It is fair to know who is pitching you. I am the anti-density girl. Always have been. I was raised in Minnesota, in the land of 10,000 lakes and 1 million, 10 thousand trees, and some room left over for a few people. For example, I lived on 65 acres lakeside. At either end of the lake were two what we in the North Country call “widenings in the road.” Emily had a population of 47; outing had fewer. It was swell with me. Density is expensive, unhealthy, and often a strip mall or a housing tract is not as pretty as the trees they cut down to build it.
Stockbridge is a village—no more and no less. The village is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and that is no accident. Take a bow, Stockbridge. We have (almost always) governed this town with old-time values and country smarts. The rural recipe is always name the problem, pick the simplest and most straightforward solution, and get it done.
We have done such a good job in our 284 years that we were the definition of safety when there was a flight to safety during COVID. We will be again when there is a flight to climate safety. When the problem is recognized and a solution makes sense, we step up and get it done.
Oh heck, we made mistakes. There have been bad guys who got up and tried to tell us what to do. It took a minute, but we figured it out—and usually just in time. We were usually strong enough to admit a problem and smart enough to roll up our sleeves. Well here goes… it is that time again.
In the above map, the blue teardrops mark the properties of 20 acres or more; green marks Chapter lands—properties with a tax exemption in exchange for restrictions on land use under Chapter 61. Combined, the blue and green teardrops are thousands of acres of open space in our town.
Stockbridge was always green and open, but now something is different. Our property values have skyrocketed. Higher property values create a wider profit margin. For everyone. The landowners may be tempted to sell, to cash out. Developers can pay for the land, develop, and sell for a price so high that there is still a healthy profit. That is the problem. The simplest solution is the most obvious: If you want to control what happens on a piece of land, buy it.
Folks stomp their feet and demand their rights as abutters or citizens, but they forget the property owner has rights too. When someone else owns the land, the town must negotiate.
However, the green tear drops are lands in Chapter 61. If Chapter lands are going to be repurposed, sold and no longer preserved as farmland, forest land or open land for recreation, then the owner must give the town the right of first refusal to purchase.
During the May 19 Annual Town Meeting, Stockbridge will be given the opportunity to vote “yes” to allocate the money to purchase. I hope they do. One of the great reasons to form governments is to do collectively what we could never do individually.
Mary Flynn, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Joe Biden said they believed in the people. They laid the problem before us and trusted us. I do too. They are gone, but I am still here, so let me explain.
I don’t know what the people will do on May 19. I know they have the opportunity to protect one American village. A village that inspired a great illustrator; gave birth to, raised, and educated three United States Supreme Court judges; made space for a spinster to run the village to its clear benefit; and held values that allowed Stockbridge to be described this way during the Gilded Age:
“In Lenex [sic] you are estimated; in Stockbridge you are esteemed.”
We did not then and we do not now fall for profit over principles, fast talk over sincere communication. I am not half as worried about Donald J. Trump as I am about us.
We used to have a grocery store (in fact two), a hardware store, and a pharmacy with a soda fountain. Why don’t we? Because a successful business was redefined as a profitable one? Because serving the people in the aisles of a store or the corridors of legislatures is now passe? Because we allowed monopolies? Because we thought a truly odd thought that some big business is too big to fail? Bail out billionaires and leave the poor to huddle, shiver, and starve?
You cannot build your way out of the housing crisis if you don’t enforce the bylaws. “Sorry, with respect, the answer is no.”
You cannot build your way out of the climate crisis by putting up wind mills and solar panels if first you clear cut the oxygen producers (trees).
The Commonwealth cannot build its way out of the housing crisis by taking away local control of bylaws.
You cannot build community by vilifying abutters; they have a valid opinion too—just not the only valid opinion.
Like I said, I worry more about us—our values, what we prize in life, what we will fight for—more than I could ever care about the Trumpster. I care more about our little village, the trees, and making a space for all the vulnerable—human and animal. It is common sense, but it is more than that: It is values—not the value in dollars.
