“Dateline Stockbridge” usually focuses on Stockbridge in the 18th and early 19th centuries. During the past week, however, listening over the cups at teatime and pizza slices at supper, it seems this is an extraordinary moment in our local history. Folks told me they would welcome a column about Stockbridge today; maybe, more accurately, about South County today. So here goes.
There is a through line connecting the new school and two pieces of new legislation that deserve our attention. The bills passed in 2024 are the Affordable Homes Act (AHA) and the Act Promoting a Clean Energy Grid (CEG), and even including the 2005 act that established the Affordable Housing Trust (AHT).
All four have stated goals that are laudable. We would be hard put, as sentient and caring people, to stand against them. A better, safer facility for our children; more affordable housing for our neighbors; promoting a more economically diverse community; and cleaner energy.
So, if all the good is on one side, what is the problem? Sadly, as so often is the case, all the good is not on one side. If we don’t focus on the decorative stuff hanging on the legislative Christmas tree, and look instead at the tree itself, that is, at the structure underneath, we find the through line that deserves our attention. It is loss of local control.
All these legislative initiatives rest on the principle that removing control from localities will hasten accomplishing the Commonwealth’s goals (more affordable housing and replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy). Simply put, all four cause local residents—that’s us—to lose power over what happens in our communities. All four shift control away from our local bylaws, our local boards and commissions, our elected representatives, to the state.
I had a professor once who would lean back in his chair (dangerously far), point his pen at a hapless student, and say, “You have missed the point exactly.” Proponents of AHA may have missed it.
Advocates tut-tut the questioners and say, “Don’t worry.” All eight Berkshire towns that qualify for the seasonal community designation can weigh the pluses and minuses and vote to opt in or out. Many planners and government officials believe when the regs are published, we will find the designation to be mandated not left to the towns to decide. It is very important to understand why they believe that.
First because so much in the two laws is mandated. Equally important, because until the regulations are published in February 2025, no one knows for sure. A law establishes requirements or prohibitions. Regulations are published to clarify how parts of the law will be interpreted and how a law will be implemented. Moreover, regulations like the law itself may state requirements or prohibitions. Ergo, everyone is guessing whether the seasonal community designation will be by choice or mandated.
Obviously, if it is optional, we can decide, and even if it is mandated, there may be things we can do locally to smooth the impact. We need accurate information on that point, not a sales pitch. Which are the state and advocates giving us? Don’t know? Ask yourself: Do the touters of AHA just make themselves look smart or actually make us smarter?
If only this were as simple as all the right were on one side. It is, as so many things are, a trade off. One mistake we make is talking about preserving the past. Truth is, as we consider these pieces of legislation, we are engaged in preserving our future. What South County will be in 50 years is based on what we decide to build or tear down, allow or disallow, now.
What makes one place uniquely and distinctly that place? How do we preserve that? What are the possibilities and choices available? Most important, what is sacrosanct? What we fight to save or to produce now will shape our future. By what right does the state remove our ability to make those delicate and very important decisions?
Progress and preservation, land use and conservation are simultaneously cross supportive and at odds. If we accept that change is inevitable and at the same time acknowledge that preservation and conservation are parts of sound planning, we do not have a solution; we have merely defined the problem.
Here is the problem: For decades residents opposed fast food and lodging chains, obtrusive signs, the destruction of historic buildings to make way for parking and public restrooms, and at the same time made their livings from the tourist industry. It seems contradictory, and it is just that: one example of inherent contradiction, and there are more.
Some of us support land conservation and affordable housing without realizing that protecting land makes the remaining land too expensive to develop at an affordable price.
Some are proponents of affordable housing and at the same time opposed to cluster housing, the demolition of old buildings, and buildings higher than four-stories without realizing that this confluence of factors makes housing unaffordable to all but the privileged few.
Some want to replace fossil fuels and at the same time preserve our open space, trees, forests, and wetlands without realizing they just eliminated the places where enough renewable energy producers can be put to replace fossil fuel.
Some tradeoffs are subtle. Do we want affordable housing if it means asking those who cannot afford to pay as much for housing as others can to live on land so wet that driveways crack and buildings sink, or on acres poisoned by log-cabin production, or on land between a dump, a field of solar panels, and wind turbines? Do we want to ask our town employees to live in houses too small to be comfortable in or to allow for having a family? Do we want to exchange the dignity of our workforce for the Healey-Driscoll administration’s goal of some specified number of houses. The trade-offs are not in the minds of the people but in the complex and interdependent aspects of the problem. And the problem is not new; we face it every time we decide about land use. How will we decide this time?
Underlying the problem is the question: Who has the right to solve it? Should we be told or asked: Which is more important, renewable energy sources or trees, the cleansers of our air or the producers of it? Should the Commonwealth take away our control over our community and should we acquiesce?
Next time: “Part Two — Specifics.”
