foot dragging

It’s Fathers Day , and it was a beautiful day yesterday for our yard sale, we were so lucky. The new owner of 18 Locust stopped by too! We were happy to move a few things back in that she wanted. Her three children are going to love growing up on Locust.

Too bad for us she did not want the gift of a plastic boat.

Let me know if you do.

I read Friday in the ENL that the fellow that bought and rehabilitated the Loaf stated , “no tenant till the dam is removed”.

I made a few phone calls, and have two more calls to make Monday.

It will be possible for me however to write about my unease over this news this weekend. It seems despite the story about the Loaf, that many like me have been wondering for some time.

When is the Great? Dam coming down?

Why has  there not more discussion and planning for this  momentous event due this Fall?

What exactly is the FOCUS of the BOS and Town Government?

Mike

time to move forward

Regional Waste Water Treatment is , and always was  a dead duck. What a colossal waste of time and money it was pursuing this solution.

Portsmouth is awash in unresolved problems, and  the PDA well they are really a golf course management group.

Read their minutes, when they post them which isn’t often. The PDA is unto themselves and no one else. I would dissolve that authority if I could.

Note to everyone, golf is dead.

Mayor Bohenko of Portsmouth is quoted today as trying to rally the public to rail against the EPA.

Now that’s true leadership.

Mike

 

Bald Eagle

  

There are 2 eagles frequenting Clemson Pond this week . One likes to launch his sortie from the large pine tree at the Powder House.The one that I have glassed most often is still young,his cap not fully white. Across the pond low , once around the boathouse then back to his aerie.

Sometimes picking off a small fish from the pond .

The gulls harry him or her mercilessly .

I am amazed the eagle does not take one of the sitting ducks.

Mike

Smelt

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I simply could not locate in my library of pics any photos of the Squamscott River along the Swasey covered with fish shanties. I know I have a few, but from years ago.

Last year I had to hike in to Rocky Point to take a pic of just two shacks to inform a guest piece by Dave OHearn.

I just inquired of Dave as to why I saw no shacks this year or last year and Dave got right back to me.

No fish. Big unknown problem. My guess pollution. F&G (Fish & Game)doesn’t have the money to study. They are broke.

 My buddy Dick wrote about it this past Sunday.

Here is an excerpt from the article .

“What is terribly worrisome is the apparent lack of saltwater smelt. And we mean lack of! And to our knowledge, nobody in the Fish and Game Marine Division saw this coming.

Why? Because a spring study that collected spawning smelt eggs in our smelt spawning freshwater tributaries was abandoned about five years ago.

Great Bay smelt supported an incredible recreational fishery and also a fairly lucrative but limited commercial sector as well. Smelt fishing was part of the basic fabric of this whole community that surrounds the Bay. And it’s gone! And nobody at Fish and Game seems to know why and to my knowledge there are no plans to recharge this smelt population by importing smelt eggs or other means. What a black eye for what once was a very alert and dynamic department.

Right now, Fish and Game are fighting to keep its department from being sucked into the Department of Safety, which more or less looks like F&G’s divisions that are devoted to conservation and public relations will be the very poor sisters to F&G’s Law Enforcement Division if this happens.”

http://www.newhampshire.com/article/20150322/NEWHAMPSHIRE0303/150329864/-1/newhampshire03

Mike

TIF Talk

 

 

Tax-Increment-Financing(2)

I read the executive summary in the above report. I also searched this am and a bit tonight  on both success and failure stories regarding TIF. One must remember that each Community or City employing a TIF is unique.

Across the Country you can find great debates raging on many aspects of the program with some States trying to reign in the practice.  In some cases has been overreach by TIF proponents. This scheme and  it  is a scheme surfaced in the 50’s.

It’s original intent was to revive blighted areas. There are arguments put forward that such and such development would not occur without a TIF. That is used alot and disputed by opponents.

Then there are school districts that have sued for loss of tax revenue. The standard comeback across the land seems to be “Well it was just woods there with a bunch of wet areas , whadda ya call em, vernal pools” “You got no revenue from that but just wait till the TIF expires and you will share in the bounty!”

