LiveFreeAndComply.org

Please watch this important message from the Citizen’s Realty Advisory Program outlining the Tamworth Millionaire Program (T.M.P.): a bold new initiative the Tamworth Selectmen have embarked upon to help struggling residents through these difficult economic times by drastically increasing their net worth. Find out how you too can become an overnight multi-millionaire simply by criticizing the actions of Tamworth politicians. This film may also be educational for other emotionally insecure, brazen, morally bankrupt politicians outside of Tamworth who are looking to increase tax revenue in their own towns.

More information on the T.M.P. can be requested from the town officials by mailing this easy-to-use form to:

Tamworth Board of Selectmen
84 Main Street
Tamworth, NH 03886

…or by contacting the Selectmen’s office directly at 603-323-7525. The Selectmen are also handily available via admin@tamworthnh.org. All personal information on the form is certainly optional, but if you’d like a response from the office staff under RSA 91-A, you may want to include some type of contact information. Sending in something particularly witty? Berated on the phone by the office staff? Please let us know at info@livefreeandcomply.org

Local objector to town government and avid writer for this website, Scott Finman, received a $4,000,000 tax assessment and resulting $70,000 /year tax bill from the Board of Selectmen in Tamworth. This is the second time in the past few months the Tamworth Selectmen have seen fit to punish town residents for what they say and write about them. Finman released the following statement:

My new status as a multi-millionaire arose out of a 20 second conversation with the tax assessor, Phil Bodwell, several months ago in which he asked to set up a time to meet with me so he could inspect the property and home; I replied that if I have to, I guess I have to, otherwise, we are a private family and would prefer to keep it that way. This policy of mine for nosy bureaucrats is not unique to the assessor’s office – my past experiences with the town government have caused nothing but problem and expense for me; the less they are involved in my property the better.

I have personally provided the Selectmen’s office with a septic plan, footprint of the house, a current use map, a detailed building notification form including square footage and number of bedrooms, as well as photos of each side of the four sides of the house and the barn. I cannot imagine what more they could possibly need to come up with an assessment at least bearing some semblance to reality. The Selectmen are hardly hurting for property comparison’s in Tamworth when it comes to single-family homes with agricultural uses of land – this is the theme of hundreds of the properties in town.

This is not the first occurrence of this problem. Selectman Willie Farnum, prior to a public meeting, openly described his policy for dealing with the few hundred privacy minded families who did not give their permission for the tax assessor to enter their homes during last year’s re-assessment: evaluate the interior of their homes at the highest level possible (assume the interior of an old Tamworth farm house is encrusted with granite countertops and $800 faucets, for example), and residents will come to the Selectmen begging to have the assessor in their home when they see their tax bill. This policy could account for the first million dollars of my assessment, but John Roberts’ motion, seconded by Farnum, to increase my assessment to four million dollars is clearly a perpetuation of their objection to folks speaking out against them that started with former Selectman Tom Abugelis’ public flogging for a letter-to-the-editor criticizing the mentality of town government. I can’t imagine the Selectmen will fess up to their assessment being a punitive measure, but a four million dollar price tag on an unfinished single-family home and a 36′x36′ barn speaks for itself.

I have been an active observer of the town government in Tamworth for over a year now, and a four million dollar punishment for what one thinks, says, and writes in town is even shocking for what I have unfortunately come to expect out of Willie Farnum, John Roberts, and Cassandra Pearce. I have lived in large cities where mayors have been convicted for acts of corruption such as stealing thousands of dollars worth of gift cards intended for needy children, and I do not believe even they would think of pulling something so blatantly smarmy in shallow retribution for what one thinks, says, and writes.

My attorneys are pursuing all legal avenues against the Selectmen to resolve such an inaccurate tax assessment based upon the stacks of information they had available to them. That said, the bravado of the Selectmen’s actions indicate that they think they are invincible, with a “bring it on” mentality to any objection to their unlawful and outlandish actions. Any challenge to them through the court system will only involve their well-paid taxpayer-funded town attorney, and any so-called “win” in court will again only be funded by money that they forcibly extract from hard-working Tamworth residents – there are no substantial personal consequences for them through the government system.

Thus, I think the most effective means of countering the Selectmen’s office is through the continued broadcasting and critiquing of their actions, as they clearly find my writings and a few cartoons poking fun at them to be so dangerous that I am in need of a four million dollar spanking. With this spirit in mind, I hereby offer my property for sale to either Selectman Farnum or Selectman Roberts at a rock-bottom price of $3.5 million – that way they make an easy $500K (by their calculations) and get rid of me in town, all in one simple real estate transaction.

The Selectmen’s history of causing problems for families and businesses in town who have caused harm to no one, their “bring it on” mentality, and their trend of punishing residents for their thoughts and words is a very negative and destructive path for Farnum, Roberts, and Pearce to take Tamworth down.

Agriculture was the focus of the final land-use forum that the Planning Board put on, led by unofficial Tamworth land use regulation facilitator Nicole Maher-Whiteside – hereafter affectionately anointed Tamworth’s Zoning Queen. Despite a handful of comments in support of more regulation at the meeting, local hard-working farmers brought forth a theme of personal responsibility, communicating with one’s neighbors, objections to burdensome taxes, a desire for Tamworth’s agricultural landscape to be of actual working farms rather than a “museum landscape” through town government, and a recognition that the only tools that town government has with which to do anything positive are to “get out of the way” with regulations and taxes.

