Coos Conversations

An open letter to Governor Lynch, our Congressional Delegation and the NH Legislature

I heard Governor Lynch on NHPR's the Exchange yesterday and was encouraged by what he had to say about the North Country. But it inspired me to write the following: 

First of all I want to thank Governor John Lynch for his proposed business tax credit for jobs created in Coos County. As a small business that has already relocated and created some two dozen jobs in the North Country I truly can appreciate that initiative. I want to urge the legislature to pass the necessary legislation to make it a reality. It’s a great start. But while we’re at it, I have a few other suggestions for you that might also help lure my fellow entrepreneurs up here. . 

•  Examine what percentage of the thousands of contracts that the state awards every year go to Coos County businesses?  The federal government gives preference to minority owned businesses in their awarding of contracts, why can’t the state give preference to Coos County owned business, or at the very least ensure that Coos County businesses get their fair share of those contracts.  Tax incentives are great, but many small businesses don’t have enough income for a tax credit to make a difference.  What they want and need is the work. The state spends millions every year on goods and services some of which can be done by Coos County entrepreneurs. How about an outreach program to publicize those opportunities to Coos County entrepreneurs and make sure they get a fair shot at those contracts.

• Create incentives that will help Coos County compete in the movie/commercial/film business. Every month I get a report of the incentives that other states offer and NH never makes the list. It seems that the North Country is like a ingenue with the capability of becoming a super model. It's biggest asset is its looks, i.e. the mountains, rivers and views. It just needs to be discovered and photographed well. Competitive incentives and an aggressive marketing program for the county would help that happen.

• Help us change the image of the North country. Every time you go on the radio or give a speech that talks about “the beleaguered North Country,” and  the lack of high speed internet, you set the image of back several years. In fact there IS high speed Internet in Coos County. If there werent’ I wouldn’t be able to run my company there. Every one of my employees can connect from his/her home. More importantly, they live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. They can leave their desks and be skiing or hiking or kayaking or fishing fifteen minutes later. We like to say that they have the shortest commute to the highest mountains and longest rivers in . There is great art and great music there too. We need your help to communicate a new image for the North Country, so lets stop reinforcing those old negative stereotypes.

•  Help spread the word to our neighbors to the north and south. Over 100 million people live within a tank or two of gas from Coos County. With the strong Looney and weak dollar, our Canadian neighbors to the North now have even more reason to look to the North Country as a place to do business.  There are millions of people in the greater Boston and New York areas that are looking to escape their commutes to the safety of a rural balanced lifestyle. We need to make sure your message of tax credits, job training incentives and other incentives get to these people. The state does a terrific job of reaching out to tourists; it needs to do an equally good job of reaching out to out-of-state entrepreneurs and business owners that are looking for a location that offers a great work-life balance, employees with an unparalleled work ethic, affordable housing and a clean, safe lifestyle.

Just a few suggestions, thank you for listening.

 

Most fascinating comparison of the week

According to someone following Laidlaw's stock on Investors Hub,  the company has a market cap of less than $1 million. That makes it worth less than KDPaine & Partners, given that we have signed contracts from Fortune 500 companies worth more than that. How can a company that small and under capitalized ever complete a project the size of the proposed biomass plant?

It's not what you say, it's what you do

All along, Laidlaw has stressed to Berlin and the good folks of Ellicottville that it is a good company and wants to be a good neighbor but when it talks to its investors, there's quite a different story. This is from a recent missive from their CEO, Michael Bartosek:

"We are currently in the final stages of negotiating a 15 - 20 year power purchase agreement with the local utility. New Hampshire's renewable portfolio standard requires that utilities enter into such arrangements in order to promote the development of renewable power in the state.

The queue system is outdated and is the process of being replaced by the NH PUC and the legislature. We expect the contract will contain language that protects us in the event there are any transmission issues."

