Glenn Morrill stood atop a soapbox as he addressed the residents of Franklin.

He implored them to think of the city’s revitalization over the past decade: the recreation, the new restaurants, the new people coming to town, all spurred by the Mill City Park.

Then, he made his pitch.

“I will be running for mayor,” Morrill said at an event Friday night. “For my team that’s standing here today, for the city of Franklin, so that we can continue the momentum that we have seen happening in the last seven years.”

He’ll challenge current Franklin Mayor Desiree McLaughlin, who ran and won in 2023 as a staunch opponent to spending any taxpayer dollars on the Mill City Park, with a promise to keep the city’s tax cap in place.

McLaughlin said she plans to run for some form of elected office this fall but has not decided whether she’ll campaign for mayor, city council or another role. She likes to “leave my options open,” she said in an interview Monday.

Funding for the Mill City Park, a whitewater playground at Franklin Falls on the Winnipesaukee River, has divided the town. Some, like McLaughlin, have said residents shouldn’t have to pay more in taxes to foot the bill for recreation and development. Taxes should be spent on things like schools and infrastructure, she said, and she looks to other municipalities, like Montpelier, Vermont, that aren’t expanding recreation quite so quickly.

“Just investing it in a parks and rec model, I think you can’t put all your eggs in one basket,” McLaughlin said. “You have to also think about your schools, think about your infrastructure … I feel like we need a wider base model.”

Others, like Morrill, argue that development and recreation projects will bring long-lasting economic benefits to the city.

Morrill also said an unwillingness to update Franklin’s spending plan has led to stalled redevelopment efforts and an inability to keep up with everyday fixes.

“You need to adjust your tax cap with the times,” Morrill said in an interview. “This is why Franklin is in the state it is. We cannot fix our roads, we can’t even fix … Soldiers Memorial Hall. When you can’t fix your centerpiece and take care of it because a tax cap is holding you back, to me, that is sad.”

Morrill chairs the city’s conservation commission, volunteers with the local soup kitchen and is involved with the Franklin Cemetery Association and the Franklin Historical Society. He also volunteered for many years at the Veterans Memorial Recreation Area.

He’s lived in Franklin his entire life and attributes his penchant for the city to its “good people.”

“It’s a small city,” Morrill said, “but it’s a community.”

 Morrill volunteers his time beautifying the city’s outdoor spaces with kayaks repurposed as flower beds.

As mayor, Morrill said he’d listen to the Franklin residents who’ve “come to me and talked to me about how sad they are that we need to move on.” But for Morrill himself, it’s all about positivity and embracing positive change for Franklin’s downtown. In his view, that includes developments like the Mill City Park and Stevens Mills, the new 153-unit apartment complex built by Chinburg Properties.

“I want to bring positive. I want to bring it back to the momentum we had two years ago with the whitewater park, with the Chinburg project, with people coming and looking at us to revitalize our downtown,” he said.

Last year, McLaughlin vetoed the city council’s decision to secure a $6.8 million bond for restoration of the Franklin Opera House, which council members ultimately overruled. She did so for several reasons, McLaughlin said, but primarily because it would’ve – and did – burst the city’s tax cap.

Former mayor Jo Brown, on the other hand, found that veto to be a concerning shot at development. She has now endorsed Morrill for mayor.

“What has not happened, and it hasn't happened in several years, to be honest, has been the planning, the capital improvements,” Brown said. “There has been so much of a focus on not doing anything to the tax cap that the city has suffered for that, and we're at that point now, with the paving of the roads and municipal services … It has to be done, and that’s what taxpayers pay their taxes for.”

The filing period for mayoral candidates in Franklin opens in August, and the election will be held Oct. 7.

 

Geoff Forrester contributed reporting for this story. Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter or email cmatherly@cmonitor.com.