The Gracie Gato Podcast

Meet Carleigh Beriont For New Hampshire Congress

She filed for Congress yesterday. Today she’s in the Speakeasy. Carleigh Beriont is a Harvard-educated union organizer, mom, Marshall Islands teacher, and Hampton Select Board Chair who looked at New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District — packed with establishment money and dynasty names — and said: not today. No AIPAC. No social media. No apologies. Just Medicare for All, a ban on Congressional stock trading, and the audacity to show up anyway. This is what a people-first campaign sounds like before the consultants get to it. Get full access to Gracie Gato's Speakeasy at gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe [https://gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

FORE! Who's Paying For This?

Starting today, Gracie Gato’s Speakeasy has a new recurring segment. Every week, Concord City Councilor Stacey Brown sits down with me to give you a direct, unfiltered report on what is happening inside Concord City Hall — the votes, the budget decisions, the things that get approved quietly and the things that get cut loudly. No spin. No press releases. Just a city councilor with a stack of documents and nowhere to be except honest. We’re calling it The Concord Report. And we are starting with a story that made me put down my coffee. Beaver Meadow Golf Course is a city-owned municipal course off Sewall’s Falls Road. It has been part of Concord’s civic landscape since 1897, when Scottish golf architect Willie Campbell designed its original nine holes. For decades, the city operated it as a self-sustaining enterprise. In fact, the official mission statement — adopted in 1994 — explicitly committed that the course would operate “without the need to supplement revenues with tax dollars.” That language was removed in 2008. Quietly. Without public fanfare. Nine months into Jim Bouley’s first term as mayor. What followed was thirteen years of General Fund transfers — your property taxes flowing into golf operations, year after year, sometimes tens of thousands more than the city publicly budgeted. The golf fund accumulated debt the city approved in increments: $138,000 in FY2018, $310,000 in FY2019, $310,000 in FY2020. When you add interest and obligations through the present day, the total debt exposure tied to Beaver Meadow exceeds $11 million. Now here is where it gets personal. In the most recent budget cycle, the Concord City Council needed to cut spending to reduce the tax rate. Here is some of what got cut: • Hoopla — the public library’s digital audiobook service — $38,000 • Bagged leaf pickup service (spring and fall curbside collection) — $99,225 • A UNH graduate student contracted to do a city tree inventory — $4,000 • The city’s ICLEI sustainability membership — $1,200 Here is what did not get cut at the golf course: • $92,000 for grounds and horticulture — including $55,600 in chemicals and $3,000 for flowers and shrubs • $8,630 in professional development — including $3,200 in tournament entry fees for the course’s two golf pros and $3,000 for “continuing education” And here is what was added to the golf course budget: • $5,000 for a new ball picker • $20,000 in temporary labor increases • $10,000 in additional overtime wages • $46,140 in total new golf course requests The library lost its audiobooks. Your leaves will sit at the curb. The golf pros are entering tournaments on the city’s dime. — Stacey Brown has been documenting all of this — budget document by budget document, fiscal year by fiscal year, going back to 2013. She attended the Golf Course Advisory Committee meeting in February 2025 and presented evidence — from a published reference book, The Architects of Golf by Geoffrey S. Cornish and Ronald E. Whitten — that Beaver Meadow has been falsely marketed as the oldest golf course in New Hampshire. (It isn’t. Waumbek Golf Course opened in 1896. Beaver Meadow opened in 1897.) The room’s response was to call her an attacker and suggest the golf course hire a public relations person. She kept going anyway. That is the kind of city councilor Stacey Brown is. And that is why The Concord Report exists. — This episode is the first installment of what will be a weekly conversation. Every week, Stacey brings me what she is watching — the votes coming up, the budget lines worth questioning, the decisions being made in your name with your money. If you live in Concord, this is your city. You deserve to know what is happening in it. All source documents referenced in this episode are linked below. I encourage you to read them. 📄 SOURCE DOCUMENTS • Beaver Meadow Golf Course Mission Statements, 1994 and 2008 • Golf Fund Budget Documents, FY2013–FY2021 (City of Concord Operating Budgets) • Council-approved debt: FY2018 ($138,000), FY2019 ($310,000), FY2020 ($310,000) • Irrigation and Clubhouse Debt Service documents, FY2018–FY2026 • Golf Course Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes, February 20, 2025 • Concord Finance Committee Budget Adjustment Document, June 4, 2026 • The Architects of Golf — Geoffrey S. Cornish & Ronald E. Whitten (HarperCollins) Listen to the full episode above. Tips and documents: gracie.gato81@gmail.com www.graciegato.com Get full access to Gracie Gato's Speakeasy at gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe [https://gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Who is the NHCADSV? Who is Amanda Grady Sexton? Who are the players and lawfirms in Concord? Let's take a deep dive.

FOUR BEDS AND A BOARDROOM — EPISODE 2: THE FAMILY TREE Last week, we followed the money. This week, we follow the people. One city councilor with two jobs and zero recusals. One lawyer with six hats and one sealed grand jury report. One professional network stretching from the New Hampshire Supreme Court to a $12,500 line item in a municipal budget — and somehow, every thread leads back to the same zip code, the same law firm, the same coalition. Tonight on the Gracie Gato Podcast: the day job Amanda Grady Sexton doesn’t mention at the dais. The conflict of interest David Vicinanzo was warned about — in writing, twice — and kept going anyway. The Deputy AG who sent the warning, then hired his son. The grand jury report that nobody outside the parties has read. The bill that would have protected survivors like Marisol Fuentes. And why it died. Pour something neat. This one we take slowly. The paper is real. The emails are public. The family tree is yours now. Listen. Then ask your city councilor if they’ve heard of any of this. Get full access to Gracie Gato's Speakeasy at gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe [https://gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

