Tom Wardrop: Moultonborough selectmen sold taxpayers short

To The Daily Sun,

I’m appalled to learn that the Moultonborough Selectmen have made a secret deal to sell the whole Taylor property to Huggins Hospital without any public notice or community input. This shows a complete disregard for the community, and for all the Moultonborough Village planning work that many of us have been involved in.

The current Selectmen obviously don’t care about any planning studies or recommendations for our Village, and their secret negotiation to sell out the Village is an insult to the entire community. I and many other volunteers participated in recent planning studies for the Village, including the community Charrette in 2018 and the UNH First Impressions downtown assessment project in 2019.

An institutional medical campus dominating the center of the historic Village sabotages our well-defined Village Vision, and is contrary to every planning and economic development recommendation for Village revitalization. It is an abomination that the Selectmen have agreed to let Huggins Hospital demolish the Taylor House, which is a character-defining feature of Moultonborough Village.

All our planning studies have identified the Taylor House as a community asset, an iconic building that is critical to our Town’s identity, history, and the look of our main street area. People come to New Hampshire to see historic buildings, not institutional buildings, in village centers. Loss of this prominent landmark house will severely impact the Village’s heritage, unique streetscape, and sense of place.

The Selectmen have given Huggins the green light to build an 8,500-10,000 square-foot building in the Village center with "no restrictions" – excusing it from any Zoning or Planning CUP reviews for the Village Center Overlay District. As a point of reference, the Dollar General store is 9,100 square feet. So thanks to this Selectboard, we can expect another inappropriate building in our Village center.

What is most disappointing is the Selectboard’s obvious unwillingness and inability to negotiate for the community’s best interests, as evidenced by their backroom agreement to practically give away the Taylor property. They are selling us all short. Huggins Hospital can afford to pay full price for the property, or if they get any deal, they should be required to rehab and integrate the Taylor House into their complex.

So at Saturday’s Town Meeting, voters will be asked to approve a revised Article 15 to approve sale of the whole Taylor property to Huggins Hospital, a nonprofit corporation that won’t pay any property taxes. Do Moultonborough voters really want an institutional hospital building to be the focal point for our Village?

Tom Wardrop

Moultonborough