If the Hartford Selectboard
The survey, which was administered by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center at a cost of $10,000, was mailed to all addresses and post office boxes in town. A total of 931 responses were received — a 14 percent response rate. Ninety-three percent came from full-time residents and 50 percent from residents who had lived in town for more than 20 years.
One way to look at the tepid response rate is that Hartford residents as a whole are not up in arms about the town budget or taxes. Another is that the assumptions underlying the main question about the budget path for the future struck many people as so outlandish as not to merit a response. It asked respondents to choose among three courses: fully fund current services at the price of a 7 to 10 percent tax increase; cut services moderately with a tax increase of 4 to 6 percent; or significantly reduce or eliminate services with a tax increase of up to 3 percent.
Perhaps the only fitting response to that question is another: How in the world did the previous town manager and Selectboards permit a situation to arise in which a hefty tax increase would be required just to maintain the status quo and a substantial one needed even if services were moderately curtailed? Anyway, 23 percent of respondents chose the 7 to 10 percent tax increase scenario; 32 percent favored the middle course; and 28 percent opted for a significant reduction in services. In short, no clear mandate was delivered.
Another difficulty arose when respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with specific town services and whether they favored increased, decreased or status quo funding. The flaw is that residents can be personally satisfied with the service provided by the town’s police or fire or public works departments, for example, but have absolutely no idea how staffing levels stack up against comparable communities or how effectively resources are deployed. An informed judgment about funding levels is impossible to make without that context. (And some would argue that Selectboard members are elected precisely to make such determinations.)
As we noted, the survey did yield some potentially useful guidance. For instance, 55 percent of respondents favored full curbside trash and recycling pickup, while 31 percent were opposed and 14 percent undecided. Residents displayed little appetite for raising taxes to undertake new projects such as extending sidewalks, restoring Wright’s Reservoir, increasing parking in downtown White River Junction, creating a town trail network and increasing bike lanes. And there was some good news for officials in that respondents rated town government pretty highly, with the exception of its ability to attract new businesses and families to town.
The other good news for the Selectboard is that the dire budget scenarios formulated a couple of years ago that gave rise to the survey’s assumptions may have been overblown. As staff writer Matt Hongoltz-Hetling reported last month, Leo Pullar, the new town manager, has proposed a flat budget for the next fiscal year that contemplates no significant reductions in service, other than slowing the rate of capital equipment replacement.
At the meeting at which the results were discussed, the Selectboard was told that it was wise to conduct such surveys every three years to gauge public sentiment. It could be argued that there was once a mechanism in Hartford to do that yearly — the traditional Town Meeting, which was abandoned a few years ago in favor of a complicated hybrid system of meetings and ballot voting because it was deemed to be insufficiently representative of the public will. We’re not sure the survey did a more representative job, but perhaps it could in the future with refinements to the questions — especially if they were supplemented by the multiple electronic means now available to register public opinion. At the very least, the Selectboard can be credited with making a good faith attempt to shape its decision making by taking the pulse of the community.