THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
ROCKINGHAM COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT
Harriet E. Cady
v.
Town of Deerfield and Deerfield Conservation Commission
Docket No: 218-2011-CV-0257
ORDER
On March 4, 2011, the plaintiff filed a Petition Under RSA 91-A, The Right To Know Law. Her pleading has three major themes, to wit, (1) various municipal boards in Deerfield are not properly posting their meetings; (2) the town's Open Space Plan was improperly enacted; and (3) the town's Police Department is not disposing of confiscated property properly.
A hearing was held in this matter on August 29, 2011. Both parties appeared. In answer to the plaintiff's complaints, the defendant (1) admitted that some of its municipal boards were not posting their meetings properly. It argues that this is a difficult situation to monitor because there are many municipal boards and they are staffed with volunteers who because of no compensation either do not know or have not taken the time to learn about how meetings are to be posted. The town will continually remind its boards of their responsibilities under the law; (2) the Open Space Plan was adopted by the Deerfield Planning Board at a properly noticed meeting and following a public hearing. To the extent that the plaintiff wishes to challenge that particular law then she should take an appeal from a decision from the Planning Board in which the law was invoked to have the Court rule on whether or not the it is valid; (3) the town has prepared a redacted list of it's [2] inventory records at the request of the plaintiff and those records are available for copying at the Town Hall at the plaintiff's convenience and at her expense.
After filing her initial petition under the Right To Know Law, the plaintiff filed a Motion for Records on March 31, 2011 as well as a Notice of Repeat Violations on August 29, 2011. However these additional pleadings only discuss the three topics that were referenced in the plaintiff's original filing and therefore need not be the subject of further comment by the Court.
Upon review of all the evidence presented, the Court cannot find that the Town of Deerfield committed a willful violation of RSA 91-A. Accordingly, the plaintiff's petition is dismissed.
So Ordered.