Category Archives: Goffstown

Goffstown Joins World Health Org Plan to Design Master Plan

As we reported before, Goffstown and Portsmouth were two towns in NH that joined the WHO/AARP program to help them craft their Master Plans, starting with a survey. The survey we saw from Bedford listed all the items on the United Nations’ wish list, used in their effort to “urbanize” America.

who_network

Yes, Master Plans are supposed to be “facilitated” by NH’s Regional Planners, (commissions created out of thin air by the legislature back in 1967) which remain unelected and unaccountable to the taxpayers. The groups to which they connect are also unaccountable, private groups (NGOs such as WHO, UN, APA, AARP, etc).

Here is an article from the Union Leader that confirms that Goffstown residents have joined this partnership undertaken by their town. Did most Goffstown residents see the survey if one has been offered? If not, how many will see it?

Two NH towns receive coveted distinction from AARP

You have to love UL newspaper’s “spin” — as if being chosen for this program should ever be considered a “distinction”. The only distinction these towns deserve is that they are defying local control in favor of international groups with an agenda.

While looking for contact information about the “correspondent” we discovered that Travis R. Morin actually WORKS for AARP! We could not have made this up.

Suggestion is that ALL Goffstown residents immediately get a copy of their Master Plan and see what made its way in, things that they may not even know about or want.

People did not move to Bedford and Goffstown to become “urbanized” or to level the playing field for spoiled millennials who cannot afford to buy homes here yet.

Goffstown’s Master Plan can be found here.

NH Activists Lauded in National Review Article

The biggest reason to attend town meetings which are coming up in your town soon!

National Review author Stanley Kurtz has mentioned some of our best NH activists in his latest article about Obamazone and the “Affirmatively Fair Housing Act” and the reason why towns should reject HUD grant funds.

To all our volunteers, those mentioned and those not mentioned, your work may be anonymous but it is not going unrecognized.

We haven’t always been able to get the numbers of people to town meetings as we would like. As you might know, in NH, town meetings (running anywhere from January – June each year) is where residents vote up or down on zoning changes. It is less clear how much say they have in these HUD grants, which are facilitated by ‘Regional Planning Commissions’, boards of unelected bureaucrats who operate just outside of public control and with specially selected NGOs. In our case it’s the Carsey Institute of UNH which actually employs a PR firm (NH Listens) and actors to steer public opinion at under advertised, under attended Delphi sessions.

We are grateful that Kurtz has given this issue of regionalism some mainstream attention. We who fight regionalism can no longer to be considered ‘conspiracy theorists’.

Full NRO Article Here

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

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

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…

Are there plans to bring Agenda 21 to your town?

“Sustainability” is the hot new buzzword on the left.

It’s the kind of word that sounds nice when you first stumble into it, but like everything else in the world of the eco-left, it really means control.

It’s what United Nation’s Agenda 21 is all about.

What might surprise you is that controversy over Agenda 21 tends to arise not from the dramatics imposition of its principles from above (like global warming), but from attempts to quietly insert UN dogma into local cities and towns.

Take a look at CFACT senior policy analyst Bonner Cohen’s article on CFACT.org

Bonner reports that, “planning commissions, which have spread like wildfire over the past couple of decades and whose members are unelected, produce an endless array of schemes designed to micro-manage every aspect of commercial, residential, and recreational life. No town, no matter how small, is safe from the meddling of planners in and outside of government.”

Are there plans to bring Agenda 21 to your town?

Is it already there?

You and your neighbors need to know.

Support HB 1573 on January 16th

There will be a Committee Hearing on January 16th on HB 1573 in LOB 301 at 1:00 PM.

Please contact the Municipal and County Government Committee and attend and testify if you can.

RPCs (Regional Planning Commissions) are the top down unelected boards who are implementing the federal government’s idea of sustainability through control over your local government.

If your town has been threatened or affected by GSF, you need to be part of this because your testimony is proof that people do NOT want this interference and the RPCs are overstepping their original purpose. We hope someone from these towns will plan on testifying on the 16th for HB 1573:

Alton
Bedford
Brookline
Claremont
Dover
Goffstown
Loudon
Manchester
Rindge

Goffstown Warrant Would Allow Rezoning

People who live along Mast Road in Goffstown, NH would be able to house their businesses in their place of residence, if this article is passed.

This was ONE of the features of Plan Pinardville that residents LIKED but could not have had without all the rest of the egregious conditions that came with the GSF proposed changes.

Town Meeting in NH, which runs anytime from January-April, is the MOST important vote you can possibly cast in NH. The Goffstown High School media center (library) will be the location for the hearing and discussion on this warrant article on January 9th, 2013.

Listen to Rep John Hikel speak about the various types of zoning in his December 16th interview with Girard at Large.