New Hampshire's 'live free' spirit turns less prickly

John Decker is one of those voters. He moved to Stratham from Massachusetts in 1998, and since then has joined a fight to get local government to take a more active role in putting boundaries on business and development for the benefit of the community's character. His particular pique? Advertising signs that line local roads.

In his alter ego as the "sign bandit," Mr. Decker has plucked, by his own estimates, more than 1,000 commercial signs from roadsides around the region. The ads are technically not allowed on public property, but the police seldom bothered with them. So Decker, a former ad executive and campaigner for Howard Dean in 2004, took it upon himself to remove the "litter."

A judge has yet to rule on Decker's misdemeanor theft charges, but score one for the bandit: Stratham is tightening its sign ordinance.

"I guess I am kind of a microcosm of the changing climate in New Hampshire, because I don't think a [born-and-bred] local in New Hampshire would ever notice those signs," says Decker.

Stratham voters, for their part, in 2002 passed a $5 million bond to put land into conservation. A light-pollution ordinance has gone in, and a proposed day care is having difficulty finding a place to locate because of resistance to more development.

"It was the new people coming in who said, 'Close the barn door [on development] ... and keep Stratham rural, because that's why I moved here,' " says Paul Deschaine, Stratham's town administrator. "People still have the right to develop their property responsibly. That's where the argument comes: What's responsible development?"

A few doors down from Decker lives Doug Scamman, the retiring Republican speaker of New Hampshire's House of Representatives. The respected dairy farmer and self-described "old Yankee" has retired before, only to return out of concern that new legislators were forgetting how to keep a tight budget.

He says many of the newcomers, whom he welcomes, came because of the state's absence of taxes – on both income and sales. But they are more politically independent than longtime residents, Mr. Scamman says, and many "earn a lot of money, and they like to spend a lot of money."

He watched the influx change Stratham. Scamman's cows used to cross Route 108, the town's main thoroughfare, to pasture. Now some 30,000 cars zoom down 108 each day, and Scamman has sold his herd.

"When I was a kid there were 35 dairy farmers. Now there is one. And you can't have all these farms here now," says Scamman. The reason: Land is at a premium. In 1960, only 1,000 people lived in Stratham. Now the town has 7,500 residents.

It's often the natives who still hold the largest plots of old farmland, and many want wide freedom to sell or develop their land.

When residents heard that Wal-Mart might be coming to Stratham, a group banded together and beat back the plans.

Scamman says he didn't particularly want to see a new Wal-Mart, but when the citizens group came to him to sign their petition, he declined.

"I told them I am an old Yankee, and if [the developers] have the property rights, they should have been able to build," he says.

He points to the BMW dealership that sits outside his window. "My wife says, 'I wish it wasn't there.' And I say, 'We could have bought the land, too.' " Besides, when it came time to find a new car, Scamman says with a laugh, "I jumped over the stone wall and bought it."

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