Why are you running for election as Selectmen?
I am running for election as Selectmen to improve the responsiveness of the Board to legitimate concerns of the residents, increase the transparency of town government and to reinforce the ideal that the town government's mission is to provide fundamental town services to its residents in the most cost effective way.
What qualifications, qualities or experience would you bring to this position?I believe my college degree in fire protection and experience as a full-time fire-rescue lieutenant and my law degree and experience as a small businessman and attorney will prove useful in serving the best interests of the residents of Wolfeboro. My first career saw me working as a full-time fire-rescue lieutenant; I earned my associates and bachelor’s degrees in fire protection and arson investigation and then worked nearly 7 years for the Gilford Fire-Rescue Department, working over five years as a shift-lieutenant. At the same time, I founded the Training and Education Committee of the, 34 community, Lakes Region Mutual Fire Aid Association, which was cited by the state of New Hampshire as a model for providing regional firefighter training and which exists to this day.
I earned my law degree at Pace University School of Law in White Plains, NY, and worked as a member of the Environmental Law Review, an editor on the student newspaper, and as a senior intern with the highly selective John Jay Legal Clinic representing indigent clients. I passed the New York, Connecticut and New Hampshire bar exams on my first attempt, and I am admitted to practice before the state and federal courts of all three states. I am a small businessman with a law practice focused on the needs of elders and their families. I have worked in legal publishing as the editor of the “ElderLaw Portfolio Series.” My law practice and work as trustee of charitable trusts helping people on hard times makes me especially aware of those living on fixed and reduced incomes.
What do you consider the three major challenges the town is facing?1. Developing a comprehensive economic development plan that will ensure Wolfeboro’s continuing competitiveness in a changing economy, while preserving the qualities that we moved or continue to stay here for;
2. Controlling taxes in anticipation of the increases in real estate taxes caused by the state’s passing its responsibilities down to the towns, by the high school’s renovation costs, and by the Congress’ attempts to stem spending and balance the budget.
3. Rebuilding the numbers of the volunteer on-call firefighters and EMTs of the Wolfeboro fire rescue department, as quickly as possible to assure a quick response to major emergencies, before an unnecessary tragedy occurs.
What would you do to address these challenges if you are elected?Support the Economic Development Committee (EDC) efforts in increasing the public’s awareness of the many studies and plans already done to capture the direction that the community wants to pursue by making those studies and plans available on the town website along with streaming video of all meetings and also by working with the committee to develop a common, or at least complimentary, economic vision to work towards.
Make the priority of the Board of Selectmen the provision of essential town services, of infrastructure maintenance, and of municipal building needs in the most cost-effective manner possible.
Direct the Town Manager to see that the fire chief rebuilds the department’s volunteer on-call force, as quickly as possible, so that the department can provide the highest level of protection at the lowest cost to the taxpayers as measured by accepted national practices and standards.
Have you held political office before? Please list positions, date and towns where served.I was the founding chairman of the Training and Education Committee of the Lake Region Mutual Fire Aid Association, Inc. (a municipal corporation) for seven years, 1986-1992; and I was appointed by Governor Lynch to the New Hampshire Board of Examiners of Nursing Home Administrators, Public Member, from 2008 through 2010.
Please provide any additional information you wish to share with voters (i.e.: business/occupation, educational background, spouse and children)I am married to fellow volunteer firefighter Delina (Ingham) Bickford, whom I met while acting together at the Village Player’s Theater. I have a sixteen year old daughter and a five year old daughter. I grew up in neighboring New Durham, a 12th generation New Hampshirite, in a family dedicated to community service with my mother being a selectman and my father being a fire chief, my brother David Bickford is serving his second term as Selectman in New Durham and served six terms as a state representative. At 16, I joined New Durham's volunteer fire department and earned my Firefighter and EMT certifications, while attending Kingswood Regional High School from which I graduated in 1981.
In 1999, I moved to Wolfeboro to work for Attorney Philip J. Ganem and upon his retirement in 2002, I opened my own law practice focused on the legal needs of elders and their families. I have been legal counsel to two local nonprofit corporations and I am also the trustee of the charitable trusts of Blake Folsom, James Martin and Mary Martin, which provide assistance to the worthy poor and scholarships to the children of Wolfeboro
I joined Wolfeboro’s Fire-Rescue Department as a volunteer firefighter in 1999 and my family volunteers each year at the Granite Man Triathlon to raise money for the Albert H. Dow III Memorial Scholarship. My family and I have been active both onstage and behind the scenes with the Village Players Theater. I have served on the Board of directors of Wolfeboro Area Creative Arts Center and on the Albert H. Dow III Memorial scholarship committee. I was recently elected secretary of the New Hampshire Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, Inc.
Specific Issues
Do you support Article 12 on the 2011 warrant to rehabilitate Brewster Hall?I remain unconvinced that the most cost effective way for the taxpayers to provide office space for our 16 town employees is to retrofit Brewster Memorial Hall at the cost of $4 million or that the retrofitting into town offices of this beautiful, iconic building is the best use of it. Town offices are where we go to pay the bills we have to pay, property taxes, car registration and electric bills, none of which I am nostalgic about. I do, however, have fond memories of seeing my first movie in its second floor auditorium, but, I’ve heard only faint assurance from the Friends that they will be able to raise $500,000 and restore the auditorium. While there is talk of a public-private partnership, unlike normal partnerships, where both risk and profit are shared, in this public–private partnership, it is the taxpayers, who take all the risk of paying any additional costs that the Friends aren’t able to cover, once Article 12 passes.
