by Ed Naile
Last night I went to the Weare deliberative session at the request of Representative Gary Hopper to help explain the Petitioned Warrant article his wife submitted to the Selectmen for placement in the Warrant for the annual town meeting. I would be allowed to speak by a vote of the body, about 75 of 8,400 residents.
The petition was drafted with CNHT help to adopt the provisions of RSA 41:47 to allow the ELECTION of the police chief in Weare
Due to a slight shuffle of paperwork, the petition as accompanied by the statute but was not printed in the proposed Warrant. Our strategy was to have the lead petitioner amend the Petitioned Warrant article to add at the end “under the provisions of RSA 41:74” then the article would be “as prescribed by law”. This was voted through overwhelmingly. Rep. Kurk was the Moderator and explained the process to the audience well and fairly.
As expected, a person jumped up and claimed the article was stupid and proposed an amendment to NOT adopt the Petitioned Warrant article, he was visibly angry (This helped us as did an hour of the current chief Miles Rigney not answering a single question directed at him. Rather he answered in platitudes of how dangerous the job is and so forth.)
I got a chance to speak thanks to a vote of those attending since I am not a resident and told the crowd this was about the right to petition being subverted by a very small minority and to think how they would feel if they themselves ever wanted to petition the annual meeting and had the meaning reversed by a small group BEFORE it was voted on by the town. The voice vote was overwhelming against the amendment to add NOT to the petition to vote to elect the police chief. A quick thinking citizen asked for a secret ballot to vote on the petition and it passed!
Why was this so important? Because during the “Debate” on the issue Chief Rigney went before the microphone and announced while holding over his head a stack of background police searches into the 25 people who signed the petition! He also got into a heated debate with the Moderator who ruled him out of order. The chief quickly responded that the Moderator, State Representative Neil Kurk was out of order and accused him of being one of the people involved in drafting the petition. Moderator Kurk said he works on many of the petitions and gives advice which is part of his job. This killed Rigney’s credibility. He spent much of the rest of the meeting trying to stare me down. (This was all on cable access TV)
At the end of the meeting I presented Chief Rigney with a Right to Know request witnessed by Representative Hopper asking for the copies of the investigations he had done on citizens signing a petition. He told me I wouldn’t be seeing those.
We will see.
In the mean time, Weare has a tremendous liability in this kook they have for a chief, in my humble opinion.