I am terrifically new to this board and lurk more than I post - but I am suddenly presented with a situation that demands a response so I would love to hear from you all on what course of action you think would help in my plight.
I live in a large suburb NW of Boston on a quiet street in a true neighborhood. The day we moved in, my neighbor brought over a casserole and cookies with paper plates, plastic forks, and a list of phone numbers of the three closest neighbors and a delivery pizza place. It is truly a village here with everyone looking out for everyone else’s children and property. My street is approx 1/4 of a mile long and is crossed at the end by a very short street that is a dead-end on one end and feeds into another street that parallels mine on the other. The only traffic we see are those that live here or visitors. It is very peaceful and conducive to street hockey and basket ball games played in the middle of the street – with minimal interruption from traffic.
My property (and this side of the street) abuts the golf course of the country club. The rich owner of said club has decided he wants to put up 12 3-unit townhouses between the 14th and 15th holes. Not really offensive. However, he wishes to open up the dead end on the street at the bottom of mine and route some if not all of the traffic down my quiet road. Needless to say – this has the neighborhood up in arms. We showed up at the planning board meeting last Monday night in great numbers and swayed the board to a negative recommendation. Unfortunately, this recommendation is non-binding and informational only to the town meeting members who will vote on this. This is the very beginning of the process where the rich land owner is seeking a zoning change to allow for his multi-unit housing.
I showed up at Monday night’s meeting armed with a petition 50 signatures strong opposing the traffic pattern and also statistics of the towns water crisis and overcrowded schools. Somewhere mid-week, it occurred to me that one of my closest childhood friends is the sister-in-law of my congressman. I spoke with her and she put me in touch with a friend of hers who sits on the town planning board and also town meeting (so he gets a real vote). He agreed to take a meeting with the neighborhood, which is tonight, to help give us some direction in how to block this.
Some thoughts of mine (and neighbors are):
Send a letter with supporting documentation and signatures of the whole neighborhood to all 230 odd town meeting members,
Get a local reporter to do a story on us (I met one at the planning board meeting who seemed quite sympathetic to our cause)
Any other insights, experience, ideas, etc are more than welcome. Even something comical to make me laugh at this situation would be good.
Those in political positions are convinced by three things:
Clear simple cogently stated arguments
Numbers of people in agreement
Money
Did I say three? Make that five.
Their own predetermined and inflexible opinions
Threats of scandal or blackmail.
So, I would work on those things in that order. Make it clear what you want and why. Add the weight of others in your neighbourhood. Include in your arguments an economic slant if it fits.
All may be lost if you get down to motivation number four, and I am assuming that having just settled into a nice neighbourhood you don’t want to sully yourself with dabbling in motivation number five.
It’s way to early in the morning for me to have any ideas much less good ones. I just wanted to say welcome to the SDMB and the very best of good luck to you!
Although I live on the other coast, I spent 3 months living in a wonderful little town (Framingham…about 1/2 block from Sudbury boundry) outside of Boston about 12 years ago and I totally fell in love with the area! If my husband would “do” snow, I’d try to convince him to change coasts. I’m hoping to convince him to “do” an autumn visit to MA next year tho.
Well SS, this is a difficult situation. I am a town councilor here in Connecticut in a decently affluent coastal town. We have a 9 member town council and we are split 4 Dems 5 Reps.
Town meeting members…could you be a little more specific. Who are these people and what do they do…Are the part of your RTM? Because here in CT we have town councils which consist of the Mayor and 8 elected constituents. Town meetings are held in an open forum, with councilors sometimes mitigating when things get out of hand.
As for the reporteras: There should be a reporter at every meeting without being asked, this is common community reporting protocol, to keep citizens who didn’t come informed of what transpired at town meetings, RTM, planning zoning, water management etc…etc…
On to your Plight - you say the club owner is going to put the housing unit on his property? And open up a dead end street to thru traffic. Well, you may be at a standstill with the clubowner, I’d go to the tax assessor’s office and see the public deed on the club, look in the section regarding Habitable space and see if there is a clause in there about how many unites they can have and what their proximity can be to the course, and to the public housing?
Then check out the road construction, is it a town, state, or federal road? Is it numbered? Is it private? Will a sound-ordinance be potentially breached? Will the Sewer, and drainage run somewhere it shouldn’t? All questions you need to ask to be fully armed at the meeting.
Good luck and get down to the town hall fast! to get your ammunition. Sounds like it may be beatable as far as the road is concerned, but the houses may be another story all together.