Last night I went to the Selectmen’s meeting at the urging of a couple of friends. We live in a “resort” town on Lake Winnipesaukee and it seems that our village has, these last two years, been overrun by out-of-town corporations buying up homes by the dozens.
In part, to be truthful, in taking advantage of the run-up in the value of house stock during the pandemic: prices skyrocketed here in town, and my home’s assessment soared along with everyone else’s. Opportunities galore for flippers that bought houses, did a bit of fixing up, and then sold them at a quick profit.
Then there were the other types of investors – or as one of the Selectmen called them, “distributed hotels.” LOTS of our housing stock got snapped up by those that were looking to cash in on weekly/monthly rentals to out-of-staters. Enough such that noise, rowdiness, rudeness, and “entitlement attitudes” have become a big problem and it all got “centered” last night around the town’s beach.
You see, it used to be a “residents only guests” beach. Then more liberalized “guest” options at much higher costs started a few years ago, whereby commercial entities like hotels could pay some big bucks so that their guests could fill up the parking lot of our small beach and essentially take over the nature and character of the beach. Where before everyone knew everyone else and it was “THE” place for townfolk to bring their kids for a day in the sun, it became “THE” place for out-of-towners to bring THEIR kids to the beach and couldn’t care if they ticked off the locals.
Tempers have risen, patience run out, and last night the Selectmen’s meeting became a Lion’s Den, and guess who was on the menu for dinner?
It turned out that there was a conflation of two things at the same time – the 1700 square foot (+/-) bathhouse/lifeguard/concession stand needs upgrades, but the Selectmen were putting out a warrant for over a $1,000,000 dollars to raze it and rebuild at prices from $300/$600 a square foot. I, of course, blew my stack like always because Gilford must ALWAYS spend top dollar for the newest “Ta Mahal” to do better than the next set of Jones’s around the lake. And then STILL have to pour more money into the buildings because they can’t build anything right the first time (e.g., the Town Hall, the Fire Department, the Police Department, problems with the school buildings – but we’ve got a GREAT “sugar shack” for maple sugaring for the kids!).
I’m a software engineer, not a civil engineer, and it has been a few years since I was on the budget committee, but I’m tired of the “we can’t just make do attitude when a Caddy does well” attitude. A $1M bucks? Most of it going for the new commercial kitchen that would only be used a few months out of a year. Costing tens of thousands of dollars when the current “lease payment” by the vendor is only $500 for the summer?
Screw that, I told them. Raze the concession stand, stabilize and extend that pad for three food trucks, redo the electric connections, so they don’t have to run generators, and let THEM carry the cost of the commercial kitchen equipment instead of forcing townfolk to pay for it.
And as far as the “far from being up to code” plumbing and the rest of the electrical wiring are concerned, rip it out and replace it all. The “building’s bones” are still decent. And figure out a different way of doing the waste plumbing, so you don’t have to jackhammer the pipes out of the concrete floor.
And how DARE you start throwing numbers around and THEN tell us that there might be asbestos in that floor that has to be mitigated. You should have done that FIRST to get a better estimate unless you, once again, do the normal business in the town of “well, we forgot about this, that, and the other things.”
I’ve lived here in town for almost 40 years. I’ve just about seen all the tricks, chief among them not taking care of the buildings in the first place to make it mandatory to replace them.
NOW, the conflation part: WHY bond $1 million just so that the AirBnBers/VRBOs get most of the benefit as we locals get crowded out of what used to be the town beach?
And that set the stage for the second part of the meeting – a complete redo of the beach passes.
I’ve already gone long here but suffice it to say the locals are revolting over this, and the Selectmen have gotten the message (after all, a politician’s first job is to get elected, and after that, their newer first job is to get re-elected). The one most at risk went through a history of “how’d we get he-yah from they-ah?” and concluded that a reset was needed (with no words to the contrary from the other two Selectmen).
That reset was to return to the days when a resident could buy a day pass for friends/relatives from Town Hall, drive to the beach, and show the beach attendant, “the next car is with me,” and both get waved in. No more “hotel/AirBnB/VRBO” passes.
The idea was to NOT penalize locals who were taking a week or two vacation and decided to rent out their homes for that time period – after all, they LIVE HERE FULL TIME. Ditto renting out a room/suite/ADO (think in-law appt building). No one has a problem for instance, with me having my son down from Colebrook with his family coming to use the beach that he grew up on as long as I am with them (or my other son from Maine). The idea and emphasis are that local residents will start being responsible for their guests personally and not in absentia.
Sure, there are some locals that “cashed in” on this STR (Short Term Rental) craze, and this made more than a few people rather angry.
Too bad. I got angry at those “not from he-yah” causing a ruckus and upon me asking them to tone things down a bit, being haughtily told, “WE PAID OUR MONEY, AND WE’RE ENTITLED TO BE HERE!!!”. And it turned out I was far from the only one.
And thus providing the point of the issues and making residents no longer feel welcome at their own town beach.
Once the video goes up, I’ll update this post (or a new one) – this isn’t over by a long shot.
After all, the Selectmen have not created a problem for themselves over the warrant and the timing of the Deliberative Session…