This is the hard part for Portsmouth. Clean energy matters. Local control matters. Rate stability matters. So does the plain fact that households judge a program by the bill that arrives in the mail. The city cannot simply say community power is good because the idea is good. It has to prove that the governance is good: transparent rates, plain-language notices, easy switching, honest comparison with Eversource, and no civic fog around who is responsible when the price changes.
Meanwhile, the Energy Advisory Committee is trying to move the city’s own operations toward lower energy use. That work is less visible but more concrete. Rooftop solar, LED lighting, municipal building upgrades, rebates, and outreach to lower-income residents are not grand gestures. They are the slow work of making public buildings cheaper and cleaner to run.
But even good projects run into government gravity. A rebate deadline is not a climate plan. A rooftop is not automatically a solar project. A leased building is not the same as a building the city fully controls. Staff capacity is not an afterthought. Procurement is not a footnote. The difference between an energy goal and an energy result is often someone with enough time to file the paperwork, line up the contractor, meet the deadline, and get the work done.
Portsmouth’s challenge is not only ambition. It is execution. That is where climate policy becomes local: not in the slogan, but in the invoice.
Housing Is Where Good Intentions Go to Be Tested
Everyone in Portsmouth knows the housing problem exists. That is no longer the argument. The argument is what the city is willing to change.
The Housing Committee’s June discussion moved through RSA 79-E tax relief, housing opportunity zones, accessory dwelling units, multifamily zoning, office-to-residential conversions, rehabilitation incentives, and a possible tax-assessment freeze for new construction. It is a long list of tools. The danger is that the tool list begins to substitute for a housing policy.
Portsmouth does not need housing in the abstract. It needs homes people can afford. That distinction matters. Market-rate apartments are housing. Luxury condominiums are housing. Short-term rentals occupy housing. Accessory dwelling units are housing. Workforce apartments are housing. Artist live-work studios are housing. They do not all solve the same problem.
RSA 79-E can be useful. It allows temporary property-tax relief when a project produces a public benefit. But a tax incentive is not charity. It is a bargain. The city gives up some future tax growth in exchange for something it needs more. That bargain should be explicit.
What does the public get? How many units? At what rent or price? For how long? For whom? With what enforcement? Does the benefit survive resale? Does it serve workers, seniors, artists, families, or merely the word “housing” in a staff memo?
A citywide housing opportunity zone may be the right move. A five-year assessment freeze may be worth studying. Office conversions may be sensible. ADUs may help. But every incentive should be measured against the same question: would this produce housing that the market is not already producing? If not, the city is not buying affordability. It is discounting development.
Housing policy in Portsmouth is hard because the city’s beauty is part of the problem. People want to live here because it has character, walkability, water, history, restaurants, culture, and a real downtown. Those same qualities make land expensive and every proposed change emotionally charged.