What this "back door tactics" indicate is that they're trying to do a side deal with PSNH to provide a way for them to cut in line ahead of other companies that are following the rules in their efforts to bring clean, green, renewable energy to NH . I wonder what the others will say when they find out? And what does that say about the business ethics of Laidlaw and PSNH?
Today's message was:

We are making good progress on the closing of the Berlin transaction and I feel very confident about where things stand currently. While we had hoped to close by the end of the year, the reality is that the Berlin site is a 100+ year old industrial property and there are issues of potential environmental liabilities and other property matters that have proven to be more complex than we originally anticipated and we are in the process of dealing with these matters.

 He then goes on to discuss in detail his plans for further appeal and litigation against the citizens of Elicottville.

Lawsuit happy companies do not make good neighbors

If anyone was wondering what Laidlaw is really like read this story and count up how many lawsuits they're filing against the town of Ellicottville. Seems to me, they invest more in legal fees than they do in their own company. Is that really the kind of neighbor/investor Berlin wants?

 

If you missed the meeting, you can still make your opinion heard here

Berlin has set up a blog to capture your thoughts, ideas and opinions. You can find it here: Berlin Master Planning & Community Conversations.

Come out to night and shape the future

The City of Berlin holds its first Master Plan - Public Visioning Session.  If you care about the future of Berlin, you should be there tonight

Bring Back the Coos Boom Times

With the shuttering of the paperboard conversion mill in Groveton several years ago, the shutdown of the Wausaw plant, the dismantling of the Burgess complex in Berlin, the sell-off of the last dairy herd in Colebrook, and the wholesale decline of woods industry labor due to heavy mechanization of timber harvesting, it is difficult to imagine that once, during a 25 year span between 1885 and 1910, Coos County boasted a bona fide boom economy, centered around locally owned and controlled businesses utilizing the vast local forest resource. Try to get your thoughts around this: During that period revolving around the turn of the 20th century, Coos County housed within its borders the world’s largest sulfite paper mill at Berlin and the grandest of all sawmills in New England at Whitefield. At a community called Hazens -- no longer on the map -- one of the largest commercial dairy farms in the Northeast was in operation, big enough to host the joint Grafton and Coos agricultural fair and keep equestrian fans happy with polo matches on a polo field where the Whitefield Regional Airport sprawls today. Not more than a stone’s throw away, at Lake Aziscohos on the Magalloway River, the largest hydroelectric generation station in the East was completed in the earliest years of the last century. To match the industrial might, huge grand hotels were a-building or greatly expanding from Carroll in the south to Colebrook and Dixville in the north. Most all the grand hotels were serviced by any one of a host of railroad companies bringing in tourist hordes from southern New England and New York. To complement the passenger and freight rail lines, a dozen shortline logging railways were punched into the mountains, allowing the wholesale and wanton clear cutting and shipment of timber on a scale not seen before by human eyes. Soon there would be modern high-speed dairy processing plants up and running, a famous workman’s overalls factory turning out garments favored by just about every blue collar worker in the lower 48, and mammoth log drives clogging the Connecticut and Androscoggin Rivers, floating timber as far south as Holyoke, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut. Boom time -- that’s what it was. Berlin’s population quadrupled in 20 years to nearly 10,000. Whitefield was the largest community on the west side of the county, its population approaching 3,000, not counting woodcutters in the camps in the forests to the east at the foot of the Dartmouth and Presidential Ranges. The foundation underpinning the surging economic life of the county then was this: local people employed by local business owners were tapping local resources to make products for local, regional and national markets. Sounds straight forward, doesn’t it? But contrast that statement with what we see around us in Coos now and in the rural fastness of the nation as a whole. The rush to globalization has severed the very connection of local people to their local resources and made it extremely difficult to mount local initiatives to make improvements. Decisions are made a world away. Resources are tapped elsewhere, particularly where labor works for pennies on the dollar. Cheap goods now flood the nation and effectively kill off local businesses and industries. Where does Coos turn to put in place businesses that tap local resources to provide local jobs whereby people can make products of value for local, regional and national markets when globalization’s jackboot is at her back? How can the good people of this wonderful region stop the decline of its towns that has been underway gradually but steadily for 100 years? It is absolutely essential to take a hard look at the development of bio-mass products -- apart from bio-mass electricity generation facilities. I’m talking about fabricating wood pellets for heating homes in New Hampshire, cellulosic-process ethanol for powering the greater region’s cars, and wood chip-heated greenhouse complexes that turn out bulk fruits and vegetables year ‘round for local and regional consumption. These industries are critical for a balanced economic equation for the county. Unlike electrical power generating stations which produce few on-site jobs, bio-mass product production would require numerous employees to get the new products to market. Such products are consumables that must be produced continuously, in an endless stream. Local jobs created to produce such products would be very unlikely to be outsourced, particularly in the new climate of ever escalating energy prices. That means that such jobs would be safe from the ravishes of globalization. They would greatly complement the local forest resource, making working life and family life in Coos County much more secure and stable. Local jobs in local bio-plants using the local resource to provide for the security and wellbeing of local people is the future for Coos citizens. Embracing new bio-mass enterprises and husbanding the forest resource well so that it provides an endless raw material base is, in my mind, a rather bright future. I get a bit of a thrill thinking that I could (and should) heat my house, power my vehicle, and put food on my table by buying local products produced from energy derived the grand Coos forests.  Submitted by Kim Robert Nilsen The Cohos Trail Association Wilshy@worldpath.net

