FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Kate Vachon, press coordinator
603 323 8224
focus@focustamworth.org

Focus: Tamworth files request to intervene in CMI suit against Tamworth

(TAMWORTH, NH, February 5)

The Focus: Tamworth legal team, headed by Andrew Serell of Rath, Young and Pignatelli, has filed a request for intervener status in Motorsports Holdings LLC v Town of Tamworth and Tamworth Planning Board. Intervener status will allow Focus: Tamworth lawyers to help defend the Tamworth Planning Board’s November 8^th decision to deny CMI’s request for a Special Use Permit (SUP) under the town’s Wetlands Ordinance.

The request was filed February 1^st in Carroll County Superior Court. Under New Hampshire Superior Court rules, anyone who can demonstrate that a legal action is likely to affect them can petition the court to become an intervener. Interveners, like plaintiffs and defendants, can file briefs and present oral arguments in court.

“The Focus: Tamworth steering committee feels that the planning board made a careful and correct decision when they denied CMI’s SUP application,” said Focus: Tamworth spokesperson Charles Greenhalgh . “Our objective is to be sure that local ordinances and local control can stand up to whatever pressure outside groups like CMI apply. We want to be sure the town’s ordinance and the Planning Board’s decision are upheld.”

The Focus: Tamworth motion was filed on behalf of more than fifty property owners, residents and taxpayers in Tamworth. The group includes the owners of 8 of the 11 lots that abut the site of CMI’s racetrack project. The Episcopal Archdiocese of New Hampshire, which owns land that abuts CMI’s property, is one of the parties asking to intervene.

The CMI property sits over a recharge area for the Ossipee Aquifer that provides drinking water for wells and municipal water supplies in 26 towns in New Hampshire and Maine . The wetlands on the CMI site are part of the system that provides water to the aquifer, which is the largest in New England . Plans for the track, as described in CMI’s August, 2006 application for an SUP, show seventeen different places where wetland areas will be destroyed or significantly impacted.

The Tamworth Planning Board denied CMI’s application for an SUP on November 8^th; a month later, CMI appealed the decision in Carroll County Superior Court, naming the Town of Tamworth and its Planning Board as defendants.

A response to the request is expected within a few weeks.

Focus: Tamworth is a coalition of local residents who support careful and fair regulations that protect Tamworth ’s economic and natural resources. More information on Focus: Tamworth is available at www.focustamworth.org.

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