WHY ARTICLE 19 SHOULD NOT BE AMENDED AND SHOULD GO BEFORE THE VOTERS AS WRITTEN

 In last night's Keene Sentinel there was a letter to the editor, written by, Ms. Bonnie Leveille,  Secretary of the Winchester Conservation Committee. She wrote about how she felt the Conservation Commission was being singled out and that some people in town were rejecting common sense in order to promote their own personal agendas at the expense of the townspeople, protection of our valuable land and protection of our water supply. Because a Warrant Petition was legally submitted and signed by more than the required number of registered voters to abolish the Conservation Committee, she felt it was a misuse of the system and the result of personality problems and that this article in her opinion would hurt the town. She went on to state that we all should do our homework and research and to stop "blogging" and working behind the scenes and get down to real government.

Well, we have done some research and these are the facts that we have come up with to show that whomever submitted this petition had done their homework and had good reasons .. We found that;

1. Winchester has no need to officially “conserve” any more land and renewable resources, nor to reduce the tax base which has already taken a heavy blow due to de-industrialization and earlier land grabs
A. More than 25% of Winchester’s land is comprised of Pisgah State Park. (Seized by eminent domain.)
B. Hundreds of acres of land are under private or public conservation easements.

C. More hundreds of acres are in current use with public access for recreation.

2. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency and NH Department of Environmental Services already have enough regulations and regulatory power to sufficiently protect the environment and water resources. The Conservation Commission has no enforcement authority, nor any authority to create local regulations.

3. In recent years the Winchester Conservation Commission has been taken over by a small handful of elitists with a narrow, aggressive agenda to gather up money, land and control.
Diversity of thought is not welcome.The presumption is that they alone know what is “best for the town.”
A. Membership is based on nominations from within the commission,
B. The Conservation Commission has (Nov. 30, 2009) $86,177.25 in the Conservation Fund, over which it exercises absolute control. The money has, and can be, used to buy land to take out of the tax base, or for projects which have historically benefited very few people. The existing conservation land is little used for “recreation” or any-thing positive. (Musterfield Park goes virtually unused. Pisgah Park and private land are the first choices for hunting, riding, hiking, etc.

C. Records indicate that this commission has paid members and family to do projects which are usually (and were formerly) considered volunteer-type pursuits.

4. Despite its claims of protecting water resources, the Conservation Commission has allowed the town to operate a gravel pit in a town forest closely abutting a town well (near Plumb Pak), thereby putting our town water supply at unnecessary risk. The site is yet to be managed or reclaimed to DES standards.

There are several auto repair shops, one automobile junk yard, a cement factory, a concrete plant, a used diesel truck repair/ used vehicle site and a couple of race tracks all in our protected aquifier and there's the possibility some are even encroaching on conservation land.

5. The Conservation Commission has a clear agenda to support more land grabs.
A. The commission supports and promotes the expansion of the Conte Wildlife Refuge into Winchester on the east side of town. The plan is to take hundreds, maybe thousands, of acres of land ("by eminent domain “only if necessary”) with no economic benefit to the town. It will become more idle land on which a few people “recreate.”
B. The commission, despite Winchester zoning restrictions, has supported the proposed composting facility under the guise of it being a “green” enterprise. 

a. the Conservation Commission stood to receive a conservation easement for land on the site.

C. It’s planning a Natural Resources Inventory, not just on public property but on private land. The hidden goals are two-fold:
(1) to identify resources and land features that are “too valuable” to be left in the hands of a private landowner and must be “collectively” managed and owned (by eminent domain, if necessary); and
(2) to locate and identify “endangered species,” both plant and animal, through which the government can exercise control and/or seizure of private land.

6. The Conservation Commission tries to act with as much secrecy as possible.

Meetings are not held in the main hall; minutes have not been posted on the bulletin board or on-line (until Dec. 21, 2009—under duress?),nor provided to the town office to be kept on file with those of other boards and committees. Requests for minutes have had to wait until Conservation Commission members got around to surrendering them. When minutes are released they are so sketchy as to be of little use in knowing what the commission is really up to.

7. In its lust for more money, the Conservation Commission sought to put a communication tower in a town forest on Meeting House Hill. It failed to read the deed which contains clear restrictions against such enterprises, before it demanded a costly special town meeting to seek approval from the voters. 
Only after more legal expenditures did the potential lessor discover the deed covenant. The commission planned to ask voter approval to put a large portion of the lease money into the Conservation Fund, thus guaranteeing it a consistent source of more money, since the crash in the real estate market has meant a “loss” to its treasury due to fewer Land Use Change Taxes. Whether there will ever be a tower is in question and apparently unlikely at this time.

8. The Conservation Commission has a documented track record of abuse of power, cutting timber on town land NOT within its authority and taking the proceeds (until it was caught in the act and returned some of the money to the general fund without a clear accounting of how much timber was actually cut on such property). See (and print) all the documents at:

http://www.winchester-informed-citizen.org/pdf/TimberSale.pdf