FOMS Alert: Deceptive push-polling tactics reported - Archived

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Okemo/Mount Sunapee Resort, the managers of the ski area, appears to be using push-polling tactics in their campaign to forward a plan for expansion and development at Mount Sunapee State Park. Several residents, in Wilmot, Newport, and Newbury, contacted FOMS to say they received deceptive phone calls this week.

One recipient, who received the call Thursday evening (10/15/2014), said the call was identified as being made for the Resort. It first appeared to be a public opinion survey, but then shifted to the caller asserting and imparting certain information designed to influence my response, explained the Newport resident. He said he was very familiar with Okemo/Mount Sunapee Resort.

“It clearly was a push-poll. And I told her that. I also told her I opposed their expansion plan,” he said.

The call also evoked the Welsh Family legacy of land conservation on Mount Sunapee, which the call recipients found particularly offensive.

Dan in Wilmot received a similar call on Wednesday (10/15/2014).

Cutting down the trees on Mount Sunapee for condominiums is the antithesis of the Herbert Welsh legacy. I also told the caller that blasting hiking trails and old growth forests off the top of Mount Sunapee to put in high speed chairlifts to feed private development is the antithesis of the New Hampshire State Parks.

Okemo/MSR is proposing for Mount Sunapee a controversial expansion plan that would introduce private resort development to the mountain’s western slopes.

The proposal, identified at the “West Bowl expansion,” is part of a Five-Year Master Development Plan now under consideration by the Department of Resources and Economic Development, the state agency that oversees the Division of Parks and Recreation.

Ten years ago, when Okmeo/MSR first proposed expansion in a master plan, they employed similar phone tactics, which at the time.

Please contact us if you receive one of these calls.

To learn more, visit: What’s the Real Plan.