Tomorrow night, Wednesday, May 4th at 7p.m. at town hall, the Select board meets to welcome it's newest member, Chuck Walkovich. While we have been in opposition at times, welcome Chuck to this leadership team. I celebrate the democracy that creates the path for all elected officers. to pursue their goals to serve their community.
On this night the first agenda item is to reorganize the roles of the Three Select Board members, electing the next Select Board Chairperson. Historically in Pepperell, the Chairmanship has been filled by the senior member of the Board. Having completed my second year on the Board, as Clerk, I have hoped to be elected to that post. I have taken great pride in my Select Board work and take credit for initiating the Climate Change Committee, reviving the Agricultural Commission, working with State and Federal Legislators, starting and Chairing the regional North Central Climate Change Collaborative , and most of all, listening to Pepperell citizens and bringing their concerns and wishes to the Select Board. As politics will have it, the choice of our next Chair Person may be impacted by the current dynamics between the three Board members. I find myself, quite often, as a dissenting voice on the Select Board and attribute that to my determined stance on the importance of maintaining our conservation and farmlands. Any loss of those resources to make room for further development, I believe jeopardizes our work against climate change, future food supply, clean air, clean water and aesthetic quality of our rural lives. I believe growth is best limited to redevelopment projects and all current and new buildings should be limited by it's measured contribution to our carbon footprint. I hope that my co-Select Board members, Mark Mathew and Chuck Walkovich will recognize that I am a good choice and elect me to the position of Chair Person. I offer the assurance that while I hold to my environmental convictions, my greatest responsibility is to uphold the principles of our Democracy and the guarantee of fair respectful and open debates and the give and take required to reach agreements. If members of the public wish to participate in tomorrow nights reordering of the Select Board I encourage you to attend. The meeting is both in person, at Conference Room A and virtual by accessing the link on the Town of Pepperell web site. Whatever the outcome of the Select Board vote, I am deeply thankful to be participating in our democratic process and hope you share my enthusiasm for the work of elected officers, and the democratic principals that guide them. . Regards, Tony Beattie
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Pepperell was declared a District in 1733, then a town in 1775. In those past two hundred and forty seven years we have continued to mature from a struggling farm pioneer way of life, to a prospering agricultural economy in the late 18th and early 19th century, adding in businesses utilizing our river powers, combining industry and farming as the town's duel identity. Our last mill is now a vacant lot. Like the decline and loss of our mill industries, Pepperell's farms are being lost to residential growth as families seek relief from the congestion of the Boston suburbs. Our business community has been little changed as surrounding, highway fed businesses have thrived on residential consumer patterns.
Pepperell, like many towns before it , Littleton, Chelmsford, Tyngsboro, Westford and many others, now runs the risk of "backfill" our building zoning by-law areas and become an urbanized town. The process of rewriting Pepperell's newest Master Plan can help explain the choice of "built out" or "rural preservation" we face. At it's first round of appointments, under Mark Andrews as town Administrator, the Master Plan Committee was largely populated by local business owners. Following public protest of a skewed stake holder committee, the Select Board agreed to add citizens representing environmental, health and social interests. Still missing was a member from the farm community. Master Plan meetings struggled to integrate business interests with land conservation and climate change planning. The final Master Plan did succeed in expressing the interests of all the stakeholders and was accepted by the Planning Board as it's guiding document for Pepperell's future. The overarching theme was to "Preserve our rural character" and be a sustainable community. Some have suggested that we can continue to increase our home building and also protect our farms. You might be tempted to think that having more local consumers will help farmers to increase their sales. Looking at our suburbanized and commercial neighbors towns to the south and east will predict and help you understand the real and sad outcome of home and business growth in any area, a minimum of farms, if any at all. Why does that happen, again and again? To farm and feel successful farmers need a critical mass of area farmers to maintain a culture of agricultural viability. As farm numbers decline the support services they rely on shrink and disappear. Seed, fertilizer, veterinarians, feed and farm equipment and repair services can't continue to serve so few farms and close their doors. Rising land values lead to less available tillable acres to lease and farm home values become more difficult to support. Increased road traffic increases the risk and frustration of traveling on public ways with slow farm equipment. Non-farming residents, not understanding farm practices, enter public complaints, frustrating farmers with the. need to defend their work. Those type of complaints triggered "Right to Farm" bylaws to protect farmers. (Please note that there are no "right to be a lawyer, banker, hardware store owner law".) And the hardest loss, not having a healthy and happy farmer peer group to share woes and successes and information with. Becoming a minority, not well understood sub group in your neighborhood creates stresses that will end farming careers. If someone suggests that at this point, in discussing land use, that we can engage in a balanced approach of mutual interests of both agriculture and residential/commercial interests, they are sadly mistaken. Our open land and farm resources rest on the edge of survival. With the growing challenge of climate change, too easily we can suffer the loss of our most precious community assets. To reach our Master Plan goals of enjoying our rural character we must focus on stopping the loss of open land and limit our population growth. It is akin to fighting a tidal force. The American cultural imperative is to grow or die. Without limits on growth, without a sustainable land use plan, Pepperell will lose it's rural character, betraying it's well intentioned Master Plan. And now my plea. To succeed in protecting our farms and natural environment we need someone to seek the office of Select Board member for this April election cycle. Without a strong voice for a sustainable, rural Pepperell, the tide of commercial and residential growth will sweep us into a crowded, unaffordable, gentrified town. The regrets would be tragic. Again, my plea, see our town clerk for the application to run for the Pepperell Select Board. Our town, in spite of the recent work of the Master Plan Committee, seems to be struggling with a unified vision of the future of Pepperell.
