by Ed Naile
CNHT has been working with the group in Rochester which has taken on the comprehensive re-zoning committee appointed almost a decade ago.
As with many land regulation oriented public bodies, they seem to have come up with a plan for future uses of private property, this time in Rochester, that was made in the dark through a series of unpublicized and unrecorded meetings. It is always better to change the status of the peasants without their knowledge.
Here is a story about the recent appearance before the Redress Committee of the NH House:
Residents air grievances with Rochester rezoning process at House panel hearing
“ROCHESTER — Residents upset with the comprehensive rezoning process aired their concerns in front of the House Redress of Grievances Committee on Tuesday.
More than a dozen residents argued that Rochester’s comprehensive rezoning committee kept city residents in the dark about the rezoning process, and potential change of permitted property use, by not keeping sufficient meeting records for more than eight years.
The public hearing came after more than 300 residents signed the redress of grievances petition, sponsored by state Reps. Cliff Newton and Susan DeLemus.
While the rezoning project is now in the hands of the Planning Board, which is in some ways starting the rezoning process from scratch, Newton said on Tuesday the working document is “fruit from a poisonous tree.””
This comprehensive re-zoning committee is in fact a public body and should have been aware of the consequences of hiring advisors, spending their budget, holding meetings etc., in secret because some of them were on a police commission in 2004 that was admonished by the Superior Court for failing to abide by the NH Right to Know Law back then.
Our Right to Know Law is extremely important so some people in Rochester such as an owner of a chicken farm who would have found himself trapped in a new residential district. There goes thousands of dollars in legal fees to get back to where you were before the secretly created land use category killed your business.
Did an individual on the secret Rochester comprehensive re-zoning committee have it in for the chicken farmer? We will never know.
Did the secret committee just not know about what would happen to the chicken farmer?
Maybe if there were public meetings and minutes the chicken farmer could have addressed the issue BEFORE losing his business.
Maybe it is about time to have the secret committee publicly pay out of their own private pockets for the damage they tried to do Rochester, some for the second time.
Among others, state Reps. Cliff Newton and Susan DeLemus have had a hand in bringing this injustice to light and trying to correct it.
Let’s hope the Superior Court does as well.