chair Williams not seeking reelection, Denise is probably the favorite to become chair in March. (The first act of the new board is to elect a chair.)  You can read all about Tom and Denise in pasts posts here going back to 2012, too many to link to.

Giana's less well known, but she's been on the Moharimet PTO for a while and ran last year; again, check out past posts here for more details. Her campaign facebook page from last year doesn't seem available anymore. I enthusiastically endorsed her last year, and I'm even more enthusiastic now that she's going to serve on the board.

Article 3 asks the voters if the district can spend $53.21 million in 23/24. 

If NO wins we get the default budget of $52.95 M, a decrease of $260K or 0.5%.  NO never wins in Oyster River.

This year the main issue was the reduction is state aid to towns.  The aid had been increased during the pandemic, but those boosts have been wound down.  The district generally tries to keep the tax impact (increases in expenses minus revenue) at 3%.  In reaction to the reduction in aid, the board chose to cap the increase in expenses at 1.5%.

Other issues include the new payments for the middle school bond and the end of the high school renovation bond. Here are some relevant slides from the Deliberative Session, which left the school board proposed budget unamended.

23/24 changes in state education aid to towns

Change in Education Property Tax Rates

I have a couple of issues with how the district reports taxes.  First of all, they include the State Education Tax line, which is the money the state collects, then doles out as adequacy aid.  The district has no control over this line.  It is interesting in that the burden is intended to be the same fraction of property value on all owners across the state; the difference in the numbers in each town reflect the difference between the actual appraised values and the equalized appraised values, where the appraised numbers are equalized (made comparable across towns) by considering recent real estate sales.  

Second, the district reports the rate, but not the percentage increase, which is probably what most people think about.  Let's compute them as Durham 1.27/(19.36-1.27) = +7.0%, Lee .63/(15.71-.63)=+4.2%, Madbury .97/(19.54-.97)=+5.2%.  You can see why they might not want to put those numbers on a slide.  I think a better calculation wouldn't include the State Education Tax line, which would probably increase these percentages.

Third is the line about changes in valuation.  Much of the time that doesn't matter; if everyone's assessment doubled in one town, the millage would half and nobody's taxes would be any different.  It does matter when Durham (it's generally just Durham) adds new taxable real estate to its rolls.  This spreads the Durham burden among more property, lowering the millage and tax each owner pays.  The effect turns out to be only half as good as it sounds, as the cooperative agreement then increases Durham's proportion of the half of the bill that's allocated proportional to property values.

That reminds me I didn't really explain how the budget works; here's what I wrote last year:

These budget numbers are total expenses, only part of the fiscal story as far as the taxpayers are concerned.  There's also an estimated revenue side, with large items being expected tuition income and scheduled withdrawals from trust funds. It's the difference between expected expenses and expected revenue that's apportioned between the towns.  Half the bill is proportional to the number of students in town, half proportional to the equalized town valuations (i.e. the total taxable property in each town).  Then the state puts its finger on the scale by granting each town adequacy aid according to a formula.  What's left in each town is billed to the property owners, the Local Education Tax millage being the total asked of the town divided by the total assessed value of the taxable property in town.  The adequacy aid comes from the State Education Tax line, which is the same rate for every property owner in the state (the millage is equalized to reflect different assessment styles between towns). 

Yes it's complicated, and there are still many more details I haven't mentioned you can read about here.  The bottom line is the board really only controls expenses minus revenue, which they usually do a good job keeping to a 3%+ year on year increase, lately even while shoehorning in an entire $50M middle school . After expenses minus revenue is determined, the apportionment formula and the state aid takes over, with changes generally falling harder on one town than the other two and pissing folks off.

I should do an in depth dive into the history of the coop apportionment in Oyster River, but eleven pm on Sunday before Tuesday election day isn't a good time to start that project.

Anyway, I'm voting YES.  For as long as I've been paying attention, for the budget article YES always wins in Oyster River.

Article 4 puts $125K aside for the eventual purchase of the middle school solar array.  This article has appeared on the ballot the last few years. There's the usual boilerplate fib about "No amounts to be raised from taxation."  That means that this money is to be taken from the fund balance, which is the unspent money appropriated last March.  So it was raised from taxation, just not this year.  I'm voting YES.

Lee.  I try not to spend too much time on Lee in this blog, but like I said above, I'm strongly supporting newcomer Democrat Erik Johnson over long time Republican incumbent Scott Bugbee.

See everybody at the polls on Tuesday.