Bagley and Cook are two stars on excellent city council

Oct. 29 − To the Editor: Portsmouth is a beautiful, well maintained, safe and well-run city, and I am proud to live here. I credit the current City Council for keeping Portsmouth on this path. Spending time watching a City Council meeting can show you why this is so. They debate the issues professionally and respectfully. While the councilors do not always agree, as Mayor McEachern has said, they can disagree without being disagreeable.

This City Council has accomplished many positive things for the city. One large accomplishment was bringing in Community Power, which is reducing utility costs for many Portsmouth residents, with aggregate resident savings of about $100,000 per month. The Council has also increased the veterans, elderly, and disabled property tax deductions to the maximum allowed under NH law, altered the accessory dwelling units (ADUs) ordinance to make it easier to build ADUs in hopes of increasing housing, and has modified the zoning ordinance to require affordable housing downtown as a trade-off for a variance. Finally, they have managed to relieve Portsmouth of the morass that was the McIntyre Building.

I keep hearing about and how the City Council has made Portsmouth taxes too high. As I said, Portsmouth is a beautiful, well maintained, safe and well-run city. I would like to see it stay that way, and I believe the city's budget supports those goals. According to the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration's table of Public Tax Rates, of the 239 municipalities in New Hampshire, 191, or about 80%, have higher tax rates than Portsmouth. The city is accomplishing a great deal while keeping tax rates relatively low. Generally, taxes are going up because Portsmouth is a desirable place to live, and home values are rising.

Finally, I would like to highlight two of the current City Councilors, partly because they are friends, and partly because they are new, first term, Councilors, but, more importantly because they have been extremely hardworking and effective as Councilors, and both have definitely earned a second term.

First, Andrew Bagley. If you ever attend or watch a City Council meeting, you can't help but be impressed by how wellprepared Andrew is to discuss the issues, and how smart and well thought out are his comments. I am always amazed that he can do this level of preparation with his family obligations and while working full time. Andrew is always engaged with the community. He bends over backwards to help citizens solve their problems and works to transform our concerns into effective policies. As chair of the Parking and Traffic Safety Committee he has skillfully handled many tricky issues that have led to safer transportation, balancing neighborhood concerns with practical solutions. One notable, but overlooked accomplishment was to increase accessibility at Prescott Park and city events. As we were coming out of the Covid pandemic, he launched a recovery task force and supported budgeting for a community mobile library. One early accomplishment was to institute a policy honoring all faiths, so that, among other things, children of minority faiths would not be penalized for missing tests or school deadlines due to practicing their faith. This man deserves your vote!

Next, Kate Cook. I met Kate while she was running for the Council two years ago, and, over a two hour talk at Kafee Vonsolln, became incredibly impressed with her and her ideas. If you ever hear Kate speak at a City Council meeting, or elsewhere, you too will see how well-informed and impressive she is in discussing the issues. Kate was one of the champions of Community Power and of a climate action plan through service on the Energy Advisory and Sustainability Committees. She fought for accessibility with wider sidewalks in the Market Square redesign, secured funding for a new accessible playground at South Mill Pond, and spearheaded creation of a new Arts & Cultural Commission and Public Art Review Committee, which will help to keep our city beautiful and culturally vibrant. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, she founded and led the Governance Committee to drive ethics reforms, increase transparency, and improve overall city governance. In past years, we all saw problems in these areas, and the work of this committee will help to fix the problems. I will be supporting Kate so that she can continue her contributions to Portsmouth.

Ken Goldman

Portsmouth