Private road relief bill goes before House committee on Thursday

To the editor:

SB246, (Qualified Private Communities Act) will be heard before the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Municipal and County Government Committee this Thursday, April 7, 2022, at 11:00am. SB246 is companion legislation to SB250 (Tax Credit) which passed the New Hampshire Senate Election Law and Municipal Affairs Committee in February as an interim study bill which in legislative parlance means the bill is dead. SB250 would have given municipalities the authority to offer property tax credits to existing qualified private road residents. However, that same Senate Committee recommended SB246 be sent as amended to the full Senate which then voted to pass it on to the House.
SB246 is mandatory legislation which will require municipalities and developers to respectively approve and build future qualified residential private road communities under either one of two conditions: Number one, build the private roads to existing municipal public road standards (so that residents may later petition the municipality to take over the financial and legal responsibilities of maintaining and replacing those roads and related infrastructure); or number two, require the developer to fund a fair estimate type of Capital Reserve based on certain factors of the cost to replace those private roads and related infrastructure at the time of completion (and turn those funds over to the residents to help defray future road/infrastructure maintenance and replacement costs).
It is crucial that SB246 be approved by the House Municipal and County Government Committee this Thursday and passed to the full House for a vote as this legislation would be the first recognition by Concord to fix the unfair imbalance of property taxation of private road residents to public road residents. If we can get this legislation passed it will help future efforts to pass legislation for existing private road residents.
Anyone residing on a private road should visit www.nhpvrta.com , sign up and follow the instructions of what to do to support this important legislation as this is the initial step in creating tax fairness between private and public road residents. The NHPVRTA fully intends to follow through with additional legislation next year to remedy the long-time property tax injustices for all current private road residents.

- John J. Gogliam