Category: Granite Views

Most folks probably scanned past the news item that recently reported the imminent closure of the 450-year-old “Lamb and Flag” pub in Oxford, England. This venerable gathering place on St. Giles Street has served clients local and visiting, famous and ordinary, and even the likes of me. The pub not only held fond memories for me, it also indirectly affected the upbringing of my children.
In the early ’70s, while doing research for my doctoral dissertation in the Bodleian Library nearby, I would repair to the Lamb and Flag at the end of the day for well-earned refreshment. My favorite seat in the pub — if it were available — was at an ancient and worn oak round table situated in a corner and flanked by two tall bookcases.
On my first visit to the pub, that space caught my eye because it was occupied that afternoon by an Oxford don and three of his students. I sat close enough to them to engage in my favorite pastime, namely eavesdropping. They were discussing a poem and each had their book open in front of them along with a pint of bitter. Behind them, the two tall bookcases were filled with Oxford University Press reference books. From time to time, I noticed, one of the group would turn around, take down a book, and look up a reference. I was fascinated by the ritual, not to mention the novelty that a pub would keep so many shelves of reference books. Thereafter, I sat at that table every time I could and I too would turn and look something up from one of the books.
Twenty-five years later, my family and I moved into a house in southern Oregon. A feature of the house that attracted me immediately was a little corner dining nook that had two tall bookshelves behind it. Ah ha! I decided to fill it with all of my reference books, from the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, Dictionary of Ancient History and Fowler’s Modern English Usage, to The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang. There were tomes of history, books on world religions, collections of poetry and language dictionaries.
Before long, our family had its own ritual. We had many of our meals together at that round table in the nook. Whenever a question of fact or definition arose, someone would say, “Let’s look it up” and would reach around to find the appropriate reference work. Tedious? Yes, I am sure our son and daughter felt that way many times. Nevertheless, we sorted out a number of homework assignments, not to mention settled disputes.
So, yes. I shall miss the Lamb and Flag, almost as much as I miss those family gatherings around our own reference table. With Google readily available now, we don’t need those any more. Do we?

In 1999 the Supreme Court declared New Hampshire’s system of taxation “unconstitutional” based on the Claremont education funding decision. The Supreme Court forced the legislature to make a hard choice. The Claremont decision was based on Part 2 Article 5 of our Constitution, which says taxes “must be proportional.” Like any other state tax, like the Tobacco Tax, Gas Tax, Rooms and Meals, one rate statewide. It became clear that the state’s education regulations were mandates and therefore needed to be funded with a uniform tax rate.

Studies were done to determine the cost of the education regulations. Most every analysis showed that the so-called “property rich” towns, largely on the seacoast, resort lakes, or ski mountains, had plenty of valuable property and could easily raise money while many communities, including Manchester, Londonderry and Derry, struggled. Tax concepts were brought forward including an income tax, sales tax and statewide property tax. The state property tax emerged.

Similar to how we would think of it today, the statewide property tax was born in 1919 at a tax rate of $3.50 per $1,000 of value. So studies were done to see what would happen if a state property tax were to be re-enacted. Spreadsheets showed that if every community were to pay the same rate to cover the cost of the education regulations, the result would be that 75 to 80 percent of the state’s population would see a reduction in property taxes while the remaining percentage (20 to 25 percent), those property-richer communities, would see a tax increase. Ironically, even if this were enacted, the property-richer communities would still have the lowest property tax rates in the state.

While the property-poorer communities would run bake sales to pay for their attorneys, the property-richer communities simply hired lawyers to make the case that they would be unfairly treated by a uniform statewide property tax. They called themselves “donor towns.”

But which are the real donor towns? If the state constitution says that everybody needs to pay the same rate tax rate, but somehow the property-rich towns’ lawyers have tricked lawmakers into ensuring that they don’t actually have to pay the tax, thus, forcing monies to be raised from other sources, especially from property-poorer towns, is that fair? In reality, the property-poorer towns are contributing higher property taxes in order to ensure that the property-richer towns don’t have to pay the uniform rate. So who’s donating to whom?

Fred Bramante is a past chairman and memtber of the New Hampshire State Board of Education. He speaks and consults on education redesign to regional, state and national organizations.

I’ve been hearing and thinking about annual cycles lately including Black History Month, the Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras, and the last day we worked in person — or the day our lives changed dramatically — due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

At our house, this one-year mark coincides with my 89-year-old mother getting her second Covid vaccine and that’s a really big deal for us. For the last year, we have been working so hard to keep her safe in the midst of this pandemic. Her health has been our primary motivator to keep wearing masks and physically distance when our longing for social connection was pulling us to congregate with friends – she is the reason we’ve been so cautious. We’re really grateful that she was able to get the vaccine.

Many people who are vulnerable and at risk are waiting eagerly for their turn; others are more hesitant for a variety of reasons. We know that this virus has disproportionately affected some populations at higher rates because of the unique combination of factors that make certain groups more vulnerable — being older, having multiple chronic medical conditions, or being a member of certain racial/ethnic groups. These differences, known as health disparities, arise not because of any biological differences between groups as we are all part of the same human family. Rather, it is for reasons such as being more likely to be employed in essential work settings and thus at greater risk of being exposed to the virus, and more likely to be uninsured and have less access to health care with more chronic medical conditions. These factors are called the social determinants of health, where longstanding underlying inequities have been revealed by the pandemic. That is why some of us say that everything contributes to health, and health contributes to everything — because good health is requisite for our ability to be successful in school, to be productive workers, to enjoy time with our families, and to live long, fulfilling lives.

