Tag: Greensboro Rd

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!

“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.

So what happened?

Polluted water flowing into Mink Brook from the development at 34 Greensboro Rd, photo taken June 30, 2020.

In a classic case of “hurry up and wait!”, the Zoning Board last night, after duly convening the meeting, going thru all the procedural gobbledygook to make it a legal meeting, decided in very short order to do . . . basically nothing.

Not exactly nothing, but pretty close. What they decided to do was continue the hearing until October 22, so that in the mean time they would have time to consult with the Town’s attorney about the issue of whether or not the board actually has the jurisdiction to hear the case. Wait, what?

You may recall that CRC mouthpiece Michael Tierney delivered a letter to the ZBA at 5:43 PM on the day before the hearing (read it here if you want the full experience: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zdSXVmkdTWjB5pGFMX9B83bZkMiITDZS/view?usp=sharing ). In that letter, he raised an objection to the entire proceeding, based on the fact that he claims that appeals to the Zoning Board must be made within 15 days, and ours was filed after 21 days. And, in a “technically strict reading of just the Zoning Ordinance” sense, he’s right. But, here’s the twist – in Rob Houseman’s decision that is the subject of our appeal, he specifically told us that we had 30 days to file an appeal:

“Please note that any party aggrieved by this decision may appeal to the Zoning Board of Adjustment under an Appeal of an Administrative Decision within 30 days of becoming informed of the decision.“

That email was delivered to us on August 6, and we filed our appeal on Aug 21.

So, here we are – as my son neatly summed it up: “So, the church is upset that they say you filed your appeal 6 days later than you should have, and that somehow those 6 days harmed them so much that they are going to now wait 30 more days to find out whether those 6 days are enough to make it so you shouldn’t be able to appeal!”

And all the while, the fish, and frogs, and other critters that call Mink Brook home are just crying out, saying, “Hey, can we get a break here? Doesn’t anyone care about us?”

So, again, I’ll ask you – look at the pictures – what kind of people would try to get away with that by relying on some kind of legalese and loopholes? Certainly an interesting way to try to win the hearts and minds of your new neighbors . . .

And the church responds . . .

Silty runoff from 34 Greensboro Rd entering Mink Brook after flowing under the road, across the field, and through the Acker’s back yard.

So, instead of actually trying to fix the problem, the church has, predictably, lawyered up. Attorney Michael Tierney – CRC’s hired gun – delivered a letter to Town offices via email at 5:43 PM today. For those who are following along at home, you might remember Tierney as the fast talking, out of town lawyer with the fancy briefcase who has been the church’s mouthpiece in the past.

Not surprisingly, there’s no mention in Tierney’s letter that the whole fiasco started because CRC lied on their original application. No mention that they might have any responsibility for increasing the runoff through our back yard or polluting Mink Brook. No indication that the church intends to do anything to remedy the situation.

Nope, instead the ZBA should reject our appeal on procedural grounds – we filed it too late, we didn’t use the right fancy lawyer words when we wrote it, stuff like that, and even if it wasn’t too late, and even if we did use the right words in our filing, it still should be thrown out because, because, because . . . well just because we say so, damnit!

The old lawyer’s adage about pound the facts, pound the law, or pound the table rings true. I suspect Mr. Tierney’s poor kitchen table is getting quite the workout tonight!

The entire text of Tierney’s letter is here – feel free to read it for yourself if you’d like:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zdSXVmkdTWjB5pGFMX9B83bZkMiITDZS/view?usp=sharing

And, if you make it all the way thru his letter, do me a favor and take another look at the picture up top. Ask yourself what kind of people would want to support that activity, and justify it on “procedural” grounds.

And some more about the signs . . .

