Heidi Preuss: Looks like goal of county delegation is to eliminate Gunstock Mountain Resort

To The Daily Sun,

I propose the goal of the Belknap Delegation is to eliminate Gunstock. This removal of commissioners without cause is the first step. I had been bewildered by this until I recently got a crash course in the Free State Project. Numerous members of our delegation belong to this extremist libertarian group and support its utopian ideology (Norm Silber, Dawn Johnson, Mike Sylvia, Ray Howard). They quietly infiltrate local governments as Republicans or Democrats, whichever is more likely to win. Locally, Gunstock is making money, but that doesn’t matter to the ideology. At their extreme they don’t believe in paying for public education or most regulation, never mind government involvement in running a county owned business. As a cautionary tale read what Grafton recently experienced under the control of this group. "A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town."

If this were publicly understood and the majority supported it I wouldn’t have a problem, but it is not. They are fairly secretive and I would propose that some have been highly manipulative and inappropriate. Gunstock is only the first and most obvious entity they’d like to eliminate. They have actually been working on this plan for years (remember the denial of the ski area bridge loan a couple years ago).

My story: I am a Laconia native and Olympic alpine skier who learned to ski at Gunstock. I also have an accounting and finance degree. This year I applied to become a Gunstock commissioner with the exact qualifications the appointment seeks. I missed the meeting and overwhelmingly lost to someone with little experience. In hindsight I believe there was deliberate collusion and misdirection. I believe the vote was predetermined with their own candidate and they didn’t want me present. While I applied as required, no formal notice was sent to applicants stating where and when the meeting and interviews would take place. I did receive an email from a delegate that I accepted as formal notice, but this notice had the wrong date. A date that was conveniently after the actual meeting. I now know I was the only applicant to receive this email. At the time, I followed up with this delegate, learned I had missed the meeting and was told with much apology they had made an honest mistake and that the email had been his personal due diligence. But he assured me the delegation had tried to locate me during the meeting. They had worried I had gone to the ski area rather than the county complex and implied they searched for me. But they all had my resume with phone number. If anyone had been concerned, they could have called. I live less than five minutes from the complex. Earlier, I had written all this off as bad luck and planned to apply again next year but with what I’m seeing now, I believe there is too much coincidence for this to have been unintentional and I suspect political shenanigans.

Heidi Preuss

Laconia