Great Barrington — Despite a shimmering sun-kissed fall, a weary edginess has crept into the spirits of townspeople and its government after months of ripped up roads, mass kvetching over the Main Street reconstruction project, the general fallout of modernization like fixing all that important stuff no one can see under the Route 7 pavement, and crumbling old town schools like Housatonic and Searles, both abandoned 10 years ago for new code-compliant construction.
At Monday’s (October 26) Selectboard meeting, it was clear that nerves are raw, people are tired, the moon is too full. Running a town is gnarly work.
Selectboard member Dan Bailly was the first to snap. It was the slow pace of progress in selling or finding a good use for the Housatonic School that did it.
“It’s been dragging on,” he said to Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin, catching her off guard. “I’ve been asking for four years.”
Bailly was referring to the completion of a Request for Proposal for the school building in the heart of the hamlet of Housatonic, a grand behemoth structure now shuttered and going the way of disrepair if someone doesn’t do something soon. It’s also a hot spot town critics have worried over for several years, mostly because it’s not on the tax rolls.
But Tabakin has only been in town for about two years, since July 2013.
Bailly asked Tabakin to see an RFP in two weeks. Tabakin said given all her other work, including her management of the ongoing Main Street project, two weeks is too soon, and she has to manage her time. She said she couldn’t get it done until mid-December.
This set off a snippy back and forth that Chairman Sean Stanton had to break up by trying to accommodate Bailly’s work schedule so he could attend Tabakin’s staff meetings with a consultant who is helping her with the school.
“You have to understand my level of frustration about what’s not happening here,” Bailly said, several times looking up at the ceiling in fury. “She has no direction — if she doesn’t know where she’s going and we don’t know where she’s going ––”
Stanton tried to smooth the televised public spat, and Tabakin suggested the matter be put on the agenda ahead of time. “Then I know, and I will have been given the professional courtesy to be able to prepare.”
Tabakin had, however, prepared for her Main Street project update, since she and Selectboard members’ inboxes have been flooded over such things as granite curbs, new Cobra lights, eliminated turn lanes, at least one broken foot, and several punctured tires. She explained that all this stuff on top of the pavement had to be put there that way in order to make it all ADA accessible, safer for pedestrians, and to fix drainage problems and pipes and all sorts of important infrastructure networks that lie underneath. All that stuff was free, too, with the state paying $5.8 million for it.
She went over a list of problems and things the town is trying to fix, however, and then addressed, point by point, specific questions that perplexed citizens had emailed her. Several concerned citizens present later thanked her for her explanations, and asked her to look into a few other things.
For instance, the raised levels of curbing and retaining walls were put in to grade the sidewalk slope for people with canes or wheelchairs. They may, however, as Ed Abrahams pointed out, be dangerous to the non-handicapped while texting and walking, as he said he found on his way to the meeting.
The bump-outs near the crosswalks were a concern. But those “reduce crossing distance,” Tabakin said.
She also brought up the painful subject of the trees. “It is a little bit of a bleak time now without trees,” she said. “But we will have many trees.” She explained that the town wasn’t the only one to make the fatal error of choosing those “trendy” Bradford Pears to line Main Street 30 years ago. It was the monoculture that did them in. The new diversified specimens “will look small at first,” Tabakin said, “but within four months they take off.” The town isn’t being cheap, she added. The small size is chosen for tree health rather than cost. Town Planner Chris Rembold confirmed this.
Luckily, the whole shebang is “ahead of schedule,” and should be wrapped up in eight months, with work stopping during winter. Alford Road is about to be repaved, and Taconic Avenue will get its makeover in the spring.
Those cobrahead lights that everyone hates may be a necessary evil so drivers can see the road and pedestrians at night, said both Tabakin and Stanton.
“It was one of those things we kinda had to take to get the rest of it,” Stanton said, referring to Tabakin’s long list of state goodies like a new water main that would have cost the town somewhere in the half a million ballpark, and new stormwater drainage that will save the wastewater system from having to process 54,000 gallons of rain water from each inch of rainfall to the tune of many taxpayer dollars.
The new black streetlamps, while charming and good enough for pedestrians, may not light up the whole road. And since Route 7 is a state highway, there was some question about whether the state and the owners of those lights, National Grid, will let the town change the lighting.
Chip Elitzer was there to ask. “They’re tall and gleaming and perfectly aligned,” he told the board. “The scale and industrial look clashes with Main Street. They weren’t as obvious before when they were weathered and old.”
Tabakin is going to find out whether new lights can be had, and said the town can make its own policy about lighting levels. But no matter where Tabakin looks, there are unhappy campers. Amid confusion about what MassDOT (Department of Transportation) will allow, Elitzer has begun a small campaign to change the lights. Given emails stacking up in inboxes on the subject, the Cobra Campaign may temporarily replace the Searles hotel controversy until the December 16 public hearing on that matter.
Elitzer emailed a letter to residents and The Edge, saying it was his impression MassDOT would allow a switch out of cobraheads for more of the “black retros,” but that National Grid might not budge without a “full-throated public outcry.”
Sean Stanton wrote back in a group email, saying it wasn’t clear yet what was possible. But he did say this: “I don’t think anyone should be under the illusion that changes at this point will be without a cost to the town.”
Tabakin’s reply: “You can’t just replace the cobraheads with the black short decorative. I think you misunderstood something in the meeting.”
Elitzer: “Why not?”
For the answer, one must wait for the next chapter in the Town Hall Series: The Mystery of the Cobraheads.
To watch the meeting go to this link at CTSB-TV
