Author Archives: Admin

Central Planners at Work

Remember, most of these people serve as UNELECTED bureaucrats fueled by federal and local dollars and who are working for the federal government on soviet-style regional commissions, and may have a greater say in what goes on in YOUR town than the average taxpayer. They will work to create “Public-Private Partnerships” taking direction from private interests that may not serve the ideas of the general population.

Notice that the Chamber of Commerce praises the raise in the gas tax.

In Bedford, voters overwhelmingly approved an “overlay district” on River Road, apparently missing the fact that this will only serve to turn Bedford into a city.

“Inward migration” is the key word here, as that is the master plan of the federal government — to get residents to reject rural and suburban living in favor of the car-less, close quarters of the new urbanism’s “compact housing”.

05-20-14 GMCC Panel Discussion

If the above video does not appear on your device, use this direct link:
http://vimeo.com/96273244

Taxing Your Roof

This very well thought out letter was found on Blue Hampshire of all places.

It criticizes a program which promotes the silly idea that homeowners with ‘roofs’ are creating stormwater runoff, water which can only come from — storms.

The whole sentence reads: “If your home has a roof, a lawn, or a driveway, chances are your property creates stormwater… There is no chance that a property of any kind creates stormwater. Only a storm can do that. Please ask the authors of this brochure to figure out what they really mean”, says the writer.

The whole DRIP program is a precursor to attempting to add roof/walkway/driveway taxes to the already large tax burdens borne by homeowners in this state.

Yes people this is the Agenda 21 that is so often called a ‘conspiracy theory’ by the left. Maybe they are starting to wake up?

SNHPC Seeks Input on “Advisory” Regional Master Plan for 2015

Update: Girard at Large weighs in on the SNHRPC [AUDIO]

First let’s look at this notice from the SNHPC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 16, 2014

Jack Munn, AICP, Chief Planner
Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission
Phone: (603) 669-4664
Email: jmunn@snhpc.org

Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission Seeks Public Review of DRAFT Regional Comprehensive Plan 2015

Between July 23 and August 21, 2014, the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission (SNHPC) is seeking public review and input on the DRAFT Regional Comprehensive Plan 2015: Moving Southern NH Forward.

This plan is advisory only and applies to the SNHPC Planning Commission Region which includes 14 municipalities located within portions of Merrimack, Hillsborough and Rockingham counties. These municipalities include the City of Manchester and the towns of Auburn, Bedford, Candia, Chester, Derry, Deerfield, Goffstown, Hooksett, Londonderry, New Boston, Raymond, Weare and Windham.

This DRAFT Comprehensive Plan is the result of a major two-year effort involving extensive public outreach through public visioning workshops; community events; social media; and public surveys. The development of the plan also reflects the hard work of a volunteer Project Leadership Team made up of planning commissioners, town planners and community representatives, including residents and businesses from around the region.

SNHPC is interested in hearing from all residents and businesses within the SNHPC Region. The DRAFT Plan can be viewed on the SNHPC website and CDs of the plan will also be made available at all local libraries in the region.

Links to the Draft Regional Master Plan:
Volume 1
Volume 2

A public presentation and hearing on the DRAFT Comprehensive Plan is also scheduled with the SNHPC Planning Commission on Tuesday, August 26, 2014 at 11:30 AM in the SNHPC Conference Room at 438 Dubuque Street, Manchester, NH. This Public Hearing is open to the public. Individuals requesting assistance or special arrangements to attend the meeting should contact Linda Moore, Office Administrator at (603) 669-4664 or at lmoore@snhpc.org

—

EXPLANATION

This Regional “Master” Plan has been developed with very little public input. Out of the 600 or so participants, perhaps only as few as 100 were actual citizens who were NOT connected to planning organizations or other special interest NGOs who influence the process.

