I’d like to introduce myself and tell you some of the reasons why I am running for State Representative in Carroll County District 7, which includes the towns of Ossipee, Tuftonboro and Wolfeboro.
I first came to NH in 1972 to attend college, and fell instantly in love with this state. I started out in the North Country, then moved to the Lakes Region when my daughter was born in 1991. I’ve lived in Ossipee and Wolfeboro since 1997.
I work as a musician and music educator. I also do computer tech work, and have done many other jobs along the way: Director of an Adult Education program, helping people get skills and credentials; legal assistant; IT coordinator; business consultant. I’ve sat on the Board of the Ossipee Main Street committee, and been part of the Wolfeboro Energy Committee. What holds it all together is my desire to help people create what they want, to work together, and to be part of a thriving community.
New Hampshire currently faces many challenges. Some of these are challenges that are regional or national or global in nature: climate change tops that list. New Hampshire by itself cannot reverse global climate change. But there are things we could do: we could set ourselves on a path to phase out fossil fuels, and turn our course towards renewable energy. And whether we do that or not, we will need to find ways to address the effects of climate change that are all around us: the bacteria in our lakes, the weakening and destruction of iconic tree species, the heat waves and drought and severe storms and erosion that are now our more frequent lot. We love our environment – but there’s no way to put a wall up to keep out invasive plants or insects, or the forest fire smoke we’ve been wrapped in much of this summer.
What to do when a challenge is larger than we can address by ourselves? Time to work together. In the case of climate change, working together with other states and with people here and everywhere who want to see a thriving planet and a clean energy future. We can do better.
Some of the challenges New Hampshire faces are at the state level. We have an education funding crisis. This one is of our own making, an adherence to a regressive tax structure that makes people with the lowest incomes pay the highest percentage of our income in state taxes. Every attempt so far to introduce any kind of tax fairness in New Hampshire has been squelched for decades by “The Pledge,” which brings with it the completely false idea that we don’t have a “broad-based tax.” That elephant now taking up much of your living room is the property tax, which keeps going up as lawmakers in Concord “cut taxes” and things still need to be paid for, so some of the expenses are pushed down to the towns. (Landlords pay property taxes too, so even if you are renting you are effectively paying property tax.) The legislature has been doing a fabulous job of kicking the can down the road for well over 30 years now, while many are hailing each kick with a cry of “No new taxes!”
There’s just one problem. Our kids are in that can. With the future of our state.
Yes, we’ve gotten away with being skinflint cheap for a long time. But we may not be able to have the future we would like to have for our state if we try to keep doing things this way. We’re in the endgame now, with a lot of people in the NH legislature who would like to solve this problem by dismantling the public schools. If you haven’t heard of the “Free State Project,” they’re here, and this is one of their goals.
I don’t pretend to have the answers to our tax dilemmas or our school funding crisis. What I do have is the willingness to sit down with others and work to figure out what to do, together, that doesn’t involve destroying our public schools.
Whatever it is that needs to be done, it needs to be done in such a way that living here and working here is affordable for working people. Speaking of work, have you noticed that the $7.25 minimum wage has lost a large part of its buying power? Every state around us has a higher minimum wage. Maine: $14.15. Vermont: $13.67. Massachusetts: $15. It’s time we raised ours. I know, “Americans For Prosperity” doesn’t want us to do that. But it’s the fair and reasonable thing to do, and it would help our local and state economy to do it.
Last but certainly not least, I am a lifelong advocate of equal rights for all. In this “Live Free or Die” state, we all must have the right to bodily autonomy. Reproductive choice is essential. The legislature is going the wrong direction when it seeks to curtail women’s rights, or to gin up outrage about transgender people or drag queens or any other “other.” My Republican opponent sought to outlaw “divisive concepts.” If there is a divisive concept out there, it is the radical right’s willingness to try to turn our citizens against one another, rather than finding ways to work together for the common good.
Diversity is our strength, not our weakness. But there’s a lot of money and power out there that would like to distract us from the actual challenges at hand and enlist us in culture wars instead, because to address our current challenges we will probably have to change some of the ways we’ve been doing things. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
What to do when a challenge is larger than we can address by ourselves? Time to work together. I hope you’ll join me, and I hope you’ll consider voting for me in the Democratic primary on September 10. You can find my campaign online at Beverly4nh.com.
Sincerely yours,
Beverly Woods