I took my high school daughter to a public meeting tonight in Newington, NH to talk about the process by which the State's Site Evaluation Committee deliberates on new energy generation or transmission projects. Her presence was celebrated by the facilitators from Raab Associates because it was the first time anyone under 20 had appeared at these public forums. Not only is she under 20, she is under the voting age of 18, but they gave her one of the little submit-your-opinion voting gadgets anyway, and she followed along.
Why did she consent to attend, you might ask? Because she is doing a paper on the Northern Pass project for her high school journalism class, and we thought it might be a good venue for her to find people interested in the project and willing to talk about it. We were right.
I love it that in New Hampshire you can run into the chair of the NH House Energy Committee at a public meeting and greet him by his first name and then get a hug. And that the guy opposed to Northern Pass from the Forest Society, having never met me or my daughter, was more than happy to give her 10 minutes of his time, and then go out of his way to introduce her to the guy from the electrical workers union who is in support of the project to make sure she got both sides of the story. There were plenty of other professionals there as well, including the aforementioned chair of the House Energy Committee, who were generous with their time, and handed out their cards, or provided their private cell phone numbers so that she could follow up with them later, because the meeting was starting and they'd run out of time to talk to her.
That my kid was also a good enough sport to sit through what was, even to an energy geek like me, a pretty dry meeting was also gratifying. Yes, we left at the break at 7:30 and didn't stay until the bitter 9:30 end, and she did admit on the walk to the car in the sleety rain we get around here in the middle of December that her mind had begun to wander onto other things. But she felt good about all the interviews she got, and learned by seeing democracy in action. New Hampshire, for whatever you might say in criticism, is very accepting of citizen participation. Perhaps it's because we hardly spend any money on government so people have to practically and actually volunteer to run the place, or perhaps it's because we haven't lost the sense that our participation actually can and does make a difference. That's the spirit that leads locals to mow the lawn at the highway rest stop when budget cuts keep it from getting done by state workers, and inspires volunteers to supplement the meager staffing at the state owned Urban Forestry Center in Portsmouth by cutting and splitting firewood and keeping up the gardens.
So, if you live here, or anywhere for that matter, don't think that you can leave all our problems to people who are paid to take care of them, to paraphrase a Dave Matthews song; get involved. It wouldn't hurt you to go check out what your local town is doing, or your state legislature, or state's Site Evaluation Committee. You are likely to learn something, meet someone, and find you have an opinion you'd like to share. And really, what are you getting out of Facebook these days, anyway?
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