LiveFreeAndComply.org

The Tamworth Planning Board and Conservation Commission are pushing ahead with their Groundwater Protection Ordinance “in the interest of public health, safety, and general welfare” (you know you’re in trouble when government starts using phrases like that). In order to keep us all safe, they think they need to conduct compliance inspections of any business in town (home businesses included) using more than five gallons of the thousands of controlled substances listed in this federal EPA list -  namely: things as common as household products under the sink, a gas can, or a few quarts of oil for vehicles on site. More precisely: pretty much every business in Tamworth will be subject to their “compliance inspections” and associated fees.

Their ordinance lays out a “groundwater protection district” subject to these rules, covering approximately all of the non-forested parts of Tamworth, and goes so far as to ban several activities entirely; as Planning Board member Steve Gray objected: construction of new gas stations will be banned pretty much everywhere anyone would want to buy gas conveniently.

The Conservation Commission put out a Groundwater Protection Ordinance FAQ. In it, they acknowledge that their compliance inspections could be considered an invasion of privacy, and counter with some ironic arguments: “We already inspect for fire safety, what’s one more inspection?”, “Inspections are educational events.” (And if you disagree with said education, fines and enforcement action for you!), and best of all: “The only businesses that would be afraid of inspections are the ones with something to hide!” (Most folks don’t have anything to hide, but still put clothing on every morning and send their mail in sealed envelopes.)

If in fact some local business owner does end up spewing toxic substances into the ground, what are they going to say? “The Tamworth Green Police inspected and anointed my operation here, I’m off the hook.” Of course not – if a business owner is so irresponsible as to be causing actual harm to his neighbors and the environment, the responsibility has and will lie with him. Having the Tamworth Green Police engage in invasive compliance inspections all over town, and charging those businesses for the pleasure of their compliance inspections, under the auspices of “maybe, possibly someday something could go wrong here” will be a bureaucratic headache for all responsible business owners in town, and an obnoxious invasion of privacy.

In the end, the town government simply wants the ability to point at each and every business, residence, or building project in town and say “yea or nay” as to its suitability in fitting in “their vision” for Tamworth. Their recent pushes on zoning and this ordinance are simply an effort to legitimize town government’s desires via stacks of paperwork, bureaucracy, and law.

The Planning Board is busy assembling its committee which will draft their new zoning ordinance for Tamworth. Members of the public were invited to be interviewed to be on the committee at the Planning Board’s most recent meeting. Subsequent to talking with everyone who attended, Planning Board chair Dom Bergen stated they would be convening a couple people to deliberate on who would be “open minded” enough to be on the committee. When prompted as to whether these deliberations would be public, Bergen stated “No, just a couple guys are going to meet. It’s not going to be…well, you tell me, am I making a mistake? We’re just going to meet to deliberate.” Planning Board member Tom Cleveland responded in jest to Bergen “Whatever you do is right.” Other Planning Board members have since stated that the final choices the couple Planning Board members (Tom Cleveland and Willie Farnum were selected to deliberate in private) come up with would be put before the full board for a vote.

Privately deliberating on government committee appointments flies in the face of RSA 91-A, New Hampshire’s “open government” statute. Section 91-A:2-a particularly refers to communications outside of meetings as a no-no. That said, it really doesn’t matter who ends up on the committee or how they get there: the Planning Board will generate whatever zoning ordinance they please in the end – if not fully so this round, eventually. But as long as the state government has provided for a means of more openness, it ought to be fair to ask that the Planning Board go along with making their process for increasing government control publicly available for scrutiny.

The Planning Board will be putting off their latest of several attempts at getting land use regulations put through in town till the 2011 town meeting. We encourage the Planning Board to spend many, many more years perfecting their zoning ordinance, as Tamworth’s residents will get left alone all the more if the Planning Board’s time is spent on paperwork and meetings rather than on enforcing their capricious rules.

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.

After months of dressing up the Planning Board’s desire for more power and control over people’s property through their “mandate from the people” in their “master plan”, and after holding six zoning meetings that several Planning Board members lamented were sparsely attended (the nerve of people not being interested in their important work!), Planning Board member Tom Cleveland committed a political faux pas at their most recent meeting, where he proclaimed: “Who doesn’t want [a land use ordinance]?!…doesn’t want an ordinance at all? Well there’s gonna be an ordinance! Tough tooties. There is going to be an ordinance.” Other Planning Board members were quick to point out that they would only be writing the ordinance and it is 51% of the voters who will decide if the Planning Board will gain more control over 100% of the properties in Tamworth.

At one zoning get-together, two Conservation Commission members weighed in on the subject:

Bill Batchelder: “I think there’s a misconception about zoning. A lot of people seem to think that zoning tells you what to do with your land. And it doesn’t. Zoning tells you a few things that you might not be allowed to do without special permission. The idea that the town is going to tell you what to do with your land, is just totally incorrect.”

Ned Beecher: “Land use restrictions are sort of based on that principle, as I understand it: we sacrifice something as an individual for the greater good.”

Clearly the town government’s good intentions are being misconstrued: you are to sacrifice your private property rights for the collective good, but you may be allowed to seek special permission from the bureaucrats. Who wouldn’t be yearning for that peachy arrangement?

Never fear though, it shouldn’t be too onerous, as Planning Board member Nicole Maher-Whiteside stated: “We’re going to start with something small, and think that it’s not going to get bigger: you’re right, it’s logical, it gets bigger. But I think if we can start with something that’s reasonable we may be able to head in a direction that doesn’t allow it to snowball into things that a majority of people don’t want.” – this is the promise with every new endeavor at every level of government, and one would be hard pressed to find a single instance where this promise was upheld over the years.

For all the purportedly awful scenarios that have been dreamt up that more government control of private property is supposed to prevent, the biggest problem on the horizon is a bunch of control freaks on this and future Planning Boards.

Tamworth Planning Board chairman Dom Bergen and his colleagues are ramping up for another go at zoning in Tamworth. In interviewing applicants to be appointed to a vacancy on the Planning Board, Bergen stated that the “Master Plan” is taking them in the direction of zoning, and as part of their vetting of applicants, asked each what their opinions on zoning would be if they were to be so chosen to be voting members on the Planning Board.

As if the land use controls they already have in place via the TWCO haven’t given them enough free reign, the Planning Board and other government-control types in town are looking for you to come beg them for their permission to start a business on your property, build a home for the in-laws, or to be able to raise a few chickens depending upon what “zone” or another you’re in. Even if the Planning Board had the nicest, most reasonable, liberty loving members on it, implementing laws that are dependent upon the niceness and reasonableness of a select few or “the will of the people” is never a healthy path to go down. And that is just the path Dom Bergen and his colleagues appear to be interested in taking Tamworth down.

On the bright side of things, New Hampshire is one of the few states that still has towns without such onerous land use controls in place, and Tamworth is only one of a handful of towns in New Hampshire not to have comprehensive zoning. It would be a shame to see that distinction be taken away in favor of more government control of private property.