[secondcurve]

Originally Posted by Irish mist

The area needs a master plan, expecting Laconia to do this anytime soon is doubtful. I have watched the city of Laconia turn into a typical non-working, non-functional section-8 infested mess. Back in the 70s the city was a solid working-class, blue-collar type of city that was safe and stable.

There's still not much random violent crime, yet, but petty crime, property crime, and drug crimes are on the rise. The current leadership in Laconia is not going to be able to turn this around, and quite frankly, I doubt it can be turned around at all at this point due to the massive influx of section-8 housing in the core of the city. It also does not help that the Laconia area has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs.

You just can't pepper a city the size of Laconia with thousands of units of welfare housing and not expect issues. These issues are of course bleeding over to Meredith & Gilford....so this is also a regional issue, and not just a Laconia issue.

You can spend tens of millions of dollars at the Weirs and it's really not going to matter until the rest of the town is somehow cleaned up, and I don't see that happening any time soon in the current political climate.

Maybe they can pave downtown for the bikers and fix the waterfront for the tourists?