Not exactly Profiles in Courage

I don’t know who will win the 2024 Profiles in Courage award, but I have a pretty good idea who won’t.

To nobody’s surprise, the Hanover Planning Board voted unanimously to approve CRC’s Site Plan Review Permit last week. There was very little discussion at the meeting, and no real debate. The decision, like so many in this 7 year saga, was obviously made behind closed doors.

Patrick Adrian of the Valley News wrote an informative article that captures the flavor of meeting pretty well, worth a read if you haven’t already: Valley News 12.8.23

In the written decision, the PB acknowledge that they don’t know if the site plan meets the town standards, but the members claim to be powerless to do anything about it. After all, they took an “oath”, so what else can they do?

Of course, history is littered with examples of bad outcomes that derive from blind obedience and allegiance to some higher order. “I was only following orders” and “I was just doing my job” are always the escape hatch. If this development some day gets built, and the results are as bad as all the neighbors expect, I think we will find little comfort in knowing that at least the Planning Board kept their oath.

In case anyone is curious, I looked up the actual oath that municipal officers take. It’s prescribed in the NH Constitution, part II, Article 84. You’ll note that it starts with allegiance to the US Constitution, and the NH Constitution. Only in the 2nd part does the oath taker swear to uphold the laws of the state, and only then after they have again sworn to uphold the NH Constitution a 2nd time. The full text of the oath is here: https://www.nh.gov/glance/oaths.htm

Article 5 of the NH Constitution is pretty clear:

“Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience . . . provided he doth not disturb the public peace or disturb others in their religious worship”

Creating a mega-development without adequate review to ensure that it doesn’t create traffic safety issues or flooding hazards certainly seems to fall under the category of “disturb(ing) the public peace.”

So, what’s next? An appeal, of course, and CRC also needs at least two state permits that we will be watching closely. Still a long way to go. Stay tuned . . .

Planning Board meeting – Dec 5

Those of us of a certain age have the immortal Alfred E Neuman burned into our brains. Look at the picture above. Why would the residents of Greensboro Rd possibly be worried about a 21000 SF development with 1.25 acres of impervious surfaces right where the road floods/washes out over and over again?

And yet, Don Wileman and the leaders of Christ Redeemer Church think that they should be exempt from any form of town scrutiny of their plans. They tell us not to worry, they are going to be good for the neighborhood. If you ask them to tell you specifically how they are going to benefit the neighborhood, they say it’s an unfair question and you shouldn’t put them on the spot. After 7 years, they should be able to tell us at least one thing, shouldn’t they?

Call me a pie-in-the-sky crazy optimist if you’d like, but I’ve always thought religious institutions should hold themselves to a higher moral standard, and be more accountable to the community than the typical real estate developer, or mafia hitman. CRC obviously disagrees. In their mind, they should evade all accountability, because, after all, they are a church.

Any way, the Planning Board will continue their review of CRC’s application on Tuesday, December 5 at 7:30. We don’t expect that they will take public comment on Tues night – this will probably be a deliberative session only. But, neighborhood attendance is still encouraged. The Greensboro neighborhood had turned out over and over again at public meetings, making sure that our feelings are known and our voices are heard.

If you’d like to learn a little more about the issues at hand, you can read the letter that I submitted to the Planning Board prior to the November meeting. It’s a pretty good summary of the current issues and how we really feel

Letter to Planning Board – 11.7.23

If you just want the TLDR version, it goes like this: CRC claims that a new state law exempts them from town review of their plans. We believe this law is patently unconstitutional, and members of the Planning Board should vote their conscience on Dec 5.

NH Supreme Court Decision is in

The Supreme Court decision has finally arrived. Sadly, it’s not great news for the neighborhood.

We always knew that getting the decision overturned by the Supreme Court was a very tough hill to climb. Not unexpectedly, the Court ruled that CRC is entitled to the Zoning Permit that the ZBA had granted them way back when. The Supreme Court also overturned the restrictions on occupancy and hours of operation that the ZBA had imposed on the permit.