I want to see both new town offices created and Brewster Memorial Hall preserved. If Article 12 doesn’t pass, the Board should separate the issue of providing affordable, state-of-the-art town offices from the issue of renovating historic, Brewster Memorial Hall. The board should find a use for Brewster Hall that will preserve its architectural beauty and allow it to set the tempo for the surrounding neighborhood and the downtown shops. At the same time, I want to find the most cost-effective means to provide town office space as part of a plan that takes into account all of the town’s space needs.
Do you support continuing the town efforts to upgrade its infrastructure (water, sewer, roads)?Yes, the most basic function of the Board of Selectmen is to provide those services that the town’s residents have chosen to fund in the most cost-effective way possible. I would look to have the departments continue to develop long-range-plans that include upgrading the roads and the water and the sewer systems as part of an ongoing maintenance plan to avoid the type of crisis seen in sewer moratorium followed by the installation of the sewer rapid infiltration beds, which immediately required an extra million plus dollars to operate properly and are still not capable of working to full capacity.
Do you support the Harriman Hill workforce housing project?I support the Harriman Hill workforce housing project, because according to the Economic Development Committee’s (EDC) report of 2010 wages in Wolfeboro are currently and consistently below the state’s averages. If we are to attract quality employees to work in our restaurants, shops, hospitals, and offices, despite these low wages, we need to provide affordable housing.
Do you think the town does enough to encourage economic development?The town needs to continue to support the Economic Development Committee (EDC), and specifically to remedy the problem our town’s lack of a comprehensive economic vision, identified by the EDC, so that the town remains economically viable in the changing economy. See my response above in “What would you do to address these challenges if you are elected?”
Do you think Selectmen should enforce zoning against the certified community residence at 15 Eagle Trace, as requested by the abutters association?
The question isn’t whether the Selectmen should enforce the zoning ordinance. The question is whether state or federal law preempts their legal right to do so. What the Board should do is ask an attorney with the appropriate expertise to look at the legal arguments that the abutters association have brought before it and to address both the preemption issue and the abutters’ arguments in a legal memorandum prepared for the Board and then waive attorney-client confidentiality for the memorandum and release it to the public to put any questions to rest. If the attorney feels that the Selectmen clearly have the authority to enforce the zoning regulations against a certified community residence, then the Board should enforce the regulations.
What do you think of the Board’s decision to rescind recognition of the firefighters’ union?It is impossible to say whether the Board made the right decision, when it rescinded its recognition of the firefighters union, since we’ve only heard the Selectmen's side of the story. Whether the Board could have reached an agreement at the negotiating table, thus avoiding legal costs to the taxpayers, will never be known. It remains to be seen, if the legal costs of defending the Board’s actions will be offset by the savings promised from the new insurance plan.
What bothers me the most is the way the Board went about rescinding their recognition of the union. On August 4, 2010 the agenda for the Board of Selectmen’s meeting stated "Approval: Repudiation of Contract." I read the agenda and seeing nothing of interest chose not to attend the meeting. By leaving out whose contract the Selectmen were going to repudiate (breach), the Selectmen assured themselves that no one from the majority of voters that passed the warrant article would be at the meeting to question the Board about its decision. While the Board may not have violated the letter of the Right to Know Law, they violated its spirit by leaving the public out of this discussion.
Are there any particular changes you would like to see in how the town is run?I feel the town needs to return to the Board of Selectmen/Town Manager form of government it adopted in 1971 in which the Board of Selectmen acts as a board of directors of the town municipal corporation and holds the town manager responsible for the efficient administration of all the town departments under his supervision. A form of government in which the Board is responsible to its shareholders, the taxpayers, to pay a dividend in the form of reasonable taxes, and provide its customers, the residents of Wolfeboro, with the best quality town services possible for the taxes collected.
Rather than the Board micromanaging certain department projects, like the upgrading of the sewer system, while ignoring other departments until a crisis occurs, the Board should direct the town manager to create an overall administrative plan with the department heads each providing individual long-range plans containing clear goals and measurable objectives. Then the Board’s role is to decide on the priority of each plan in light of the bigger picture of the economy and the ability of the taxpayers to pay for implementing the plans.
An example of the Board ignoring a town department is the Board’s failure to ever publicly discuss one of my concerns, based on national firefighting safety standards and practices, that the Wolfeboro Fire-Rescue Department has a dangerous shortage of volunteer on-call members to back up the 2 full-time firefighters that can respond to an emergency at any particular time of the day. I have been floored by the Board’s willingness to turn a blind eye to the shortage of manpower that I told Linda Murray and Marge Webster about in May of 2010 and asked the full board to investigate in October of 2010. It’s beyond my comprehension that the Board has still not asked the fire chief during a regular Board of Selectmen’s meeting to back up his opinion, with national firefighting safety standards and practices, that having only eight (8) volunteer on-call members to back up two on-duty firefighters is not dangerous. By deciding not to even discuss, whether or not the shortage of volunteers is dangerous, the Board has violated their basic duty to assure that the town manager and his department heads are providing fundamental town services as efficiently as possible.
Today, we are all too busy to sit through every minute of a Selectmen’s meeting just in case something comes up that we might have an interest in. So as a Selectman, I will strive to assure that the agendas for Board meetings are written in plain English that everyone can understand, and, I will strive to assure that all of the public’s business and concerns are discussed in public meetings.
