Wednesday • February 11 • 2026
Vol.XVIII • No.VII
Manchester, N.H.
It appears that Aldermen Dowd and most of the rest of the Board of Aldermen for the City of Nashua think that the Nashua taxpayers have very deep pockets.
The City of Nashua residents must remember that the city received a total of $44,453,420 in ESSER funds from 2020-2022. That Aldermen Dowd states the ESSER funds were short is a total lie. It seems that the Nashua School District spent the money on other things.
A resident should also remember that ALL of this money only went to public schools, and none went to private/charter schools. Maybe some of the money should have gone to the private schools because they would have tracked the funds that were received accurately.
Currently, the Nashua School budget is $176,664,951, with school bonds totaling $133,011,500 for a grand total of $309,676,451. This is for the lowest enrollment in public schools and in educational scores in the last ten years. Maybe this is why the School District could not keep track of all the money they received.
Last week Aldermen Dowd gave an explanation on the ESSER funds that the City of Nashua received that was appalling. Aldermen Dowd told the board and the public that the city was short on ESSER funds by $4.5 million dollars. Aldermen Dowd said no problem, the School district spent the ESSER funds on other things however that is the school district problem and not the Nashua taxpayer problem.
School officials will just have to cut their spending down by $4.5 million dollars in other places. And whoever made this mistake needs to be fired now. A $4.5 million dollar mistake is no small matter, and someone needs to be held accountable.
Second, if a roofing company gave the City of Nashua a quote to do the two roofs, that is the figure that the Nashua taxpayers should pay. If the roofing company did not realize that there were already two roofs that needed to be removed and now wants to charge the Nashua taxpayers an additional $2 million to remove the old roofs, then maybe taxpayers should not be using them because it appears that they are NOT qualified.
Please stop being so free with the Nashua taxpayer’s money and start holding people accountable for their mistakes.
Nashua residents need to voice their opinions with Aldermen Dowd and other board members. Please send an email to them at boa@nashuanh.gov and tell them that the Nashua taxpayers are tired of paying for other people’s mistakes.
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There is only one show on network television that I have watched and have for years. Fortunately, thanks to DVRs and streaming services, I have not had to park in front of a television every Friday night for the last 14 years. Blue Bloods has been a constant for over a decade because it is a rarity.
It is quality acting, with great storylines, favorably portrays the police, and has strong family values. For a primetime show with a lengthy history, Blue Bloods has only been nominated for one Emmy, and that was for a stunt performance. No actor has ever been recognized for their work. Why?
I remember years ago reading about why Tom Selleck joined the CBS show. He was brought to tears by the script of the pilot show and wanted to be a part of what he saw as a quality TV series. I am a bit embarrassed to admit that nearly every show has given me wet eyes. Apparently, 15 years later, Blue Bloods still touches Selleck more than just a TV series. Most of the characters on the show have grown up before our eyes, and some have died. This show is a model of quality and consistency in an industry that lacks both. So why the snub by the Emmys? There appear to be many, and none of them are justified.
Most of these possible reasons seem petty for a show with such success and longevity, but not surprising in an industry so shallow. Fortunately, millions of viewers like me are not hooked on the show because of awards but for the quality of the show. Maybe there is a message there. Not everyone needs a trophy to live a quality life. Just being good at what you do should be enough.
The post What Does Emmys Snub Of “Blue Bloods” Say appeared first on Granite Grok.
I had some thoughts about the person that occasionally (rarely?) sits behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. The man can’t seem to find his way onstage. He has difficulty making it to the podium. He appears to shake hands with people who aren’t on the stage.
He frequently speaks to or about people who aren’t there—because they’re dead (e.g., Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, or Rep. Jackie Walorski who died before a conference that she had convened).
He just spoke of asking President Lopez Obrador of Mexico to open the gate between Gaza and Israel. He continues to repeat tall tales about various events that have been fact-checked as false. He slurs words together.
When he is finally done. he can’t find his way off of the stage. Does he seem OK to you?
