Sheffield — It is a quiet election year in Sheffield — so quiet, in fact, that there is only one contested seat, though one of the combatants appears twice on the ballot. However, that one contested seat is on the Selectboard, where much of the political power in Town Hall is concentrated.
The May 9 match-up is centered around two veteran Sheffield officeholders. Nadine Hawver, who served two terms previously on the Selectboard but was defeated by Bob Kilmer in a reelection bid two years ago, is angling to regain her seat at the table.
Meanwhile, George Oleen, a six-year veteran of the Planning Board, is looking to expand his scope of responsibility with a seat on the Selectboard. Both are longtime Sheffield residents and are well known among the various constituencies. The contested Selectboard seat will be open because Martin Mitsoff is stepping down.
Oleen is also running to keep his seat on the Planning Board, and so is Ken Smith, who currently chairs that board. There is nothing in the law to prevent Oleen, who is retired, from serving on both boards simultaneously.
In an Edge interview, Hawver, a retired banker working now as a tax preparer, had no shortage of issues she wanted to talk about. She cited “unfinished business” from her six previous years on the Selectboard, including the ongoing effort to build a new garage for the town highway department, the work of the 8 Town Regional School District Planning Board and the perennial problem of affordable housing.
Hawver currently chairs the town’s Housing Production Plan Committee. The subject of affordable housing has taken on an increased urgency, as home values and unemployment skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re writing a plan. When I came on board in 2014, affordable housing was a passion of mine and there just wasn’t a lot of support from the rest of the [select] board,” she declared.
Hawver said she got the ball rolling on the new highway garage in 2019 by identifying a site on Berkshire School Road across from the campus of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District. Most of the money for the project had been set aside at town meeting years ago.
A Highway Garage Design Committee has been formed. Preliminary work, including perc testing for a septic system, has started at the site, and the town is poised to begin design work with an architect. Town officials say the current facility on Pike Road has outlived its usefulness.
“It has developed a bit since I went off the board, but I’d really like to be there for the completion of that, because it was kind of an important project I was working on that I didn’t get a chance to finish.”
As for the regional school district initiative, Hawver began work on the panel in early 2020 as the Selectboard’s representative, then went off when she lost her bid for reelection. But no one else from the Selectboard stepped up to take her place on the 8 Town Regional School District Planning Board, so she rejoined it as a citizen member.
That board, which is exploring the possibility of enhanced collaboration or consolidation with the Berkshire Hills Regional School District, last week stopped just short of recommending that the two districts merge and house grades 9-12 in a new school on the Monument Mountain Regional High School campus in Great Barrington. Hawver voted for the motion to explore that option in depth.
“Of the seven options we looked at, that’s the one that makes the most sense and I would really like to be able to dig deeper,” Hawver said. “Unfortunately, as you can see, it’s taken us two years to get to this point — and we certainly don’t want to take seven years on each of the seven models. I’ll be old and very gray by then.”
For his part, Oleen cited his experience on the Planning Board and his service on the Cable Commission that brought cable television to Sheffield for the first time in
the 1990s. He also served in the U.S. Army in the late 1960s. That was one of the only periods of time since 1946 that Oleen hasn’t lived in Sheffield. He was also a scoutmaster for 25 years.
As a member of the Planning Board, Oleen voted last year to deny Wise Acre Farm the special permit it needed to build a cannabis production facility on Polikoff Road. Facing intense political pressure from neighbors, the board was unanimous in its opposition.
Oleen, a former food inspector for the U.S Department of Agriculture who has been retired since 1997, also cited his ongoing work on solar array regulations and a so-called “dark sky” bylaw, which addresses the subject of light pollution at night.
“It’s coming along,” Oleen said of the bylaw. “We want to make sure people don’t illuminate too severely.”
Oleen would also like to see more transparency in town government, arguing for more consistency on how meeting times are posted. He also wondered why there has been so much turnover in the highway department.
Asked if he supported the preliminary plan to locate a new garage on Berkshire School Road, Oleen replied, “I don’t think in the vicinity of the school is where it should be, but there’s just so much ground that can be used. It’s not in the wetlands; it’s just convenient.”
On the issue of the possibility of a merger between the two school districts, Oleen said that when Southern Berkshire was established in 1953 as the first regional school district in Massachusetts, Great Barrington had the opportunity to join and it declined to do so.
“Granted, both student populations seem to be shrinking but if we’re going to eliminate the oldest regional school district in the state, I believe it would be less expensive for the towns to tuition the students into Berkshire Hills than to join the district,” Oleen said.
Asked what prompted him to run for the board, Oleen replied, “I just think that the Selectboard needs some new blood. We can’t have retreads all the time. I just think I’d do a good job.”
The annual town election will take place on Monday, May 9 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Senior Center at 25 Cook Road.
