By Dakota Antelman — [email protected]
In their first meeting of this year’s election cycle, Select Board candidates gave their take on topics including town staffing, cell coverage, and commercial development to a decidedly pro-business audience.
Elizabeth Akehurst-Moore, Paul Boehm, Mary Hartman, and Joe Laurin met for the March 5 forum at the Concord Free Public Library. The Concord Business Partnership hosted the event.
After recent political scuffles, the afternoon featured some pointed exchanges around municipal spending and previewed the coming dash toward the April 8 elections.
Town spending
Responding to an initial budget question, Akehurst-Moore said animosity between town and school leaders around budgeting “is crazy.” She said there should be more discussion in the budget process and called for more town budget scrutiny.
Akehurst-Moore flagged the human resources department, which was set to include six full-time employees in the 2026 fiscal year under a February 10 preliminary budget. She said HR is “a completely bloated department” and criticized an arrangement where she said the town has employed a consultant from Florida “to come up here.”
She invited officials to “prove me wrong [and show] that there is some rigorous conversation going on about the town budget.”
Fiscal collaboration
Stakeholders agree this year’s budget process has been more amicable than in previous years. Hartman did not take credit for the change but said she hosted meetings for school and municipal leaders to discuss spending.
“I got people to sit across from each other and talk,” she said. “They did the work.”
Hartman also defended elements of HR staffing, recalling recommendations from the town’s Personnel Study Task Force. She said the task force formed amid turnover, morale problems, and management issues in town government. She said some recommendations required the town to bring in unbiased, outside help.
Hartman said the town has a consultant working remotely. She said the consultant visited Concord for two weeks over the past year. But she said the town does not pay the consultant to fly back and forth from Florida and that the consultant will be leaving in the coming weeks.
Hartman said there has been misinformation about how much the town pays its consultant and said that work has been “incredibly valuable.”
Town manager Kerry Lafleur confirmed that the consultant will finish working for the town on June 30 now that officials have hired a new assistant HR director.
Streamlining development
Town leaders have cited commercial development as part of the solution to Concord’s budget crunch.
Though it wouldn’t be a “silver bullet,” Laurin said the town should work to attract new businesses and offset the residential tax burden. He said changes should include repairing Concord’s reputation as a place with “seemingly over-the-top fees” and a byzantine permitting process.
“That is something within our control,” he said.
Boehm said the Select Board should take a “very active” role in land use and development discussions around the former MCI-Concord prison property, the Superfund site at 2229 Main Street, and other parcels.
He said the board should assess “blockages” to development.
“We have very good bylaws, we have very good policies, and we have very good practices,” Boehm said. “But they were not designed for progress.”
Improving cell coverage is crucial to Concord’s business growth, several candidates said.
No endorsement from CBP
Akehurst-Moore is a member of the CBP’s Board of Directors.
Board president Tyler Spring said the group doesn’t endorse individual candidates in Select Board races, but he acknowledged Akehurst-Moore “is behind all of our goals.”
“So, my guess is a lot of our members will promote her as a candidate,” Spring told The Concord Bridge.
Other members, Spring said, might vote differently.
As election season heats up, some say campaign motivations have trickled into public meetings.
Several residents, including CBP board clerk Mark Martines, criticized the Select Board in February for its handling of board, committee, and task force appointments.
Select Board members started revisiting their policy on March 3. Before their discussion, resident Craig Awmiller suggested appointment complaints were a “manufactured problem” meant to hurt Hartman in her re-election bid.
The Select Board added language to its March 3 agenda saying, in part, that “comments related to political campaigns are not appropriate” during public comment sessions.
“The purpose of public comment is to address the board on issues that are under consideration of the board,” Hartman told The Bridge. “Since the [ Select Board] does not decide elections, comments about the election are inappropriate.”
