This morning on Girard at Large, Goffstown Realtor Mark Warden talked about Plan Pinardville and how major changes via a “master plan” are not needed to accommodate new businesses in the downtown area.

Of course we all know that Plan Pinardville is just a small part of a bigger program, NH’s Granite State Future.

Regional Planning Commissions are charged with ‘assisting’ with master plans and making ‘suggestions’ for changes per the recommendations of HUD and the grants thereof. They’ve dubbed their plan Granite State Future and it’s a product of your state and federal tax dollars. Nashua’s RPC gets paid $1.5 MILLION, yes that’s MILLION dollars per year for this dubious job.

RSA 36:45, “enables” Towns to join in the formation of Regional Planning Commissions.

RSA 36:47 states that the costs of “assistance” shall be paid by the municipality or county to which the service is rendered. [which means it’s a taxpayer-funded operation and thus subject to all 91-A rules, transparency laws, and freedom of information and enjoys no copyright]
 
The Master Plans are being “quietly” implemented at the local level during planning board meetings where, although there’s been notice to make it all quite “legal”, there’s no one from the public in attendance. Oh sure, they had “listening sessions” set up and run by PR firms such as Action Media and NH Listens, but those were limited to the Delphi method of controlled input.

The few times one of our residents says she has been bored enough to watch live Salem local government channel and the Planning Board, she’s seen Ross Moldoff, Salem’s Planning Director, try to get the planning board to approve the “Master Plan” at the local level in a perfunctory manner, without discussion and with no member of the public present.

But wait a minute, didn’t Salem opt out of Granite State Future and the whole “master plan” deal? We think we remember they did.

We did hear a planning official tell a resident in another town that they would go ahead without permission regardless. Is this legal?
 
The government is supposed to be the servant of the people, but “we” are becoming their servants as we unwittingly trust their authority and “professional expertise” and as they quietly strip us of local control and seize our liberty.