The County Political Mullet, Growing Continues

The growth of the mullet seems to extend from small town politics, state level funding development, into county level financial decisions. And at some point it starts to blend just like a good haircut. Only this one hides a rats nest underneath

Because the newest incentive in the ongoing Political Mullet saga is not subtle.

According to the Conway Daily Sun story, Smith said the latest slate of elected-official raises was his initiative. Those screenshots show future pay for county offices like Register of Deeds, sheriff, and county attorney jumping sharply, including a proposed Register of Deeds salary of $131,000 for 2027 and 2028, up from $77,625 for 2025 and $81,500 for 2026.

Now, if you are a regular taxpayer reading that someone’s raise is equivalent to a years salary at minimum wage!!

Because in Carroll County, apparently inflation is bad for everybody except government salary ladders, which seem to be climbing like they found a coupon.

And that is where this stops being “just another raise story” and starts becoming very, very Ossipee.

The town’s own website lists Jonathan Smith as chairman of the Board of Selectmen. Separate town pages have also listed him as Building Inspector and Zoning Enforcement Officer, and the Budget Committee page lists him as the Selectmen’s Representative there as well. NHPR election records have also listed him as the state representative for Carroll 5. At that point, this is no longer a hat collection. It is a municipal starter kit with expansion packs.

And no, this is not just a few grumpy locals muttering into their coffee.

At the March 2026 town meeting, voters came within two votes of passing a petitioned warrant article that would have barred selectmen from also working for the town. It failed 80–78, and the coverage made clear the article centered on Smith’s overlapping roles as selectman and town employee. When something nearly passes by that margin, that is not fringe suspicion. That is half the room looking at the hat rack and asking whether maybe, just maybe, one person does not need the whole coat closet.

The money side at town hall was already eyebrow-raising before the county raise story even arrived.

Ossipee budget records show the Selectmen’s Salary line rising from $20,840 to $32,200 for 2026, an increase of $11,360, or 54.51%. The same minutes show J. Smith seconding the motion recommending that salary line. To be fair, a raise for an elected position is not automatically illegal, sinister, or proof that somebody is swimming through tax dollars like Scrooge McDuck in municipal khakis. But when the same official sitting in the seat helps move along the pay for that seat, it lands about as gracefully as a snowplow in a flower bed.

Then there is the county layer, where the overlap starts resembling a small family-sized lasagna of authority.

The Carroll County Delegation has the power to set compensation for elected county officials, including the sheriff, county attorney, treasurer, and register of deeds. So when a state representative with a major town role is also tied to initiating large future raises for county elected offices, people are not crazy for noticing that the same few hands keep appearing near the important levers. That is not paranoia. That is pattern recognition with property taxes attached.

And the orbit around that power structure has not exactly been a picture of calm professionalism and church-supper harmony.

The Conway Daily Sun reported that two of the three Carroll County commissioners objected when Ossipee Town Administrator Matt Sawyer was hired as delegation coordinator for $15,000 per year for 50 hours of work, arguing the role was incompatible with his other job as county treasurer. Around that same period, county minutes reflected disputes over an investigation and a move to alert the New Hampshire Attorney General and public integrity unit. So the backdrop to all this is not “everyone agrees everything is fine.” The backdrop is more “the smoke alarm is chirping and town hall keeps insisting it’s just character.”

Then there is the part residents actually feel in real life: enforcement.

Town minutes show Smith describing zoning enforcement as sitting under the purview of the Board of Selectmen, with warning letters, notices of violation, cease-and-desist orders, and court actions all part of that process. In other words, this is not some ceremonial title you put on a business card to impress the dog. It is actual enforcement power over private citizens and their property. That matters more, not less, when it is bundled together with governing roles and budget influence.

And that concern is not theoretical.

In June 2025, the Conway Daily Sun reported that Ossipee withdrew its zoning complaint against resident Steven Brown after acknowledging that a material fact in the case was wrong. The same report said the selectmen, led by Smith, planned to file a new complaint. Maybe the town believed it was correcting course. Maybe it was. But from the outside, when the government gets a material fact wrong in a case against a resident and then reloads, it starts to look less like careful enforcement and more like municipal whack-a-mole.

The McDormand matter fits the same pattern of tension between concentrated authority and private citizens.

In January 2025, the Daily Sun reported that Derek McDormand sought a restraining order against Smith over the demolition dispute involving his garage addition and said the town was harassing him. Later filings in that broader dispute included allegations of trespass and efforts to reopen the matter. Residents following the case have also raised questions about document handling, billing issues, and whether the same circle of officials keeps turning up whenever enforcement, demolition, and property disputes hit the fan.

And that is where the story starts to rhyme.

Because the McDormand demolition dispute does not exist in isolation. It sits uncomfortably close to another demolition and property-control fight that already put Ossipee in the spotlight: 15 Main Street.

Then came the Main Street building saga, which by this point deserves its own category somewhere between “planning failure” and “community theater performed with demolition equipment.”

In March 2024, reporting said Ossipee Main Street’s president felt blindsided by the selectmen’s parking-lot plan for the building. By late 2025, the Daily Sun reported that two Ossipee selectmen said they were not informed the building had already been demolished. When even fellow board members say they were surprised by a demolition, that is not a communication hiccup. That is a magic trick with public property, and the audience is getting tired of clapping.

So residents are left looking at two different disputes involving demolition, property, town action, and familiar names, and asking a very reasonable question:

How many times does the same pattern have to repeat before it stops being a coincidence and starts being a management style?

Even Smith’s public style has drawn notice beyond budgets and bulldozers.

In 2021, coverage of Ossipee’s COVID-era dispute reported that the board denounced a critic as the “mask-shaming police,” with Smith reading the statement. Some people may shrug that off as pandemic-era nonsense. But it still fits the larger pattern: criticism from residents does not seem to get treated as healthy public input so much as an inconvenience to be answered with a bigger microphone.

Put all of that together and the problem becomes hard to ignore.

• A board chair who is also a town employee.

• A building inspector who is also zoning enforcement.

• A selectmen’s representative on the budget committee.

• A state representative inside the county salary-setting world.

• A 54.51% jump in selectmen pay that he seconded.

• A new raise package for county elected offices described, according to screenshots, as his initiative.

• A near-passing town article aimed at exactly this sort of overlap.

• A county orbit already clouded by role-mixing and investigation disputes.

• Enforcement fights against residents.

• A zoning complaint withdrawn after a material fact was wrong.

• A demolition saga that even fellow selectmen said blindsided them.

• A separate McDormand dispute involving demolition, trespass allegations, and continuing court conflict.

  
  

That is not one red flag.

That is a full parade, with matching jackets and a marching band.

And that is why this matters to ordinary readers.

Because this is not just about whether one official makes too much money, wears too many hats, or enjoys a little too much administrative cardio.

It is about whether a town can still call itself accountable when the same person keeps turning up in the chair, at the desk, in the minutes, in the budget process, in enforcement, and now at the front of a fresh round of public-pay increases.

It is about whether public service is being shared, checked, and balanced the way it should be, or whether it is being stacked like cordwood until nobody can tell where one role ends and the next conflict begins.

In a healthy town, power is divided.

In an unhealthy one, it gets recycled.

And around here, the Political Mullet keeps looking the same:

Business in the front.

Red flags in the back.

Only now the back is getting harder to hide.