As you may remember, when Lara and I originally appeared before the Selectboard to discuss the sign issue, we asked for permission to keep them up until Sept 30. There was no real significance to this date, but we were told that we needed to have an “end date” to our request. For background info, you can read the original post about the Selectboard meeting here

At the time, Sept 30 seemed like a long,long way away, but, now , all of a sudden, here we are. We’ve decided not to remove our signs, and just sent the below note to the Selectboard:

Dear Selectboard Members – 
After much deliberation, we have decided not to remove the “Protect our Residential Neighborhood” signs from in front of our house.  Recent changes in the circumstances of the underlying Zoning dispute have led us to believe that the public needs to be informed about the developments in the case now more than ever.  Of most particular importance, we believe the Town is considering a settlement that will significantly affect our neighborhood, without any regard for and input from the people who actually live here.  Additionally, we believe that the Town’s proposed action will set a precedent that should be rightly upsetting to citizens from all areas of town, and we intend to use the signs to continue to promote awareness of the situation.


As we have traveled thru town these last several weeks, it has become obvious that the town does not actually enforce any “regulations” regarding signs in the manner that Julia described in her email below.  Signs are up for all sorts of events, much earlier than a week in advance, and rarely taken down the day after any event.  Signs for political and social “causes” (Black Lives Matter, Solarize Hanover, etc) are all over town and appear to draw no scrutiny or enforcement action.  It is obvious that the DPW staff does not make any effort to remove any signs from the town ROW’s in any organized manner, and the Zoning Administrator does not make any effort at enforcement either.


As we said when this topic first came up, we do not believe that we need permission from the town to display our signs, as they are protected free speech.  For your information, I have included below the email that Julia sent to the state DOT after our last meeting.  


We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue further if the Board desires and would be more than willing to attend an upcoming meeting if you would like to place this on the agenda.


Very truly yours,
Jeff and Lara Acker

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Julia Griffin <julia.griffin@hanovernh.org>
Date: Thu, Sep 5, 2019 at 3:09 PM
Subject: Private Lawn Signs Within ROW on Greensboro Road, Hanover
To: district2@dot.nh.gov <district2@dot.nh.gov>
Cc: Jeff Acker <jeff.acker@hproofingllc.com>, Robert Houseman <robert.houseman@hanovernh.org>, Peter Kulbacki <peter.kulbacki@hanovernh.org>, Michael Chase <michael.chase@hanovernh.org>, John Sherman <John.Sherman@hanovernh.org>, Asa Metcalf <Asa.Metcalf@hanovernh.org>

Doug:

My apologies if this information is not appropriately forwarded to you.  Given that you head up the District 2 office, I wanted to be sure to advise you of a decision regarding the installation of lawn signs within  the State-owned ROW on Greensboro Road in the event your maintenance staff encounters the signs in their routine maintenance work within the next month.

In Hanover, our Zoning Ordinance forbids the installation of lawn signs on private property.  If we encounter lawn signs within Town-owned ROW, our DPW staff removes them unless the signs have been installed with Town permission to promote an upcoming event of general public interest.  In that case, we only allow the signs to be installed for one week prior to the event and they must be removed the day after the event ends.

Multiple residents on Greensboro Road have installed yard signs within the State-owned ROW communicating their opposition to a proposed church project which has received ZBA approval on a Greensboro Road parcel.  They came before the Town to seek permission to allow the signs in the ROW which we granted through the end of September, but we did alert them that, technically, since this is State-owned ROW, not Town-owned, it would be the State’s call should your staff choose to remove the signs.

I have copied one of the residents representing the group, Jeff Acker, for his information.

Thanks,

Julia N. Griffin

Town Manager

Valley News chimes in on sign questions

In case you missed it, the Valley News had a long article on Sunday about the sign issue, and the CRC proposal in general. I’m not sure how their paywall works, but here’s a link to the article: https://www.vnews.com/Greensboro-Road-Signs-Cause-Stir-27627567.aspx

It pains me to say this, but I think it is clear that some members of the town staff see us as “the enemy” in this situation. This is not at all what we want; we have said time and time again that we don’t want to be in an adversarial position relative to the town. Sadly, I’m not sure that’s the feeling in Town Hall.

Quoting from the Valley News article:

“Meanwhile, town officials contend Acker and his neighbors dragged their feet obtaining permission for the signs. All they had to do was send in a letter and get the OK of Hanover’s five-member Selectboard, Town Manager Julia Griffin said last week.”

