As a 16-year resident of Lebanon and the mother of a fifth grader at Lebanon Middle School and a ninth grader at Lebanon High School, I would like to urge my fellow Lebanon residents to vote “yes” on Article 2, the Lebanon School District renovation plan.
Good schools, with safe and modern facilities, are the foundation of a thriving community. The renovation plan improves student and staff safety and security, upgrades educational support spaces, and expands core instructional facilities to accommodate class sizes and curricular needs.
Improving our schools — and in the case of some of the plans, making necessary and long-overdue upgrades that will bring our schools up to contemporary educational standards — will also improve the city of Lebanon for all of its residents. Families like mine, with school-age children, may benefit most immediately, but other residents, such as retirees, would benefit from the community’s talented workers who graduate from our schools, and from the influx of new families attracted to the area’s thriving school system.
I hope you will vote “yes” with me on March 10.
LAURA BRAUNSTEIN
Lebanon
On March 10, Lebanon families need to advocate for their children. Article 2 is an investment in our schools and for the communities they serve.
Both Hanover Street and Mount Lebanon schools were built in 1953 with minimal additions since then. Both of these schools lack necessary space for special services. We’ve seen firsthand the cramped quarters and inadequate space in which these teachers must teach, support and test.
Both elementary schools need sufficient space to cook or serve lunch to this population. Hanover Street School needs a cafeteria separate from Lebanon High School to better serve the 300-plus student population, while Mount Lebanon students would greatly benefit from a fully working kitchen to provide a variety of warm meals.
As parents of children at Hanover Street and Mount Lebanon, we highlight both elementary schools and the renovations needed because we cannot delay or split up this much-needed project.
Article 2 has our full support, and we hope many others will support it, as well.
KATIE SCANLON
and KATIE BERDSEN
Lebanon
First, I would like to send major kudos to Richard Milius of the Lebanon “Gimmes” (aka the School Board) for being the only person there who recognizes that we, the citizens, are not money trees surviving on air and water. Also, a big thank you to Tom McGonis, whose letter pointed out most of the problems that we taxpayers are facing (“The generosity of Lebanon taxpayers may be ending,” Feb. 27).
There are two issues I would like to add. When it finally got the middle school (on the fourth vote!) the School Board promised to sell the unused schools. Did it? Of course not. To the best of my knowledge, only one was sold and the other two are still on our backs.
The second is that School Board members keep saying they want to attract young couples with children. What a joke. They can’t afford these taxes either.
CONNIE KRONER
Lebanon
Lebanon’s so-called “Welcoming” ordinance raises serious concerns. Please read the complete petition, not the few sentences presented when soliciting signatures. You will see the obvious problems and the reasons to vote no.
■ The term “welcoming” is a misnomer, intended to make the petition seem appealing and benign while distracting from its actual intent. Nowhere does it welcome bona fide immigrants or refugees to Lebanon. The petition addresses Lebanon police procedures, forbidding officers from asking people about citizenship status or working with federal immigration officials.
■ The “elephant in the room” is that the petition’s true purpose is to shield people who are in the county illegally. The petitioners do not dispute that. People who come here or stay here illegally do so for many reasons, from seeking work to very serious criminal purposes. Who among the petitioners is going to vet those they are protecting? The U.S. does not have open borders. Our immigration laws are legitimate and for our protection. Thousands of immigrants do enter the U.S legally every year. Realistically, legal immigrants have nothing to fear.
■ Lebanon police and city officials already don’t ask about citizenship nor assist in immigration enforcement. However, the ordinance places undue restrictions on law enforcement. For example, if there is a federal warrant issued for a specific person here illegally and the police happened to stop that person for another reason, would the police be prohibited from detaining that person, informing federal authorities, or even letting them use the police station?
■ There are unexpected consequences. Section 6 requires the city to warn residents whenever immigration authorities are in Lebanon. This would essentially make city staff complicit in aiding people in the country illegally. The city attorney pointed out that if a city employee or volunteer inadvertently did something in opposition to the ordinance, that person may be subject to repercussions.
