As a GB Selectboard member it is my pleasure to hear from people who are happy or unhappy with how things are going in Great Barrington. Recently, I’ve heard from people who are unhappy that the Holiday Inn was given permission to add a third floor and 20 rooms. I’ve heard from people who hate the ugly poles just put up to hold the traffic lights, and I’m hearing from people who would rather save Searles school than allow it to be torn down and replaced by a new hotel. My response is usually this: “It’s more complicated than that.”
In the case of the traffic light poles, I wasn’t involved in the decisions, but when I’ve asked those who were, I’m told that lovely, sleek polls weren’t an option. A very few options met federal safety guidelines, but they were either uglier or prohibitively expensive. How expensive is “prohibitively?” I don’t know, I wasn’t there so I won’t second guess, but I do remember that there was a lot of complaining about the cost of this project.
The decision was made, by a committee of taxpayers, elected by other taxpayers, after doing exhaustive research, all of it in front of the public at open meetings and, finally, approved by the voters. They listened to public input, including members of the public who liked these poles better than other options. They considered appearance and cost. The people who made the decision weren’t blind, stupid or corrupt. They were people, like you, who weighed the real, possible options and made the choice they thought was best (or least worst).
As the only Selectboard member who voted against allowing the Holiday Inn to add rooms, it would be easy for me to say that the majority of both the Selectboard and the Zoning Board of Appeals, who gave final approval, were either idiots with no sense of aesthetics who don’t know what is best for the town, or part of the good-old-boy network that allows any project to go through if it has the right lawyer. I’ve heard people say both.
But it’s more complicated than that. To come to the decision to allow the expansion, we considered the competing issues of the economic impact on the town, the visual impact on the neighborhood, and the will and intent of the voters who voted to limit hotels to 45 rooms. As I said, I disagree with the decision. You may, too. But that doesn’t mean they were wrong, just that they reached a different conclusion than you, as I did, on a complicated set of issues.
Also, although you and I and our Facebook friends disagree with them, that doesn’t mean a majority of Great Barrington voters would disagree with them if asked. With every decision, some number of people will disagree. It was a complicated decision.
The request to replace the Searles school building with a new 95-room hotel has been submitted. The process has begun. NOW is the time to get involved, attend meetings, learn the options and give your opinion. There is a meeting Wednesday (Oct. 7) at 5 p.m. to consider the design of the building, and another on Thursday (Oct. 8) at 7 p.m. to consider the overall impact on the town. The Selectboard will consider it at their meeting in early November. (All meetings at Town Hall. Check www.townofgb.org for details)
Now is the time to influence the decisions about the hotel. Come to the meetings and give opinions but please keep three things in mind:
1) There may be things to consider that you don’t know, so listen before you speak.
2) If a citizen makes a suggestion that is not adopted by an elected board, it might not be because they weren’t listening. There may be a reason involving consequences you haven’t thought of, or competing issues, or someone else may have suggested the opposite. Or they might disagree with you.
3) Even though you, your friends and I all agree, that doesn’t mean most people in town agree. Some decisions don’t have a right or wrong. One person’s “ugly” might be another person’s “modern and clean.” One person’s “blight” might be another person’s “historic.”
Finally, we all know that two years from now there will be letters to the editor either complaining about the new hotel where the beautiful old school once stood, or complaining about the still-rotting school where we could have had a modern tax-generating hotel, or complaining about the renovated school that is now condominiums too expensive for locals to afford, or complaining about an ugly 20,000 foot retail space or bank that the land owner is allowed to build without any special permission from anyone. There are no easy answers. It’s more complicated than that.
