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Originally Posted by winnilaker
The hearings this summer were to get an opinion of BOATERS on the lake about HB162.
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Do you feel this way because your own poll was so disappointing? How about sharing that with us?
Should we use the hearing numbers that include all of the sheets that you guys filled out with the names and addresses of "friends who couldn't make it"? If the balance of attendees at the summer meetings was going to be used as the basis for deciding the fate of the bill, I'm sure the Committee would have policed the attendance sheets more carefully.
You guys are really really scraping for some way to spin out a number that favors you. I would expect that you could do better than an argument like this. Or we could use the unanymous opposition of the NHRBA membership to prove that "New Hampshire's Recreational Boaters" oppose HB162
unanymously. (Stop the presses!)
The citizens of NH own its lakes...
all of the citizens of NH. The opinion of a fellow in Sanborton is surely more poignant than that of some OSO guy who rode all the way up from NJ for the first time in two years to attend a hearing. The tax dollars of that guy in Sanborton pay the salaries of the MP and the other costs associated with owning a lake like this. The tax dollars of NJ Joe pay for up-keep and police at the NJ Shore. That guy in Sanborton is supposed to have this lake at his disposal for any legal activity that does not interfere with the uses of NH's other citizens, whether he takes advantage of that right every weekend, once a summer, or once a decade. It is his lake too. It does not belong to your friend in Sarasota or your friends in Michigan, who travel the country to attend meetings like this to "save their sport".
If you felt so strongly that your side had the might in NH, why did you have to go all the way down to Florida last month to have a strategy session with the national performance boaters' associations to solicit their help in fighting this NH bill? (
http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/s...7&postcount=76)
But the bottom line is still the same...
the Committee (bipartisan except mostly Republican) considered all of the hearing testimony (and attendance balance), all of the letters, all of the emails, all of the evidence, all of the facts and opinions, and at the end of the day they collectively said "You know what? This bill doesn't even go far enough to fix the speeding problem on our lakes, let's make it even broader and give it even more bite". I can't believe they would have done this if the balance of opinon at the hearings had been the determining factor.