Stockbridge – In the end, the ancient order prevailed at the standing room-only 2015 Stockbridge Annual Town Meeting Monday, May 18, an unusually crowded affair that had town residents assigned to the bleachers customarily reserved for nonvoting attendees.
It was a 47-item, 5-hour marathon.
The $6.3 million town budget passed – a 10 percent increase over last year, a rate that even Finance Committee Chair Jean Rousseau admitted would be “unsustainable” if it continued. The budget included Police Department appropriations of $1,041,476 over which there had been so much angst a week earlier at the “Baby” town meeting. For the duration of the Town Meeting, at least, there appeared to be collective acceptance of guidance by the Board of Selectmen and Finance Committee. And as if by common agreement, there was not a reference, direct or indirect, to ISIS, the Islamic terrorist organization, whose purported scheme to attack Christians on Mercy Sunday at the Marian Fathers had been cited, at the Baby Town Meeting, to justify increased expenditures for the Police Department, including the hiring of an additional officer.
And voters, with coaching from the Board of Selectmen, continued to support the $50 million redevelopment of the derelict Gilded Age “cottage,” Elm Court, on Old Stockbridge Road. Voters soundly defeated a proposed bylaw that would have forbidden the issuance of liquor licenses to enterprises within a residential district.
Still, some measure of dissatisfaction with the way things have been run in town government was expressed in the outcome of the town election the next day, Tuesday May 19. Five-term Selectman Deborah McMenamy, a determined advocate for new Police Chief Robert Eaton and his style of running the department, was defeated in her quest for a sixth term. Her opponent, Ernest Cardillo, who campaigned as “the voice of the people,” won the 3-year term on the Board of Selectmen by a margin of 52 votes, 334 to 282.
“The Board of Selectmen fully supports the Police Department in requesting an additional officer,” Chairman Stephen Shatz explained to the crowd at the town meeting. “Since 1981, there has been no increase in the number of police officers. This is an issue that should have been addressed some time ago. I suspect [retired police chief] Rick Wilcox would agree.”
Indeed, he did. He was in the audience, in the bleachers, as a resident of Great Barrington.
“It makes sense to hire another officer,” Wilcox said. “I allows additional coverage, and reduces overtime expenses, just as Chief Eaton has said.”
After the budget items were passed, the meeting took up the matter of a bylaw that would restrict the issuance of liquor licenses to entities within residential neighborhoods.
Despite an impassioned appeal from Stockbridge Road resident, Barney Edmunds, to adopt a bylaw – an obvious attempt to cripple the redevelopment of Elm Court into a high-rolling resort – the townspeople resoundingly rejected the proposed bylaw, reaffirming their priority to maintain vestiges of the Gilded Age.
Edmunds may have been trying to protect his residential neighborhood from commercial development but he had a tough row to hoe. First, the item he was advocating – number 43 on the agenda but moved up to be considered right after the budget items – had been submitted by an “out-of-towner,” that is, a resident of Lenox. To qualify for town meeting consideration, however, it had been signed by 10 Stockbridge residents. And in a show of Stockbridge patriotic fervor, Town Administrator Jorja Ann Marsden read out the names of the 10 town residents who had In order to satisfy the interests of nonprofits, such as the Rockwell Museum, that do serve alcohol and therefore must apply annually for renewal of their liquor license, Edmunds offered an amended bylaw that would have exempted “nonprofit” entities from the liquor license restriction.
The Board of Selectmen was having nothing of it.
“The Board of Selectmen opposes this circumvention of the process we went through last year to approve a special permit for Elm Court,” declared Board Chairman Stephen Shatz. “This measure makes an invidious distinction between profit and nonprofit. We are in favor of Elm Court.”
Stockbridgian– and retired District Court Judge – Fred Rutberg pointed out that if passed, the bylaw would “usurp the authority of the Board of Selectmen.”
And David Hellman, the attorney for the Front Yard LLC, the Elm Court developer, noted that “this article is intended to affect only one property, Elm Court. And it would kill the project. Stockbridge would lose $600,000 in annual tax revenue. It is an insult to the town of Stockbridge, brought by a resident of Lenox. It’s an outrage.”
The voters at the Town Meeting appeared to be persuaded not to impose obstacles to the Elm Court project.
