Common Sense For New Hampshire

There’s a special Planning Board meeting scheduled for tomorrow night, Tuesday September 24th at 7:00 PM, on the redevelopment plan Mayor Doherty wants to implement.  The plan includes the construction of major buildings at 8th Ave and 13th Ave like the ones pictured below.  The plan also gives our mayor  “the power to convey or lease public property (as provided in a redevelopment agreement) to a designated redeveloper without public bid.”  As is par for the course. the whole thing is being rushed through, so you better hurry if you have anything to say about this.

Update!  Important comments from Ted Ehmann:

Page 22, XII of proposed Plan claims the Boardwalk Plan has “consistency” with the 2004 Master Plan.  Belmar’s Master Plan Emphasizes: Quality of life improvements and foster/reinforce a strong sense of community and encourage social sustainability. Most striking in the Master Plan is the need for “extensive public outreach and meetings”.

The plan became available last Wed. 9/18 and is being approved this Tues. 9/24.   Was not in the Coast Star and a small legal notice appeared in the APP Saturday.

Quality of life issues is what created the plan’s first lawsuit in May.  When the mayor would not say for sure that there would be no bars and liquor licenses on 13th Ave. Pavilion.

Regarding the designated area I will use the apples and oranges analogy.  Both are fruits.

Let’s say that oranges are traditional areas of redevelopment. That is acreage within a municipality that at one time was tax revenue producing.  Then as in the criteria used by our mayor and the Planning Board in March, the area suffered from “fire or storm”.  Remedy:  Designate for redevelopment and have private developers purchase said land and restore it to tax revenue producing acreage.

The mayor and his developer are trying to make an apple an orange;  Belmar and the boardwalk. The beachfront acreage is municipal land and can never be tax income producing.  Further complicating this is that beachfronts and boardwalks are under the Public Trust Doctrine and even if we wanted to (unlike the marina) we can’t sell them to private interests i.e., privatize. Further complicating the issue: In order to get redevelopment status, the said acreage had to be depreciated by the storm.  But after the storm the town did a 20 million dollar bond.  The boardwalk and beachfront are worth more today than before Sandy.