Haverhill Libraries No comments yet

LIBRARIES AND THE LAW

By Robert G. Fillion on February 11th, 2010

Citizens of Haverhill, N.H. need to have more information about their libraries if they are to do anything to bring about much needed improvements in their library service. The town has four public libraries and each ranks among the most deplorable in the state. Much of their problem is due to poor funding but it is also due to not having elected trustees and to the town not holding them accountable. We can judge inadequacy of the libraries by personal observations as well as by the extent of the population that does not use them.

People stay away from these libraries in droves. While library trustees avoid reporting the number of people who use the libraries, informal surveys show that no more than about 15% of Haverhill residents use one of the libraries. State Library reports show total funding of the four Haverhill libraries at about 40% of the state average. The vast majority of towns have only one library.  When the four Haverhill libraries divide the money, each receives an average of 1/10th of the state average. The libraries do not supplement each other or collaborate. Each replicates most costs in the three other libraries, which further reduces the effectiveness of their skimpy funding.

Central to the library problem is the town’s peculiar custom of funding an elected library board of trustees that does not conduct a library. This is not only an obvious anomaly but the board transmits the town’s annual library appropriation to independent libraries that it is unable to hold accountable. Voters of the town have never voted to establish or accept any one of the four public libraries and have never made any demands on them or on the elected trustees.

The town’s attorney has reported to the selectboard that the Town has not established a public library and has no authority over the four libraries. This supports the selectboard’s claim that it has no authority over the libraries and may explain why it does not set standards, requires no reports, and does not audit the libraries. However, this position calls for a legal challenge.

Trustees do not report their activities or bring their concerns to the selectboard. This leaves the selectboard without the information it should have to make sound budget recommendations or to direct funds at particular improvement efforts.

Citizens of Haverhill, N.H. need to have more information about their libraries if they are to do anything to bring about much needed improvements in their library service. The town has four public libraries and each ranks among the most deplorable in the state. Much of their problem is due to poor funding but it is also due to not having elected trustees and to the town not holding them accountable. We can judge inadequacy of the libraries by personal observations as well as by the extent of the population that does not use them.

People stay away from these libraries in droves. While library trustees avoid reporting the number of people who use the libraries, informal surveys show that no more than about 15% of Haverhill residents use one of the libraries. State Library reports show total funding of the four Haverhill libraries at about 40% of the state average. The vast majority of towns have only one library.  When the four Haverhill libraries divide the money, each receives an average of 1/10th of the state average. The libraries do not supplement each other or collaborate. Each replicates most costs in the three other libraries, which further reduces the effectiveness of their skimpy funding.

Central to the library problem is the town’s peculiar custom of funding an elected library board of trustees that does not conduct a library. This is not only an obvious anomaly but the board transmits the town’s annual library appropriation to independent libraries that it is unable to hold accountable. Voters of the town have never voted to establish or accept any one of the four public libraries and have never made any demands on them or on the elected trustees.

The town’s attorney has reported to the selectboard that the Town has not established a public library and has no authority over the four libraries. This supports the selectboard’s claim that it has no authority over the libraries and may explain why it does not set standards, requires no reports, and does not audit the libraries. However, this position calls for a legal challenge.

Trustees do not report their activities or bring their concerns to the selectboard. This leaves the selectboard without the information it should have to make sound budget recommendations or to direct funds at particular improvement efforts.

Miscellaneous Perspectives No comments yet

TRENDY TIMES

By Robert G. Fillion on February 10th, 2010

In October 2009, Haverhill had a new weekly newspaper, Trendy Times. It may be too soon to judge the impact that this newspaper can have on the town and on the paper’s survivability. Its success will depend on its advertisers, which in turn will depend on the number of ads that it can attract that other newspapers in the area have been publishing. Many of them have been vying intently for ads and readership. As with any newspaper, Trendy Times must be experiencing start up problems that have to do with interesting a readership and attracting business ads. This is crucial to Trendy Times since it does sell subscriptions or exact a newsstand price. It goes out to all homes in the area without charge.

The Trendy Times offers the chance for a more liberal influence on the community. My hope is that it can put the pouty Neanderthal Bridge Weekly out of business and loosen up the staid and stuffy Journal Opinion.

To keep Trendy Times alive businesses need to place their ads in it and citizens must contribute their opinions and information. They should welcome its liberal policy of printing citizen thoughts. The Trendy Times has appealed to the public to contribute money to help it survive the initial demands for money while it builds up its good will among advertisers. If you want this newspaper to survive, please contribute at least some small amount in lieu of subscription. One issue of a local paper costs 70¢ at a newsstand. Figure the cost of this at $8.40. You should be willing to pay this much to sustain the newspaper for 3 months, while the Trendy Times gets on its feet.

I wish the newspaper well and hope that it can put the stodgy and pouty Bridge Weekly out of business.

PROOFREADERS

Proofreaders in the Haverhill area are hard to find. None advertises his services and none is listed in the yellow pages. Anyone in the Haverhill area who is available to do proofreading may submit a cost free ad for publication in haverhillperspective. Briefly state your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, qualifications, and your fee.

