An amendment to Conway’s zoning ordinance that voters approved in April is running into resistance from property owners who already have short-term rental agreements in place for this year. The new regulation bans short-term rentals of properties that are not owner-occupied and lie in residential areas.
The town has sent a letter to the property owners, informing them of the ban, but the Mount Washington Valley Association for Responsible Vacation Rentals has asked for a grace period due to the existing agreements that have been in place for months. With 504 short-term rentals in or near Conway, the association is concerned about invalidating those agreements.
Conway Town Manager Tom Holmes said the town has asked the Carroll County Superior Court to settle the conflict. If the town fails to enforce the zoning ordinance, it can expect challenges from the people who passed it and want to see the short-term rentals shut down.
New Hope For Infrastructure Plan
After weeks of back-and-forth discussions aimed at hammering out a plan that both Republicans and Democrats could support, President Joe Biden pulled the plug, recognizing that the effort to address the nation’s infrastructure needs was going nowhere. Hope now rests with the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 58 House members, who are supporting $761.8 billion in new spending over the next eight years, bringing the total cost of the proposal to $1.2 trillion.
Biden originally sought $2.25 trillion, reducing the request to $1.7 trillion by the end of the talks with Republicans. The Republicans raised their offer from $568 billion to $928 billion, but only $150 billion of that involved new spending. They drew the line at raising taxes and disagreed with many of the items, such as broadband expansion and social programs.
Bloomberg reports that the Problem Solvers’ initially released plan would provide $959 billion for transportation: $518 billion for highways, roads, and safety; $64 billion for bridge investment; $155 billion for transit; $25 billion for electric vehicle infrastructure; $120 billion for Amtrak passenger rail; $41 billion for airports; and $25 billion for waterways and ports. Another $90 billion would go to “asset-neutral” investments; $200 billion would go to energy, water, telecom, and veterans’ housing (including $45 billion for broadband, $25 billion for electric grid and other green energy, and $14 billion for water storage in the West).
Developer Abandons Keystone Pipeline
TC Energy, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline that has faced opposition from environmental groups for more than a decade, announced that it is abandoning the project after spending about $8 billion to build about 300 miles of the line.
The pipeline would have carried oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of the United States. Environmentalists said the oil sands crude it carries requires more processing and emits more greenhouse gases than most oil.
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, issued a statement after the announcement, saying, “For 13 years, an international movement of frontline communities in the U.S. and Canada, Indigenous leaders, and environmentalists fought back against this terrible proposed project at every turn. Today, we can say yet again that our efforts were a resounding success.”
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