REGIONAL BIOFUEL PLANTS AND LOCAL FOOD PRODUCTION

The announcement by North Country Renewable Energy LLC, the feelers sent out by Laidlaw, and the proximity to the existiing wood-chip power plants at Bethlehem and at Whitefield, means the biofuel revolution is at the doorstep of Coos County. But there is a second industry, one that can quite literally tap on site the waste steam and electrical output of bio-plants, that could be developed right alongside the new generation stations.

The industry I'm speaking of is environmentally controlled bulk-food production. In Europe there are several power stations that are linked with massive greenhouse banks, hothouses that grow wholesale tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, and other vegetables that can be grown in high density environments for the tables of consumers. In Winslow, Maine, a new 14-acre greenhouse system is now turning out great quantities of hothouse tomatoes and all the volume is being trucked to the big Maine distribution warehouses of Hannafords supermarket chain. That greenhouse complex got up and running using propane as the heat source, but the company is building a wood-chip cogeneration boiler to heat the greenhouses and provide 18-hours of artificial lighting to get maximum production from the vegetable plants growing inside the hothouses.

Coos County is about as far away from food growing regions of the United States as a county can be, yet Coos County once fed itself only four and five generations ago. Biofuel plants have the capacity to be the energy source for environmentally controlled food production right in Coos. At Winslow, Maine, the tomato growing greenhouses employ 150 people in a nonstop plant, tend, harvest and ship cycle. Won't Coos like to have those jobs? You bet.

I can imagine entrepreneurs wedding food production systems with the bio-plants to jump start the revitalization of agriculture in Coos County.
Such a hybrid business would be exciting in terms of energy and food production volume, and such hybrids would suddenly be job factories for the county. If you will allow me, I can imagine big greenhouse sysems in place tied to industries such as the Tillotson rubber manufacturing plant in Dixville, the furniture factory at Beecher Falls, Vermont, the electric stations at Bethlehem and Whitefield, one at the energy park in Groveton, and, if a generating station or cellulosic biofuel plant is constructed in Berlin, one in Coos' only city.

Creating such food-energy hybrid companies would ensure that Coos County is no longer at the end of the food and energy distribution chain in the United States. Suddenly the county would be at the head of chain, a much better place to be during uncertain times.

Submitted by Kim Robert Nilsen
The Cohos Trail Association
wilshy@worldpath.net      

If you care about Berlin, attend tonight's Planning Board meeting

Tonight's Berlin Planning Board Meeting may be one of the most important events in the history of the city. If you care about the future, please attend and make your feelings known

Laidlaw wants us to be scared, very scared

Laidlaw Energy Files $10 Million Federal Lawsuit Against Town of Ellicottville, NY; Seeks Judgment to Operate …