Hey ConcordTV, it's almost February

Tonight, I was watching a rebroadcast of the Concord School Board meeting on the ConcordTV [formerly CCTV] on Channel 6. They were talking budgets and tax rates and other interesting [to me] items ... BTW, did you know that a $1 added onto to Concord's tax rate would yield $3.8 million?
I was cooking while listening to the board talk and then the meeting ended. We then all sat down to eat and I started bringing items into the dining room when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a strange billboard: "Happy Birthday!" with a cartoon birthday cake. Below the cake it stated, "If it's November, it's your birthday!"
I did a double-take. Did I just see that? If it's November, it's your birthday! Sure enough, I did.
Note to ConcordTV: It's almost February.

You would think that with five - yes, five - employees, over there, four of them full-time with another part-timer paid for by the city, they would be able to change the billboards more than every few months. Although, I will admit that the School Board meeting looked a lot better than it used to look. So, someone over there is doing something right [They just are not changing the billboards].

Speaking of ConcordTV, earlier this week, I received an email with a slew of event notices in it. I scrolled down and saw this entry:

CONCORD TV OFFERS TRAINING SESSIONS, JAN-MARCH, including “Planning Your Program, Intro to Camera, Studio Production, Intro to Editing. The fees are low -- $10 – and you can trade volunteer hours in lieu of fees. Get the word out about your group.

I went to the channels' Web site and saw that they have a few classes set up. Specifically, eight between now and mid-March. So, they hired a full-time training person and the most the guy can put together is eight classes over more than two months? What is he doing the rest of the time? He clearly isn't changing the billboards which run over and over again. What can he be doing? Wow, that sure seems like a good use of our tax dollars, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Elsewhere on the site, you can find a producers' page - with nothing on it - and a forms and documents page, the place they used to post their tax filings and other things. Guess what? That's blank too.
There is a "Values" page, with all kinds of talk about the first amendment and democracy, inclusiveness and diversity, etc. ... that is, of course, unless you are interested in probing documents which show programming numbers or anything else, like some people have asked for. In the end, it all seems so weird. It wasn't that long ago, May 2005 actually, when CCTV Board member Anthony "Skip" Tenczar screamed, "We have nothing to hide!" But the board hid behind the city solicitor and former City Councilor Kathy Rogers to keep from releasing any of their records. Sigh.

It's St. Paul's School ...

According to the City Manager's office, the new siren this morning was St. Paul's School testing "a new emergency outdoor mass notification system." The system is set up to notify students and faculty about any emergencies. Hmm. I wonder. What is over there that would need emergency notification?

Emergency broadcast system test?

Does anyone know why there was this strange emergency broadcast system test alert this morning? It just went off about a minute ago. There were some very unclear words, then a siren which sounded like an air raid siren, then more garbled words on the announcement. How weird was that? Having just seen "Cloverfield," it kinda gave me the whigs for a split second. Did anyone else hear it? If the city did this, couldn't they have put a notice in the newspaper to let us know they were going to run it ... or that it even exists?!

Ani DiFranco cancelled

From the Capitol Center email list:

The Ani DiFranco January 21 concert at the Capitol Center for the Arts has been canceled by the promoter. We have been informed that Ani has laryngitis and cannot perform.

Ticket holders will be contacted shortly by the box office with information about a possible rescheduled date and about refunds.

For further information, you may call the box office Monday between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Cox receives a single vote

Chicago businessman John Cox received one vote in yesterday's Republican primary. You would think that a guy who held a few events in Concord and even appeared on local radio a few times, including an entire hour during which I interviewed him, would be able to muster up two votes. Nope, just one. I wonder who that person was and why they decided to vote for him.

Concord Election Returns

Democrats:
Barack Obama 4,367
Hillary Clinton 3,898
John Edwards 1,750
Bill Richardson 639
Dennis Kucinich 158
Joe Biden 17
Chris Dodd 7
Richard Edward Caligiuri 4
Kenneth A. Capalbo 4
O. Savior 4
Randy Crow 2
Henry Hewes 1
William C. Hughes 1
D.R. Hunter 1
Tom Laughlin 1

Republicans:
John McCain 2,684
Mitt Romney 1,577
Mike Huckabee 781
Ron Paul 601
Rudy Giuliani 565
Fred Thompson 49
Duncan Hunter 24
Alan Keyes 3
Vern Wuensche 2
Jack Shepard 2
Hugh Cort 1
John Cox 1
Daniel Gilbert 1
Albert Howard 1
Stephen W. Marchuk 1
Cornelius Edward O'Connor 1

More political news

If you looking for New Hampshire primary news, go to politizine.com.

A tale of one Concord voting precinct

I have not had a chance to really check out any of the voting precincts today, only my own. I think, after hearing some of the details, you'll get a sense of where things are headed tonight.

First, Obama kids were everywhere around Concord this morning and this afternoon, doing last minute canvassing. I probably saw about 10 of them in the morning and another six or seven in the afternoon, in two different parts of town. Hillary supporters were out on various street corners around Concord in the late morning, standing in pairs with signs. There were Ron Paul supporters on Main Street, like they have been for weeks.

At the actual polling precinct, there were two people standing out for Hillary, three for Edwards, three for McCain, five or six for Paul [most holding both Ron Paul and anti-war signs], and about eight or nine people for Obama. This is pretty good poll coverage for the middle of the afternoon. There were a few Romney and Rudy signs but no people there representing the campaign or other campaigns. A plane was flying around Concord in circles dragging a "Ron Paul Love Revolution" banner.

One odd thing I noticed was that there were no poll checkers in the Ward. Usually, even in small race, there is extensive polling beforehand and then, campaign workers at the polls, checking the votes coming in. There were no poll checkers inside. Every effective GOTV operation has these people inside the polls making sure their campaign's voters get out to vote. This was very, very odd.

There are about 3,300 registered voters in the Ward. As of 3 p.m., more than 1,300 had voted, or about 40 percent. That is pretty good with five hours left of voting. In the 2006 midterms, 55 percent voted and in the 2004 general, 74 percent voted. About 55 percent voted in the 2004 presidential primary [245 taking Republican ballots, 1,084 taking Democratic ballots]. John Kerry beat Howard Dean by about 110 votes that day. Interestingly, in just for years, more than 900 new voters have registered in the Ward.

The Ward is a liberal, affluent, lawyerly area, with new McMansions, patches of working class families, and wooded areas and farmland. The registration breakdown for the 2004 primary looked like this: 35 percent Democrat, 33 percent Republican, 31 percent undeclared. Some of the election returns looked like this: Democrat Paul Hodes beat incumbent GOP Rep. Charlie Bass here in 2006 by an almost two-to-one margin. Hodes beat Bass by a slim 200-plus votes in 2004, with John Lynch besting incumbent Gov. Craig Benson by more than three-to-one. Kerry bested President Bush by more than two-to-one.

So, it is easy to guess that tends to trend a bit more on the liberal side than conservative side and it would make sense that there would not be a ton of Republican sign holders at the precinct. McCain, as we all know, is drawing independent voters, which is why his campaign probably sent sign holders to the Ward.

Edwards: Enough is enough

Former Sen. John Edwards talks to voters in Concord on Saturday.

In front of hundreds of people at the Bektash Temple in Concord, John Edwards talks about why he wants to be president.

Richardson: Change AND experience

Gov. Bill Richardson rallies his supporters at NHTI on Saturday morning.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson made his case on why his previous experience can bring about the change the nation needs.