How The NHCADSV Failed Marisol Fuentes

SPECIAL EDITION: “She Begged Them” The Marisol Fuentes Story — and the institutions still not answering for it Marisol Fuentes went to court. She begged them to protect her from her husband. They didn’t. On July 6th, 2025, he killed her in Berlin, New Hampshire. What happened next is a masterclass in how powerful institutions manage catastrophe — not by fixing it, not by owning it, but by going quiet in exactly the right places, at exactly the right time. In this special edition of The Gracie Gato Podcast, I’m pulling the thread on a story that has more layers than a New Hampshire winter: A brand-new magistrate who set bail, watched a woman die, and then resigned — leaving a very interesting legal question about who’s now exposed without her umbrella of protection. A Right to Know request that Executive Councilor Janet Stevens has been pursuing for months — and that Berlin Police Department is blocking, citing privacy concerns for a woman who is no longer alive to need them. A press release from the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence calling for more training — issued by the very organization that runs the training the police were supposed to have completed. A judicial selection commission that approved the magistrate who resigned. A commission that included, among its members, NHCADSV Executive Director Lyn Schollett. And one question that nobody — not the police department, not the coalition, not the crisis center — has answered: Was a victim’s advocate present when Marisol Fuentes went to court and begged for her life? The silence around that question is not nothing. It’s everything. This episode connects the dots between Berlin PD’s stonewalling, the sovereign immunity doctrine that may have just lost its roof, the NHCADSV’s conspicuous PR pivot, and the funding structures that give powerful nonprofit institutions every incentive to manage optics over accountability. I want to be clear: this is journalism, not prosecution. We don’t have all the answers. But we have the questions — and we have the names. Marisol Fuentes deserved better. So does the next woman standing in a courtroom somewhere in New Hampshire, asking the system to protect her. New Hampshire courts have extended this protection to nonprofits before. There’s precedent from a case involving CASA NH — Court Appointed Special Advocates — where a judge ruled that because CASA volunteers function as an arm of the court, they get the same immunity protections as a judge. Here’s why that matters in Berlin. RESPONSE, the local crisis center, provides advocates to attend court hearings with victims. That’s literally on their website. Victim advocacy in court settings is their *job.* If RESPONSE had an advocate present — or was supposed to have one present — in Marisol’s case, their liability exposure is significant. *Unless* they can claim sovereign immunity. *But.* Sovereign immunity in these cases flows through the judge — or in this case, the magistrate. Stephanie Johnson *resigned.* When a magistrate resigns in disgrace after a catastrophic failure, does the sovereign immunity umbrella she could have extended to nonprofits working under her court... disappear with her? That is a legal question I am not qualified to definitively answer. But I can tell you this: it’s a question that *someone* in a law office is asking right now. And the answer to that question may have a lot to do with why Berlin Police are stonewalling a Right to Know request. Think about it. If both the PD and RESPONSE dropped the ball — and the magistrate who could legally shield RESPONSE is gone — you’ve got a situation where a crisis center under the NHCADSV umbrella is potentially exposed. And if RESPONSE is exposed, NHCADSV is exposed. And if NHCADSV is exposed... Funding. Federal funding. State grants. Millions of dollars that flow through that organization annually. Now the wall makes a little more sense, doesn’t it? Listen. Share. And if you know something — you know how to find me. Listen now — available on all major podcast platforms and right here on Substack. Sources with relevant documents are always welcome. I protect sources. That’s not a tagline. It’s a promise. Leave a comment, share this post, or upgrade your subscription to support independent journalism that doesn’t look away. Gracie Gato’s Speakeasy — because the truth doesn’t need a spin cycle. Get full access to Gracie Gato's Speakeasy at gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe [https://gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Four Beds and a Boardroom

Part 1 of 2: Four Beds and a Boardroom For ten straight years, the City of Concord wrote the exact same check — twelve thousand, five hundred dollars — to the same domestic violence nonprofit. No contract. No fee schedule. No public accounting of where the money went or what services it bought. The city’s police department helped staff the nonprofit’s annual fundraiser. Without a contract. Without an invoice. Without anyone in the city explaining how that squared with the 2008 resolution requiring nonprofits to pay for police labor on a fee basis. The city’s own website promoted the nonprofit as the primary public resource for domestic violence survivors — without disclosing that the nonprofit was, at the time, chaired by the Mayor’s wife, treasured by a sitting City Councilor, and sponsored at its annual fundraiser by the former Mayor’s own private lobbying firm. And in 2020 — quietly, with no press release and no public discussion — the City Manager stopped using the nonprofit’s name on the budget line. The check is still $12,500. The recipient is still the same. But somewhere along the way, somebody decided that the specificity of the original line item had become a problem. Tonight on the Speakeasy, we ask why. In this episode: * The 1978 nonprofit that became something else in 2014 * The 2008 resolution that built the legal architecture for everything that followed * The 9-Month Status Report in which the Concord Police Department admitted, in writing on the city’s own website, that it had been providing uncompensated services to a private nonprofit * The annual fundraiser that grossed $51,816 and netted $2,288 — a 4.4% margin * The Wedge Sponsor on the 2016 flyer whose name nobody in Concord wants to talk about * The HUD-funded offices with a sign on the door that says they don’t have staff * Two campaign-finance receipts from the fall of 2017 that should not have appeared in a Concord City Council race * And the day job nobody has told you about yet Next week: we follow the money out of Concord. We follow it to the State House. We follow it to a 2018 settlement, a 2019 court order, and a grand jury report that — to this day — is sealed in a Merrimack County file cabinet. Get full access to Gracie Gato's Speakeasy at gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe [https://gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]