Whitefield voters have a distinct choice this year as two candidates vie for a seat on the board of selectmen.
“Stop the spending,” he said, referring to the new town office center that will be on the warrant for town meeting March 21. “I run into people every day and they’re concerned about the expense” of the $750,000 project. “I don’t feel people have the money to take on something like that, or any increases at all.”
Furthermore, since only a “select handful” show up for the annual town meeting, Hardman said, it would be better for capital expenditures to be voted by secret ballot.
He said he knows it isn’t the town’s fault that such a small percentage of the population actually votes on articles, but “not everybody has Saturday off any more.”
“We seem to have a lot of over-budgeting in town,” he said. Money that isn’t spent on one thing is “transferred to something else, and townspeople aren’t aware of it,” he said.
[Voters traditionally approve a warrant article authorizing selectmen to transfer up to 10 percent of any line item account to another.]
The way property is taxed could also be improved, Hardman believes. Some states, he said, require property owners to pay taxes according to living space square footage. “We spend a lot of money going around revaluing property,” he said. Once property is assessed by measuring space, there is no need to make changes unless homeowners add on. This system could stem the tide of taxpayers seeking abatements, Hardman believes.
The square footage system would also correct another inequity. “A person may choose to live in a 960 sq. ft. mobile home, and say you had the same size ranch. You may pay $1100 in taxes and taxes would be $500 for the mobile home.” With extra tax burden to the town if there are three school age children living in that mobile home “you could be paying higher taxes.”
Hardman said he’s sure being a selectman “is a big learning curve” but he’s ready for the challenge. He served on the planning board 1994-98 and feels “it wouldn’t hurt to have somebody from this end of town (Rt. 218 south) representing us.”
The Alna native moved to Whitefield in 1991. He is a U.S. Marine Corps vet and member of the American Legion.
She is employed by the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program, previously as a caseworker, and now director of the volunteer program managing a corps of 70 statewide volunteers.
McKeen has served on many town boards, including 16 years on the planning board. She has also been president of the PTA, helped start a school library with volunteers in the 1970s, put on several talent shows, served on the comprehensive plan committee and is currently a member of the historical society and the Bicentennial committee as organizer of August 2009 Whitefield Days.
“I’ve done a lot of volunteer work in this town over the years because I care about the community,” she said.
Participating in the town building committee most recently was a natural extension of that concern. “Who knew the bottom was falling out of the economy?” she said this week.
Still, McKeen sees her service on the panel the past three years as part of the volunteerism and community spirit she believes in and that the town center represents.
“That’s who I am. The selectmen appointed the committee, asked us to serve and come up with a plan for the Greene property. We worked hard to get a quality building at as low a price as possible. We’ve done our job and now it’s up to the voters to decide whether to do the building now, later, or ever.”
Being positive is part of her nature, she said. In her view, “There’s huge variety in this town. What I like is there are a lot of independent thinkers. I learn a lot from them.”
Whitefield is also “a talented town,” with many creative small business owners, craftspeople, and artists, McKeen said. The connectedness she remembers from earlier years, the group efforts to knit the town together, seem to have been lost because “life is different, more people are working and don’t have time to volunteer.” Yet such connectedness is important, she believes, “especially now when times are tough.”
McKeen feels she is prepared to join the selectmen’s board because “I’m at a time of life where I can take a leadership role, I have good organizational skills” and she is familiar with issues facing the town.
There are no other public office contests in Whitefield this year. Planning board member Stephen Smith is seeking another term; two other two-year vacancies on that board have no declared candidates.
Incumbent road commissioner David Boynton is running unopposed for a one-year term. Whitefield has joined a regional school unit (RSU) and the seat vacated by Marianne Marple has no candidates in the remaining three and a half months before the RSU starts.
Polls are open 8 a.m.-noon on Sat., March 21 in the school gym. The annual meeting begins at 2 p.m.
