Town Councilor (3-Year Term) - Carden Welsh

Address:  3 Fairchild Drive

Occupation:  Retired, former businessman

Education: 
Bachelor’s Degree, Economics – Tufts University, 1975
Masters Degree, Business Administration – Columbia University, 1977
Course work completed, but no thesis written, toward a Masters Degree in History, University of New Hampshire, 2007

How long have you lived in Durham?  almost 35 years

Have you previously served on any government/community, civil boards, commissions or organizations? 
Durham Town Council – 10 + years
Durham Zoning Board of Adjustment – 6 years
Council Representative - Durham Planning Board – 2 years
Council Representative - Economic Development Committee – 2 years
Council Representative - Integrated Waste Management Advisory Committee – 3 years
Council Representative - Conservation Commission – 2 years
New Hampshire Trust for Public Land Advisory Board - 5 years
Treasurer, US Congressional Re-election Campaign – 2 years

Please provide a brief paragraph explaining your interest in being elected to the position for which you are running.

My wife and I love living in Durham and feel blessed to have been able to raise our family here. There are not many communities where someone can watch a fisher cat stroll through their back yard, learn from distinguished professors, listen to owls caterwauling at night, walk to world-class college sports and enjoy a variety of restaurants and hiking trails. Now in retirement, we are both active in supporting this uniquely wonderful community.

I am running for council again because I feel that the town can continue to benefit not only from the skillset developed during my business career, but also from the comprehensive knowledge I have gained from many years of work on council, the ZBA, the planning board and other committees. In addition to committee work, my understanding of the town has been enhanced by extensive volunteer activity including maintaining recreational trails, pulling invasives, preserving public land, running elections, selecting new police officers and providing data by counting migrating eels and rainbow smelt in the Oyster River and empty parking spots downtown.

In my first year on council, I developed and convinced the council to add an “economic goal” to the town’s list of objectives, limiting increases in new taxes to the rate of inflation plus growth in new taxable property. Since then, over my three three-year terms on council, the town and the council have worked hard to flatten what was then a rising the tax rate, while at the same time to improve and extend the services provided to our citizens. Every year I pored over the town’s budget requests and worked long hours with other councilors as we attempted to meet important town needs in a cost-effective manner. We benefited from a period of significant tax-paying development in town (the town’s taxable valuation more than doubled between 2013 and 2024), which enabled us to increase our support of the library, build the new town hall, refurbish the police headquarters, expand our park and recreation services, add a part-time land stewardship coordinator, a community police officer and a second town engineer, while maintaining relatively flat tax increases for residents on an inflation-adjusted basis. I would plan to continue this work, and attempt to balance the conflicting goals, responsibilities and costs of town services as efficiently as possible.

Recently I was appointed to fill Councilor Eric Lund’s council position. Sadly, Eric passed away last year.  Those who have watched this year’s budget proceedings have seen that I consistently fought to reduce spending in what became a very difficult budget year, given the relative lack of new taxable development in town.  Most unfortunately, with last year’s reassessment, the impact of the town’s spending has been felt disproportionately by certain areas of the community.

Looking to the future, we need to work hard to preserve the best aspects of our heritage as a small town/academic community in a beautiful rural, natural environment, and at the same time manage and instill future growth.  In my past terms on the council, I have endeavored to support policies that would focus on the “common good” and maintain an attractive balance of residential, commercial and university life – a goal that has admittedly been difficult to achieve. I hope that my work has served as an effective bridge between disparate community interests.