Also on today’s menu:
State School Marketing Approved
New Hampshire’s Pandora
Marine Patrol Sergeant Nick Haroutanian told the Laconia Daily Sun that the nor’easter that came through the area overnight on Tuesday sank at least seven boats on Lake Winnipesaukee.
Most owners take their boats out of the water between Labor Day and Columbus Day, but the weather this fall was nice enough that some boats were still in the water when the storm blew through. Peter Chiklis, a recovery boat captain with Tow Boat US, said gusts around 3 a.m. may have been in the 60 mile-per-hour range. One pontoon boat was still on the rocks on Thursday afternoon, the deck disconnected from the pontoons. Another boat, near the beach by the Greystone Motor Inn on Scenic Drive in Gilford, was sunk in four feet of water while another had been completely ejected from the lake and was sitting on dry land.
“Nor’easters, they can be very disastrous; yesterday was an example of that,” Haroutunian said on Thursday.
State School Marketing Approved
The state’s Executive Council has approved a contract to market the Laconia State School property for private development, but the approval includes a requirement that the real estate brokerage firm CBRE work with the Lakeshore Redevelopment Planning Commission and the City of Laconia as it tries to find developers for the 250-acre site.
Executive Councilor Joe Kenney assured the Laconia City Council that there would be a comprehensive plan developed in consultation with the city. The city had been unhappy with Gov. Chris Sununu’s effort to fast-track the sale of property to the highest bidder, fearing it would result in the site being only partially developed, and not put to its highest and best use.
The resolution requires that the broker present any bona fide offers to the city council before presenting them to the Executive Council, and that the broker meet with the Lakeshore Redevelopment Commission to be briefed on the environmental, master planning, surveying, and other work that has already been performed.
New Hampshire’s Pandora
Bob Sanders writes in the New Hampshire Business Review that assets under management by New Hampshire’s trust industry increased by more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in the last year, an amount that is triple the amount reportedly going into South Dakota where the so-called “Pandora Papers” exposed the movement of nefarious money shielded by people looking to avoid taxes and scrutiny.
The Pandora Papers identified New Hampshire as a place where it is easy to form trusts, but Sanders says the state has overtaken South Dakota in some ways as the premier place to secretly stash foreign assets, both in trusts and in relatively new and even less regulated family law foundations.
New Hampshire’s family foundation law went into effect in October 2017 for another first-in-the-nation initiative. According to the article, foundations are similar to trusts, but are based on civil law rather than common law, and are usually found in Europe and Latin America, but not in the United States. Wyoming is following New Hampshire’s lead and its own foundation law will take effect next year.
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