By Rod Hansen
Staff Writer

The town of Weare acted legally in enacting a 2004 interim growth ordinance meant to stem new subdivisions in the area, the state Supreme Court ruled in a recent decision.

The interim growth ordinance, adopted at the Town Meeting of March 9, 2004, barred the Weare Planning Board from reviewing “any ... major subdivision applications creating a total of more than three lots.”

The Weare Land Use Association, a voluntary nonprofit group, filed a dispute in the Northern District of Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester only days after the ordinance went into effect, group member Ralph Joyce said.

Joyce said the Weare Planning Board told him to wait a year when he submitted a subdivision application for 21 lots in a 56-acre parcel off Colby Road in 2004.

Members of the Weare Land Use Association claimed the ordinance to be illegal and unconstitutional because it violated land owners’ statutory right to have completed applications accepted by formal vote, thus protecting it from later ordinance changes.

The Land Use Association appealed the case to the state Supreme Court in the fall of 2005 after the Superior Court ruled in favor of the town.

Oral arguments in the Weare Land Use Association vs. the Town of Weare were presented to the state Supreme Court on March 16 of this year.

Attorneys in the case included Sumner Kalman of Plaistow representing the Weare Land Use Association, and Boutin and Associates of Londonderry representing the town.

In their decision, issued May 18, the Supreme Court agreed with the Superior Court’s statement that “the purpose of the interim growth management ordinance ... is to provide “a town (with) reasonable time to develop (or alter) a master or comprehensive plan and to provide for phasing in growth.”

The Supreme Court also agreed with the Superior Court’s statement that interpreting the statutes as the Weare Land Use Committee suggested would produce an illogical result.

Supreme Court justices also wrote in their decision that Weare’s interim growth ordinance complies with an earlier Supreme Court decision upholding slow growth ordinances “as a temporary measure, when it lasts no more than one year toward the purpose of developing a comprehensive plan.”

The Supreme Court did not address the Weare Land Use Committee’s due process argument that the ordinance bears no relationship to controlling growth due to “unusual circumstances,” a statutory requirement for interim regulations.

Because the Superior Court did not address this in its decision, the Supreme Court did not address it either.