Attention: Kingston and Newton property taxpayers. Our taxes are getting out of hand, and, according to New Hampshire State Representative Mike Kappler, My Opinion, Carriage Towne News June 17, 2008, quote, “not only are all kinds of fees, fines, taxes and other types of state money grabbing going up, just wait until you get your November tax bill and next year will be worse”.
Kingston and Newton: we have to seriously consider having the town of Fremont join the Sanborn Regional School District, instead of paying tuition. Have it go three ways; we have to lighten the load. They can’t say there are less voters because Newton has always had less voters than Kingston and we pay equal taxes for the school budget. My son graduated 18 years ago.
Kingston and Newton let’s act or many will lose their houses. Already there are many for sale in Newton, and there won’t be many children going to the new high school.
Brenda Dailey
Newton
To the Editor:
What Was the Hard Work That the Dems Did?
It was interesting to read Senator Hassan’s opinion in the June 22, 2008 Seacoast Sunday. She certainly puts the spin on the two years the state has experienced with the liberal Democrats in control of the House, the Senate, and a democrat in the governor’s office. Yes, they worked hard. But it was not for the people of New Hampshire as most of us would define it. It was for some of the people, especially the traditional allies of the Democratic Party. They worked hard to reward the lawyers, state employees and the public school teachers.
The lawyers, of which the Senator is one, now have joint and several liabilities. This is a ridiculous law that can only make sense to a lawyer. Example: Two friends are riding in a car. The driver loses control. An accident happens that injures the passenger. The passenger’s lawyer, anxious to achieve the maximum settlement, settles early for the driver, for a low amount, but goes for the big money by suing the town and the state, finding the road owners at fault. The percent of the blame for the road owners may have been minimal, but the amount asked for in the settlement may be for the vast majority of the amount.
State employees have not only received pay increased greater than inflation, but they were able to head off any large co-pays in their Cadillac of a Health Insurance Plan, a plan that any one of us citizens would be privileged to have. They were also in control of any attempts to reform the State Retirement System. A study commission made several recommendations to save the system from financial peril. The House went along with most of the recommendations, recognizing the importance of action now. But the Senate caved. They removed virtually all the reforms, at the behest of the employees, and threatened the House with huge increases in the employers’ charges if the House did not concur. Either way, towns and cities will pay more for all the public employees. All the Senators voted for the version that the union wanted.
The Joint House and Senate Costing Commission on an Adequate Education agreed that they had to create a theoretical model to satisfy the Supreme Court. What followed was certainly not a minimal model. The liberal Democrats had six of the ten votes on the commission. As a result, all the votes followed party lines and inflated the basic costs. For example, the newly graduating teachers now have to take what are called praxis exams. These have not been a requirement in the past, but are a requirement for the title of highly qualified. Rather than use entry level teachers in the model, the liberal Democrat leadership insisted on three years experience as the base, even though this might include teachers who did not have the title of highly qualified. This step added sixty million dollars to the overall cost. This was so bad the Republicans did not support it, and the governor did not sign it, allowing it to become law without his name on it.
This state budget was one of the worst products of the legislature in decades. All the Democrat liberal leadership and their allies saw rewards. But the worst part was the handling of the revenue estimates. Usually they are the starting point for any budget. But the Democrat leadership controlled Ways and Means Committee refused to do any estimates, while the Finance Committee was deliberating on the budget. This would be equivalent to creating your spending plan while not knowing how much you will have to spend. At the end of the process the Ways and Means Committee was told what their revenue estimates would be. The Republicans, on that committee, having the most experience at estimating revenues, declared that those estimates would be almost two hundred million dollars short. That advice was ignored in May of 2007. A year later the reality was obvious. But the Democrat leadership can never admit that Republicans were right. Rather, let’s blame the national economy, even though the state revenues are coming in at record levels, but not the imaginary ones that the Dems projected.
So let’s put Senator Hassan’s remarks in perspective. She has blamed the Republicans for not taking care of our roads and bridges. The worst delay in our ten-year plan has taken place under the liberal Democrat leadership. You can spin all you want but the reality will come home to the voters when they get the real bill, not the delayed payments that the Senator and her party are presently engineering. Instead of Senator Hassan touting that she is in the liberal Democrat leadership, she should be ashamed of it. She was one of the ones that did this to us.
Representative Ken Weyler
Kingston
To the Editor:
Congratulations to Rick Korn, his family, and staff on the purchase of the former Pond View Restaurant.
My family and I have been regular diners at Rick’s Café and Grille in Kingston since they opened and have had many fantastic meals there. The wait staff is always outstanding.
If you haven’t been to Rick’s lately, you don’t know what you are missing.
How about calling the new restaurant “Rick’s Crystal View”, naming it after the soon to be in the terrible two’s Crystal Korn?
For anyone who has never had a meal prepared by Rick, you have missed a great dining opportunity.
I am sure Julia Child is smiling down from heaven and saying, “Go Rick, keep up the good work.”
