How Do You Crash an Open House? Just Ask the NHTPC

On February 24, 2013 we posted this open invitation from the Lakes Region Planning Commission.

It was to be an open house for a public discussion on “Granite State Future”, a statewide project among all of the the state’s nine regional planning commissions, coordinated by the Nashua Regional Planning Commission. The project is funded through a $3.37 million federal grant from the EPA/HUD/DOT.

The invitation stated: “The purpose of the Open House is to provide an opportunity for the LRPC Commissioners, local officials, and the public to meet LRPC staff and talk about the Granite State Future Project and LRPC’s ongoing planning work that will inform the development of the Lakes Region Plan.”

So you can imagine how surprised we were to wake up the next day and see this misleading headline from the Laconia Daily Sun for an article fraught with some pretty curious contradictions: “Tea Party members crash LRPC Open House”

Excerpt: MEREDITH — An open house at the Lakes Region Planning Commission’s office on the regional planning agency’s role in the Granite State Future project turned into a media event last night as local Tea Party activist Tim Carter grilled Kim Koulet, the LRPC’s executive director, about the project as Ed Comeau of Government Oversite Cam filmed the question-and-answer session.

Koulet at first had said that filming the discussion wouldn’t be permitted as it was not a public meeting but after objections were raised that the open house was taking place in a public facility filming was allowed to take place.

We find it rather strange LRPC Vice Chairman Warren Hutchin’s claim that the GSF plan comes “from the ground up” when the regional planners are unelected boards with no authority, and yet, can manage to bypass local officials while rejecting local input on proposed new laws, ordinances, and fees outlined in their documentation of goals and objectives. The fact that their “listening sessions” are often “facilitated” by hired corporate PR firms is another red flag. Few residents are even aware of these sessions which usually end up being attended mostly by public officials and companies who hope to gain work from the projects.

Hutchins’ claim that “the regional plan will be based on input from the 30 local communities” seems inconsistent with the fact that Carter and others like him find that their objections are not welcome. So far most input from the communities has been ignored, defying any such claim that the ideas are coming from the “ground up”.

We didn’t vote these regional planners in, and thus we can’t vote them out. How is this kind of lawmaking even legal? How is this the “NH Way”?

It is interesting that even though the emphasis is supposedly on getting the public input about what they are looking for to improve the community, the opposition comments are never listed. The fact remains that this is a top-down program that is a done deal (in their minds anyway) and they are determined to go ahead with it regardless.

Related: Here are a few more videos from Skip over at Granite Grok. Tim is seen outside the venue explaining what GSF is really about, and another video of Tim speaking to the Belknap Republicans about it.