To the Editor:
The proposed demolition and replacement of Great Barrington’s historic Searles School with a 95-room hotel hinges on a legal fiction, and should therefore be turned down by the Selectboard. The bylaw in question was passed in a town meeting just over a year ago. Its intent was clear: To provide an incentive to hotel developers to rehabilitate historic structures rather than tearing them down.
Now the applicants’ attorneys have come up with a lawyerly reading that is supposed to convince the townspeople that they voted for something entirely different, namely an incentive to tear down a historic structure and reap the benefit of 95 rooms as a bonus. This was clearly not the intent of the law, and the lawyers have had to resort to dictionary definitions to try to convince us otherwise. What needs to be done is simply to make it clear that the selectmen are not going to repudiate the good faith of the voters by overturning the bylaw.
A major precedent for considering the intent of a duly enacted law was set last June by the U.S. Supreme Court, which made it clear that minor language in a law is not grounds for gutting the law, in the case of the Affordable Care Act. And members of the Selectboard and other town boards who endorse this hotel proposal are effectively gutting a duly passed bylaw whose intent was discussed and made clear in the town meeting.
The likeability of the parties involved, local people all, and the possible economic benefit, are irrelevant to the situation, because what’s at stake here is the integrity of a New England town meeting, the most direct form of democracy on the planet. The people voted in good faith; now it’s time for their elected representatives to stand up in good faith to this request and deny it, on the grounds that the bylaw was not intended for this. The board is in the position of strength, because they’re being asked for a favor. If this gutting of the democratic process is countenanced, what town bylaw will lawyers scrutinize next to stand on its head, like this one?
The proper course of action of the part of the Selectboard is to honor what the voters supported in good faith, deny the 95 rooms, and allow the developers to proceed with their demolition for a hotel whose size comports with the bylaw — 45 rooms. If they can’t make a luxury hotel work at that size, then they, too, can follow a proper course of action and seek to have the bylaw changed. Let’s not undermine the democratic process in town for a quick– and temporary– solution to a problem.
Steve McAlister
Great Barrington
