I will admit, I am ashamed. I am ashamed that although I have worked as hard as anyone to get the word out about the federal government’s plans to urbanize every town in America per their international bosses, this intrusion upon our right to self-determination by our own local control was unknown to me (and apparently many others) when Bedford’s overlay district became a done deal in 2012.
In the course of my current research I came across the video where one of the town’s planners and the town’s consultant, hired to help draft the ordinance, described the vision of an urbanized area of Bedford along the river, complete with workforce housing and bike paths, via overlay districts and radical zoning changes. The two boasted about how Bedford’s river area could look like a “little Portsmouth”.
It was only after I emailed the town’s planner did I get a clearer picture of the steps it took to get this approved. Did those 3,402 voters know what they were voting for or where these ideas came from, or that it would in effect be stealing from the suburbs to feed these newly citified areas? Who in his or her right mind would want to urbanize a small town when they moved there to escape the city in the first place? At least I am comforted by the fact that I likely voted NO on all zoning changes, as I normally would.
Here is the scoop.
The town’s planner explained to me that both projects (Overlay District and Pedestrian and Bicycle Connectivity Master Plan) were major recommendations of the 2010 Master Plan which will be implemented by completing the zoning change. The Overlay District was voted on by the citizens on the March 13, 2012 ballot and was passed 3402 to 957 (78%).
I found it amusing that the town’s planner felt the need to explain that the woman in the video with the consultant is a long time citizen member of the Planning Board but who “may have sounded like she was from out of town due to her strong southern accent”. When I referred to the fact that “outsiders” were the masterminds behind these plans, I was actually talking about the feds and their international bosses.
He went on to say that the Ped/Bike Plan does not require a town wide vote and was adopted by the Planning Board on February 10, 2014 and by the Town Council on February 26, 2014 both following public hearings by each board. The Ped/Bike Plan was funded as part of the Community Planning Grant Program, which is not the same as Granite State Future being implemented by the regional planning commissions, but it is also funded by HUD. It is administered by NHHFA. There was not a grant for the River Corridor project.
I found that a bit confusing since if it is part of the town’s master plan, the RPCs had a most certainly had a hand in it, and they are funded by grants and other taxpayer dollars, with little oversight I might add.
But, again I ask, who in his or her right mind would want to “urbanize” Bedford? Most moved here to get away from cities, not to turn Bedford INTO a city.
Residents likely did not know what they were voting for or where the ideas came from; ideas that would result in the implementation of a massive scheme to redistribute the wealth from the suburbs to the cities.
That’s the bottom line, isn’t it?
We have seen how Obamacare is redistributing health insurance from one set of people to another, at the cost of dumbing down the quality for everyone.
The federal government is attempting to dictate what should be done in education, again resulting in dumbing it down, not improving it.
And now, we see the dumbing down of our towns.
Obama did not invent this push to rob the suburbs to pay for the cities, quite the contrary. Regionalism took hold in 1992 at a UN conference in Rio de Janeiro where “human settlements” of compact cities were first promoted openly and continue to be promoted by NGOs and other special interest groups. However Obama has stepped up the use of HUD/EPA/DOT to impose zoning changes, a move he hopes will result in ‘social justice’ for those who cannot afford to live in places that are deemed too racially or financially homogenous. To find out where the “problem” areas are, neighborhood “mapping” will be used.
Related Reading:
Obama’s Quiet Anti-Suburban Revolution
