Common Sense For New Hampshire

OK.  Let’s say that FEMA had agreed to pay to replace all of our beachfront buildings.  Everyone who thinks that Mayor Doherty would still have decided not to build the double-building with the roof top golf on 8th Ave, please raise your hands.  Just as I thought.  I see no hands.

The decision to build only two buildings was not a compromise with the critics of the mayor’s grandiose plans.  Actually none of those critics ever said to build fewer buildings.  (Although several voters I’ve visited over the past week or so thought we should not replace any of the buildings that were knocked down.)  The petitioners and other critics only wanted smaller buildings, like the original ones.  The only compromise the mayor made was with the financial reality of the situation.  So there was no compromise at all, just spin.  If the mayor thought he could get the money to build three buildings or even four buildings, those buildings would be going up no matter what anybody said.

One more thing:  Much has been made of the fact that none of the plan’s critics attended the meetings of the advisory committee until the plans had been finalized and sent to the council.  This is because nobody had imagined that they had planned to make such drastic changes to the beachfront.  We thought they were simply going to choose the types of siding and shingles and colors and stuff  but basically still keep to just replacing what was down there before the storm.  Nobody was given any reason to think otherwise.  If, when the creation of the committee was announced, the mayor had been more forthcoming about the nature of his plans, does anybody doubt that those meetings would have been packed starting with the very first one?