Interestingly, the Court did NOT base their decision to overturn the restrictions on the religious discrimination grounds that the Church had argued for. Instead, the Court ruled that the evidence in the record did not support the specific restrictions imposed by the ZBA, and therefore they had to be stricken. I’ll skip a legal analysis, but suffice to say that it’s a headscratcher of legal reasoning. If anyone is interested, you can read the complete decision here:

NH Supreme Court Ruling

So, what happens next? The most important thing to recognize is that the fight to preserve our residential neighborhood is not over! There is a LONG way to go, and many opportunities to continue to contest this proposal.

On the legal front – we plan to file a motion asking the Supreme Court to reconsider their decision. We think there are a few instances in the decision where the Court misunderstood what the evidence in the record actually says. But, getting Supreme Courts to reconsider rulings is a high hurdle, so this is a long shot, but a shot worth taking. Because the NH Supreme Court ruled only on the Zoning issues and didn’t rule on the religious grounds, there is no avenue to appeal into the Federal Courts that we can see.

On the local front, CRC will presumably file soon to get in front of the Planning Board for Site Plan Review. This will be a similar process to the Zoning Board review, with public hearings, opportunities for neighbors to be heard, etc. I’ll write more about the specifics of Site Plan Review in a later post, so stay tuned. We are planning to engage our own experts who will be able to testify in areas such as traffic impacts, storm water runoff, wetlands degradation, etc.

In order to proceed, CRC will need some permits from the State of NH as well. We are looking into what exactly that entails, and what opportunities there may be for the public to be heard as part of that process.

If this were a football game, you might say we’re at the end of the first quarter. Maybe the other team just scored a touchdown, but the game is far from over! The Bottom line is that this proposal – this size building, this size parking lot, this many people coming into a quiet residential neighborhood just isn’t right.

It doesn’t belong here, because it doesn’t belong in any residential neighborhood. Nobody who lives in Mulherrin Farms, or Grasse Rd, or Occom Ridge, or any other residential part of town would accept it in their neighborhood, and we won’t either!

And now, back to the main event . . .

So, where were we?

To make a long story short: Way back in what seems like prehistoric times, Grafton County Superior Court held a hearing on the various appeals of the Zoning Board decision to grant a special exception to Christ Redeemer Church. That ZBA decision reversed their original denial, and instead granted permission with some toothless conditions. If you want a refresher, you can read my original post here: Update on Zoning Appeals

After that hearing, and a bunch of legal maneuvering by the Church’s hired mouthpiece Michael Tierney, the Grafton County Court essentially ruled in favor of the town. The Court rejected the neighborhood argument that the conditions imposed by the ZBA don’t adequately protect the character of our neighborhood. And, the Court rejected the Church’s argument that they should be allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. The Court also rejected our appeal that the ZBA wetlands approval is illegal and violates both the spirit and the actual language of the wetlands section of the zoning ordinance.

As part of the Christ Redeemers’s legalized extortion scheme, they tried to claim with a straight face that Hanover should pay them $1.2 million dollars in damages for illegally holding up the construction of their mega-church. In one of the only truly funny episodes of this entire affair, the Grafton County Court agreed that they were entitled to damages, but calculated the amount due at $281! ($1 nominal damage+ $280 in court filing costs). I hope for Mr Tierney’s sake that he didn’t take this case on contingency!

So, all parties appealed to the NH Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for Tuesday, March 29 at 9:30 AM. All Supreme Court proceedings are streamed live – you can watch the proceedings here:NH Supreme Court live stream. You can also attend the hearings in person and sit in the gallery if you’re interested.

The hearing is a very structured affair, with only 30 minutes allotted for the entire proceeding. No witnesses or testimony, just the attorneys presenting their arguments and answering questions from the justices.

Some time after the hearing, we will get the written decision, and that will be the final decision on this zoning issue. But, no matter what decision comes down, this is unlikely to be the end of the whole thing. Maybe the end of the beginning, but there is a long, long way to go.

“Mistakes on top of mistakes”

First, a little refresher:  Back in August, Zoning Administrator Rob Houseman made an administrative decision that essentially said that the work at 34 Greensboro could continue without any additional wetlands scrutiny, despite the fact that Christ Redeemer Church had filed for their building permit without delineating the existing wetlands as required by law.  And, the town had approved that permit without the wetlands delineation, despite the fact that the town is currently involved in a lawsuit about those exact same wetlands!  The Acker’s appealed that decision.

