Cemetery Trustees meeting

The Cemetery Trustees will meet at the Town House on Tuesday, April 20,, 2021, 6:00-7:00 p.m.

Agenda items include discussion of the budget and capital fund, stone repair, tree removal, and painting of signposts. 

The public is welcome. 

Official Notice from the Supervisors of the Checklist

New Hampshire law requires that the Supervisors of the Checklist verify the checklist every ten years. Any person on the checklist who has not voted in the past four years must re-register to remain on the checklist. 

The Supervisors are sending notice letters to these voters at the address the voter provided when registering.

 

The Supervisors of the Checklist for the Town of Orange will hold a session for re-registering voters who have not voted since April 1, 2017, accepting applications for new voter registration, accepting requests for the correction of the checklist, and or change of political party affiliation on:

 

Date: Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Time: 6:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Location: Orange Town House

Cardigan Mountain Road

Orange, New Hampshire

      

Voters may check party affiliation on-line:

https://app.sos.nh.gov/Public/PollingPlaceSearch.aspx

Results from Town Meeting and Election

ARTICLE 1: To elect the following town officers for the following terms: 1 Selectperson 3-year term, 1 Town Clerk 1-year term, 1 Treasurer 1-year term, 1 Tax Collector 1-year term, 1 Deeding Agent 1-year term, 1 Road Agent 1-year term, 1 Budget Committee 3-year term, 1 Cemetery Trustee 3-year term, 1 Trustee of Trust Funds 3-year term, 2 Planning Board Members 3-year terms, and any other officers as required by law.

Officers elected:
Selectman (3 Years): Tamara Fairbank
Town Clerk (1 Year): Michelle Goffreda
Treasurer (1 Year): Trish Weekes
Tax Collector (1 Year): Sharon Proulx
Deeding Agent (1 Year): Sharon Proulx
Road Agent (1 Year): Scott Sanborn
Budget Committee (3 Years): Louis Shelzi
Trustee Of Trust Funds (3 Years): Karen McFarlane
Planning Board (3 Years): Tessa Michetti and Karen McFarlane
Planning Board (1 Year): Bruce Ells
Cemetery Trustee (3 Years): Gulley Dunlap

 

ARTICLE 2: To see if the Town will authorize the Tax Collector to accept the prepayment of taxes pursuant to RSA 80:52-a. Taxpayers shall be allowed to prepay taxes no more than two years in advance of the due date of the taxes. No interest shall accrue to the taxpayer on any prepayment, nor shall any interest be paid to the taxpayer on any prepayment which is later subject to rebate or refund.

Article 2 passed.

 

ARTICLE 3: To see if the Town will authorize the Moderator to appoint a committee of five Orange residents, two of whom may be officers or employees of the town (excluding members of the Select Board, Tax Collector, Treasurer, Town Clerk, and Select Board Secretary), to study the salaries of the Town officers and employees and report their findings and recommendations in the next annual Town Report, including a warrant article that they deem appropriate.

Article 3 passed.

ARTICLE 4: To see if the Town will vote to raise and appropriate eight thousand dollars ($8,000.00) to be paid into the Highway Equipment Capital Reserve Fund.

Article 4 passed.

 

ARTICLE 5: To see if the Town will vote to raise and appropriate five thousand dollars ($5,000.00) to be paid into the Town House Capital Reserve Fund.

Article 5 passed.

 

ARTICLE 6: To see if the Town will vote to raise and appropriate four thousand dollars ($4,000.00) to be paid into the Revaluation Capital Reserve Fund for the purpose of revaluation of real estate. Revaluations of all real estate are required by law every five years.

Article 6 passed.

 

ARTICLE 7: To see if the Town will vote to raise and appropriate one thousand dollars ($1,000.00) to be paid into the Town Road Improvement and Repair Capital Reserve Fund.

Article 7 passed.

 

ARTICLE 8: To see if the Town will vote to raise and appropriate the Budget Committee’s recommended sum of $241,132.00, not including appropriations by special warrant articles and other appropriations voted separately, for the ensuing year for the Town’s general operations.

Article 8 passed.

 

 

Ad hoc broadband committee will meet tomorrow and Monday at 6:30pm

The broadband news is starting to heat up, with several possibilities for greatly increased access—and speed—promised over the next couple years. Donald McFarlane, who serves on the ad hoc committee with fellow Orange tech wizards, is setting up two sessions on Google Meet to consider the Town’s options.

Note that there are separate links to each meeting.

