Yesterday the Union Leader reported on my petition to abolish the Planning Board, that will be put forth from a group of concerned citizens. Here’s why.
We saw this year that group of citizens can follow the law and propose a citizens amendment to zoning ordinance. They collected the signatures, wrote the petition, and presented it as required. The Planning Board voted to not-recommend the amendment, as it would undo a lot of the hard work they had done. That’s all fine and good, as the Planning Board is required to recommend or not recommend amendments put forth by petition.
What happened next was troubling to many, myself included. The Vice-Chair of the Planning Board, Ivy Vann, in a separate meeting of the Master Plan Steering Committee, was quoted in the minutes as saying “we have to defeat this warrant article.” They went on to say
Ms. Vann noted she did not feel it showed unity when Mr. Ward [Select Board Chairman] abstained from the vote to not take a position of the support or lack thereof on this petition article. “It was disappointing” she said. “It was not just disappointing it was deeply heartbreaking” adding “and I don’t really want a Board of Selectmen that need to be asked” interjected Ms. Heller.
Protest Petition
We know the Planning Board Vice-Chair put together a protest petition to the citizen’s amendment. The protest petition was delivered at the last possible moment, raising the threshold for the citizen’s amendment to a 2/3rd supermajority, as opposed to a simple majority. There are questions about the validity of both the citizen’s and protest petitions that are currently sorting themselves out in court. We will have to wait and see on that front.
We know that a majority of the voters on Town Meeting Ballot day voted in the affirmative for the Citizen’s Petition. A majority of the voters wanted the amendment passed, which would have repealed one Overlay Zone and amended a second.
We know that other proposals put forth by the Planning Board in recent years, including form based codes which can dictate appearance and style of your property, have been rejected by a majority of voters.
Task Force Housing
We know that a task force has been assembled. The headline on the task force invitation letter to those who signed up says “What will Peterborough look and feel like when we have successfully crafted housing solutions that meet our current and anticipated needs?”
We know the task force asks members to read Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block.
The expanded and revised edition of Community tackles the hysteric rise of isolation and fear in a digitally interconnected world.
As a response to the increasing violence in our culture, the widening ideological divides, and the growing gap in economic well-being, there is greater awareness that a deeper sense of community is desperately needed. But even as we acknowledge the need to build community, the dominant on-the-ground practices about how to engage people, civically and organizationally, remain essentially unchanged. We still believe community is built with better messaging, more persuasion, and social events for people to get to know each other better. All of which is naïve.
Monadnock Rod and Gun Club
We know that the Planning Board put forth an ordinance that eliminates outdoor shooting ranges. The Monadnock Rod and Gun Club has existed in town, with outdoor shooting ranges, for decades. The Town of Peterborough and the MRGC have been involved in lawsuits for years, that are as yet unresolved in courts.
Abolishment
Given all this, we believe the Planning Board and others involved in controlling how the Town gets built, where it gets built, and when, have not been listening to the citizens in Town. They have proposed ordinances that will restrict or remove your property rights. They have used the law and protest petitions to stop citizen engagement in having their say.
We know that abolishing the Planning Board would freeze existing ordinance as adopted at the next Town Meeting, those ordinances would remain in force as is for at most two years, at which time those ordinances would all be stricken.
We know that the Planning Board, Task Force, Master Plan Steering Committee, and others need to listen to the citizens of Peterborough and protect property rights not dictate them.
Therefore, pursuant to RSA 673:18 we have established the following petition to place on the ballot a question for the voters, “Are you in favor of abolishing the planning board as proposed by petition of the voters of this town?”
If you are, download the PDF here. You can fill it out as a registered voter in Peterborough, and mail it to me at the address listed at the bottom.
petition