INCOME TAX

It is time to prepare your federal income tax report for 2009. Many people need help with their reports. Of course, accountants are available, but many people want to do it themselves but need advice on particular aspects of it. In towns with an adequate information service or library, citizens can go to it for helpful information. Haverhill people are handicapped for lack of such service. Anyone who would be willing to offer help in preparing reports may submit information for publishing on haverhillperspective.

Town Information No comments yet

BUDGETING IN HAVERHILL

By Robert G. Fillion on February 10th, 2010

Each year the town of Haverhill government goes thru a procedure that has potential not only to keep citizens informed, but it has the potential to exert great influence on taxes. It consists of appointing a budget committee that meets in December and January to deliberate the budget each year. It affords an opportunity for the select board to consider citizen recommendations regarding the budget, though the committee does not invite citizens to attend their meetings. The public is permitted to attend but not to comment or question.

The committee does not provide information to newspapers. Of course, newspapers would rather report things that happen rather than things that don’t happen and nothing much happens at the very pro forma, conformist, and predictable budget committee meetings.

It is not at all evident that the budget committee acquires knowledge of value for budgeting or advises the selectboard in any way. It does not add, subtract, or alter budget items. It endorses the selectboard’s budget. No one dissents from whatever motion someone on the committee makes.

The committee consists of about 15 people whom the board selects, probably not to achieve a cross-section of citizens, but to be an official and therefore visible group that the board can say endorses the town manager’s budget (in effect the select board’s budget). The public generally may not be wise the pointlessness of the budget committee which seems to exist only because state law requires it. Of course, the selectboard has the right to select people who they believe will take positions consistent with the board’s outlook. It does this well. All committee votes on the budget are unanimously in favor of the board’s budget, which seems to strengthen the position of the selectboard when it presents the budget at town meeting. The budget committee lies in the heart of good ole boy country.

On January 6, the budget committee voted to accept the town manager’s recommended budget for the recreation commission. No one on the committee suggested any amendments and no one asked serious questions that would make any difference in the budget. Most of the committee members said nothing. All members seemed to agree unanimously with everything in the budget that the town manager prepared on behalf of the selectboard. It is phenomenal that the town manager can produce a budget that everyone fully agrees with.

The manner in which the good ole boy budget committee treated libraries in January 2010 is typical good ole boy stuff. No one on the select board or the budget committee had any comment or questions about the library budget. This was despite the deplorable condition of the libraries and the lack of any library reports or action plans that are normal aspects of budgeting. Even the representatives of the libraries who attended the committee meeting did not speak up to increase the selectboard’s budget which called for funding that is about one tenth of the average budget in towns of Haverhill’s size in the state. Library people requested a budget that the town manager told them to request and went to the budget committee meeting to defend it, which was hardly necessary since the committee predictably would unanimously approve their budgets anyway, just as they always have. The committee would ask no questions, just as it always has.

Even if the libraries had disagreed with the library budget, they were not in a good position to question it at the budget committee meeting, since they had signed off on the budget that the committee was looking at. (Note that I say “looking at” and not “considering”.) Even if the libraries did not submit a budget request the committee, as it has done before, would include a budget. The process is unstoppable.

At its January 5 meeting, the committee unanimously voted to prevent any questions from the public about the libraries and to accept the library budget that the town manager had presented to them.

The Woodsville district meeting in 2009 was  consistent with the selectboard’s policy on disengagement from libraries. A Woodsville commissioner stated that citizens of the town should have nothing to say about what libraries do. This is good ole boy stuff. This policy is also enforced by the Woodsville library trustees who do not want to hear from anyone who does not use the library and who have endorsed the librarian’s policy who said that if anyone was dissatisfied with the library he should stay away. Town selectmen and district commissioners endorse this view. I also endorse it. I am dissatisfied and I stay away. Unfortunately, I pay for it anyway.

The town recently acquired the National Guard armory in Woodsville. The selectboard set up a good old boy committee to consider possible uses of the armory. One such idea was an information services and community activities center, which are functions normally associated with libraries but not in Haverhill. At its January 5 meeting, the armory committee received a statement from the selectboard that it had decided to have nothing to do with libraries. The budget committee, at its meeting on the following evening, considered the town manager’s budget that included $49,000 for libraries.

It might seem that the selectboard’s decision to have nothing to do with libraries is very incongruous with having told the libraries how much to request in their budgets, especially since the libraries cannot survive without town money. However, the board claims that funding the libraries is analogous to making a charitable contribution to an organization. It chooses this approach to escape any accountability for library performance. It can fund a library without auditing it or knowing anything about it. If it gave to the boy scouts it would not ask for a boys scout budget.

Generally, the town’s contributions to charity do not control the receiving organization. However, funding the libraries is totally controlling since none of the libraries in Haverhill can survive without town funding. Furthermore, the selectboard re         quires that the libraries submit “budgets”, which are not budgets at all but rather last year’s financial reports. When last year’s financial report becomes next year’s plan, it leads to stagnation. The library can only operate as it did last year. Contributions to charity do not involve requesting budgets.

In 2008 the town voted to appropriate money to the White Mountain Health Association, the River’s Reach Resource Center without benefit of a budget.,

It appears that trying to move libraries to become intellectual operations places intellectual demands on the selectboard members. Voters seem not to elect board members for their intellectual acumen.