The effort to create a Regional Master Plan for 2015 was done under the Granite State Future program. If one explores the link from the SNHPC‘s website to Granite State Future, one arrives at a page with this explanation:

MOVING SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE FORWARD

The Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission is facilitating A Granite State Future for the communities in the Southern New Hampshire Region. A Leadership Team and a Public Outreach and Engagement Subcommittee serve as advisory bodies for guiding the project. These advisory bodies are made up of citizen representatives from the different communities in the region, as well as representatives from businesses, organizations and local government.

An extensive public outreach campaign is being undertaken to reach all sectors of our region in every community. SNHPC encourages input and involvement from everyone in the region. The ultimate goal for this project is to develop a regional plan and vision for the future that addresses everyone’s individual interests and shared interests and identifies actions and recommendations that work to save taxpayers money, create better communities and to promote working together with neighboring towns and cities.

We’ve already proven that it is not community-based program, but a top down program devised by the RPCs, with input mostly from American Planning Association, local planners and NGOs and business, all enabled by grants from HUD, EPA, DOT.

We’ve shown how there were fewer participants from the true public sector partaking in the visioning sessions.

We’ve shown how these plans seek to cover every aspect of one’s life from housing and the prevention of sprawl through urbanization, land use, farming, health, education (Annenberg), healthy eating (children in schools), mental health, broadband, energy usage, gasoline, cars, water (including your private well), bike, transit, and more — while remaining a layer of government that is often unseen and therefore uncontrolled by the voters.

And we have shown that once the RPCs convince a town to accept the money from the federal government, it is NO LONGER AN ADVISORY PLAN. In order to benefit from the federal funds, HUD requires mandatory changes in the zoning and planning of each town in question. Sometimes these changes are voted on at the once-yearly town meetings and sometimes not. Further, legislation filed that the RPCs support would take the right to vote on zoning changes away from the townspeople.

Please examine these files to see what they have in store for the region covered by the SNHPC for 2015. Keep in mind that it is usually thought to be a ‘done deal’ unless opposition is mounted, so if you don’t like what you see, it is imperative to attend the public meeting and presentation on August 26, 2014.

Volume 1
Volume 2

Inside the World of Planning

The Sustainable Freedom Lab has prepared this excellent document that should be downloaded and shared by all.

It is called “Inside the World of Planning” and it addresses the problems of regionalism.

Some of the covered topics are…

No oversight of unelected regional boards
Undersampled surveys used to misprepresent goals of the community
Unethical methods used to sell plans to town and city boards
False data use to show benefits of regionalism where none resulted
Corruption and cronyism

Goffstown Makes the Wall Street Journal

Rob Astorino did not violate any anti-discrimination laws. And Westchester is an example that should make everyone sit up and take notice of what is going on in EVERY town and city in the country.

In NH it’s called Granite State Future and people in Goffstown, Rindge, Salem, Rochester, and Bow have beat it back. Bedford was not so lucky.

From the article:

Residents of the northern New York City suburbs were recently treated to a TV ad invoking images of the Jim Crow South and claiming that Westchester County executive Rob Astorino has “repeatedly violated anti-discrimination laws for years.” None of the ad is true, but it does reveal some important political news with national implications.

To wit, Mr. Astorino is resisting the Obama Administration’s attempt to rewrite local zoning laws by federal fiat, and as the Republican candidate for Governor of New York he has a better chance to beat incumbent Andrew Cuomo than the conventional wisdom believes.

On the credibility of the discrimination charge, consider that Al Sharpton, the racial provocateur, recently made a trip to Westchester to deplore making race a political issue. He was sent by Mr. Cuomo specifically to make race a political issue.

The facts are that Mr. Astorino took office in 2010 in the heavily Democratic county and inherited a 2009 housing settlement with the federal government signed by his Democratic predecessor. The deputy county executive at the time the original lawsuit was filed was none other than Larry Schwartz, who is now Mr. Cuomo’s chief of staff. In 2007 the county executive’s chief adviser, Susan Tolchin, called the lawsuit “garbage.”

The suit was always dubious given the lack of evidence of discriminatory practices. Between 2000 and 2010, the numbers of blacks and Hispanics living in Westchester’s mostly white neighborhoods increased by 56%. The county is the fourth-most diverse in the state and rivals Manhattan in the number of black and Hispanic residents.

