In a stunning conclusion to the March 21 Planning Board meeting, two-term Board member, Jayne Begala resigned. Limited to 3 minutes by Board Chair Rick Chellman, Ms. Begala read only a portion of her prepared statement, which detailed her conclusion that “the Board is ineffective, is not doing the priority job assigned to it by New Hampshire statutes and has been relegated to a peripheral role by City Council and staff.” (The entire text of her statement follows.)
In the past, Ms. Begala has harshly criticized the Planning Board’s seeming lack of interest in updating the City’s Master Plan, a statutory responsibility under NH RSA 674.1, II. This was visible at the beginning of the meeting when she requested that the agenda move up the Master Plan to the first item from the last for “a rigorous discussion now.”
It was voted down 5-4 led by the Chair.
According to Ms. Begala, the Board has become a “rubber stamp for whatever development project developers and their teams of well-paid lawyers, engineers, and architects, have proposed to build. City planning staff invariably recommends that we approve these projects, and the Board generally does whatever it is asked to do.”
“In recent years, the Board has rubber-stamped a whole lot of new luxury and ‘market’ rate condos, some with penthouses, many new hotels rooms, and very little actual affordable workforce housing that City Council claims is their big priority.”
Board leadership also was called into question. Ms. Begala stated, “Unfortunately, this Board is led by a weak and ineffectual chair who apparently takes his marching orders from City Hall. He apparently attends numerous weekly meetings with city staff and comes to Planning Board meetings to “report” foregone conclusions decided in a far from transparent manner by staff and the City Council and its various subcommittees.”
By the way, Chairman Chellman, who during the trial in February acted as a key witness for the City in its attempt to remove James Hewitt from the Planning Board, seemed particularly irritated with Ms. Begala during Thursday’s meeting. After the 3-minute warning signaling the end of her allotted time, he sat in silence for a few moments. Then he declared “meeting is adjourned.”
Here is a link to the March 21 2024 Planning Board Meeting so you can see for yourself. What follows is Ms. Begala’s full, unedited letter of resignation:
Statement of Jayne Begala – Resignation from Portsmouth Planning Board
It is with profound regret that I am resigning from the Planning Board, effective immediately.
I resign in good conscience, recognizing that I have done everything I could to advocate for the oversight of Portsmouth’s growth, development and land use planning as assigned to this Board by New Hampshire law—and for timely, critical data collection necessary to support this Board’s decisions and to do actual land use planning. I am left with no recourse but to resign since the Board is ineffective, is not doing the priority job assigned to it by New Hampshire statutes, and has been relegated to a peripheral role by City Council and staff.
I love Portsmouth. I grew up here and am a proud graduate of Portsmouth High and UNH. After additional education and a career in international public health, I returned to my childhood home, determined to make a positive difference in the city I love. That’s why I agreed – twice – to serve as a volunteer on the Planning Board.
I have given my service on the Planning Board the best effort I could, and taken this role very seriously as a representative of the citizens of Portsmouth:
- Until last night’s meeting, I had served two terms and 5 years on this Board.
- I have read each page of the extensive meeting packets that we get from city staff, less than a week before each meeting (which have always been hundreds to thousands of pages!) and I have tried to visit each of the sites proposed for development or construction in each of the projects that have come before us. It’s been a lot of work.
- I’ve advocated for updated data and analysis regarding housing, parking, and growth patterns over and over and served on the Master Plan subcommittee
But I have concluded that as presently constituted, and with the role relegated to it by the current City Council, this Board has become a totally ineffective, almost powerless body that, while approving site plans and CUPs and variances, performs no useful role in planning, shaping or controlling development in Portsmouth.
o This Board has, during my 2 tenures, been a virtual rubber stamp for whatever development project developers and their teams of well-paid lawyers, engineers, and architects, have proposed to build. City planning staff invariably recommends that we approve these projects, and the Board generally does whatever it is asked to do, often with few questions asked. Abutters and neighborhood concerns are heard but seldom acted upon.
- Virtually every developer who applies gets a Conditional Use Permit (which is essentially a variance or special permit) to build more square feet, or build in otherwise prohibited areas or include otherwise prohibited uses, beyond what our Zoning Code allows—generally with no meaningful benefits for the residents of Portsmouth. Apparently, our zoning code doesn’t need to be complied with if you want to build a big project, even in wetlands and buffers. This situation renders our zoning code largely ineffective. The exception becomes the rule!
- I have frequently been the only vote against approving many of these projects as presented, and one of the only members who asks hard questions of the developers and points out the issues, the lack of good justification, the lack of supporting studies and data (such as traffic studies, or adequate parking, or the lack of trees and green space or other amenities).
- The results of this? Well…..look around. In recent years, the Board has rubber stamped a whole lot of new luxury and “market rate” condos, some with penthouses, many new hotel rooms, and very little actual affordable workforce housing that City Council claims is their big priority. And many parts of Portsmouth are losing their historic character and charm and protected spaces, and are starting to look like Boston or Cambridge Massachusetts. Is that what the citizens of Portsmouth really want?
Oddly, despite all of this high value/expensive new development, and all of the tax revenues that one would think they should be generating, our residential taxes keep going up, and the City Hall staff keeps growing with 14 new, well paid employees in the last year alone—some of them lawyers, and a burgeoning city budget of $137M. Something is wrong with this picture.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, we have a hopelessly outdated and essentially irrelevant Master Plan, rooted in the past, that fails to address what Portsmouth has become in the last 10 years of rapid growth and development, and where we are going and want to go. But apparently our chair and the 4 City staff who sit on this 9 member Board don’t think we need to update our Master Plan anytime soon. Instead, controlled by the City Council, they turn their attention to the “Master Plan” of Market Square – downtown’s aesthetics are always a priority over the other neighborhoods in this city.
As a Planning Board, it is our statutory responsibility under NH RSA 674: 1, II to review/revise and update our Master Plan – which we could do quite quickly and efficiently to be responsive to those calling for “action” around housing. Using the Master Plan as a working guide to city planning via zoning ordinances and guiding Planning Board decisions on individual projects is necessary and a core responsibility of New Hampshire planning boards under state law.
Unfortunately, this Board is led by a weak and ineffectual chair who apparently takes his marching orders from City Hall. He apparently attends numerous weekly meetings with city staff, and comes to Planning Board meetings to “report” foregone conclusions decided in a far from transparent manner by staff and the City Council and its various subcommittees, rather than facilitating the Planning Board’s work on our own state-mandated scope of work. He routinely cuts off discussion and debate after voicing his opinion. Our chair doesn’t even set the agenda for our meetings—City Hall staff does. I’ve never heard of a municipal board, or any kind of a board—where the chair doesn’t even set the agenda. I mean, who’s in charge here? Apparently not the chair.
This is all crazy and backwards—the Planning Board appears to be working for City Hall/Planning Department employees and City Council and the developers, and not for the citizens of Portsmouth via processes that include them up front. The Board is now purely reactive to whatever staff, developers and the City Council bring us.
Moreover, besides the now sidelined Master Plan—a Planning Board’s most important statutory responsibility and its major proactive mandate—the City Council has taken away much of the PB’s fundamental role under NH law to plan, propose, and review land use. They created the Land Use Committee and now the Housing Committee, relegating the Planning Board to approve whatever plans and policies they send us, like the 39 piecemeal G1 zoning changes that were never properly explained before this Board approved them as one lumped item at our February meeting, over my objection and a couple of others.
So it is with much regret, sadness (and yes, frustration) that I conclude I can serve no useful function as part of this Planning Board, and that I can make more of a difference serving our community in other ways.
So I hereby resign from the Planning Board, and wish you all the best.
