New Hampshire needs to provide better public transportation options Forum for Portsmouth school, police and fire candidates Oct. 3

The Department of Transportation's 10-Year plan is being reviewed and public hearings are happening across the state. While this plan includes important investments in our existing roads, bridges, and trails, it needs to increase investments in two important areas for our state: public transportation and electric transportation.

As a resident of Dover, I use the Amtrak or C&J bus often when I need to go to Boston. I have used the COAST bus a handful of times but its infrequent schedule is difficult to work with. I wish there was a bus or train option to travel to Concord or Manchester other main hubs of activity in our state. Electric vehicles are expensive and as a renter it would be difficult for me to have a charging station at home. I know from speaking with neighbors and friends that these issues are not exclusive to me, but representative of NH's failure to include all forms of transportation in their planning.

NH needs better, more accessible bus systems, an extension of the commuter rail, more electric vehicle charging stations in public places, and electrification of our government-owned vehicles. These investments are good for our state: they will create jobs, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and make the state more accessible for more of our residents. Without public transportation and electrification, our entire transportation system is falling behind the times we live in.

Rebecca Beaulieu Dover

Sept. 30 − To the Editor:

The Citizens for Voter Education, together with the Portsmouth Public Library, is hosting a forum for candidates to the Fire and Police Commissions and the School Board in the Portsmouth City Council Chambers on Tuesday, October 3, 2023 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Please come to the forum with your questions or watch from home on Channel 22 of the City's YouTube Channel.

The municipal election in Portsmouth will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023.

Beth S. Margeson, on behalf of the Citizens for Voter Education

Portsmouth

Some ideas for the Kittery Climate Adaptation Committee

Oct. 1 − To the Editor:

Kittery Climate Adaptation Committee keeps asking us for ideas to stop climate change. I have repeatedly offered suggestions for local climate change control, to no avail. On my very application to be a member, I stated my accomplishments locally and internationally, with no reply received.

In the 1980's, USA Today mentioned my attempts to stop a “Gasohol Plant” planned for where Market Basket and Social Security offices in Portsmouth, NH are now. I helped halt it by taking it to court, speaking of “solar power” instead of gas & oil or using food to make fuel. In my resume to KCAC I also revealed I helped instigate Carey Turtle preservation on a section of Mexico's Pacific Coast and other environmental light pollution actions there and elsewhere. As with other Kittery Boards I've applied to, I never get the courtesy of a reply, except for one - a denial. I am forever perplexed, being a caring native of this seacoast area for generations, a life long vegan, artist, and environmentalist.

So, I write now in hopes Kittery Climate Adaptation Committee will actually read my “ideas” and use their funds and grants to:

Start with the sun. Encourage and use solar, wind, thermal, passive architecture locally. Look up in the sky and see the modern warfare going on with chemicals strewn to change the weather here and everywhere dangerously backfiring and causing floods and drought with their “ways to block sunrays” resulting in erratic weather.

Stop allowing grants for “farming” to be used here to raise & slaughter animals when the grants' intent is for “plant based” agricultural foods for human beings. Reach out to Kittery Community / Recreation Center to accommodate all citizens with plant based vegan food choices and stop discriminating against youth and adults who are vegan. Generations of residents who don't eat meat or animal body products could never go and enjoy any activity at Kittery's recreation center events as only animal body products are offered free or for sale, leaving out the majority of health seeking, compassionate residents. Carbon emissions from using dead animals as food adversely affect climate.

I once asked KCAC members what they are doing; and they said something about the Navy Yard. There is more to Kittery than the Navy Yard. It's time to include other concerns of locals who live here. We can't breathe with traffic to and from the Navy Yard and it's polluting.

Ban balloons at celebrations from being sent into the sky because balloon parts end up strangling birds and causing pollution wherever they land. Stop cutting and killing York County's old growth trees and even new flourishing trees. Trees clean the air, and we need to preserve trees and doctor them, not cut them down ! Stop killing - hunting our wildlife and instead allow balance of nature, without violence towards any creature, including the human sort.

Suzy Courage Johnson Kittery Maine

Newspapers becoming numbed to a threat to democracy

Sept. 29 − To the Editor:

Yesterday President Biden gave his fourth speech on democratic values in honor of his friend and colleague, the late Senator John McCain. It was a powerful warning that MAGA backers, advocating unlimited presidential powers, pose a threat to our institutions and constitutional freedoms. There is not one article in today's Portsmouth Herald referencing this event. Yet we see one-half page devoted to the shouting match between Republican candidates at the second “debate.” I think many readers understand why President Biden has given four speeches on the issue of preserving our Constitution, especially those who have studied the numbing of the Germans during the early days of Nazi infiltration. If we can't rely on our newspapers to report on major presidential messages, at least we have YouTube. I encourage all interested to listen to the President's speech.

Angela Bell Newmarket