Bon Appetite!
Caroline Gainan
Sandown
To the Editor:
“I’m Just Grateful to Have Been There”
I’ve been watching little league baseball games for fifty-three years. As a player in the 1950’s, then as a coach, umpire and parent…something on the order of a thousand games.
The games themselves are filled with lots of walks, wild-pitches, passed balls, errors, overthrows and a million strikeouts. The dominant background noise at little league games are the constant encouraging parental shouts of “good swing”, “almost”, “nice try” and “you’ll get ‘em next time”.
But, here’s the thing: Once in a while, every game or two…and maybe just a couple of times each season… something extraordinary happens in these games. It usually comes out of nowhere and quickly recedes. A second-stringer makes contact with a wicked fastball or a kid stabs a line drive ticketed for right field or the right fielder tracks down a long fly ball near the fence. And these things are such great fun to see, great moments.
But last week, on Monday evening, a Nottingham boy named Dow – a first baseman - provided me with the most extraordinary moment in my fifty-three years of watching little league baseball.
We live in a world of instant replay and digital camcorders and phone cameras, but this moment was not recorded. Words will have to do:
It is the sixth inning of an “away game” for Nottingham, played in a truly wonderful field in Auburn with real lights (kids love playing under the lights), and the teams are locked at 3-3. It is late twilight and – to the delight of the boys – they have turned those lights on. Two outs, runners in scoring position.
The right-handed batter fights off a pitch and pops it foul, wide of first base. The ball – at its apex – is less than twenty-five feet in the air, and it is slicing toward the home team dugout. Probably out of play.
The Nottingham boy – our first baseman - is blocked out from the play by the first base coach, an adult who is one head taller and many pounds heavier. In a second the ball will land harmlessly.
But this boy has in mind somehow catching the ball and recording the final out of the inning. Seeing that his path to the foul pop up is blocked by the first base coach, the youngster astoundingly runs a tight half circle around the adult and reaches the five foot fence that guards the field.
Having successfully negotiated himself around the adult who was blocking his path to the ball, the boy simultaneously begins a jump and reaches his glove over the fence. His arm extends two feet outside the field of play. The glove is open wide with palm turned upward.
An instant early or an instant late, an inch too short, a jump to the left or to the right…and we would have watched the ball perhaps tick off his glove…and we would have heard parents shouting “nice try” and “almost”.
But on this Monday under the lights in Auburn, New Hampshire, the Nottingham boy is neither early nor late, and so the ball lands slap-dab in his glove, and, in one motion, the boy from Nottingham squeezes it and lifts his arm to the sky as he lands back on the ground. He takes the ball out of his glove and shows the ball to the umpire who, after a dazed moment, signals the batter “out”. Inning over. Game still tied. We’re going to extra innings for crying out loud!
His teammates mobbed him. Parents are jumping up and down, shouting and laughing and applauding. But our Nottingham boy seems unaware of the noise and oblivious to the excitement around him. There is a certain expression on his face. It is as if he knows that something momentous has just taken place. Something that maybe he will remember all his life.
As for me…well I’m just grateful to have been there, grateful to have seen that wondrous catch and grateful to have met the boy from Nottingham who made it.
Robert Sprague
Nottingham
To the Editor:
“Drifting”
It is dawn on a cool spring morning as my boat drifts across the lake at the same slow pace as the rising mist off the still water.
As the sun rises it creates a play of light upon the water and a change of colors in this pristine wilderness, while all around me is the music of birdsong, creating a serene peacefulness that comes when one feels they are a part of this most natural of worlds.
Standing near the bow of my boat with spinning rod in hand a flick of my wrist sends the spinner bait through the quiet. It splashes down just beyond the drop off point, and seconds later…”Wham”! The battle is on as a largemouth bass explodes from the water trying to free itself from the lure. After much effort I reel this mighty warrior into the boat, remove the hook from its mouth and return it to the water.
With another flick of my wrist the lure sets down near some old wood pilings. The flash of silver has caught another largemouth’s eye and he chomps on it with such a fury it nearly rips the rod from my hands. The big bass leaps from the water, twisting and snapping at the lure, and with one last mighty effort frees itself, yet we both know full well that we’ll get to play this game another day.
Sitting down in the bottom of my boat I lay my head back against the seat as the boat drifts freely across the lake’s calm surface.
It has been a day of joy, a reflection and remembrance of having drifted over these same waters for so many years now, and to have the same feelings today that I did then. It reaches deep within me and tugs at my heart a little bit.
Every journey in life requires leaving something behind, so you can open your mind to discovering something new. That truth has never been more symbolized than by the trials that the old largemouth bass and I have encountered in this lake.
As the setting sun rests among the clouds, tinting the world with a lavender glow, my day is coming to an end as my boat reaches the shore. Looking back at the lake I hear a splash that makes my heart leap and I know this has been a day when two become one in the spirit and the heart forever.