Mr. Astorino has nonetheless complied with the settlement, which requires Westchester to build 750 affordable-housing units in mostly majority-white neighborhoods over seven years. Westchester has secured financing for 417 units and nearly a quarter of the units are already occupied, putting the county ahead of schedule.

Democrats still aren’t satisfied because Mr. Astorino refuses to let federal housing officials expand the deal extrajudicially. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is pressuring Westchester to declare that its zoning practices are discriminatory merely because many of its neighborhoods aren’t as racially integrated as HUD deems necessary. Westchester would then have to build thousands more public housing units, submit to HUD investigations and let the feds seize control of local zoning to determine where to build homes and schools.

Westchester conducted eight studies of zoning between 2011 and 2013 and found no evidence of racially exclusionary policies or practices. Mr. Astorino also hired an independent analyst from Pace University to look at the data, and he concurred with the county’s conclusions.

HUD didn’t like these results, so the agency’s federal monitor brought in the left-leaning Pratt Institute to produce “report cards” on the 31 communities involved in the settlement. Pratt also found no racially exclusionary policies or practices. It did find economic reasons that some neighborhoods aren’t diverse, but this is the result of individual home purchases. Pratt gave Mr. Cuomo’s own community of New Castle and other wealthy neighborhoods like Rye and Scarsdale passing grades.

When Mr. Astorino still resisted, HUD withheld $7.4 million in community development block grants last year and is threatening to withhold $5.2 million this year. This deprives Westchester’s poorer neighborhoods of the very funds that are supposed to build affordable housing.

All of this has national significance because HUD is using Westchester to test drive its racial engineering project to redefine discrimination by demography. Former HUD deputy secretary Ron Sims referred to Westchester as its “grand experiment” in 2009. HUD hit the Long Island city of Oyster Bay with a similar lawsuit in April, and other cities are wondering if federal funds are worth the threat.

Citizens in the town of Goffstown, New Hampshire, rejected a HUD-backed housing proposal in September after viewing a video that explained what had happened to Westchester. Mr. Astorino has also proposed to refuse federal funds and to use a bond issue to start Westchester’s own block-grant program “for the communities being held hostage by HUD.”

Which brings us to this year’s race for Governor. The media are portraying it as a lay-up for Mr. Cuomo, but don’t be so sure. Mr. Astorino should do well upstate, where the economy is lousy and Mr. Cuomo has banned fracking for natural gas.

The Republican has a history of doing well with suburban Democrats, who also resent Washington’s attempts to rezone their neighborhoods. In 2010 Mr. Astorino won 25% of the black vote and 30% of Democrats. Mr. Cuomo is worried enough that he recently cut a deal with the public-union Working Families Party, which suggests he will move left on taxes and the economy if he wins re-election. Mr. Cuomo is also trying to shut down Wall Street donations to Mr. Astorino, who needs money to get out his message of economic revival.

This is the context for the HUD-Cuomo-Sharpton racial squeeze play: Try to stigmatize Mr. Astorino just as he is trying to introduce himself to a broader electorate. Such race-baiting politics is what should be stigmatized, just as the country should reject HUD’s attempts to dictate the racial composition of America’s neighborhoods.

Read more…

Save Our Town Rindge Responds

Larry Cleveland of Save Our Town Rindge had this to say about an article that appeared in the Ledger Transcript that blamed their group for voting to reject certain federal grants supporting local projects in Rindge, and to cut their relationship with the Southwest Region Planning Commission.

In response to the article: High Speed Internet project at a standstill due to town vote (Karina Barriga Albring, June 18th).
by Larry Cleveland, SOT

First of all, the title itself is misleading. The standstill is caused by the fact that the Fast Roads project in Rindge is complete. Please go to their website and see the press release. It has nothing to do with the “town vote”. They are out of grant money. Selectwoman Oeser keeps saying that the town can’t apply for any grants allowing for more broadband. To the best of my knowledge, there are no more grants available. If there were, don’t you think Fast Roads would be all over them? If there is, please Ms. Oeser, state what they are. I have been to several meetings, and not heard of one. Is this behavior just a tactic to discredit Save Our Town?