Of particular note, coming from three of the local farmers present:

What can we do outside of government that can facilitate that [neighborly] communication?…

You could create a whole set of regulations that tried to impose a certain kind of landscape, but it could all be fields that are mowed but aren’t worked….

I could live with seeing [agricultural land] protected [through government], but far better, far better to have people living on that land farming it….

So what do you do though then when you’ve got some nice rules in place, regulations that keep agriculture land agricultural land, but you can’t afford to be there to do an agricultural endeavor? If we were given Red Gables Farm today, we would have to move because we could never afford to live there…So how can the town encourage people with agricultural interests to come here and get a piece of something to do something with?…I think people passing through with an interest in agriculture are going to keep right on going when they look at the real estate brochure….

There are young families out there, who, if they had access to some of this land, could do a good job of making it productive. If not make their whole income from it, make a substantial portion of it. But they can’t do it without help. And I don’t look to the government to do it; frankly, that has to come from the private sector; it has to come from the good will of the people to figure out how that’s going to happen….

As Tamworth’s Zoning Queen herself put it:

What I’ve heard so far is that the big thing is to stay out of the way; to not make rules that you can’t have livestock here, you can’t have a farm here, you can’t do this, you can’t do that….

I’m really hearing pretty loud and clear, actually, that we need to be more careful about making too many rules.

The Planning Board submitted in their 2010 budget request a need for $21,000 for their legal expenses, or rather, a whopping 60% of their entire $35,070 budget request. Not a bad system to be able to take money from local families and businesses and use it to defend their all-knowing “planning” when those same families and businesses object to their wise “planning” and take them to court over it.

[Update: Town attorney collecting 60% of the Planning Board's budget can't even make it to a Supreme Court case to stick up for the Planning Board's "unlawful" and "unreasonable" actions.]

The new Superintendent of government schools for SAU 13, Jay McIntire, after introducing himself at tonight’s Selectmen’s meeting as one of the more highly paid taxpayer-funded employees, stated that as part of his new job, he was looking to cut costs at the administrative level and find a new, more economical home for the SAU’s operations. As long as we’re going to have government schools, they might as well be slightly less expensive – good for Jay so far. Upon Selectman Farnum’s suggestion that a portion of the local sinkhole of taxpayer money, the K.A. Brett elementary school, could possibly be used for the SAU’s operations, Superintendent McIntire stated that it would be far too easy for a child’s parent, displeased with something or another to do with their child’s education, to be able to go right to the Superintendent’s office down the hall if the principal couldn’t or wouldn’t tend to the parent’s concerns.

If Jay has unhappy parents at his schools, and he apparently doesn’t fancy dealing with their problems, it would seem to be a simple solution for everyone involved if parents could keep their earnings taken from them to fund the government school system as well as Jay’s paycheck, and instead send their child to a private or home school that would perhaps meet their needs better. Not every family can afford to be required to pay for a government school as well as a private school at the same time, and thus unhappy parents without extra funds are left to send their kids to a school whose Superintendent objects to having to deal with them at their convenience.

Update: Superintendent McIntire responds, stating lack of financial freedom for parents in school choice is unfortunate, and he really doesn’t object to parents… Read the rest of this entry »

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 the midst of trying economic times, Tamworth selectmen Tom Abugelis, Willie Farnum, and John Roberts are moving ahead with seizing citizen’s properties for back taxes. From the 5/14/09 Selectmen’s meeting minutes, one family wrote a letter asking not to have their home taken from them. Two properties were recently deeded by the town, and it is not clear if the letter was written by one of them or by a new family whose property is soon to be on the chopping block, as such discussions are closed to the public:

A taxpayer requested the Board stop a lien from being placed on his property.  The Board advised of their policy to not stop liens from being placed on properties or deeding of properties.

Cold. Fortunately, it sounds like the family is only being put on the path to being literally tossed out on the street, and will be staying in their home for now: Administrator Cassandra Pearce chuckled at a public meeting, in front of a rolling camera, about the town “becoming landlords” for the time being on a recently seized property.

B..b..but if we don’t take people’s properties from them, then other people won’t be quite as motivated to write a check to the town every year for their “fair share”. We’d not have the money to pay for a wildly expensive elementary school, nor a community nurse, nor for the health & welfare budget, nor… Tell it to the folks losing their homes. It is wrong to have a system in place that takes people’s homes from them for not contributing their “fair share”.

Selectman Willie Farnum told citizens at a public meeting, in all earnestness, that if they were concerned about high property taxes they could physically destroy their homes to reduce their assessed value. Farnum encouraged tax-burdened Tamworth resident Bob Abraham to sledgehammer interior walls to reduce the number of bedrooms in his house, stating that he himself had razed a portion of his own home for precisely that purpose.

We would suggest to Willie that he, as a Selectman, is directly responsible for the tax burden on citizens and it would be more productive for everyone if he and his colleagues simply reduced spending, and thus the onerous property tax rate in town. Farnum campaigned on lowering taxes this past election season, and he ought to pursue that by substantially reducing spending and the resulting tax rate, not by destroying property values.