So on Feb 4, the Zoning Board deliberated on the Acker’s appeal of Rob Houseman’s Administrative Decision.  And then they issued a decision that basically looked like this:

The Board ruled that Rob was wrong in part, but right, in part, and because he was right for the wrong reasons and wrong for the right reasons, on balance, we will just let Christ Redeemer Church do whatever the heck they want.  Or something like that . . . 

But the fundamental problem with the ZBA decision is that the Board didn’t account for what was in my opinion Houseman’s blatant bias in favor of Christ Redeemer Church and against the Ackers and the Greensboro Rd neighborhood.  For example, when confronted with two contradictory opinions from Certified Wetlands Scientists, Houseman reached out several times for additional information from Audra Klumb, the CWS who represents the church, but never asked for additional information from Rick Van de Poll, the CWS that we hired.  And then (again, of course, in my opinion), during his testimony at the hearing on Jan 28, Houseman blatantly and intentionally misled the ZBA by claiming that he chose to accept Klumb’s report over Van de Poll’s because she had 16 data points in her report and Rick only had 4 in his report.  Now, the number of data points really shouldn’t be the reason to choose one over the other, but it’s worse than that –  Klumb actually only had 3 data points in the information she provided to Houseman!

And that is just one of several examples of what appeared to us to be bias in Houseman’s decision making process.   So, faced with this alleged bias, we feel we have no choice but to appeal the ZBA decision, and explicitly point out to the Board the facts as we see them.  We have filed a Motion for Rehearing, and the ZBA will deliberate about our motion at their meeting on March 25 at 7 PM.

As we wrote in our appeal: “The entire way that the Zoning Administrator approached his decision indicated bias toward the Ackers and an intent to find reasons not to take any action to address their concerns. His demonstrated bias and multiple, unexplainable errors, makes the ZBA’s deferral to his judgment unreasonable.” 

You can read the full Motion for Rehearing here: Motion for Rehearing

And the Exhibits that are referenced in the Motion are here: Exhibits

If you want more, you can read the complete text of the ZBA decision that we are appealing here. And if you want some background on the whole affair click here

We are carrying this fight for the dozens of people in this neighborhood, and the hundreds of folks around town that have supported us every step of the way – financially and emotionally.  So, when you read about alleged bias against “the Ackers”, it’s really bias against every single resident of this neighborhood, every single person who has donated to the cause, every single person who has seen me or Lara around town and asked us how things are going and encouraged us to keep fighting because they know that deep down we are right.

We’ve tried for so long to just stick to the facts and the law, and present our case, and not get into personal attacks.  But in our opinion, the bias against us has gotten so blatant, and so bold, that we feel we can no longer ignore it.  This is not a decision we made lightly, and not a decision we feel particularly good about, but we have come to the point where we realize that we have no choice.  The town’s bias against this neighborhood has become one of the facts in our view, and we can’t ultimately prevail without making that part of the story.  Sad, but unfortunately, true.

ZBA meeting update

Dirty water flowing from the construction site at 34 Greensboro Rd into Mink Brook. This pollution continues intermittently, despite the fact that the site work is complete and the site allegedly stabilized.

As advertised, The ZBA gave the Acker’s appeal of Rob Houseman’s administrative decision a full and proper hearing on Thursday night. Predictions of a quick and easy meeting were proven wrong, and the whole affair turned out to be longer than the average Major League baseball game. Thanks and credit should go to the ZBA members for giving the matter the time and attention it deserves.

We presented evidence of dirty water flowing off the site into Mink Brook, and dramatically increased water flow into the wetlands due to a new foundation drain pump that is now located at 34 Greensboro. The ZBA also heard from noted wetland expert Rick VandePoll (https://www.rickvandepoll.com/). Rick has done wetlands surveys up and down the Mink Brook corridor and is currently working for the town on the Mink Brook Forest project. Rick testified about the technical details of what makes the area in question a jurisdictional wetland.

