Dover residents nearly had taxes imposed on their roofs, driveways and walkways. You will see this “impervious surfaces” tax rear its ugly head in every town, eventually, if it is not stopped. To highlight the importance of letters to the editor, here is one very excellent example of a letter a Dover resident sent to her representatives and could also have been sent to her newspaper:

Honorable Members of The House Municipal and County Government Committee;

I wish to express to each of you my strong support for HB 1573. Here in New Hampshire — the “Live Free or Die” state — we must take a strong stand against yet another Federal Government intrusion based on the Marxist concept of central planning. HUD’s mandate to Regional Planning Commissions to “mitigate” private and individual property rights is in direct violation of our Constitution with no accountability to the taxpayers. Planning Boards — if needed at all — should be elected locally, funded locally, and accountable locally. The whole movement being perpetrated by HUD is clearly in lock-step with the U.N. Agenda 21 — which has a clear mission of forcing the United States into surrendering its sovereignty to a central world plan of redistribution of resources controlled by a group of third world thugs. A clear example of this nefarious plot occurred last fall here in Dover, New Hampshire.

Christopher Parker, Dover’s Director of Planning and Community Development went on a junket to Cuba for the stated purpose of “implementing urban agricultural strategies.” If he wanted to learn about agriculture, he could have taken a short trip to The Thompson School of Agriculture at U.N.H. in Durham — one of the very best schools specializing in the subject. Why would he go to Cuba, which has a tropical climate, and is a communist country with socialized agriculture and central government planning? What is Castro’s Cuba good at? Mr. Parker’s claim that Dover “has been working to boost participation at the community garden” is the main reason for going to Cuba, and that “he hopes his time in Cuba will help him find innovative ways to encourage others to participate in this unusual brand of farming.” With government spending at record levels, our city fathers think that it’s a priority to expand a half-acre community garden? All this begs the question: Did he go to Cuba to learn about agriculture and help local farmers, or did he go to learn how to increase government’s control of (i.e., socialize) farming? America has been the “world’s bread basket” because farmers have been free to do what they do best: grow food. The Soviet-style state-controlled farms that Cuba has had have been repeatedly shown to be failures. Why, then, the trip? Was it to learn better farming methods or to learn techniques to get government’s nose into yet another segment of American enterprise? We’re in the throes of coping with the introduction of socialized medicine, and now the seeds are being sown for the next step in the destruction of American exceptionalism: socialized agriculture. I smell what could be a rat, but it is probably the stench of the Marxist U.N. Agenda 21 lurking in the shadows.

Respectfully submitted,
Jean L. LaBrack
Dover, NH

Jean eventually did submit to Fosters and it was printed.