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After several months of toiling on behalf of the Planning Board’s excavation subcommittee, along with the diligent efforts of the state gravel bureaucrats, the Selectmen, and Cassandra Pearce: gravel companies in town are becoming an avid target of local busybodies. In particular, Hank LeTarte’s gravel operation has been shut down by royal decree until it is anointed with the appropriate government paperwork, and Chocorua Valley Lumber is being extorted to the tune of $100 /day for their history of flagrant non-cooperation with the town when it comes to wetlands and important matters of government paperwork.

Selectman Willie Farnum and Cassandra have openly discussed their creepy endeavors cruising around town eyeing what they can see of gravel operations from the road. Lessons learned: don’t let bureaucrats on your property, and put some shrubbery between your property and their leering eyes.

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.

Chair of the Conservation Commission, and Professional Poop Farmer, Ned Beecher sent a letter to his neighbor George recently, detailing the disaster that he had caused when he installed a meager little culvert and removed, horror of horrors, a tree stump. Not an ecological disaster, mind you, nor anything that impacted the properties of George’s neighbors, but a disaster of a far greater magnitude: no government permission was sought for the endeavor.

The letter includes helpful tidbits for George, such as a grand explanation of all his permitting options through the DES, his tree-stump removal violation, and a suggestion that George and his wife “may want to consult with the Planning Board and/or Conservation Commission to get a sense of the permissibility of what you propose, prior to spending time and money on the application process”. At least Ned understands that their subjective control of private property does have time and financial implications for local families and businesses, and it certainly will in this case as he CC’ed his letter to the NH DES as well as the Selectmen for enforcement action. Ned wraps up his letter with a particularly neighborly tone: “As noted, you are possibly in violation of three state and local regulations. You may need as many as three permits to proceed.”

Something is wrong when some poor fellow can’t remove a stump nor install a culvert on his own property without threats of being cost time and money, along with gracious offers to “get a sense of the permissibility of what you propose” from various town and state bureaucrats. Most neighbors help each other out with backyard projects, but apparently if you live next door to a town bureaucrat, you’re instead threatened with enforcement of onerous and unethical regulations.

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.

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.

From the Planning Board January 28, 2004 meeting minutes, regarding current Planning Board member David Little’s disregard for the TWCO:

“It is a problem that significant work was done but no one had a chance to check or look at it. The application should have been in so that people could check or at least look at it.”

Little failed to get approval or review of his wetland impacts under the TWCO. Little did file for and receive a permit from NH DES for the wetland impacts, according to the NH DES OneStop project information site.

We are certainly the last to object to Planning Board member’s use of their own private property that is in conflict with the TWCO, and simply suggest that the Planning Board ought to be so gracious as to let the rest of the town do the same without using the force of government to coerce families and businesses into compliance with their subjective control of private property, as they have done many times over since this case in 2004.