Vote Douglas C. Bates
for Nottingham Budget Committee

I am perhaps best known in Nottingham for creating www.NottinghamRoads.org, which detailed the history of how the Town Board of Selectmen got the Town sued due to their misclassification of several of the Town's roads, why the Town was likely to lose in court, and why voters should act to stop the Town's wasting of taxpayers' money on lawyers by overriding the Selectmen via the 2021 Warrant Articles #19 & #20. The voters passed these overwhelmingly.

Or, maybe I'm better known as the husband of Doctor Mary Braun, a physician at Lamprey Healthcare who has hundreds of Nottingham residents as patients, and who, early in the epidemic, posted many videos on the various Nottingham Facebook groups explaining the health issues and risks as was best understood at that time. Mary and I bought a home in Nottingham just after we got married in 2018. Previously I was living in Glen, NH and Mary in Exeter, NH. We house hunted for over a year, zeroing in on Nottingham as the best place for us to live. We made the right choice.

I am a retired executive. My last role was as Chief Marketing Officer for a publicly traded company and executive member of the company's board of directors, where I was involved in overseeing the company's budget. Hence, I have considerable experience in overseeing budgeting at the scale that Town operates at. I am also an author. My philosophy-as-self-help book, Pyrrho's Way, was published in 2020 and is currently one of my publisher's best selling books. I also publish articles on this topic on Medium.com. When I worked for a dot.com start-up in the late 1990s, I learned the basics of HTML so I could create simple websites like this one myself.

I am interested in serving on the Budget Committee so that I can help the Town avoid unnecessary divisiveness and legal fees from overzealous efforts to avoid expenses that the Town is legally obligated to incur, and which are traditionally popular with the Town's voters. As with any town, although we have voters at each end of the spectrum, some of whom are quite vocal in their preferences, Nottingham's voting record shows an electorate who have a well-founded skepticism for spending proposals but who are willing to vote for them when the benefits have been well-justified relative to the costs. I see the purpose of the Budget Committee as serving as investigatory specialists to help the voters analyze these issues.

To acquaint voters with the approach I would take to the Town's fiscal issues and to help voters make decisions on the Town's 2022 Warrant Articles, I present the following analyses on three of the Warrant Articles Nottingham voters will cast ballots for on Tuesday March 8.

Town Warrant Article #26

Summary: To prevent the Budget Committee from recommending a budget more than 4% higher than the prior year's budget.

See the analysis. This one best highlights the differences between me and my opponent. My opponent signed the petition to put this Warrant Article on the ballot. I recommend voting it down, as it would hinder the Budget Committee from performing its duties.

Town Warrant Article #21

Summary: The Town should accept as public roads the remaining 0.7 miles of Emergency Lanes.

See the analysis. This one is similar to the analyses I provided voters at www.NottinghamRoads.org for last year's similar Warrant Article. I recommend approving it.

School Warrant Article #1

Summary: The Town should spend $5,574,980 to expand the school building.

See the analysis. This Warrant Article is the most complex issue Nottingham's voters face this year. While I see good reasons to be opposed, the reasons to be in favor seem to me to outweigh them.