The annual town and school meetings are scheduled for 7 p.m. on Monday, March 6, at Tracy Hall. Balloted voting will take place the next day, Tuesday, March 7, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Tracy Hall.
Norwich
Neither first-term Selectman Dan Goulet nor former Selectboard Chairman Christopher Ashley is seeking re-election.
Residents Claudette Brochu and John Pepper are running to fill Goulet’s three-year seat.
Brochu, a retired Dartmouth-Hitchcock nurse, said that she had been inspired to run by concerns that rising costs for services were driving lower- to middle-income residents out of town.
“Norwich is a small town, and I think we sometimes tend to forget that,” she said in an interview, noting that Norwich’s more than $4 million town budget dwarfs those of comparably populated communities such as Hartland. “We are a small town, so we shouldn’t have necessarily the resources and budgets of a larger town, even if the majority of people can afford it.”
Brochu, who in past years has called for level funding of the town and school budgets, and who this year went through the municipal spending plan line by line to propose trims, said that as a Selectboard member her focus would extend beyond making cuts.
“I’m not going to go in there to say we should slash budgets or cut services,” she said. “That’s not my intent at all. I think we need some Yankee ingenuity back in things and some common sense, and so I hope to be able to deliver that.”
Pepper, co-founder and CEO of the burrito chain Boloco, said that friends and family had encouraged him to run for the Selectboard. After a certain amount of persuading, he said, he has come to see a foray into public service as a natural extension of his goals as a businessman: to make life better for his constituents, or rather his employees.
Pepper said he hoped to bring his leadership skills to the board, and added that he would be open to all viewpoints as a selectman.
“I’m not going to come in and say ‘I’m pro-taxes or anti-taxes, I’m pro-development or anti-development,’ ” he said. “I’m more open to listening first.”
Pepper said he also was looking to bring civility and consensus back to Norwich government.
“There’s a lot of negativity,” he said. “There’s broken relationships on the part of the town managers and various Selectboard members. This has got to be a town that’s beautiful from the outside but also from the inside out.”
Kris Clement, a longtime resident and former crafts store owner, and John Langhus, a vice president at solar developer Norwich Technologies and former part-owner of Morano Gelato, are seeking the two-year term to replace Ashley.
Clement ran for the Selectboard in spring 2015, challenging Ashley while calling for improved communications between the board and the public.
She said this week that remained a priority for her.
“An informed public is a vital part of any community,” said Clement, who since her run in 2015 advocated for and later became a member of the new Norwich Communications Committee. “In order to be informed, there needs to be sufficient communication between town government and the residents.”
She also said that the town’s legislative body should be considering financial strain on residents as it prepares its budgets.
“I believe currently that our budgets, right now for a segment of the population, are not sustainable,” she said. “And I believe we need to strike a balance between value and level of services and the need for all segments of the population.”
In a listserv post announcing his candidacy last month, Langhus said he had come around to local politics after a period of disillusionment.
“I convinced myself that I was not suited to it, and I left it to others,” he wrote. “I regret that now, today above all days. If I am to value our democracy here in Norwich, I must be prepared to help support it and to give it life.”
Langhus, who served on the committee that helped the Selectboard in its ongoing search for a new town manager, said Norwich needed to more fully embrace the board manager model, which gives the manager control over operations and the board power to influence policy.
“We continue to struggle in Norwich with how directly the Selectboard involves itself with the day-to-day operations of the town manager,” Langhus said in an interview. “I think it’s different to operate under that situation for the town manager. It also affects how you choose your town manager.”
As Selectboard elections approach, the Planning Commission is working on a proposal to create a high-density zoning district along Route 5 South and River Road intended to encourage affordable housing development.
The newly elected Selectboard members may have a chance to rule on the plan, provided the Planning Commission does not submit a final proposal to the current board in the next three weeks.
Although Brochu expressed concern about filling open land in the corridor and increasing the burden on municipal services, she said she would wait to see a final plan before passing judgment.
“Bottom line, I want to see what their final proposal is and what comes before the Selectboard, because before then it’s all speculation,” she said.
Clement took a similar line, noting that the Town Plan, a periodically updated document that outlines townspeople’s vision for land use, calls for not only development of affordable housing but also the preservation of Norwich’s small-town character.
Pepper said a “blend” of priorities needed to take place that would allow for some development but perhaps not a rezoning of the scale proposed.
“I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to development as generally proposed,” he said, “but I think some of the rezoning is hard to stomach.”
In another listserv post, Langhus said the Planning Commission’s proposal could address an ongoing housing shortage while preserving the rural feel of the community, although he also expressed skepticism about combining commercial and residential development in the proposed new district.
“The commission has suggested concrete ways in which we can insure that any development is orderly and looks consistent with the rural character of our town,” he wrote.
On the Town Meeting warning, the spending plan for town operations stands at $4.83 million, including outside appropriations such as operating expenses for the town library.
That makes for a 2.1 percent increase over the current year’s budget. The major influences on the proposed spending plan include rising costs from health insurance, workers’ compensation, ambulance services and debt service on an anticipated $1.4 million bond covering fire and police facilities renovations, town leaders said.
If residents approve the proposed budget and all outside articles, the anticipated increase in the municipal portion of their property taxes will be a little more than a penny per $100 of valuation, or $41.20 on a $400,000 house.
A warning article asks for $70,000 to fill a gap in the public facilities project that town officials have previously disclosed.
School officials are asking for nearly $5.6 million for the coming year, which they estimate will result in $18,799 in spending per equalized pupil, a 5.9 percent increase over the current school year.
That budget does not include the results of ongoing contract negotiations with teachers at the Marion Cross School.
School Board members Tom Candon and Jim Mackall are running unopposed for re-election.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.