Is Third Time The Charm For Concord City Council Candidate Cook?

CONCORD, NH — Maple Street resident John Cook has been through this process before. Twice during the last eight years, he has run for mayor of the city of Concord. The two races were mostly on a lark — no one else was running so, why not?

Sitting outside of his home, he laments that the issues of his past races were pretty much the same as today — protecting property taxpayers, creating better collaboration between residents and the council, and doing something about those “chaoses,” the nickname he created for the parking meter kiosks downtown.

This run, for Ward 4 city council though, is more serious. Cook has signs, he has been door-knocking and meeting with neighbors, and has a volunteer campaign manager helping him. He’s even received the endorsement of former Ward 4 city councilor, noted Concord CPA Robert Washburn.

“I’m old,” Cook said. “I can’t rake roofs anymore. I can’t climb 40-foot ladders. I can’t put them up or take them down anymore. I can’t do much of nothing … so I might as well get into politics.”

At 74, Cook is still spry. He rattles off a litany of things that are wrong with the city that could be fixed – from the budget process to the control the Legislature has over communities and the inability to broaden opportunities for young people while protecting retirees. Retirees, he noted, were getting hammered by tax increases and being forced to sell their homes since they can’t live on Social Security while paying the city’s high property taxes. Young people, in entry level jobs, can’t afford the rents because the property taxes are too high, he added.

And then, there are all the people who come into the city for work and use the services but don’t pay for them, he stated. They take their salaries and go home, Cook quipped, adding that they were creating wear and tear on the capital city. Cook said it was really noticeable in the winter, when the roads to state office buildings and businesses seemed to be plowed first before neighborhoods. And even then, he added, it shouldn’t really be called plowing.

“It’s not really snow plowing,” he said of winter cleanup. “It’s snow relocation … into my driveway and my neighbor’s driveway …”

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Cook said, if elected, he would probably only serve the remaining six months of the term. But, even in that short amount of time, he would have contributed to the betterment of the city not unlike his restoration of historic houses in the North End – one won him a Heritage Concord Award. A Vietnam veteran, Cook has more than five decades of experience in budget management, finance, auditing, and accounting, including work with the state at the Department of Welfare, Community Development Services, and Mental Health and Developmental Services. He’s also served on the Governor’s Commission on Crime and Delinquency and N.H. Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

Many politicians and lobbyists, he said, were like steamrollers — mowing over regular people in the city. He is wondering about the assessment process and whether it was fair to residents when compared to commercial and industrial property. The middle class, he said, had been moving out. Traffic and road repair should be a priority, Cook noted, while also bringing cost controls to the Beaver Meadow Golf Course, which is losing a lot of money. He added that having a strong mayor political system instead of a strong city manager would also bring more accountability to the public.

At the same time, solutions, Cook said, were not simple, due to the large number of tax-exempt properties forcing more costs onto other property taxpayers. Approving tax breaks like the 79E provisions given to developers was a mistake, he said.

The city is “complex … everything is so complex. And sometimes, fixing things makes it worse,” he said. One example is the parking meters which Cook has been complaining about for eight years. The kiosks were supposed to fix the revenue collection problems when compared to the old Park-O-Meter machines but, he said, weren’t.

“They are still a mess … even worse now,” he said. “I see them constantly fixing them.”

Ward 4 residents go to the polls from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 4, 2019, at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Concord on Bradley Street.