Thank you, Lakes Region Planning Commission Executive Director Jeffrey Hayes for giving us a glimpse under the curtain! In this relatively short clip, he proves TWO things:
- Regionalization is still being pushed by NH’s “fourth level of Government” (the others being local, county, and State) even as we were hammered that it doesn’t exist
- A GREAT example of what I’ve been saying for years – bureaucracies exist to grown beyond their underlying and authorizing State statutes. Here, Jeffrey Hayes seeming wants to turn the LRPC from being an advisory organization to a money making one by making it “topmost” and charging the underlying (and soon to be subordinate) towns money for stuff.
And for those of you that would accuse GraniteGrok of cherry picking, the entire video is after the jump. And one of those folks there is my town’s Planning and Land Use director.
A few years ago when the HUD “Sustainable Communities Initiative” (formerly Smart Growth, and yes, UN Agenda 21 (which is no longer but superseded by yet another name (like Liberals / Progressives, they keep “burning out” what they call themselves))), we used to do a lot of writing against what we saw was the Obama Administration pumping in a lot of Federal dollars with the nine Regional Planning Commissions being the recipients of that cash. What started out as “transportation coordination” and “interfaces between local area communities and the NH Dept of Transportation” have morphed into much, MUCH more. For instance, at the time I wrote it, my Public Works Director was on it and they decided to take on broadband deployment. He knew roads – telecomm, not so much, but they took it on BEYOND their authorizing statutes.
So now Jeff Hayes decided to use the “incremental” process in using what I would label as “sneaky” tactics to gain control of towns/ cities and even county governments. It is clear that they do watch folks like us, their opposition. If you watch the whole thing (agenda listed below), they are quite open in actively lobbying FOR and lobbying AGAINST policies and bills (using our tax monies) that would help or hurt their activities. I’ve posted before about the Belknap County Commissioners looking to extend THEIR power in regionalizing the Police and Fire departments in the county. In watching the entire meeting, one can’t help but to think that the LRPC forward thinking is to slowly take on more and more of what our traditional small NH towns and cities have typically handled for centuries. PJeff Hayes’ own words in relation to the towns under his “control” is “Limit what they do to a few things“…
Regional Procurement Update is when Jeff Hayes goes on this stream of remarks pushing more agenda on getting more procurements, adding even the County Commissioners, especially the Fire Departments and I think also the Police—all about Regionalization of many utilities and duties.
John Ayers questions Jeff on the reason why Alton and other towns leave the LRPC, Agenda 21 and other issues pertaining to events that make towns leave. Jeff rebuts the theories of the towns—they want sovereign towns and can pay their own bills, plus get their own Grants.
What is Sovereignty? The quality or state of being Sovereign equals Power and Authority. Supreme and Independent power or Authority in towns/cities equals a Sovereign Community. The LRPC takes away all these qualities through their Regionalization of all the Lakes Region towns/ cities and counties, if We the People let them (easy to do – who really watches this pretty much unknown level of NH government)? Regionalization takes away Sovereignty, decision making, citizen awareness and discussion. Talk about “the Administrative State”; the Commissioners are all unelected and accountable to no one and no voters. Get this – and they charge local towns for the privilege of “membership” in all this.
The above is just the “Regional Procurement Update: Electricity, Oil and Propane” (think large amounts of money now flowing through an agency that isn’t authorized to do this – what kind of vigorish do you think will get skimmed off the top for this?). The list doesn’t stop there: catch basin cleaning, outsourcing school buses to the LRBPC instead of contracting with private companies. They’e already become a bit of a “electricity power supplier” for some towns.
Once that is done, what comes next?
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Here’s the Agenda for that meeting if you follow along:
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Full Video:
