Jim Splaine City Council Candidacy Announcement

Below is Jim Splaine's candidacy announcement for City Council. If you are a candidate for Portsmouth municipal office, post your candidacy announcement as a blog post.

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I am an applicant for Portsmouth City Council.  If hired by the voters this November, I will work to generate positive conversation about the future of our community that includes as many people as want to be involved.  Each of us is on this planet for only a short time, and I'm asking for the chance to be able to help for the next two years.

BACKGROUND and EXPERIENCE
I undertake this new adventure with excitement.  Two thirds of my life ago, at age 22, I was elected to my first term on the Portsmouth City Council.  In the time since, I have been on the Council for 12 years, six of those as Assistant Mayor -- being part of about 300 Council meetings, and the education that provides. I also was in the N.H. Legislature representing Portsmouth for 30 years, six of those in the State Senate.

In addition I served a term on the Portsmouth School Board, and was chair of the 1987 Portsmouth Charter Commission which re-wrote the city's charter -- our governing document -- for the first time in 100 years. I also have been involved professionally and as a volunteer in a number of organizations and businesses. I'm a 1971 UNH graduate and was awarded my teaching certificate. I was President of the Seacoast Shipyard Association during the closure fight in the 1990s, and on the board of other non-profits. I facilitated and coordinated the 2020 Vision Project forums, the Portsmouth Vision Committee, founded the Greater Seacoast Economic Summit in 1991, took part in Leadership Seacoast, and participated in the Portsmouth Listens master planning process a few years ago.

In all that time, I have learned the value of bringing people together to find solutions. There is immense payoff when people work with each other to create visions and collectively decide on goals.

A clear example of the value of bringing people of diverse political beliefs and philosophies together to accomplish an important goal was when I sponsored the Civil Unions law in 2007, and the gay marriage bill in 2009. Because we assembled support from people across political party lines and of all philosophies, we won equality for New Hampshire citizens, and kept it. As of now, over 2,520 same-gender marriages have been celebrated in our state, with more every week. New Hampshire was an early nationwide leader in this cause.

SMART GROWTH
The pressures of development and growth are intense throughout our Seacoast. I support smart growth, one that balances our historic and special "small town" yet dynamic character and what is unique and important to the quality of life that our residents and visitors enjoy, with the prosperity and new jobs that careful growth can bring. We don't need to get much bigger and fuller in order to be a livable, exciting community. Let's not lose our focus of what is important to us. Development, an emphasis on redevelopment, and growth can be a great benefit to us, but it has to be smart and placed in the right spots. Investors and developers can be our friends, and if we're smart about how we let them grow our Seacoast, we'll all do well. We're in this together.

OTHER ISSUES
While Downtown development and parking are important matters on which I would like to work, so are the many other issues the City Council considers: budgeting, spending, tax stability, zoning, smart growth, protecting the arts and our historic culture, police and fire protection, roads, bridges and sidewalks, educational opportunity, library, environmental protection, and recycling programs, affordable housing, senior and children services, recreation, health, water quality and sewage, city hall transparency, regional cooperation and summitry, and even stop signs, snow removal, and speed limits. As participants in our democracy and the election process, we as voters and those of us who are candidates should look beyond the buzz issues of the day and consider all the other issues too. Portsmouth is a big community, with many needs.

A CIVIL CAMPAIGN, AND MORE - A Unique Offer
I promise to have a positive and idea-oriented campaign, and I expect that the race for Council will be civil. With that in mind, I want to do something unique to political campaigns. I want to go beyond just campaign "civility" and find a way to make this year's election more fun and friendly for us

Under our City Charter, we can hire nine people to serve at the City Council table. In that sense, those applying for jobs on the Council are not competitors against each other, but rather are asking to be one of each voter's nine choices. Realizing that as candidates, we are all neighbors in this community which we have chosen to call "home," I am welcoming any or all of the others running for Council to join with me in door-to-door visits during the coming weeks -- and I plan to do a lot of it.

I welcome one or more of the candidates to walk with me on those home visits, and present our similar viewpoints, as well as our differences, to voters who we talk with face-to-face. This will also give us a chance, as candidates, to get to know one another better, and that will forge a better relationship in serving together if we are elected.

I am not suggesting a "team" campaign, but rather a friendly campaign where we express our thoughts to, and more importantly learn from, the voters of Portsmouth -- and each other.  As candidates, I expect we'll disagree on some issues, but agree on many more.

I have always found visiting voters door-to-door at their homes an exciting, and educational, part of being a candidate for office, and I think this offer could raise the civility, and fun, of this year's campaign for all who participate. It might help encourage the next Council to work better together to provide leadership and action to solve problems we face.

There will be joint forums and other events, but walking our streets and sidewalks together could give us a golden opportunity to learn so much more.Talking "with" instead of just "to" or "at" one another is essential in government, but too often that is missing and is replaced by confrontation, and sometimes anger and competition.

Conversation gets us to compromise and consensus, if that is possible, on most issues of initial disagreement. We have a wonderful community and our wealth includes having a diverse population with people of all ages who take part in our arts, businesses, organizations, and government. We have much to celebrate. Our job together is to energize Portsmouth's future.

My focus will be on the realization that Portsmouth is at a crossroads, with a number of options and choices that we can make.  Either we design our future, or it just happens.

Thank You,
Jim Splaine
E-Mail:  jimsplaine@aol.com