The latest buzz? The report about the classified documents about Afghanistan and Ukraine found in cardboard boxes in Mr. Biden’s garage and in his office at the Penn Biden Center. As Mr. Biden was the vice-president or a senator at the time, he was not legally allowed to declassify and retain those documents.
Will he be indicted? Per special counsel Robert Hur—no. Why?
Mr. Hur noted that Mr. Biden’s memory was so poor that he couldn’t remember when he was vice president or when his son Beau died, among other things. Mr. Hur stated that Mr. Biden would be a sympathetic elderly defendant and a jury wouldn’t convict. Not that AG Garland would actually issue an indictment against his buddy. C’mon, man
Are you still planning to vote for this person as president of the United States?
The post Night Cap: You Voted for Joe Biden – What’s Wrong With You? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Charging residents for government transparency (see HB1002) increasingly sounds like a bribe to me. Yes, we created these documents at your expense, but if you want to see them, you’ll need to slip us a little cash. It might be a lot of money; we’ll let you know.
The bill passed, was reconsidered, then did not pass but did not fail. It has been rushed back to the Judiciary Committee for emergency resuscitation. The goal of its sponsors [(Prime) Kuttab (R), Michael Cahill (D), Ball (R), Maggiore (D), Ankarberg (R), DeSimone (R), Dunn (R), Nelson (R), Bill Boyd (R), Edwards (R), Grassie (D), Carson (R), Gannon (R), Watters (D), Lang (R), Avard (R)], all of whom have put the state before the people (IMO), is to rearrange the words until it passes the NH House.
The buzz suggests easy passage in the Senate (like sh!t through a goose), and Gov. Sununu signing it seems likely, so this bilking citizens is a wholly endorsed project of the Republican Party.
They are making public document access and, therefore, government accountability a potential hardship.
Ua Nemhnainn, commenting on an earlier article about HB1002, observed that Article 8 of the NH constitution clearly states that “the public’s right of access to governmental proceedings and records shall not be unreasonably restricted.”
The only remaining argument against my … points is possibly over the word ‘unreasonable’ in Art. 8. If a fee would impact even a single citizen from accessing government records, it is unreasonable. Overall, this bill would have a chilling effect on low-income and ordinary citizens even making requests, as they would have no way to know ahead of time if they would suddenly be charged $25 or $300 for a request.
This is a point we’ve also made, but Ian Underwood added a new dimension to the conversation – as we expected he would – by pointing out that the system we have without the need for bribes (my words, not his) has things backward from go.
The problem with the current RTK setup is that you have to already know there’s a problem before you can start looking into it. If you want to find the problems, you have to be able to look at everything.
Actual transparency would require towns, municipalities, school districts, and agencies to make all documents that could be subject to an RTK available online as soon as they have been created. That would include all official emails, all RFPs, all bills, all correspondence… everything.
That’s what a Right to Know (RTK) law would require. What we have now is a Right to Ask (RTA) law, which is a very different kind of thing.
We have a “right to ask” but not a right to know, to which the HB1002 sponsors and supporting members of the legislature would like to add a fee, fine, tax, or, as I’ve now suggested, a bribe.
Yes, you can ask, but before you can know, we’ll need some as-yet-to-be-determined sum of money upon whose payment we may then provide the documents we think you requested (if they get it wrong, you’ll likely have to grease their palms again).
All we’re missing is a muscly gold-chain-adorned leisure suit-wearing guy named Vinnie the fixer and a shadowy alley reeking of garbage and piss.
The post HB1002 and Bribery: Give us Some Cash and We Might Share Some Documents You Already Paid For… appeared first on Granite Grok.
Since attaining supermajority status in Montpelier, the Democrats’ education policy can be explained as “give the government school monopoly (the VTNEA, superintendents association, etc.) whatever they want!”
This included universal “free” school meals, expanded pre-k spending and control over birth to five care, and a new pupil weighting system guaranteeing more spending on certain classes of students. This cocktail exploded in their – OUR – faces in the form of an anticipated 20 percent plus property tax increase.
Now, they are desperate to paper over this colossal political screw-up, and their plan to do so is not to spend within our means but rather to raise more taxes to feed into the education fund to “buy down” the impact on property taxes. In other words, continue to take more and more money from taxpayers to give to their political cronies, just out of different pockets, in the hopes we can be fooled into thinking we’re somehow getting a deal.
