I read with interest Councilor Allan Herschlag’s “My Turn” (Monitor Opinion, Nov. 7) regarding the Caleb tannery site in Penacook.
As someone who actually lives in Penacook and pays property taxes to the Merrimack Valley School District (unlike Councilor Herschlag), I am excited and relieved to see any building on the tannery site and happy to see that the builders have incentives to remove that non-taxable blighted land from our village and replace it with housing.
We don’t need more commercial storefronts – the ones that exist have a high vacancy rate as it is. Part of the reason is that no business wants to move to the village because of the huge area of land that is a stain on the middle of town and has been for decades.
I believe that when that awful, ugly, fenced-off, weed- and stone-filled land is replaced with a structure and people, businesses and tax-paying entities will come to Penacook.
CHRISTINE MILLER
Penacook