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:
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!
Greensboro Road Neighborhood Info 