LiveFreeAndComply.org

In new case law, pertinent to recent Planning Board rulings against Club Motorsports in town, a Strafford County Superior Court judge rules that Planning Board decisions based upon sentiments that the project doesn’t “seem like an appealing situation” or that it could potentially pose a “quality of life issue”, as stated by two members of the Dover Planning Board with regard to a new subdivision application, are “unlawful and unreasonable”.

In response to their most recent endeavor in obtaining a Special Use Permit from the Tamworth Planning Board, CMI writes “the Planning Board denied CMI’s SUP application for the wetland impacts associated with the motorsports country club without providing an explanation for the denial, and without deliberating and ruling on the impacts associated with the access ways”. The Planning Board’s own minutes from that meeting corroborate CMI’s account of the events leading to the SUP denial: no discussion amongst the board, and a flat-out denial with no explanation.

Since, as in the noted Superior Court Case, CMI has complied with and exceeded all requirements put forth by the DES, the EPA, and the Army Corps of Engineers, one can only only assume that either the Tamworth Planning Board is a herd of primates mindlessly voting Nay on every Special Use Permit that comes before them (and this has not been the case), or that it boils down to the racetrack posing a “quality of life issue” and that the track doesn’t “seem like an appealing situation”. Given this recent Superior Court ruling, the Planning Board is in even less of a good legal position than they were, and the taxpayer’s of Tamworth are picking up the tab for the ensuing court battle over their subjective application of the TWCO.