Following this story, as it has developed inside Town Hall, reveals to me, that we have a conservation minded group of folks and a business minded group of folks who are working for opposite futures. The conservationist wishes are to retain the rural quality of town, hold onto our remaining open farm and forest lands, keep taxes down by avoiding building out and gentrifying our town, and they are dedicated to fighting climate change and wish to propose policiesto win that battle. The business minded folks worry about our ability to pay increasing property taxes for increasing municipal services demanded by the public and they want more local businesses to share our tax responsibilities and to serve our families. I wish to be a strong advocate on the environmental/conservationist side of this struggle. Our planning board has developed a proposed by-law, "Adaptive Reuse Overlay District". (AROD). This by law would allow owners of municipal, church, community organization buildings, and historic home properties to apply for a special permit allowing the owner to open a business in these often residential locations. A list of fifteen allowed uses at these locations include such businesses as barber shops, business offices, restaurants, lodgings and more. AROD, as an overlay district would apply to the entire area of Pepperell, boundary to boundary. Our town planner, Jenny Gingras, explained to me that the municipal benefit is to prevent existing, older buildings to fall into disrepair, leading to their demolition. Pepperell would lose it's historical assets should that happen. Planning Board members have taken the position that Pepperell needs more businesses to serve the public and to share in supporting our property tax base. While I applaud looking ahead and taking preventative measures to ensure retaining our historical homes and buildings, I would prefer to discuss an historical home preservation by-law. Also, looking around our town, I don't see historical homes in a state of neglect or threat of demolition. The idea that increasing business properties will lower property taxes is just not demonstrated in our neighboring towns that have pursued that same course. Businesses in this town do not pay a higher property rate. To the contrary, more building development in every case, Littleton, Westford, Chelmsford, and others, led to higher property taxes, creating housing cost problems for middle and low and fixed income families. More pointedly, Pepperell has seen a significant development spurt and the corresponding raising of property values and the increase in taxes we must pay. Further, as AROD Special Permits are sought and given to property owners we will have taken a giant step towards turning our semi rural community into a built out commercial town, with businesses dotting our town and residents moving to other communities they came to Pepperell for, a quiet, friendly, small town with scattered wildlife, river, forest and farm landscapes. The AROD bylaw interest had, in it's origins, a welcome goal: Allowing small business uses in our Peter Fitzpatrick School. The "Fitz" is currently in a residential zone and therefor limited to "educational" uses. By allowing a zoning change for the Fitz to commercial zoning, we can look forward to the development of a shared commercial kitchen and food hub in the school kitchen, a great resource to area farmers and consumers. Also, it provides the Peter Fitzpatrick School collaborative greater range in finding an anchor tenant to financially support the arts and education programs the community seeks. AROD is best limited to the school property and two adjoining properties. What worries me most is our continuing disregard for the consequences of building more homes and their fossil fuel current harm to our environment and the future increasing harms we are burdening our children's lives with. I understand that the existential threat we have created with our fossil fuel economy is hard for us to face and take action on. But we must. There's no moral argument to ignore the tragedy we have created. We are currently, in Pepperell, building problems, not solutions. Our Master plan appears to have hidden in it, an inherent conflict. There are those that argue it directs widespread residential and commercial growth and those that argue the opposite, sustainability and preservation of our natural assets. Please attend the AROD informational virtual meeting scheduled for February 3rd at 7pm, found on our town web site, and share your opinion on this proposed by-law. The AROD draft document may be viewed on the Town of Pepperell web site under "Adaptive Reuse Article"- we want to hear from you! |