Affordability affects everyone
I’ve been thinking a lot about why everything costs more these days, and I keep coming back to the same thing: energy. Electricity, heating fuel, gas for the truck. When those prices go up, they don’t just hit homeowners who pay the bill directly. Landlords pay more to heat and light their buildings, so rent goes up. Store owners pay more to keep the lights on and the trucks running, so prices on the shelf go up. A homeowner can grit their teeth and absorb a higher bill for a while. A landlord or a small merchant running on thin margins usually can’t, so it gets passed along to the rest of us.
I don’t have a fancy study to point to, just what I see around town here in Hancock. Fuel and power costs touch everything else we buy, which is exactly why they deserve more attention than they get.
New Hampshire already has real advantages going for it; no income tax, no sales tax. But none of that helps much if our electric rates and heating costs keep climbing year after year. We need more efficient, lower-cost ways to generate and deliver power, and we need our state leaders to treat that as a real affordability issue, not an afterthought.
I’d like to see candidates for the State House and for governor say plainly what they’ll do to bring down electricity and fuel costs for homes, landlords and small businesses alike. Ask them directly when you see them at the town hall or the general store. If we want to tackle the cost of living here, this is where to start.