By GLYNIS HART
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NEWPORT – Fresh from the meeting of Northeast Governors and Eastern Canada Premiers at Stowe, Vermont, Governor Chris Sununu spent Tuesday afternoon strolling around Newport, visiting various businesses, and listening to voters and public officials tell where his government should put its attention.
Hunter Riesberg, Newport town manager, declared it “Governor’s Day,” and said the town selectboard is hoping Sununu will repeat his visit annually.
“I’m not going to do any great speeches,” said Sununu. “I’m here to ask you what you’re thinking.” Steve Smith of the Newport Chamber of Commerce led the way. After walking through several businesses, making a stop at the town hall, and sussing out the downtown, the governor and his entourage sat down in the Sugar River Bank community room for an open discussion.
Superintendent of Newport schools Cindy Gallagher said, “Clearly school funding is one of our needs. I’d like you to be aware of the commitment of our community to our School-to-Work initiative.”
Gallagher emphasized that Sullivan County is very different from the more populous and prosperous counties to the east.
“We need to be able to sustain the cottage industries, and the manufacturing and the high-tech advanced manufacturing,” said Gallagher. “We need to be able to keep our workforce here.”
Sununu said he’s a strong supporter of career and technology education, and he’s trying to push it to earlier grades. “Right now most CTEs you can take those classes as a junior or a senior. Why? Why not as a freshman? Why not computer coding in the sixth grade? For me that’s school choice. School choice is not public versus private, vouchers versus not — that’s like 1985. School choice is, as an individual, what choices does your child have in whatever education setting.
Pointing out that he’s the first New Hampshire governor in 25 years to have attended public schools, Sununu said the state has the top-ranked schools in the country. “I get it,” he said.
He mentioned the governor’s scholarship, which he created, and said the whole $5 million doesn’t need to go to the university system. “The money needs to go to the individual not the institution.”
Gallagher and others at the table said enrollment for the Career and Tech centers hits a roadblock with state and federal rules that limit the number of students who can enroll from each town. “There’s a volume piece that prevents us sending kids back and forth. And, an eighth grader can’t visit all the CTE centers because there’s no transportation or tuition reimbursement.”
Another roadblock to economic development is the lack of public transportation in Sullivan County. One man said, “We need transportation in a rural area to get these students to the businesses and back. That’s one piece that’s missing.”
Sununu said he is battling with the legislature over spending federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) funds on a planned Amtrak project, linking Manchester and Boston. In March, representatives approved an amendment to the state’s 10-year transportation plan, shunting $4 million in federal money toward designing a rail corridor that could connect Concord, Manchester and Nashua to Massachusetts. “It would drastically harm 80 percent of the state,” he said. “It would pull all the funding out of these communities, just to subsidize one system that sends people out of the state.”
The governor said New Hampshire funds all of its rural bus systems through CMAQ. “We’ve got good bus systems here; we need to find a way to expand them not contract them.”
After the discussion, the governor visited the Ruger gun manufactory.
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