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BY ROD HANSEN
Two petitioned requests for recounts will have town officials hand-counting ballots at town hall at 1 p.m. Sunday, March 25.
Both recount requests concern warrant articles where slim margins decided the outcome.
In the case of Article 13, a $1.6 million bond failed to garner the 60 percent vote needed to fulfill the neighborhood of Lynchville/Danis Park’s decades-long attempt to attach to a municipal water supply.
A resident delivered the request for recount to Town Clerk Donna Bergeron on Monday, March 19.
Article 22 gives the town the authority to establish a Tax Increment Financing district. That item passed by a vote of 1,166 to 1,163. Bergeron said a petitioned request for a recount of that vote came Tuesday, March 20.
Of the two requested recounts, the Lynchville/Danis Park item carries a longer history, with public concerns on the matter dating back four decades.
The article requested a total appropriation 2.5 million for the design and installation of a water distribution system in the Pinardville neighborhood, with $1.6 million to be paid in bonds and the remainder through grants and interest.
The article would have had no impact on town taxpayers, as the bonds would have been paid through homeowner fees.
"We’re not saying any (town officials) made a mistake. We’re just not accepting a ‘no’ vote right
now," said Cove Street resident John Paradis, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1974.
"We’ve gone a long time without water."
Though the article gained more than a simple majority by passing 1,490 to 1,036, it did not achieve the 60 percent of the vote needed to pass a bonded project.
A vote of 1,516 to 1,010 would have given the article the percentage it needed to pass.
The Lynchville/Danis Park neighborhood sits close to the banks of the Piscataquog River, and residents have long complained of poor water, sewer, drainage and road conditions. At a bond hearing for the article prior to Town Meeting, neighborhood residents said they could not brush their teeth or drink water from the tap, while others said high bacteria count made their homes uninhabitable.
The article’s 26-vote defeat is itself enough to warrant a recount attempt, Paradis said.
The language of the warrant article may be what led to the measure’s defeat, Paradis said.
"If you read the article, the $2.5 million is right at the top. I think a lot of people just saw that and voted
‘no’," Paradis said. "We should have caught that at the deliberative
session."
Resident Martha Fournier, who spearheaded efforts to get the item on the ballot, offered a view similar to
Paradis’s.
"The improvement would have had no tax impact, but that language was at the bottom of a very complicated and very expensive warrant
article," Fournier said.
If enough voters made mistakes in filling out their ballots, the item might have a chance of passing, Bergeron said.
The town’s AccuVote voting machines count "overvotes," or instances where voters mark both
"yes" and "no" on their ballots, as blank. A hand-count could send the final tally the other way, Bergeron said.
"If there were 27 ballots in there that we interpret differently as human beings, there is a
chance" the ultimate tally could change, Bergeron said.
On Sunday, a special "board of recount" will hand count all town ballots that contain articles 13 and 22, Bergeron said. Members of the board of recount include selectmen, the town clerk, and the town moderator, she said.
Published Wednesday, March 21, 2007 6:53 PM by Goffstown Editor
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