Conway Daily Sun
10/2/2007

Stating 'shock' over latest permit rejection, CMI again asks 'Why us?'

Track-builder complains host of other projects never subjected to same scrutiny; Focus: limited plans play to assemble track 'piecemeal'

Nate Giarnese

TAMWORTH—Club Motorsports Inc. says it's “shocked” that Tamworth town planners last week rejected its scaled-back application to expand old logging roads and build five storage units on a slab of mountainside long-sited for the company's stalled $21 million driving club.

The race course builder Wednesday night learned the board's latest verdict, a 3-1 vote to deny CMI access roads up Mount Whittier and what the company calls “minuscule” wetlands impacts on its rugged, mostly forested 251 acres.

The application marked a drastic reduction in scope from another rejected by the board in November, 2006, for a full-blown motorsports country club and 3.1 mile professionally-designed driving track with expansive chemical spill protections. CMI is fighting that denial in court. It would not say whether it will launch another appeal over last week's decision, but the town attorney is preparing for the possibility.

In a new statement this week, CMI complains the decision, delivered with no explanation or public deliberation after two hours of public comment, sent them away with new questions and more money to spend.

“As a result, we have no idea why we were not approved and unfortunately will have to expend considerable money and resources to vindicate our right to gain access to our property,” the company said in the statement sent Monday to The Conway Daily Sun by vice president, Jim Hoensheid.

Town attorney Rick Sager declined to comment on the statement Tuesday, citing uncertainty as to whether the company would appeal the ruling in court.

But he said after the rejection last week that the board had struggled with how to handle the application because several surprising elements in the plan, including the storage sheds, were revealed by CMI for the first time that night without customary previews by officials in town government, including the conservation commission.

Sherry Young, attorney for Focus: Tamworth, the citizen's group that successfully sued to force CMI to apply for the permit, contacted late in the afternoon, said the application appeared an attempt by CMI to cobble together “piecemeal” elements of the greater driving club proposal that had already been rejected.

“The buildings are probably at the same locations as the garage-Majals,” she said in reference to lodging units the company planned to build over garages to let clientèle of the high-end club sleep directly above their automobiles.

Of maps and documents she said CMI unfurled with never-before-seen changes at the public hearing last Wednesday, “The board members had not had an opportunity to see them.”

Moreover, CMI included in the six-page statement charts indicating 24 proposed developments in Tamworth the last decade which would impact far more wetlands that CMI's access roads, but in some cases, were never reviewed under the Tamworth Wetlands Ordinance that was used to test the CMI plan.

The company has previously leveled similar complaints in legal arguments involving conflicts with the town and Focus: Tamworth.

The documents cite major government projects that CMI said were not reviewed under the ordinance, including the widely publicized removal of the Bearcamp River Dam in 2002, impacting 14,010 square feet of wetlands; a town fire department expansion application impacting 6,800 square feet, and a proposed road to the town dump.

According to the application rejected last week, CMI's access road and storage buildings would impact just 674 square feet of wetlands, down 90 percent from its broader plans, the company said.

Further, Tri-County CAP, a publicly funded low-income heating assistance service, was granted a waiver in 2003 to build a parking lot and a building over an unknown amount of wetlands, CMI said. CMI estimated the impact at 1,000 square feet.

Other private projects without Tamworth Wetland Ordinance reviews include a citizen applying to build a stream-fed .41 acre wildlife pond in 2000, a company in 1999 applying to build a driveway with culverts to a proposed commercial building, impacting 3,100 square feet of wetlands, according to the charts.

Dominick Bergen, the chairman of the planning board, and John Mersfelder, a leader on the town conservation commission, which helped amend the ordinance, and which makes recommendations to planners, could not be immediately reached Tuesday to confirm the accuracy of CMI's assertions.

The statement said CMI plan “meets or exceeds the recommendations of the Tamworth Conservation Commission.”

In another complaint hinted at in earlier legal arguments, CMI also insists the planning board has stretched beyond its jurisdiction by using the ordinance to regulate the top of the Route 25 mountain.

“The TWO (Tamworth Wetland Ordinance) does not extend to any dry or upland sites,” the company release says.

Despite state and federal environmental permits, the N.H. Supreme Court has ruled that CMI still needs a Special Use Permit under the ordinance to build its park. The ruling, upheld in May, did not uphold CMI assertions that the ordinance was unfairly used to target the company, and that the rigorous federal and state permitting processes had made the town review unnecessary.