For months you have been at the epicenter of conflict between the Belknap County Delegation and the Gunstock Area Commission. You have garnered public support through falsehoods and outright lies. Now that the GAC legal bills have become public, the general public can compare the legal activity that you have initiated to the timeline of the dispute and the GAC minutes, and it is extremely disturbing. For over 60 years, the GAC and Belknap County Delegation, have enjoyed a harmonious working relationship. Despite your claims of partisan political appointments, it was essentially the same Delegation that appointed you, Brian Gallagher, and RustyMcLear to the GAC. The Delegation entrusts the GAC with running the County’s most prized possession, Gunstock Mountain Resort, in an ethical manner while representing the interest of the Belknap County taxpayers that own the resort. There are By-Laws in place that assure that no one Commissioner wields any more power than another. No one Commissioner can unilaterally act or occur cost without authorization in the form of a vote, from the entire Commission. State open meeting laws (RSA 91-a) should ensure that the Commission’s work is done in an open and transparent manner. This has never been an issue; in fact, my research indicates that the Delegation has never removed Commissioners for cause.
This all changed when you launched an expensive and unreasonable vendetta against a fellow commissioner. Peter Ness did what was expected of him, he asked tough questions. Those questions seemed to make you uncomfortable. Back in September 2020, quietly and with no authorization to do so, you engaged legal counsel to begin researching Mr. Ness’s background and qualifications. You had the Gunstock attorney investigate Mr. Ness’s Bar status, and the status of his Ski instructor certification, and researched the businesses that Mr. Ness has an ownership interest in. None of this was done in the open and is not reflected in any of the minutes. You also unilaterally sought legal counsel to issue a creative, yet incorrect interpretation of the law to allow Gallagher to remain a commissioner despite no longer meeting the basic requirement of being a “resident property owner in Belknap County”, a requirement that has not been amended and remains to this day. You feared losing political control of the GAC if another Commissioner was appointed in his place. During the July 29, 2021, GAC meeting, the Commission (including Gallagher) held a vote to ask legal counsel to research the legality of a redundant ethics policy that Mr. Ness was challenging. The authorization was limited, yet you improperly used it to Commission a full-blown investigation and report (soviet style dossier) into Mr. Ness that would later be used as the basis for a vote of no competence in Mr. Ness and a referral to the Delegation asking for Mr. Ness to be removed.
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Once again, you acted unilaterally and without any authorization, costing Gunstock many thousand dollars. The investigation and dossier resulted in trumped-up charges that Mr. Ness was attempting to sell a software program to Gunstock, although no evidence existed that this happened, not a single proposal or sales presentation was produced and there is no record that Gunstock ever considered a purchase of similar software. Charges of Mr. Ness being rude to employees were also made, although it was all hearsay, not a single firsthand account was produced of the alleged behavior. Mr. Ness was not interviewed during the investigation. The Dossier was immediately published with the minutes on the Gunstock website (despite your recent statement, memorialized in the Laconia Daily Sun that the charges against Ness have never become public) and presented to the Delegation as evidence. When it became apparent that members of the Delegation were not pleased with the way this all transpired, you, without authorization engaged legal consul again to attempt to have more than half of the Delegation disqualified from the removal proceedings based on a conversation that you claim you had with Norm Silber and Mike Silvia – a conversation that we now know did not happen. Ultimately, the Delegation concluded that no evidence existed that would raise to the level “cause” and declined to remover Commissioner Ness. The Delegation did have questions of how this dispute raised to the level that it did and began to review public minutes, looking into the actions of Gallagher, McLear and yourself. You personally recruited McLear because of his experience in the hotel industry, even though Gunstock does not operate a hotel.
It became public knowledge that the three of you have quietly using the Masterplan Committee to open a door for a public/private partnership with a hotel operator who would build and operate a slope-side hotel on Gunstock Mt. The Masterplan Committee seemed to operate in complete secrecy in violation of state law, no minutes of its meetings seem to exist. You publicly stated that there was interest from private entities in the proposal, yet you have refused to identify those private entities. Rumors begin to spread of a plan that would ultimately land yourself and McLear investor stakes in the new hotel.
Ness was asking questions that seemed to disturb you, so you attempted to have him removed.
The Delegation discovered that the investigation into Ness was commissioned without authorization and a slew of severe RSA 91-A violations causing them to create a schedule to hold removal hearings for the three Commissioners that have caused all the strife. A vote was held to authorize the lawyer sue the Delegation to prevent it from exercising its statutory authority to remove Commissioners for cause. Once again, this authorization had limits, limits that you far exceeded. You directed the Lawyer to refer Silvia and Silber to the Attorney General to be “criminally charged”, that was rejected. You authorized the attorney to do opposition research on a GAC candidate, research that was used in full page attack ad paid for by an unregistered citizen group.
The GAC lost the lawsuit as it didn’t seem to have any basis in law. After Dr. Strang was appointed to the commission, you once again, improperly and with out any authorization, engaged legal counsel to prevent a properly posted meeting from occurring. The meeting happened after a long and embarrassing protest by you and McLear. At one point you claimed that GAC by-laws trump state laws! A majority of the GAC voted to drop the lawsuit and legal activity completely; however, you improperly instructed the attorney to continue. You then improperly and without authorization engaged legal counsel on the question of McLear’s term, presenting a lengthy opinion to the GAC but refused to identify it’s author.
The entire dispute seems to trace back to your vendetta against Commissioner Ness, who was asking questions that you were not comfortable with. You have improperly racked up over $110K in legal fees to the County Owned GMR and Caused the Delegation to rack up $50k to defend itself against your frivolous lawsuit.
Your actions violated your Oath, the GAC By-laws, state law and the trust placed upon you as a Commissioner. You don’t have anything to add to the GAC and your presences is distraction to the important work of the GAC.
As a “resident property owner in Belknap County” I am demanding your immediate resignation from the GAC.