The Board will now move on to a deliberative session on Thursday, Feb 4 at 7PM. The Deliberations are open to the public via Zoom but no public comment is allowed:

  https://zoom.us/j/921315070     Meeting ID: 921 315 070

So when is a wetland not a wetland?

Anybody who is interested will get a chance to find out at the Zoning Board meeting on Thursday, Jan 28..  The ZBA has agreed to hear our appeal of Rob Houseman’s decision that the wetlands at 34 Greensboro Rd. are not really wetlands that the town cares about.  You may remember that originally the ZBA refused to hear our appeal.  But at their Dec 10th meeting, sanity prevailed, and the ZBA reversed course and agreed to hear our case after all.

You can read all the details and background info about the on again/off again appeal here: https://greensbororoad.org/2020/12/05/so-what-does-it-take-to-correct-a-mistake-by-a-town-official/

And, in case you’re wondering what the whole thing is about in the first place, here is what started the whole thing way back when: https://greensbororoad.org/2020/09/23/whats-happening-on-greensboro-rd/

But if you don’t want to read through all that again, I’ll cut to the chase. Here’s the question the ZBA has to answer: Can we seriously look at this picture and think, “Nah, that’s not a wetland”?

Water flowing from across 34 Greensboro into the “not a wetland” next to Greensboro Rd.

Or, can we look at this picture, and think, “Nope, I don’t see anything wrong with that”?

Dirty water flowing into Mink Brook from the runoff at 34 Greensboro

The ZBA meeting agenda, the case file, and the info for the Zoom link if anyone wants to join in is at: https://www.hanovernh.org/zoning-board-adjustment/events/50226

This is a public hearing, so anyone is welcome to participate.

So what does it take to correct a mistake by a town official?

Multiple choice question here:

A. 133 page motion

B. 6 Exhibits

C. 10.46 pounds of paper (7 complete sets, weighing in at 1.495 lbs each need to be filed)

D. Thousands of dollars in legal fees

E. All of the above

If you went with E, you are the winner! And all this because Rob Houseman “mistakenly” told us that we had 30 days to appeal, when we only had 15 days according to the zoning ordinance. Things that make you go hmmm . . .

When last we met, the Acker’s had appealed Hanover Zoning Administrator Rob Houseman’s decision that all the silt and pollution flowing into Mink Brook from Christ Redeemer’s renovation at 34 Greensboro was irrelevant, and nothing to worry about. In a nutshell, “Nothing to see here, move along folks”

You can read about that here: https://greensbororoad.org/2020/09/23/whats-happening-on-greensboro-rd/

Instead of just addressing the problem, the Church lawyered up: https://greensbororoad.org/2020/09/23/and-the-church-responds/

And the Zoning Board went along for the ride: https://greensbororoad.org/2020/09/25/so-what-happened/

After the meeting on Sept 24, the ZBA and Zoning Administrator Rob Houseman met behind closed doors and determined that they would not hear the case. No public discussion or deliberation, just a perfunctory motion made at the October 22, 2020 ZBA Meeting, as quoted in the minutes of that meeting:

“Waugh made a motion to dismiss this case, based on legal guidance provided by
Town Counsel, Stanger seconded.“

No opportunity to present our case, no public discussion among the Board Members – they had obviously already discussed and deliberated this in private, none of them seemed surprised by the motion. The motion passed 3-2, the gavel came down, and the case was dismissed.

Chairman Waugh did say before making his motion that Rob Houseman “felt really bad” about his “mistake” and “had apologized” for it. I’m not quite sure who Houseman has apologized to, but it certainly isn’t the Ackers.

So, that brings us up to the present day, and an odd quirk in New Hampshire zoning law. In order to appeal a decision of the Zoning Board, you first have to ask the Zoning Board to reconsider their own decision. Kind of like when you were a kid, and you asked Mom if you could stay up past bed time, and she said no, so you said, “but, pleeeeze can I stay up past bedtime?” Never worked then, not likely to work now either.

