Governor Chris Sununu toured Jaffrey manufacturer MilliporeSigma on Wednesday, talking to employees about continuing efforts to bolster New Hampshire’s business environment and how communities can build more housing options for the workforce the state desperately needs.
MilliporeSigma is a medical manufacturer that makes products used in biotechnological and pharmaceutical drug therapies and research. The company has been steadily growing by 11 percent per year. The company hopes to have over 1,000 employees at its Jaffrey facility by the end of this year, and if it continues to grow at its current rate, could double in size in the next ten years.
In a question-and-answer session with MilliporeSigma employees, Sununu said the company “…is in the middle of a monster growth potential.” And added, the manufacturer is not alone.
“We’re in a fortunate time here in New Hampshire. The economy is booming,” Sununu said.
New Hampshire’s high-tech manufacturing industry, in particular, he said, should be a draw both for keeping workers in-state for their jobs, and drawing new businesses here to create potential partnerships.
Sununu discussed some barriers to the workforce with MilliporeSigma employees. One employee, who lives in Massachusetts, said he is seeking to move to New Hampshire but hasn’t been able to find housing in his price range.
“We’re trying to create incentives at the town level,” Sununu said. “And our focus is that young family looking for their first home.”
Earlier this week, Sununu announced a plan to address New Hampshire’s housing shortage, based on the recommendations of a task force that has been meeting for the past three months on the issue. Sununu stressed that while the state has a need for more multi-family and affordable housing, he wants local municipalities to still have a say in what their housing growth looks like.
Sununu’s plan includes providing more free training for zoning and planning board members, creating web-based tools for town planners, and improve zoning options to allow towns to incentivize the development of affordable housing units.
Sununu is also promoting the acceleration of investment into housing, by updating rules for tax increment financing, or TIF districts, to be used for residential development, and strengthen other community revitalization tax programs, and provide tax deductions for workforce housing developments, and reducing the real estate transfer taxes for sales of homes under $300,000.
Sununu is backing two bills expected to come before the legislature in its upcoming session to help achieve these goals.
The first bill streamlines the decision-making process for planning and zoning boards, putting in place more-enforceable time limits for decision-making processes and court appeals, and providing additional training for land use boards.
The second bill addresses allowing TIF district funds to be used for residential housing, expands a tax relief program that gives a period of tax relief to buildings undergoing renovations, and creates a voluntary certification program to incentivize towns creating a regulatory-friendly environment for housing, including workforce housing developments, including towns sharing in a business profits tax revenue derived from new housing developments.
New Hampshire is doing better than many East Coast states when it comes to retaining and attracting young professionals, Sununu said in Jaffrey Wednesday. While that’s a positive, he said, it’s also “a little like being the best surfer in Kansas,” since northeastern states, in general, are struggling to keep and attract their millennial-aged citizens.
Sununu said he has heard many times that small towns don’t want large housing developments, and one of the reasons why is the impact of the incoming population into school districts. But in today’s world, school numbers are declining, but slow enough that it’s not possible to cut a large number of teacher positions, meaning costs remain the same while districts receive less student-based aid from the state.
Sununu said New Hampshire communities should be encouraging young families to move and stay here.
One of the ways to do that, Sununu said, is investing youth early in the jobs that are available near them. And when he says early, he means well before they are graduating college. High School students should be introduced to their area jobs in the first half of their high school career, offered internshi p opportunities and after-school jobs in their second half, and be a ready workforce by the time they graduate, particularly for the state’s high -tech manufacturing fields, which is the state’s largest economic driver.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.