Pamela Tucker Announces Her Candidacy For State Representative

My family came to Greenland in 2000. Eight years ago, my husband, John, and I began looking for a community to call home. He and I had both moved frequently during the 1990’s for work, living all around our country. But in 2000, with a young family underway we wanted to lay down some roots. In the community of Greenland we saw decency in the way people treated one another. We found a great public school and a vibrant, close knit community. The town itself was beautiful, clean and safe for our growing family. New Hampshire’s low tax burden made Greenland an affordable place to live. In many ways, Greenland was the perfect place for us to call home.

For eight wonderful years, we have been a part of the Greenland Community. My family attends Greenland Community Church, where I teach Sunday school. I and my girls are active in the Greenland Girl Scouts where I have been involved in for five years as well with countless other community events. In 2002, I helped to reorganize Greenland’s recycling program to advance the “Keep New Hampshire Green” initiative.

Prior to raising my children, I worked for the Gillette Company for almost nine years. Starting out in sales, I was promoted into management and eventually trade marketing over the course of my career. During this professional tenure I managed major customer accounts, was responsible for oversight of product lines and coordinated the training of company personnel. My responsibilities required working with multiple departments within the company, fostering relationships and agreement with these groups to ensure we met customers’ expectations. I believe these skills will serve me well in Concord.

Greenland has been a wonderful place to call home, however, our community isn’t immune to national and global problems. Recently, the US economy hasn’t performed as well as it has in the past and energy prices have increased dramatically. When the economy slows down, increases in state tax revenue grow more slowly compared to vibrant years. In past economic slowdowns, Concord has tightened its budget and slowed the rate of government spending. If my family or your family faced a difficult financial period, we would do the same -- cut out unnecessary expenses until things turned around. Last year, I, like many New Hampshire citizens became concerned about our state budget. Rather than cutting back on expenses, Concord approved a state budget that exploded government spending by over 17%. Even in this challenging economic environment, state government revenue never fell. In fact, it increased 2.5 percent over the previous year. However, this was much lower than the projections put forward by the statehouse to justify their rather large budget increases. To pay for this shortfall, our representatives voted to borrow money through public bonds for budget items that have always been considered operating expenses. Our state government, under one party rule, is playing a shell game with the state budget and in just one year has indebted our children.  This fiscal irresponsibility must not be allowed to continue, and this is why I have decided to take a stand this year.   If elected in November, I will do everything I can to return fiscal discipline to Concord

I am opposed to a broad based tax for New Hampshire. People work hard for their money and deserve to keep as much as possible for their families. As your state representative, I will never forget that every dollar in our government budget is one less dollar in your family’s budget for braces, or books, or medicine.   We must constantly fight to remind our state government to live within its means and to focus our government budget dollars on top priorities --like education, public safety, and safe roads –especially in times when tax revenues grow slowly. In addition, with the economy slowing down, I can not think of a worse time for the state government to institute any sort of broad tax that would take money out of the pockets of our citizens

Here in Greenland, residents are facing a new challenge. The development of Pease Tradeport has drastically increased traffic through our town on route 33. This fall, the new shopping center will be opening and traffic along that corridor will only be increasing. A traffic light is absolutely necessary at the corner of Route 33 and Bayside Road to maintain public safety and safe roads. I think this is the perfect example of what our state government ought to do and I will make this a top priority. I am currently reaching out to Republican leaders in the state house to put this important issue on their docket and I will continue to focus on this as a key issue for all of us.

I have long been an advocate of the environment and a promoter of conservation and recycling. Those of you who know me personally are aware of the reusing, reducing and recycling my family practices everyday. I will work to promote voluntary and community based solutions to keep New Hampshire green. I would appreciate your support in November. You can reach me at 431-8982 or feel free to contact me through my website contact form.

Thank you for your time!

Respectfully yours,
Pamela Tucker