BY GINGER KOZLOWSKI
Have you ever wondered how much your child’s teacher is paid? How about what happened at the last school board or selectmen’s meeting? Or whether your neighbor was arrested in that commotion last week?
You have every right to get that information, but it may not be easy to do so.
Neighborhood News investigated accessibility to such public documents by having staffers ask for town and school minutes and salaries as well as the list of arrests and police calls in the previous week.
We did not identify ourselves as reporters in order to see how the general public would be treated when making such requests.
Adhering not only to the letter but also the spirit of the Right to Know Law are Windham and Candia, where town hall workers went out of their way to make sure we had everything we asked for and more.
Overall, the 16 towns in our coverage area do well at releasing minutes of town and school meetings. Ask for salaries or arrests, however, and public servants are protective of this information, some to the point of refusing to release it at all.
The towns which complied immediately with all our requests for town and school minutes and salaries plus a list of arrests were Windham, Pelham, Dunbarton, Hopkinton and New Boston.
Failing our requests were the police departments in Allenstown, Auburn, Bedford, Bow, Goffstown, Hooksett, Pembroke and Weare. The town halls in Allenstown and Bow refused to release town salaries at all, while Bedford, Hooksett and Salem put us off with having to make a request in writing. All 16 town halls immediately gave us minutes for their town council or selectmen meetings.
At the school district offices, all gave us the school minutes we asked for. The Bow, Bedford and Weare SAUs refused to release school salaries, while SAU 66 (Hopkinton), SAU 19 (Goffstown, New Boston and Dunbarton) and SAU 28 (Windham/Pelham) complied. There seemed to be confusion over what we asked for at SAU 15 (Hooksett, Candia and Auburn) and SAU 53 (Pembroke, Allenstown and Epsom), so we did not receive salary information by press time, but they both seemed to be working on the request.