The Political Mullet, Part III - Business in the Front, Original Map in the Back

Nothing is complete without bringing something full circle… And that is why the McDormand property comes in.

Because the person saying our the lines are wrong is not just griping about some random corner of Ossipee. The claim is bigger than that.

The claim is that this lot ties back to the older, correct chain tied to the original town map foundation, and that once this parcel is corrected, the surrounding lines begin to correct from this point outward.

In other words, this is not just a boundary fight.

It is a starting-point fight.

And if your starting point is wrong, the rest of the map can go wandering off like a shopping cart in a February parking lot.

What the Records show

The public record shows that on November 19, 2019, Jim Rines presented two boundary line adjustments on Dorrs Corner Road for Ernest Berry’s property.

Keep in mind that Mr Berry is the brother of the selectmen at that time Martha Eldridge, who happened to be the town administrator for 20+years!

And not only did Rines present to a board he was on, he presented to Eldridge’s Niece, who had gotten married only months prior at the property in the BLA.

At that meeting, Derek McDormand objected on the record that the boundary lines shown did not match the deeds, said his line was about 100 feet farther west, and said the disputed area was tied to a stone wall he claimed had been knocked down and removed. The minutes also show Rines stating that in boundary reconstruction, “original monuments hold over everything else.” The Board approved the BLA anyway.

This being a complete violation of survey laws and regulations, And we are not even getting into the specifics on the permits they require from the state for a line adjustment like this, it didn’t matter they disregarded them like trash at the town dump!

That is the moment this whole thing stops looking like harmless local paperwork and starts looking like the first bad zipper tooth on the town’s pants.

Because if original monuments control, and someone is standing there in 2019 saying, “This line does not match the deeds or the physical evidence,” then that is not background noise. That is the warning light on the dashboard.

Now add the next part.

On December 7, 2021, Planning Board minutes say Jim Rines presented the draft revision of the new town maps and demonstrated the changes and corrections needed. So the same surveyor tied to the disputed 2019 Dorrs Corner line was later involved in showing the Board how the town maps themselves needed to be revised.

That is where the mullet really starts flowing in the wind.

Because if the McDormand parcel is the one true deed that connects back to the true older layout, and if that line was shifted or misread in 2019, then later map “corrections” may not have been correcting the real problem at all. They may have been formalizing it.

That is the issue in plain English: once the wrong line becomes the working line, every later correction can start looking official while still being off.

And by 2024, the town’s own minutes show it was still trying to fix how BLAs were being finalized. On May 21, 2024, the Planning Board discussed that no mylar should be recorded until the new deed had been submitted to finalize a subdivision or boundary line adjustment, and it also discussed having a new mylar generated to put certain boundary lines back to their pre-2009 BLA position.

Then on June 4, 2024, the Board reviewed regulation changes that included a new section called “Failure to Register BLA.”

That is not exactly the kind of phrase a town adds when everything has been humming along like a church organ.

small-town hat-stack problem.

Ossipee’s 2023 annual report lists Jim Rines as a member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment. So the same name appears not just in private land presentations, but inside the wider land-use system too.

That does not prove wrongdoing by itself. But it absolutely adds to the appearance problem when the same circle of names keeps showing up around boundary changes, map revisions, and board-level land decisions.

More so considering he just won seat for selectman 2026!

So here is the easiest way to understand McDormands argument:

He is not just saying, “My line is wrong.”

He is saying, “My parcel is one of the places that shows where the real line system should be.”

And if that is true, then correcting this parcel would not just fix one lot. It would begin exposing how the surrounding lines should fall back into place from that point outward.

That is why this matters to more than one family.

Because once a bad line gets approved, used, and folded into later revisions, it does not stay politely in its own yard. It spreads into assessments, tax maps, abutter relationships, planning decisions, and the official story the town tells about who owns what.

So the real question is no longer why Derek keeps talking about this.

The real question is:

What if the guy everyone keeps brushing off is standing on the one property that points back to the original map itself?

That is the Ossipee political mullet in a nutshell.

Business in the front: approved plans, revised maps, signed papers, everybody act normal.

Party in the back: old monuments, older deeds, a disputed line, and one inconvenient parcel refusing to shut up.

And honestly, that might be the most New Hampshire thing of all.