It’s not a new strategy. The Education Fund is currently fed by the property tax, 1/3 of the sales & use tax, ¼ of the meals & rooms tax, the state lottery, and a handful of other minor sources. My friend John McClaughry dubbed the public-school special interests “The Blob” after the 1950 horror movie monster that grew ever larger by subsuming – killing and destroying — everything in its path. It’s an apt description, and The Blob is on the move again!
The House Ways & Means Committee is currently debating what other new revenue sources can be thrown into the expanding path of The Blob. Here are the top candidates:
According to the Joint Fiscal Office, each 0.1 percent increase in the sales tax would raise approximately $9.3 million. Of course, this would make Vermont even less competitive with neighbors New Hampshire, which has no sales tax, and New York, which has a 4 percent sales tax. It was also pointed out that the sales tax is a regressive tax hitting lower-income people harder than those with higher incomes.
Expanding the sales tax base – the things subject to the sales tax – could squeeze as much as $271 million by including groceries, medical products, residential energy, clothing, and footwear. These things are currently exempt from the sales tax because, well, people need them to survive. Taxing them would be cruel and unusual. But, you know, if the VTNEA wants the money….
The JFO ran the numbers on taxing just “sugar-sweetened” beverages – soda, sports drinks, energy drinks, ready-to-drink teas, and coffees, etc. — at either 1 cent or 2 cents per ounce (so 12 to 24 cents per twelve-ounce can/bottle, but it also applies to syrups and powders to which water is added). This would extract an estimated $15.2 to $29.8 million from thirsty Vermonters. However, Rep. Peter Anthony (D-Barre) floated the idea of taxing ALL sweetened beverages, an idea the chair Emily Kornheiser said she could potentially get on board with, regardless of what the sweetener was. This would roughly double the take. Hey, why not? The VTNEA wants the money.
Of note, no other state has a sugar or otherwise sweetened beverage tax, although a handful of municipalities do. So, look for “Vermont will lead the way!” propaganda to come if this takes off.
Democrats in the legislature have been salivating about the Cloud Tax on software as a service for over a decade, and this might just be the year! (Because the VTNEA wants the money.) For the most part Vermont does not tax services (more on that in a moment). This tax, which would cost Vermonters roughly $20 million per year, would hit things like your Microsoft Office or Google Apps subscriptions, Quickbooks, Mailchimp, Toast or Square, Force, Amazon Web Services, and with cruel irony, TurboTax, so you’ll get to pay a tax to pay your taxes.
While this has implications for everybody, it will be particularly painful for small businesses that need these software services to operate competitively.
Although a general expansion of the 6 percent sales tax on goods to include services – everything from school tuition, legal advice, hair salons, personal trainers, lawncare, etc. – was not part of the JFO presentation, it was raised by members of the committee. The JFO presenter referred them to the Rand Study done in 2023 to determine new revenue streams to fund expanded government-run pre-k. That study showed that expanding the sales tax to services at the 6 percent rate would extract $105 to $143 million, depending upon what and how many exemptions are allowed.
Currently, candy is considered a grocery and is exempt from the sales tax. Taxing it at 6 percent would only raise $3.7 million, but as long as you’re stealing, you might as well do so from babies. The VTNEA wants the money!
The tragedy of all this taxing and spending – or perhaps the intent – was pointed out by Representative Scott Beck (R-St. Johnsbury). “Given how we define education spending and calculate the yield, this would be worse because you’d get all of the taxes and not get property taxes down at all.” Asked to elaborate, Beck went on, “If you pour all of this money into the system, the districts are going to spend it up because it’s cheap money. I mean, we’ve added in the last – with Wayfair [v. South Dakota sales tax SCOTUS decision] We’ve added $100 million in sales tax to the Education Fund, and look what’s happened to property taxes. The money’s cheap to the districts, and so they spend it.”
Just like The Blob monster that it is.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok.
The post The Democrat Solution to High Property Taxes Is… More Higher Taxes! appeared first on Granite Grok.