The article alleges that Fast Roads brought high speed internet to the Police Department, RMS, and the library. At a recent meeting, the question was asked, “are there any Rindge town buildings connected to this broadband?” The answer was, “no, it’s too expensive.” The fact is this broadband “pipeline” only runs by 467 homes in Rindge. This is less than 25% of residences. Out of those, only 80 have chosen to be connected. This project cost the American taxpayer $2.5 million in Rindge alone. At that rate, with only 80 homes connected because of the high price to connect, and service rates, that amounts to over $31,000 per house. What a bargain. And now they want even more taxpayer dollars to run more lines that won’t be used?

This article, like others, has again misquoted me. I never said that I believe there is no need to expand service in Rindge. I did say that I believe according to the Fast Roads press release, they have no intentions on expanding service in Rindge. Frankly, there are not enough houses per mile to make it a lucrative business for ISP’s.

Another untruth in this article is the line “voters decided they didn’t want Rindge officials to receive any (HUD) grants.” Not true. We want to be able to see what they are, and what strings are attached before accepting. After this last round of HUD grants, it was revealed that town officials never read the whole contract, nor did they have legal counsel look at them. As far as “not having the tools” to apply for additional grants, I ask what grants? What tools? Oeser is stated as saying “getting geographic data from the SWRPC is the most convenient approach”. I say, it might be convenient, but there are other resources. It might take a little more work, but isn’t that your job as an elected official? Maybe the real convenience is blaming everything on Save Our Town.

Agenda 21: Global Conspiracy or Climate Savior?

Updated Article: 7/19 5:27 PM

“These events and many others like them are connected by one resonant term: Agenda 21. Agenda 21 is a United Nations advisory document, adopted in 1992 by 178 signatory nations including the U.S., which provides guidelines for sustainable development. But opponents of the plan see it as something more sinister: In her book Behind the Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21, Koire describes Agenda 21 as “the action plan to inventory and control all human beings and resources on the planet.” Koire’s book has become a common manifesto for the dozens of groups and untold thousands of individuals across America opposing the document, its goals, and what they see as its vast influence.”

Amazingly, while denying international involvement, they cite ICLEI, the UN’s sustainability arm which has worked its way into many local governments.

“According to Michael Schmitz, executive director of the U.S. chapter of the ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, there has been a broad rise in these sorts of incidents, with “a very small but very vocal group of protesters who will essentially try to disrupt the process [of local planning meetings].””

If the plan is to disrupt the process of Soviet-style top down direction of our lives by central planners via unelected boards, be prepared for more.

Our hero, Rosa Koire, is mentioned.

Here is her response.

Fortune Magazine (Fortune 500/Time, Inc.) published an article yesterday highlighting me and our fight against UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development. The article is a nuanced manipulation that lies by omission and half-truths, and slimes by intent. David Morris, the author, brings in ICLEI public relations and the Southern Poverty Law Center to ‘balance’ the article, and then concludes that Agenda 21 is necessary to save the planet — it ‘requires some sacrifices, not all of them made entirely willingly’.

The following quote is from our interview; David Morris asked me if I had anything to add.

I guess what I want to ask you, David, is how committed you are to representing a particular point of view that’s going to marginalize what I’ve told you? I’m hoping that you’re going to write an article that is genuine and fair… We have something serious going on in our country and around the world and it needs to be dealt with in a serious manner. If the major corporations which own the media are controlling that information we will not be able to get that information out to the people so that they can make these decisions for themselves. So I’m hoping — you have an opportunity here — and I’m really hoping that you’re going to use it.

Watch the interview here on YouTube. Judge for yourself how the media operates to manipulate public opinion and block the truth.

Here is Rosa’s rebuttal to what she calls a “smear” article by Forbes. [Video]

Rosa’s Website

Sadly Rosa passed away on May 31, 2021