The following phone number will be monitored throughout the meeting by someone who can assist with and alert the committee to any technical issues - (917)334-9088

Agenda:

1. review information received to date to inform a status report for town meeting

2. open discussion

3. survey the sense of the committee regarding specific options and recommendations

Saturday's session:

Meeting ID

meet.google.com/nbm-oavw-azn

Phone Numbers

(‪US‬)‪+1 617-675-4444‬

PIN: ‪436 040 205 2315#‬

More phone numbers

Monday's session:

Meeting ID

meet.google.com/cnb-fidd-xap

Phone Numbers

(‪US‬)‪+1 617-675-4444‬

PIN: ‪802 068 302 3513#‬

More phone numbers

Public Notice

The Supervisors of the Checklist will be meeting on Saturday, 2/27/2021 from 10:00 - 10:30 AM at the Orange Town House to register new voters and make corrections to the checklist.

Correction: Voting day hours

A number of sharp-eyed Orangeites pointed out that the times were reversed in the earlier post about voting.

Voting day, March 9, has the usual schedule: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Want to Be Contacted for Eventual Broadband?

Alasdair Dunlap-Smith, who serves on Orange’s ad hoc broadband committee, sent a couple links to the New Hampshire Electric Co-op’s site. This one lets you sign up to be contacted when NHEC starts offering broadband to our town.

According to the NHEC site, the current prices in the co-op’s pilot project area are $89.95 for one gigabyte per section, upload and download speeds; and $49.95 for 25 megabytes per second, upload and download. (Those prices are monthly, presumably.)

The slower, cheaper plan’s download speed is comparable to the speed I’m getting with DSL on Cardigan Mountain Road. NHEC’s upload speed would be much faster. Ours is just 1 mbps with DSL, 25 times slower.

—Jay

Town Meeting Will Be Held at the High School

Our great Selectboard Secretary sent these notes along with the minutes of the board’s joint meeting with the Budget Committee. (As always, you can view meeting minutes in this site’s Documents section.

Article One on the warrant is the election of officers. Voting for officers will be done at the Orange Town House on Tuesday, March 9, 2021, 11a.m. to 7p.m., with the same COVID-19 procedures as the 2020 voting days.

“Traditional Town Meeting,” the following day, Wednesday the 10th at 7 p.m., is the gathering of townspeople to deliberate and vote on the rest of the warrant articles. This cannot be done at the Orange Town House—its size simply will not accommodate the safety requirements that are necessary during this time. Town meeting on the 10th will be held at the Mascoma Valley Regional High School auditorium. By statute, if a town meeting is held out of town, the town must provide transportation, for those who request it, from the traditional place of voting [Orange Town House] to and from the place of voting [high school]. We are presently looking into options. When you receive your town report by mail in February, all plans will be in place and they will be included with your report.

Hopefully next year I will be emailing you instead with the plans for our customary pot luck community supper that has always preceded town meeting. Until then, we shall remain resilient, hopeful, and vigilant!

Every five years, the town votes to have the Moderator appoint an ad hoc salary study committee. The committee consists of five Orange residents, two of whom may be officers or employees of the town (excluding members of the Select Board, Tax Collector, Treasurer, Town Clerk, and Select Board Secretary), to study the salaries of the Town officers and employees and report their findings and recommendations in the next annual Town Report, including a warrant article that they deem appropriate. Moderator Dan Hazelton asks that you contact him if you have an interest in being on the committee. Dan can be emailed at dmhazelton@hotmail.com.

 Another ad hoc committee this year will be the updating of the Orange Hazard Mitigation Plan; it is funded by a matching grant, but, as in  the past, the “in kind” volunteer hours that townspeople and officers put in have always paid our half—which results in no town money needing to be raised to pay for the update. Please consider volunteering. Contact the Select Board for more information. From what I understand at this time, the meetings will be held at the Town House with the option to participate with Zoom. Details to follow.

Town Office Open for the 2021 Election

Sandi sent us this list of open offices and their terms. The filing period starts tomorrow, January 20, and continues through 5pm Friday, January 29. Candidates must file a Declaration of Candidacy with the Town Clerk, Michelle Goffreda, to get their names on the ballot. She holds regular office hours on Wednesdays from 3:30 to 5:30. In addition, she’ll be at the Town House on Friday, January 29, from 3 to 5.

Voting takes place on March 9, with Town Meeting the next day. As always, you can find dates on the calendar.

Select Board 3 years

Town Clerk 1 year

Treasurer 1 year

Tax Collector 1 year

Deeding Agent 1 year

Road Agent 1 year

Budget Committee 3 year

Cemetery Trustee 3 years

Trustees of the Trust Funds 3 years

TWO Planning Board Members 3 years each term


High-Speed Internet Is Coming Soon!

The NH Electric Coop plans to bring blazing-fast internet to Orange. This is a very big deal, allowing our town to remain rural and beautiful in the years to come, while increasing residents’ ability to earn a living by telecommuting. Not to mention downloading a movie in seconds!

