Editor’s Note: Is your town or county experiencing a move toward “regional” rather than “local” government? The following is from the New Hampshire Tea Party, in an attempt to educate folks about the problems involved with regional government.
Posted 10/8/2013
Help fight the coming “regional governance” in your NH town.
THE PROBLEM
Powerful non-governmental influences such as the National Governor’s Association, are promoting Common Core Curriculum in our schools; and insidious programs such as the UN’s International Baccalaureate Programme have been instituted with help from agents of the World Bank.
It has become apparent that our local, state, and federal governments are being manipulated by a gaggle of NGOs and corporate foundations (such as the Carsey Institute) who are associated with public universities such as UNH. These groups, with their very special interests, are attempting to override the wishes of the local community.
After the voters in the Winnisquam Regional School District had already voted down the idea of providing an all-day kindergarten, public relations firms from the Carsey Institute at UNH held “listening sessions” at which they attempted to pretend to garner “input” to make it look like the community wanted all-day kindergarten as part of their area “master plan” under the Granite State Future plan.
What is a “master plan”? Towns are now in the process of creating “master plans” under the advisement of unelected boards called “Regional Planning Commissions“. There are 9 such commissions in NH, in addition to the Water Sustainability Commission created by Governor Lynch’s executive order in 2011. These commissions are going far beyond their purview of managing roads, bridges and sharing firetrucks… they now want to plan every aspect of your existence. This is happening through a program called Granite State Future. It is exactly like other “sustainability” programs all over the country, and the world.
Under the guise of “sustainability” the Regional Planning Commissions, or RPCs, want to write into their “master plans” new laws and provisions for control over every aspect of your existence, including but not limited to, how you can use your own property, where you can drive your cars, energy usage, food consumption and obesity, your water rights, healthcare management, childcare, and as we mentioned above, education; all under the mantle of “sustainability”. They hold “listening sessions” to pretend to get community input, making the public think the ideas came from the grassroots. They keep referring to the program as “community based” yet no one in the community asked for it. No matter where these ideas originated, the whole concept of regional, central planning is truly Orwellian.
The GSF plan if successfully implemented, could mean the imposition of things such as a VMT Tax (you would be taxed by the miles you drive) taxes on your private well water, and the inability to build on certain rural lands, in favor of compact housing developments in “mixed use” zoning. RPCs also plan to lobby for legislation to make them more “authoritative” whereas right now, they are supposedly only “advisory”. Imagine though, just one of these appointed, advisory-only committees gets as much as $1.5M (tax money) to operate? Nice work if you can get it.
We’ve scoured and studied their plans and we don’t like what we see.
Here is an example of recommended reading taken right from GSF’s Regional Plan Appendices:
1. Empowering Urban Counties
The most direct and efficient way to create metropolitan government in the majority of metro areas is to empower urban county government. In this scenario, the county government assumes the functions and responsibilities of the municipal governments within its boundaries, and municipalities are abolished.
2. Consolidating Cities and Counties
This involves creating area-wide governmental units, focusing on consolidating municipal governments with their surrounding county governments. Consolidation brings unification of the tax base and centralization of planning and zoning.
3. Combining Counties into Regional Governments
This involves combining several counties in the same metropolitan area into one regional government.
So, you can see, regional government means putting you, the voter, even further from the decision making process. “Granite State Future” will use EPA/HUD/DOT grants to get started with this process under the umbrella of “sustainability”, and then the taxpayers will foot the bill for the rest — resulting in a major redistribution of the wealth from person to person, town to city, city to region.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Learn about regionalism, sustainability programs, and Agenda 21 by Googling those terms.
Read the Granite State Future website: http://www.granitestatefuture.org/
Read the counter website and watch the videos: http://www.granitestatefutures.org/
Attend a session near you: Find your town in the flip menu on either website and see when your region will invite public input. Be prepared to give it to them! They will ask for your “input” but if you disagree, you may be looked upon as a “disruption” of the approval process.