Lee — Following its October 1 presentation to the Select Board regarding using a surplus school tract to serve as the grounds for a new facility, the Lee Youth Association (LYA) received some good news from the dais at their December 3 meeting. Select Board members unanimously approved the LYA as the winning bid in a Request for Proposal (RFP) put out for the property that has a mailing address of 170 Greylock Street but is accessible via Maple Street. The land is currently under the purview of the Lee Middle School/High School Facilities Committee, as it was originally slated for educational facility use.
Payment for the project is cited to be sourced from LYA’s fundraising efforts, without any impact on the town’s taxpayers.
LYA is a nonprofit organization offering educational and recreational programs for infants and youth from Lee, Becket, Lenox, Otis, Pittsfield, Sandisfield, Stockbridge, and Tyringham. Its proposal includes a 6,150-square-foot, regulation-sized gymnasium; outdoor playing spaces adjacent to classrooms; added parking spaces to be shared with the adjacent ballfields for their overflow; and a drop-off/pick-up circle in the center, with a new driveway to be constructed on Maple Street. The childcare center is slated for the project’s first phase and the gymnasium for its second phase.
Although the measure passed, board members said they would be reviewing the terms of the to-be-created 99-year lease contract with an eye toward community and school district accessibility of the new structures; specifically, its proposed community room and gym.
LYA was the sole responder to the RFP, with a copy of the nonprofit’s application found here.
The group filed its response on November 6 to the RFP’s very specific criteria, including that the property must serve a childcare function, allow for public use of the facility, and the respondent be a nonprofit organization.
“I think this is a great chance for some collaboration between the town and the LYA,” said Select Board member Sean Regnier. “I think that the location seems a good fit for them, what they need.”
Two local questions added to Lee residents’ census form
The Select Board also approved a two-question addendum to be sent to residents with their census materials and returned with the census form. The answers are not binding for respondents who will remain anonymous.
That addendum can be found here.
By asking residents how much additional money they would be willing to pay by way of a tax assessment for a clean Housatonic River and the impact a slated toxic-waste landfill will have on their property values, the document is intended to help determine the value of the damages Lee suffered as alleged in its March 13 litigation naming defendants General Electric Company (GE) and Monsanto (together with its spin-off companies). That civil lawsuit alleges that the town endured an “intentional infliction of Harm to Humans and the Environment.” Lee officials are seeking a monetary award for damages suffered: the elimination of the use of the river that flows through town and the negative effects from having a toxic-waste disposal facility within their purview.
The lawsuit further alleges an illegal relationship, or conspiracy, existed between the companies whereby GE consented to indemnify, or not hold Monsanto liable for, any fallout from the sale of its now-banned polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to GE as officials knew of the dangers the chemicals posed to humans and the environment. GE was found to have deposited PCBs into the Housatonic River after it used the chemicals in its Pittsfield electrical transformer manufacturing plant.
A 2020 settlement agreement between then-representatives of five Berkshire towns—Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, Sheffield, and Stockbridge—as well as GE and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provided that those communities would receive a total of $62 million from GE in exchange for not appealing the terms of the order. Out of that settlement, Lee received $25 million, with an upland disposal facility, or toxic-waste repository, to be constructed in its borders housing the less toxic materials dredged from the waterway.