Alasdair Dunlap-Smith, who serves on Orange’s ad hoc committee on the internet, explains the news. (I inserted a couple of notes in italics.) -Jay


The New Hampshire Electric Co-op (NHEC) has formed a new subsidiary to deliver high-speed fiber-optic internet service to towns like ours. NHEC already delivers electricity to a majority of Orange residents. This new internet service will be available not only to those customers but to most, or all, of the rest of us as well. 

NHEC expects to offer download and upload speeds up to one gigabit per second. (That’s a download speed about 40 times faster than what most of us are getting.)

NHEC has already completed gigabit fiber-optic internet service to four towns in New Hampshire with CARES Act funding. The cooperative will not ask the Town of Orange to contribute funds; nor will our electricity bills be increased to pay for the project.

While the buildout of internet service to all NHEC towns could take several years to complete, priority will go to towns such as Orange that are included in the federal grant. NHEC expects to have a public schedule available in the coming months. For updates, check the NHEC website. (We’ll post the news on the town website as soon as we get it. If you’re a subscriber to this site, you’ll be getting an email.)

Absentee Ballots Processing

TOWN OF ORANGE, N.H.  PUBLIC NOTICE

PARTIAL PROCESSING OF ABSENTEE BALLOTS

N.H ELECTION LAWS  2020, CHAPTER 14

Partial processing of absentee ballots will take place at the Orange Town House on Thursday, October 29, beginning at 7:00 p.m. until completed.

The Town Moderator, Clerk, and Supervisors of the checklist will be present.

Daniel Hazelton, Moderator

Michelle Goffreda, Town Clerk

Voting in Orange

A Canaan resident reported on Saturday that a man driving a New York registered car came to the door of her home and claimed that the names of her family had been removed from the checklist; they could not vote this year, the man reportedly said.

If that happens to you, please report it immediately to the Orange Town Clerk. Only the Supervisors of the Checklist can remove a voter’s name.

Speaking of which, you have until Monday to ask for any changes to the Checklist. Here’s the official notice:

The Supervisors of the Checklist will be in session Monday, October 26, 2020, 6:00 PM - 6:30 PM at the Town House. No additions or corrections to the checklist shall be made after this session until election day on November 3rd.

If you already voted by absentee ballot—or plan to in the next few days—you can track it through this official New Hampshire website. If you haven’t requested an absentee ballot yet, you’d better hurry. (You’ll find the absentee ballot request form here.) While the state will accept requests until Monday, November 2, you obviously won’t get your ballot in time to vote. Once you do receive your ballot, you can put it in the mail and hope it gets in by 5:00 p.m. November 2. A safer bet: take it to the Town House during Town Clerk hours. (See the calendar.)

Vote YES on the NHEC ballot

If you get your electricity from the New Hampshire Electric Co-op, check your mailbox for a member ballot. It asks you to vote on a bylaw amendment that will allow the co-op to provide affordable high-speech internet access to towns such as Orange.

Several internet-savvy folk in our down have formed an ad-hoc committee on internet infrastructure. The committee recommends voting YES on the amendment. The Orange Selectboard also unanimously decided to vote YES on the ballot the Town received.

Primary Election Results

You’ll find them here. Amy Tirpaeck notes that the 2 Republican write-in votes for Sheriff were sent to the State as a part of Orange’s results. While they’re not included in the sheet, those two votes definitely were counted and reported.

Thanks to all the volunteers and officials who made this election come off without a hitch.

Dan Hazelton's note for Orange absentee voters

Dan, who’s Orange’s town moderator, notes that you have the option of turning in your absentee ballot on Election Day. Just make sure you drop it off by 5 pm. “Otherwise,” he says, “the voter will need to come in and vote in person.”

Absentee Ballot? Confused Voter? New Voter? Here's What You Need.

Thinking of voting absentee by mail? The U.S. Postal Service has warned New Hampshire (among 46 other states) that the state’s recommendation to mail ballots 7 days in advance may not be early enough to make it to the Town Clerk. Mail in that ballot at least 15 days in advance, says USPS. For the general election on November 2, that means getting your ballot in the mail by October 19.

Which also means acting early to request a ballot. You find the request form on the Forms page of this site, Orangenh.US.

After filling out your form, you can skip the mail and drop the ballot off on Election Day. Town Moderator Dan Hazelton recommends absentee ballots—that way you won’t even have to go inside—and Town officials are working to make the process as safe and easy as possible.

Confused about state voting regulations? Here’s a one-pager.

Finally, the Supervisors of the Checklist will be in session at the Town House to register new voters from 6:00 to 6:30pm on Monday, August 31, 2020. This is the last date/time to register to vote prior to the New Hampshire State primary election on Tuesday, September 8. No change of party affiliation can be accepted at this meeting.