The two candidates running to represent Ward 8, which spans most of southeast Concord, including parts of the Heights and the airport, are as starkly opposed on the issue of housing as anyone running for city offices this year.
Jonathan Cate, who operates a dairy farm with his family, doesn’t think Concord can handle much more housing. He’s argued the city’s resources – from its first responders to its waste and wastewater processing capacity – would need large investments to accommodate more people, and he doesn’t think taxpayers have room in their budgets to shoulder it.
Instead, Cate thinks the city should focus on bringing in commercial and industrial development that would grow the city’s tax base without putting much extra strain on existing resources.
“We’re not the most business-friendly, and we haven’t been for decades,” he said. “If that’s what we want for a city, this is going to be the problem we continually have over and over again.”
While the housing market in Concord is undersaturated, he said, he’s not worried that major proposals for housing in Ward 8, including the redevelopment of the Steeplegate Mall, have slowed.
“We are not in a position to expand the housing base,” he said. “Not at that scale.”
To incumbent Ali Sekou, whose day job is as a community engagement leader with New Hampshire Housing, housing is a harbinger of business growth.
“We cannot have businesses if we cannot even house people,” he said. “Economic development comes with housing.”
Beyond expanding the tax base, keeping tax increases manageable also relies on city spending levels.
After a marathon budget hearing this summer, councilors overwhelming approved a 3% tax rate increase. Sekou was not present at the budget approval meeting, but has supported the spending plan. Investments in new staff wages and in a new police station, Sekou said, are necessary to provide the standards of service and public safety that residents expect.
“When people ask me about fiscal responsibility, I said fiscal responsibility doesn’t mean to not pay people what they deserve,” he said.
He went on to defend the city’s investments this budget year.
“We are very mindful of taxpayers, we are always mindful of the increases in tax,” he said. “But that’s what you get when you live in a city with all these good amenities that we all get to enjoy.”
Cate was critical, saying that city leaders needed to take a harder look at those investments. If wages are set to increase, he said, the city should wait longer to update equipment, like new police cars or fire trucks. He doesn’t think it should be all at once.
“We’re short-staffed and I agree, we need to address that. But, you know, I just went out and saw a bunch of brand new Tahoes. Did we really need new Tahoes or could everybody have been just a little bit happier with the old Explorers they had?” he said of the police department. “Those are the hard decisions…That’s what running a city needs to be like. It can’t be ‘we’re going to get it all.'”
Growing the tax base by bringing in new housing and new business is the sole strategy Sekou cited to ease pressures on taxpayers. He didn’t point to a place in the budget where reductions could be found going forward.
“When we bring businesses in, we will increase tax bases and it will help everybody,” Sekou said.
It’s an approach cited by many members of the council. For reference, the city’s property tax base grew by less than one tenth of one percent last year, far short of where city leaders had estimated when they set the budget in June.
The two candidates also take starkly different stances on how to confront homelessness in the city, with Sekou focusing more on funding services and Cate wanting more rigorous police response.
This race is a rematch from two years ago, when Cate and Sekou were among three candidates running for an open seat.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Councilor Sekou did not vote in favor of the current city budget due to an absence.