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In what Club Motorsports bills as a “win”, their ongoing legal drama was sent back by the court system to the town to re-review CMI’s Special Use Permit application. Here’s to hoping CMI has something up their sleeve with regard to getting past the town bureaucrats, because it seems they’re back to square one and the Planning Board will just do a “better” job of telling them what they can and cannot do with their property this time around. This seems to be just another occasion for the town government to drag out the process for CMI – which, of course, is their goal.

Club Motorsports, FOCUS, and the Town of Tamworth took their battle to the New Hampshire Supreme Court once again. Despite the conflict of interest that one might envision when trying to solve one’s problems with government via the government court system, recent cases continue to stack up in favor of CMI and property owners in Tamworth.

The bottom line is that either CMI will be back starting fresh with the Planning Board if the trial court’s decision is upheld (the Supreme Court’s decision is pending as of this writing), or they’re in for being tied up in court even longer. On its face, it would seem that government-control types win either way, and the Planning Board will simply do a better and more thorough job of hosing property owners such as CMI the second time through. That said, it’s clear that CMI sees the recent trial court ruling as a victory (words like “unlawful” and “unreasonable” are stated in the court order with regard to the Planning Board), and the recent Supreme Court appeal has shown their opposition to be fretting about the “logisitical nightmare” and “impossibility” involved in the Planning Board complying with the trial court’s decision.

Planning Board member David Little was present for the oral arguments given at the NH Supreme Court, ostensibly there to support Club Motorsports in their defense of their right to utilize their property, as he himself has gone above and beyond even CMI and engaged in some brave and noble civil disobedience, openly flouting the town government and ignoring the Tamworth Wetlands Conservation Ordinance on his own property. [Just kidding folks, Dave regularly speaks out in support of the TWCO and gleefully participates in the enforcement of it. (Well, with as much glee as Dave has in him, which doesn't strike one as very much.) A bit of a double standard for Planning Board members, eh?]

Also of note is that for one of the largest matters of litigation that the town has ever seen, the town was not represented in front of the Supreme Court. Richard Sager, the town’s attorney, either intentionally or through ineptitude, reportedly didn’t get paperwork filed properly with the court and the attorney for FOCUS was the sole representation for the town – seems to be not quite on the up-and-up to let an attorney with separate clients and interests be the sole representation in front of the NH Supreme Court in a suit that the town is named in. [Political joke of the day: What do you call a lawyer with an I.Q. of 50? ....Senator.]

What this all serves to illustrate is the lengthy and expensive disaster for local families and businesses that one small land-use ordinance, such as Tamworth’s Wetlands Conservation Ordinance, causes in the hands of a Planning Board. Lot line rearrangements and Tamworth’s ecosystem would get along just fine without their wise “planning” every month, and did for many decades when Tamworth didn’t have a Planning Board. The Planning Board clearly doesn’t think they have enough power and control since they are mobilizing yet again to get more land use regulations pushed through this year; the abuse of CMI is a shining example of why that ought not happen.

Local residents who speak out in support of Club Motorsports building their motorsports park in town almost uniformly articulate the position of “more tax revenue for the town from CMI, lower taxes for the rest of us”. Even if one accepts the premise that the additional revenue would be used for tax cuts (ha!) rather than to increase the funding of the local government schools and social programs, it is a shame that the town government has put families and businesses in the position of lobbying for “we’re getting abused with high property taxes, please let’s abuse more people and businesses so the burden on me will be slightly lessened”.

The root of the problem is government spending, and consequently, government taxation. There is no good reason Tamworth’s forcible seizure of your money needs to be double that of surrounding towns. Family homes and businesses do not exist to support the government with tax revenue, and Club Motorsports is not coming to town for the warm fuzzy feeling that taxation gives them; they are coming in spite of the onerous taxation, not because of it.

There are good reasons to support Club Motorsports:

1. You see their abuse and expense at the hands of the town government, and realize that the systems in place to do that to CMI are just as in place for you and your private property, subject to the whims of the various town boards.
2. More businesses = more customers = more economic activity = more jobs = better for everyone.
3. You like high-end sports cars, or blazing fast motorcycles and are looking forward to the convenience of a track nearby.
4. You think FOCUS members are a bunch of gray-haired, pot-smoking, tree-hugging flower children of the 60’s incapable of minding their own business who are hell bent on government control of pretty much everything and the old adage of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” applies.

…but increased revenue for the town from CMI should make you mad at your local government for abusing families and businesses through taxation, not grateful to spread the negative effects of government spending to another local business.

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.