Planning Overreach in Lebanon
Tuesday’s Valley News quoted Lebanon Planning and Zoning Director David Brooks regarding his belief that the city has the right to place requirements on construction beyond those mandated by the building code: ‘There’s “nothing in the building code that (says) it can’t be superseded by a more stringent requirement,” he said.”
Nothing, that is, except America’s constitutional form of limited government. Just as a judge can’t exceed sentencing guidelines, and the police can’t arrest people unless they infringe on statutory laws, and a town manager can’t impose property taxes higher than those approved at Town Meeting, city officials can’t exceed the building codes.
Brooks’ remark goes a long way towards explaining why Lebanon Area Chamber of Commerce President Paul Boucher described the unique difficulty of building in Lebanon (Valley News, Feb. 5): “When the state’s economic development officials ask companies about moving to Lebanon, (the companies) shudder.” No other New Hampshire town elicits this concern.
Most simply, when civil servants and the citizen-members of the Planning Board create their own laws, chaos ensues. River Valley Club managers worked for months with architects, builders, the New Hampshire State childcare regulator and banks to design a safe, code-compliant childcare center. Then our blueprints and financial plans were disrupted by city employees and Planning Board members who believe they have unlimited power to make up new laws on the fly. That’s not right.
At RVC we have repeatedly faced such behavior. To cite but one of many examples, about a decade ago we wanted to build a two-court tennis bubble on our property. The Lebanon Fire Department, even though there was no such code requirement, insisted that we install sprinklers in our proposed structure, despite the fact that not one of the thousands of tennis bubbles in America has sprinklers — because an inflatable structure is incapable of supporting the weight of a sprinkler system. That argument was of no concern to the city’s fire chief. We were not allowed to build a tennis bubble.
Some folks might want to allow administrators to make up rules. My preference is the democratic development of laws that are voted on by elected officials and published for everyone to see. The New Hampshire Legislature and the Lebanon City Council enacted the International Building Code as the law of the land. That decision should be respected by everyone, even the people who work in the city planning office.
Joe Asch
Owner, River Valley Club
The Effects of Solar Credits
I want to thank Kevin Jones at Vermont Law School for his critique of my column on the sale of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) in Vermont (“Renewable Energy Is Good for Vermont, Even If Credits Are Sold,” March 3). I’m afraid, however, there is still daylight between us.
In his rebuttal, Jones said: “What McElroy either fails to understand or chooses to ignore is that when the RECs from a Vermont solar plant are sold to a utility in Massachusetts, it is the Massachusetts utility customers who are purchasing the low-carbon renewable energy, not the Vermont utility customers.” This is demonstrably false. When RECs from a Vermont solar plant are sold to a utility in Massachusetts, the energy involved typically stays behind and is consumed by ratepayers in Vermont. Only the so-called “environmental attributes” convey. Indeed, many if not most purchase-and-sale agreements for RECs explicitly state as much, not to mention the fact that brown energy imports to Vermont are no less displaced whenever such sales occur. Why not? Because the green energy stays here.
Now I know state and federal guidelines prohibit sellers of RECs from referring to the energy that’s left behind as green or renewable so as to avoid the possibility of double counting. But in order to double count, people have to actually be counting the same things twice. Is that what could happen here? I don’t think so. In all cases where RECs are sold, the attributes involved pertain to generation, not energy. RECs represent the “nonpower qualities of renewable electricity generation” (EPA). Purchasers of RECs therefore buy generation attributes, not energy attributes, nor even energy itself. The generation is renewable, the energy itself is not; it’s just electrons, and as I say, typically stays behind.
Thus, purchasers can count the RECs and not the energy, and sellers can count the energy and not the RECs. No double counting. So let’s not let the laws of the land conflict with the laws of common sense as we so often do. That rarely ends well.
Mark W. McElroy
Thetford Center
Big Government or Big Business?
To the Editor:
I would like to thank the Valley News for providing the forum in which Mr. Dreisbach and I could exchange views. I recently called him directly and we had a very respectful conversation in which we made plans to meet over lunch to continue the dialogue. But due to a long out-of-state work commitment, I will be unable to meet with him for several weeks. Until then, I can’t resist a parting shot.
In Mr. Dreisbach’s rebuttal to my critique of his opinion, he agrees that “we may indeed be on that path” toward a Russian-like oligarchy. Nevertheless, he insists that “a smaller government that focuses on truly needed essentials” is still the way to go. Apparently he believes that the corporations that control our world will voluntarily relinquish their vise-like grip on wealth and political power out of a magnanimous desire to make our nation better and more fair.
If only that were true.
Richard Klovdahl
Braintree, Vt.