There is a large property with lots of cabins. I have always wondered about it. It is for sale.
Greenwald Realty had that property on the market several years back, too. Don’t recall the then-price.
Found a copy of their 2010 ad on the page Jay shared. Says 1.79 million then-price. http://21route9.com/WSJ_10152010.pdf
It straddles 3 towns. Roxbury, Keene and Sullivan. It has 3 or egresses already. So you could make a long driveway to Roxbury, build a big building and have your own voting block in a town with only 250 people.
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What is the zoning on the property in each town/city?
Are all the current buildings in Keene?
In Keene it’s zoned as commercial:
http://gis.vgsi.com/keenenh/Parcel.aspx?pid=6697
Yes.
I wouldn’t buy it as a known Free Stater to to further develop it, too much risk for the excellent chance of the City Council blackballing you. Maybe less risk of developing the Roxbury or Sullivan portions. Always budget for “campaign contributions”.
The recent satellite photos show the entire acreage looks like it has been harvested for timber recently, so that kind of devalues it a bit.
I would try hard not to buy anything in Keene as a known Free Stater. Zoning in Roxbury likely doesn’t matter because they won’t want the cost of a court battle.
Since when has a NH government declined to irrationally fight something?
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There are like 99 houses in Roxbury. A $100,000 court case will cost each family $1000. They aren’t going to do that, especially if their path to victory isn’t clear as a bell.
They collected almost $600k in property taxes last year.
Come on Mark, you know not to believe in the fantasy that the people running the government will act rationally. Grafton spent, what… $17k in legal fees fighting John Connell. And that was before they even got to go to court, because the people who took possession of the property agreed to drop the case against the Town.
It is certainly not a foregone conclusion, but if the waters are muddy enough, and we would have to muddy the waters, there isn’t much they could do. I would be curious what could be done legally if 50 people showed up at Town Meeting and said they were camping on the land.
Nothing immediately. That was our our original idea for the Free Town Project back in 2003. Buy land, let people stay there and vote. Problem is finding people with enough fortitude and life situational ability to do it. FIFTY? Man, have you got some wild dreams. Good luck finding 20 these days.
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I think if you could get 50, then you could easily get 500. Because the reason would have to be THAT motivating for people to commit to the cause.
I guess the good news about the timber being cut on it recently is that you basically have shitty access roads already graded through the whole property, making it a lot easier for people to “move to Roxbury”.
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Blockquote I think if you could get 50, then you could easily get 500. Because the reason would have to be THAT motivating for people to commit to the cause.
Votes=money+organization. More money just means you need less organization, and vice versa.
You don’t think the town will spend 100k to acquire a million dollar property?
They fine you, put a lien on the property, then take it if you don’t want to play along.
There is a reason no zoning was a requirement for the free town project.
If I lost, I would pay the fine. I am no fool.
I just don’t think that there is a law that says that a resident must live in a domicile. If on the day of Town Meeting, I had slept last night, or the last several nights in the geopolitical polygon, known as Roxbury, and intend to sleep there into the future, I think I have every right to vote that night at Town Meeting. If I and 50 of my roommates vote to kill off the relevant portions of the zoning ordinances, I don’t know what they could do.
Is there a way to make this thread private?
And they can always institute zoning, when sufficiently motivated by your (in their minds) voting terrorism. But the point was to buy a property and commence activities before they could appropriately respond. But back then, nobody had the money and also wanted to do it quietly.