You can’t “lose ” what you were not receiving prior. It’s really something the back and forth. In Vermont several Communities had to give back some significant monies.

http://vtdigger.org/2013/05/15/municipalities-pay-back-some-money-over-tif-dispute/

While nosing around a couple of months ago I also read the three links below with interest.

http://www.vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/RH/20130423/NEWS01/704239854

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20101126/NEWS03/711269889/1004/NEWS03

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Can you imagine what a linked bike trail would bring in revenue over shipping odd chunks of granite ?

The project that the granite was destined for in Florida is a vital dike system containing Lake Okeechobee, which has and could again fail, causing a devastating flood. It’s quite a story.

I read that granite train story as one where proponents got all juiced over what they construed as a “big deal”

It was a bust. It only served to get RR folks all jazzed up and screwed a major bike trail in planning.

The music man’s magic touch gone woefully awry.

I have not seen wholesale changes in the  Town Board players over the last twenty five years or so. It’s the same folks really, the same opinion makers. In fact the major ones  can recite their Community accomplishment’s and often do preface their weighing in with long recitations. I have received some of those emails but deleted them as frankly I found them embarrassing, for the sender.

Puffery. Some wield it with no shame at all. I hope you did all those things for the Community and yourself. The work in my view is sullied when one tries to “use it”

The Great Bay Kids groundbreaking is tomorrow morning at 10am at their new home on Epping Rd.

What the heck was everyone doing? What was Sylvia doing as it seems to me I sense wagons circling around the Planning Department. It can’t be that those that put up signs and blustered over Great Bay Kids at the Rec  are now all worked up about the woods.

So we hired a gun  and now he and this TIF scheme will probably go down in flames. That is what I am feeling and am quite surprised that anyone any insider( excluding Nancy Belanger) thinks otherwise. Yes there were meetings, there is one tonight downtown. I can’t go I am exhausted and am not sharing the cause of that, but believe me it’s off to bed soon. This is a complicated issue and many potential voters still don’t know who Harry or Kathy is or why that should matter.  I test people all the time and here are the facts.

No one is listening or reading.

My current bed book-  Chronicles of the Frigate  Macedonian 1809-1922

If you vote for the woods the TIF will not work, so vote against that too, no splitting. It’s all or nothing really.

Supposedly the numbers don’t work unless the buffer zones in some areas are shrunk. It just seems such a major step back, for what again?

That interchange at Epping Rd and 101 is terrible. This strapped State won’t be making any improvements. I cannot imagine a luxury hotel on Epping Rd, or even a Mr Tux.  A friend of mine once thought Mr Tux was a front for something as you find them at every major highway interchange. Portsmouth Ave is a strong interchange , RT 125 in Epping, but Epping road? It has no traffic volume at all.  It’s a granite train.

Goodnight.

Mike

 

 

 

 

 

 

time to engage in some tif talk

I think it’s time Epping got their own newspaper. We can chat about all that later, but later and ongoing till the vote we should work harder as a Community. We must discuss this TIF and a  letter to the paper does not cut it.

Even if it contains salty words like “pernicious”

C’mon that was funny!

In between time with Auntie I have located some informative papers to share and I hope we can get  our arms around this TIF issue. So let’s do it here , you must use your name when commenting and provide a legitimate email address.

You will have to read some of the documents I provide though I will pull excerpts to tease that click.

I will get this up and ready tomorrow sometime, out straight with Auntie right now.

Mike

Just over there- Epping Rd version

2015-01-18 14.22.17

 2015-01-18 14.21.59If you were to stroll across the ice and enter the woods left of center in about 200 yards you could purchase one of Clydes delicious cupcakes.

Epping Road lies in a straight line in front of me through the woods.

You would not believe what is buried in them thar woods.

You might enjoy visiting the Facebook page of a Colcord Pond resident. Here you will find wondrous photos of this special spot.

In Summer and Fall.

Just over there.

Mike