Peering down into the portal of Nashua history makes it quite clear: The current battle over the best way to fill the Nashua Police Commission seats ain’t, to paraphrase the old saw, our first go-’round.

As a matter of fact, public back-and-forths, and surely more that took place behind closed doors, were quite fashionable at different times, in different eras, over the past 130 years.

By now, anyone paying even an iota of attention to Tuesday’s municipal election is at least somewhat familiar with ballot Question 2, a seemingly innocuous title of a referendum whose contents are anything but.

Question 2, it can be said, is a question that needs no introduction. Simply put, Question 2 asks voters to weigh in on whether the current system of appointing Nashua’s three police commissioners should continue to be handled by the governor and Executive Council, or if the appointment process should be instead handled by the mayor and Board of Aldermen, and the number of members expanded from three to five.

One of the things that caught my attention as I listened to and read the accounts of the latest salvos tossed across the proverbial bows of the opposing combatants was the occasional references to “130 years ago” and “1891,” which are different ways of describing how long the governor-and-Executive-Council appointment process has been in effect in Nashua.

Dean Shalhoup

I must point out, and underscore it in bold type, that this essay is intended solely as a fun look-back at some of Nashua’s previous debates over the Police Commission appointment process — and is not in any way meant to try and sway opinions, or voters, one way or the other.

That said, our first stop in the way-back machine is a Nashua Telegraph story that ran in the days of the Mayor William Beasom administration, so you know it’s a long time ago.

“The bill provides that three commissioners be appointed by the governor and council for terms of six, four and two years, a new appointment to be made every two years. The board shall have entire control over the appointment and retention of the city marshal assistant, members of the city watch, night watch, constables and special police.”

That appeared in the Feb. 19, 1891 Telegraph, the year that Nashua adopted its city charter, and the one that is referred to in the current discussions as the birth of the modern Police Commission.

Members of the state legislature’s local delegation were “highly in favor of it,” the Telegraph wrote, opining that “there is little doubt that the bill will pass” — and it did.

As a side note, that 1891 revised city charter also spelled the end of what must have been a most cumbersome, unnecessarily outsized form of city government: In addition to having an alderman, each city ward also had two, sometimes more, councilors, members of what was called the Common Council, in a city of less than 30,000 population.

Ward 9 was created around that time as well, and a couple of others were redistricted, giving us the one ward alderman and six aldermen-at-large seats we have today.

Imagine what the aldermanic chamber would look like on meeting nights these days, with three or four men and women representing each ward.

Three years into the state legislators’ approval of the governor-and-Executive-Council appointment system for the Police Commission, local folks involved in Nashua’s temperance movement lashed out at both the commission and the police, accusing them of not doing enough to quell “the liquor situation,” citing as an example “the Thanksgiving attraction at the Franklin Opera House.”

The story, which ran Nov. 28, 1894, doesn’t say what happened at that Thanksgiving event, but it surely had something to do with alcohol being present.

The temperance folks, who were in the process of forming a “Law and Order League” with plans to launch a “saloon closing movement,” began calling for the abolition of the Police Commission.

Failing that, they indicated they would seek legislation to amend the charter to make the Police Commission and top police leaders elected positions.

Come the 1909 legislative session, a variety of bills were floated having to do with certain city commissions.

A proposal was put forth for the “abolishment of the Board of Public Works,” and putting the Public Works department under “the immediate orders” of the Board of Aldermen.”

The proposal also called for “putting the members of the Police Commission under the jurisdiction of the mayor and Board of Aldermen, and appointed by them instead of by the governor and Executive Council.”

About a decade later, in 1919, things would get a tad more radical: A bill was introduced to the legislature proposing “ousting the present 3-man commission and setting up a commission of a single member, patterned after the systems of some of the larger cities of the country … .”

According to the Telegraph story, the proposal, if passed (which it didn’t, despite a favorable recommendation from the Nashua delegation), the governor would become the first commissioner for a 5-year term.

One opponent of the proposal suggested its purpose was “intended as a means of getting the present commission out of office,” adding that the bill “had no good purpose … and which the majority of the city taxpayers do not want.”

Nashua state Reps. Lester Thurber and James Whitney signed a letter calling the bill “a most pernicious and dangerous bill … aimed almost entirely at one of the present police commissioners.”

The proverbial gloves came off again just a year later.

Evidently miffed by the Police Commission’s request for a $4,000 increase in the department’s operating budget, the Board of Aldermen responded by “recommending that the legislature be asked to amend the city charter so that the members of the Police Commission be elected by the people of the city.”

Talk about cutting right to the chase.

A variety of aldermen for and against the proposal were quoted in the December 1920 story. One of those who supported electing the commissioners was an alderman named Mercer (first names were often omitted by reporters 100 years ago), who “expressed the opinion that he did not think that the people of Nashua, a city of 30,000 people, should be classed as incapable of, and lacking in, native intelligence enough to elect the commission.”

In 1939, a measure that would have made the sitting mayor a member of the Police Commission was indefinitely postponed and went away.

Come 1947, lots of attention was paid in January to a bill introduced by Nashua state Rep. Agenoir Belcourt, which, if passed, would give Nashua “home rule” — the equivalent of today’s “local control” — by removing “the power of appointing members of the Nashua Police Commission from the governor and council” and “placing it in the hands of Nashua’s voters.”

“Why shouldn’t we elect the Police Commission just as we elect the Fire Commission?” Belcourt asked, rhetorically, according to the Telegraph story.

The paper’s leadership decided the matter was worth an editorial, in which whomever the writer was stated that there “might have been some merit” in the charter amendment taking effect back in 1891, “but today, there are citizens who will argue with considerable justification that state-appointed Police Commissions lend themselves to more political finagling than Police Commissions elected by the voters of a community.”

Fast forward to Nov. 2, 2021: Whatever position you take on this and other matters on Tuesday’s ballot, the most important thing is making sure to find time to get down to your local polling place and cast your vote.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.