As a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel begins to shine with increasing numbers of people vaccinated, and hospitalizations and deaths finally beginning to decline, we can dare to look forward to resuming the in-person celebrations we had to cancel or put off. And I imagine that even the mundane activities of our daily lives will seem celebratory — going to work and chatting around the water-cooler, convening in person, exchanging handshakes and hugs.

The infectious nature of this pandemic has illuminated how we are all connected, that any one of us is only as healthy as others in our community, that we are all in this together — and that at heart, we all want the same thing.

Dr. Trinidad Tellez is a family physician and health equity strategist, community advocate, and consultant.

We’re now deep into the pandemic hoping against hope that 2021 will be the year that we’ll get to see friends, family and some of our favorite places. It’s too early to say how much will return to normal or even what we’ll consider normal then, but there is hope. Hope that we’ll get back to some of those routines and hope that we’ll discover new ones. Hope for one another.
This is Hippo’s 20th Best Of and like many of you we’ve had to make some adjustments to accommodate this pandemic. We’ve changed some of the questions and pared down some categories to better reflect the current situation and past year. The goal, as always, is really to get the pulse of our readers about what they value and like about their community. As big box stores, big tech and big finance occupy more of our landscape it’s all the more important to share what you think makes your community special and different from another place. It’s those great hiking trails, those places to take the kids sledding, the places to grab a scoop on a lazy Sunday or the person who kicks your butt into shape. It’s the coffee shop with art for sale on the walls and it’s the juicy burger that you probably didn’t need. It’s that slice of pizza that you tell people from out of town about.
Those are the things we want to know about in our annual Best Of and it’s those things that we enjoy now or look forward to enjoying when we can. You can vote in this year’s best of at hippopress.com. Voting ends Feb. 28.

Some Republicans in the New Hampshire House are pushing legislation that could give about $4,100 to anyone sending their kids to a private school or home schooling them. As currently envisioned, it should not pass.

Arguments for direct grants to parents, like the ones this bill would set up, are that families should have the freedom to find a private school or home-school option if their public school is failing their children. It’s a powerful argument. It is unfair that children can be deprived of a good or adequate education by being stuck in a failing school.

But this legislation does not focus on the needs of the low-income families who have the least financial ability to leave poorly performing schools. Let’s be blunt here. This is largely a handout to parents who can already afford to send their children to a private school. If this legislation really wanted to address educational freedom then it would specifically target children in underperforming schools whose parents don’t earn enough money to send them to a private school. This legislation as currently envisioned doesn’t offer enough to truly bring school choice to those families. The proposed $4,100 is probably not enough to completely cover the cost of a private school. (For example, the non-parish-sponsored tuition listed on the websites of Manchester area Catholic elementary schools seems to be over $5,000 annually and many nonreligious schools are much more.) And it’s highly unlikely that low-income parents would be able to afford to stay home and home-school their children. For the parents and students who need it most, the legislation is still likely to leave families paying some of the private education bill.

This legislation could be re-envisioned to target those in need by means testing and targeting districts that fail to meet agreed-upon standards. Kids going to those schools could be eligible for a grant covering the entire cost of tuition to private school, charter school or a different public school district if their parents met agreed-upon low-income guidelines.

Rather than $4,100 going to 16,000 private school students (or possibly more, if additional New Hampshire families jump on this universally available deal), New Hampshire could focus the aid on a few thousand families who really need help. An additional benefit would be continuing to provide aid to those schools in districts that aren’t meeting expected standards for their students.

If we are truly trying to give each child the best opportunity to succeed then let’s target our aid to those that need it most.

WMUR reported that on Jan. 22, nearly 150,000 people signed up within the first 10 hours of Phase 1b opening for a Covid-19 vaccine. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, by Jan. 27 this number had increased to 200,000 with another 50,000 signed up by their health care provider. This phase includes anybody 65+ years of age, as well as those with certain health conditions, and others who qualify because of where they work. All totaled, there are about 300,000 in this group. That is an impressive response from our New Hampshire residents, and it gives me hope that the end is on the horizon for a pandemic that has taken so much.
While we’re off to an ambitious start, I continue to hear concern and hesitation about taking the vaccine. Given how quickly both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines received emergency authorization, it is understandable. According to PBS NewsHour, the methodology that both of these vaccines utilize, however, messenger RNA (mRNA), is not new. mRNA has been studied for 50 to 60 years, not only for vaccines but also for cancer treatment. Scientists and researchers have been studying how to utilize mRNA with RSV, MERS and SARS viruses since the early 2000s. Both Moderna and Pfizer built on science that had been collected for many years, thus enabling Moderna to design its vaccine in just two days. After development, both vaccines were required to go through the normal three phases of trials encompassing nearly 70,000 people in the Phase 3 trials. Both companies reported efficacy of approximately 95 percent.
This vaccine is not mandatory. People are free to choose whether or not to receive the vaccine based on their personal circumstances and personal health situation. The decision should be made after fully understanding the facts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers factual information on the vaccines (cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html), and the State of New Hampshire’s Covid-19 website (nh.gov/covid19/) is very informative.
We must achieve herd immunity for the pandemic to end. The World Health Organization states that herd immunity should be achieved through vaccination rather than through exposure to the pathogen that causes the disease. To achieve herd immunity, most experts agree between 75 to 80 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated. Will New Hampshire be first in the nation again and lead the country out of this pandemic? It seems as though we are well on our way.