By Rep. David Preece
On Thursday, the New Hampshire House will vote on two bills—SB 564 and HB 1588—that could significantly alter the relationship between state government and local communities.
Supporters view these measures as necessary responses to New Hampshire’s housing shortage. The need for additional housing is real and urgent. Young families, seniors, and working people are struggling to find homes they can afford.
But there is another issue at stake that deserves equal attention: local control.
For generations, New Hampshire has relied on local decision-making to shape growth and development. Through planning boards, zoning boards, select boards, city councils, and town meetings, residents have played a direct role in determining how their communities evolve.
The question before lawmakers is not whether we need more housing.
The question is whether solving our housing challenges requires weakening the authority of local communities to guide their own future.
As a former Executive Director of the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission and an urban planner with more than four decades of experience, I have worked with communities across New Hampshire and throughout the country. Successful planning is never simply about deciding where buildings should go.
It involves understanding road capacity, emergency access, water supplies, wastewater systems, environmental constraints, stormwater management, school enrollment impacts, fiscal sustainability, and the long-term character of neighborhoods.
These are inherently local considerations.
That is why municipalities invest years developing master plans and zoning ordinances through extensive public engagement and professional analysis.
SB 564 would substantially limit the ability of municipalities to use one of the most effective planning tools available: conservation and open-space subdivision ordinances.
More than 170 New Hampshire cities and towns have adopted these ordinances. They allow housing development while preserving wetlands, forests, farmland, wildlife habitat, drinking water resources, and neighborhood buffers. These regulations are not anti-growth measures. In many cases, they encourage development while protecting the natural and community assets that residents value.
The conference committee version of SB 564 goes further by limiting local authority over dead-end road standards and allowing utility infrastructure within or along wetland buffers and conservation areas.
These decisions have traditionally been made locally because local officials understand the unique environmental and infrastructure conditions of their communities.
HB 1588 presents a similar challenge.
Current law already requires municipalities to allow multi-family housing in commercially zoned districts. Communities retain some flexibility through special exceptions or conditional-use permits to ensure residential developments are compatible with surrounding land uses and do not create health, safety, or infrastructure concerns.
HB 1588 would require multi-family housing to be permitted by right in many commercial areas, reducing local review and limiting a community’s ability to address site-specific concerns.
Again, this is not an argument against housing.
It is an argument for thoughtful planning.
A one-size-fits-all approach may appear efficient from Concord, but conditions vary dramatically among New Hampshire’s cities and towns. What works in one community may create significant challenges in another.
At the same time municipalities are losing authority over growth management, they continue to shoulder increasing financial responsibilities.
The state has yet to fully meet its constitutional obligation to fund an adequate education, leaving local property taxpayers responsible for much of the cost. Municipalities face rising expenses for schools, roads, public safety, water systems, and other essential services.
When state government shifts responsibilities downward while limiting local authority, communities are left with fewer tools to manage growth and protect taxpayers.
The result is a growing disconnect between responsibility and control.
Local governments are expected to absorb the impacts of development, maintain infrastructure, educate children, and protect natural resources. Yet increasingly, they are being told they have less say in how those responsibilities are carried out.
New Hampshire has long prided itself on government that is closest to the people. Town meetings, local elections, and municipal boards have been central to that tradition.
The debate over SB 564 and HB 1588 is ultimately about more than housing policy.
It is about whether decisions affecting the future of our communities should continue to be made primarily by the people who live there or by lawmakers in Concord.
Housing affordability is a challenge that demands action.
But we should be cautious about solving one problem by undermining a principle that has long defined New Hampshire government: the belief that local communities deserve a meaningful voice in shaping their own future.
David Preece