But, that’s the way the system works. So, the Zoning Board will consider our Motion for Rehearing on December 10, 2020. Agenda and Zoom log in details here if anyone is interested: https://www.hanovernh.org/zoning-board-adjustment/agenda/121020-zba-agenda

If you want to read the whole 133 pages that we filed, you can find that here: https://www.hanovernh.org/sites/g/files/vyhlif3226/f/uploads/z20_28_crcacker.pdf

If you don’t want to read the entire filing (and I don’t blame you if you don’t), you might be interested in these emails back and forth from Rob Houseman to various parties that are included as Exhibit B. These are emails and documents that were never included in the original permit file – Rob provided them to us after we made a specific records request: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17IlV8Fn8o7QZ6GBpWK1jqpu8V1hGw_0eOih1L4eyvUk/edit?usp=sharing

If you want to donate to the legal fund, there’s a “Donate Now” link up at the top right of the page that will take you to the GoFundMe site. Any contributions of any amount are greatly appreciated.

And, in case you are curious, the pollution and siltation continues unabated. This picture was taken during a rain storm on Nov 30, note the color of the water flowing out of the pipe and into the wetland. From there it’s a pretty straight shot to Mink Brook. But just move along folks, nothing to see here . . .

Love that dirty water? Not really . . .

The Standells may have “Loved that Dirty Water” because Boston was their home, but for those of us along Mink Brook, we don’t care for it all that much.

Silty water flowing into Mink Brook at 27 Greensboro, photo taken 10/13/20.

For those of you that have been following along, you’ll recognize that this has been an ongoing situation all summer and fall. The town gives us one excuse after another, and so far has refused to take any meaningful action to actually correct the situation. Here’s the note I just emailed to Rob Houseman, with a cc to Julia Griffin:

Rob – Please see attached picture that Lara just took.  This is silt coming into Mink Brook right now!  How many more times are we going to allow this to happen before you halt the project over there so someone can figure out where it is coming from and how to make it stop?  I don’t understand why this is allowed to keep happening and nothing is done.  I can meet you at the house right now if you would like to see it.

If anybody is so inclined, please feel free to join the chorus. Maybe there’s strength in numbers – my voice alone doesn’t seem to be getting it done.

Update on Zoning Appeals

The Valley News is out this AM with an article about the appeals on the Church Zoning Case. There was a hearing held earlier this week in the Grafton County Superior Court regarding all of the various zoning appeals pending in this case. To recap: there are 3 separate appeals pending before the Grafton County Superior Court, and the court consolidated all of them into one large case and scheduled a 3 hour hearing to consider all the issues.

The 3 issues are: 1) The Ackers have appealed the granting of the Wetlands Special Exception permit. 2) The Ackers have appealed the granting of the Special Exception allowing the Church use in the single family residential zone. 3) CRC has appealed the conditions that were imposed on the use permit by the Zoning Board.

https://www.vnews.com/Town-church-officials-meet-in-court-36676605

The article focuses almost exclusively on the CRC vs Town aspect of the dispute, and just mentions in passing, almost as an afterthought in the final paragraph, that the Court also considered the Acker’s appeal of the Wetlands permit.

I understand that newspapers have limits and reporters have editors, but this is a pretty big mischaracterization of the actual hearing. The article is generally accurate in describing the events it describes, but the reporter only barely scratches the surface of the entirety of the 3 hour hearing. Not blaming the Valley News, because to tell the whole story would be more like a novella, not an article for a daily paper.

Nate Stearns, attorney for the Ackers, made detailed presentations to the court about both issues on appeal from the neighbor’s point of view. Because this is an appeal, not a trial, there are no witnesses and no new evidence presented. The bulk of the work was actually done in advance by the attorneys – they file various motions and pleadings and briefs that lay out the evidence in the record and the points of law that support the decision they are asking the judge to make. At the actual hearing, the attorneys basically make brief oral arguments where they hit the highlights of the briefs they have already submitted, and answer a few questions from the judge.

We don’t know what to expect in terms of a decision, or when we might receive it. And, of course, any decision can be appealed to higher courts by any party. Bottom line, the story is far from over, and the struggle to preserve the character of our single family neighborhood will probably continue for some time.