The City Council passed a true welcoming statement last year. Do we really want an ordinance purposely flouting our laws and a having a hidden agenda?
GREG SCHWARZ
Lebanon
Hanging in my house is a framed certificate of naturalization belonging to my great-grandfather. He became a citizen in 1902, while stuck in port in San Francisco. In an attempt to pass the time, he and a group of colleagues went down to the courthouse and walked out as citizens of the United States. All they needed was a citizen to vouch for them and they, in the space of a few minutes, become citizens. My parents gave me the certificate when I moved to the U.S. in 2007. They thought it was a bit of a joke. How funny that you could become a citizen so easily (if you were a white man).
My journey toward citizenship was not so easy, and I was able to use the “easiest” route because I married a citizen. Even then it took the better part of a decade and of $10,000. I work with people with doctorates who trained in this country and who want to stay and use their education here, but they’re from the wrong country and in the wrong field. Their journey to citizenship will take decades, if it is even possible. Anyone talking about illegal immigration as a problem of just needing to “do it legally” doesn’t understand how expensive, time-consuming and arbitrary the legal immigration system is in this country.
For these reasons, I support the “Welcoming” ordinance in Lebanon. You don’t know anyone else’s journey and you don’t know how hard it can be to come and live in this country, whatever your reason for coming here. We owe it to our fellow humans to offer a safe path in our community, while we demand changes at the national level.
SARAH McDONALD
West Lebanon
I saw Kurt Minich as a good leader in our time together at Sturm, Ruger. As such, I trust he will be a very positive and productive influence on the Newport School Board. He has my vote on March 10.
SKIP ROLLINS
Newport
The writer represents Newport in the New Hampshire House.
The coronavirus is eerily reminiscent of the anthrax outbreak reported in Sverdlovsk, Russia, now Yekaterinburg, that occurred sometime around October 1979. There are very interesting parallels.
First, both Sverdlovsk and Wuhan, China, are sites of biological research facilities that study either anthrax or coronavirus, both amenable to weaponization. Such facilities are very rare throughout the world. The Soviet facility was in direct contravention of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
Second, each outbreak was initially and vociferously blamed on local markets. The Russians blamed tainted meat afflicted by anthrax. The Soviets had to shift their story as 64-plus deaths spanning two-plus months did not cohere with a tainted meat problem, which could have been swiftly dealt with. In 1992, then Sverdlovsk party boss Boris Yeltsin finally confirmed that the anthrax was released by an explosion at a biological weapons facility.
China immediately blamed coronavirus on Wuhan’s “wet market,” specifically bats. The only problem is that the first victim, a female virologist, never visited this market, the Asia Times reported. It is curious that China refuses to release additional information.
Third, both countries rallied the scientific community and the World Health Organization behind the tainted food theories. In the Sverdlovsk case, Harvard biologist Matthew Meselson was skeptical of an anthrax release. However, he was a long-time proponent of a biological weapons ban. In China’s case, Rutgers biology professor Richard Ebright said the coronavirus showed no proof that it had been genetically modified. In the Asia Times of Feb. 17, however, he argued that the coronavirus could be the result of a “lab incident.” In both cases, domestic policies trumped science. The coronavirus jury is still out.
In the final analysis, there is one difference: Anthrax is deadly, but not contagious. Coronavirus is less deadly, but contagious.
MICHAEL W. JOHNSON
Fairlee
This could be my last letter to the Forum. I’ve written more than 400 since I began in the early 1990s. I’m in a nursing home and very feeble. I started a diary of life here upon arrival, including being run over by a car. Early on I decided I would create a book and title it Going to Dartmouth as I have donated my body to Dartmouth College.
I became a patient of hospice, where I met the most intelligent person I ever knew. He encouraged me and made useful suggestions. When it became nearly impossible to hold a pen, he furnished a small tape recorder that he could plug into a device that transcribed my voice into written words. The two times a week he comes to visit he asks me to more fully explain statements I had spoken. He had a regular business envelope in his shirt pocket to make notes. I’ll never get to read the book.
ROGER SMALL
Claremont