If that was “all we had to do”, then I wonder why town officers felt the need to send an email threatening $275 per day fines, telling us our signs were a zoning violation, needed permission from the NH DOT and so on. You can read the whole email exchange between me and town officials here and decide for yourself: Greensboro Road sign emails

I also still have questions about why specifically our signs were targeted for enforcement. If there were really safety issues, it seems like those could have easily been addressed by just moving a few offending signs? Or were the complaints really based on the content of the signs, which raises a whole host of other concerns. There are several other signs in obvious plain view on well traveled main roads in town (both in the town right of way and on private property) that don’t seem to draw any attention from the enforcers.

Thankfully, I think we got a very fair hearing with the Selectboard, (read more about that here). Reasonable people came to a reasonable resolution of the issue, and the signs can stay. So for now, maybe that’s all that really matters?

The signs can stay!

On Monday, Aug 5, the Selectboard considered the topic of the “Save our Residential Neighborhood” signs that have popped up all up and down Greensboro Rd, and all the way out into Etna and in other spots around town. For background on the topic, you can read previous posts here and here.

The Selectboard seemed mostly sympathetic to our plight, and the confusing standards that were being applied to the signs. Comparisons were made to other signs that appear around town, both in the town right of way and on private property, such as “Solarize Hanover”, “Black Lives Matter”, “Love Trumps Hate”, and others. Rob Houseman indicated that any signs on private property are most likely zoning violations, but apparently we have a “complaint based” enforcement system, so if no one complains, no action is ever initiated by the town. Seems odd that town officials would drive, bike, walk right past obvious violations every day and then try to bring the hammer down on us, but so it is.

Town Manager Julia Griffin stated that because Greensboro Rd and Etna Rd are state roads, not town roads, it really is up to the state to determine what can be in the right of way. She went on to say that she had spoken to someone at the state level who told her that they would not entertain any requests for signs in the state right of way, but that they would allow the town to make the decision for them. Based on that information, the Selectboard voted unanimously to allow the signs to remain in the right of way until Sept 30th as we requested.

Julia’s statement that the state is willing to cede authority to the town in matters relating to the state roads is curious. It seems as if the town called the state, and the state essentially said, “We don’t care, do whatever you want.” It begs the question of why the town then doesn’t do the same on issues such as biker/pedestrian safety, speed limits, road conditions, drainage issues, and a whole host of other topics. But maybe that’s a topic for another day . . .

Strength in Numbers

The Zoning Board will meet on Monday, May 20 at 7:00 PM (Town Hall, 2nd floor) to deliberate the motions to reconsider their approval of the church’s application. The Ackers (on behalf of the abutters and neighbors) have filed to overturn the decision completely. The church has filed to overturn the toothless conditions imposed by the ZBA in their approval. The church calls the conditions “oppressive” and they are asking for unrestricted use of the property – as many people as they can fit, any time of day, any day of the week.

The Board meeting is open to the public but it is a deliberative session only, and we don’t expect that there will be any opportunity for public comment . Despite that, we still think it is important to show up, and show support. During one of the previous meetings, one of the ZBA members said that “the neighbors seem to think the area is what you can see from the end of the Acker’s driveway”. We need to make sure the board understands that the negative impacts of this extend way past the immediate abutters. The Board may say “NO” anyway, but it will be a lot harder for them to say no to a room full of their friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

The overwhelming support for this cause is coming from all over town:

  • 18 residents from all around town wrote letters to the Zoning Board in support of the Acker’s motion
  • 50 yard signs are out and about- I’ve seen them all the way from Hanover HS to Etna Village
  • 55 separate individuals have made donations – either to the GoFundMe, or the PayPal account, or by mailing checks directly to our attorney (you can add to that total by using the “Donate Now” feature at the top of this page)
  • 609 unique visitors have read 1258 pages of this blog since May 1

Whatever decision the Board makes on Monday, there will still be many more chapters to write. Please attend the meeting if you can, and please help spread the word to others around town. Our strength is in our numbers.