Around Natick

From Rick Wynn, comes the following email:

 

The following letter is being sent on behalf of Rick Wynn, Chairman of the Natick School Committee. Please forward this letter to your entire committee membership and to anyone else you deem appropriate.

Dear PTO, PCC and School Council Members,

On behalf of the entire School Committee, I want to alert you to two new items that have been posted on the Natick School website, www.natick.k12.ma.us, that we believe will be of interest to you and your respective members. The first item is a link to an online survey that was designed to solicit input from the community on what’s important to them in a new superintendent. We need your help in getting the word out about this survey and we hope that you will help us encourage as many people as possible to fill it out and submit it. The second item is a statement issued by the School Committee that provides the community with an update on the Superintendent search process. Both links can be found by following the link above to the homepage of the school dept’s website and then looking in the “Announcements” section on the right hand side of the page.

Please encourage all of your members, as well as others in the community, to begin using our website as the best source of information about issues involving Natick Schools. We’re really excited about our new website and we plan to use it actively to provide the community with as much information as possible. The School Committee is working hard to provide the community with regular updates on school related subjects. Examples of potential updates include:

>Agenda items for upcoming public School Committee meetings
>Updates on our Superintendent search process
>Messages from the Superintendent and School Department
>Announcements about important upcoming events

We welcome your suggestions for additional updated topics!

Finally, I also want to alert you and your members to two upcoming opportunities to provide your perspectives on the profile of our new superintendent directly to our hired search consultant Jackie Roy. They are as follows:

1) Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - 7:00 p.m. at the Morse Institute Library, Marshall Lebowitz Meeting Room

2) Monday, September 10, 2007 - 7:00 p.m. Wilson Middle School Auditorium

We hope you will help us encourage as many people as possible to attend!

Sincerely,

Rick Wynn, Chairman
Natick School Committee

Click on the picture to see a larger version.

For all the talk about improvements to Speen Street, I don’t think it matters much what this sidewalk was made of, the streetscape doesn’t look very nice. If they had undergrounded the wires and removed the poles, it might have looked nicer. That bylaw didn’t take effect soon enough. (At least that was the excuse I was given when I asked why they didn’t plan for undergrounding.) I guess in Natick, aesthetics aren’t a consideration unless a law says they have to be.

I wonder how the folks on the other side of the street like the sidewalk installation. It doesn’t seem to make much sense having sidewalks on both sides of the street here, since there’s so little pedestrian activity anyway.

A resident and voter sent the following message, for publication. I think there are many legitimate observations that deserve attention. Here’s the text:

“Town Meeting is the place where decisions are made. The culmination of months of strategy and discussion, during public committees and meetings, where votes are taken and the town decides. Some residents would like to know what happens “unofficially”?
Are there conversations in private, and strategy sessions, not made public? Strategy for favorable and popular land use for one neighborhood over another, for example.

Some people have a long term strategy. Forming a committee called “360″ is one. Creating a “hoop district” is another. Special rules for companies who are willing to mitigate is one more. How about trendy ideas like “CPA” and rail trail to divert attention from the real needs of the town? Sometimes, an RFP or request for proposal is used to keep an idea moving. Delaying a decision, rushing a vote, all manner of tactic used, depending on the politics, and what some think will pass one time, and not another. I don’t think there are too many residents who realize the CPA vote was a method to be used for approval of tax dollars to be spent on building a rail trail, for example. It was. Just as the creation of a HOOP district was a method to help promote affordable housing in the area around the Mall.

One example of long-term strategy and “planning” has been successful and that was the strategy of a recreational use for the gravel pit on Oak St. The Oak Street sand pit was a piece of property the town could have developed or sold in order to meet it’s quota of affordable housing. The sale of that property could have netted the town a huge windfall and kept another part of town from being overwhelmed by hundreds of condos.

Should the gravel pit have been sold? The opposition strategy says it would probably would have been developed under 40B. Those against the idea said there is no mass transit nearby. People with limited income need a way to go to work, they say. Let’s leave that property alone. Let’s prevent development by using the enviromental issue in the area, and then make town responsible for cleaning it up.

There was a strategy for that neighborhood, and I think some folks know which Selectman is the expert at long-term planning for his own special interests.

He helped cut a deal with Mathworks, to use the land for athletics. I think it was a strategy aimed to prevent the possible use of the land as residential.

It was a strategy that worked, diverting attention away from the need for affordable housing, while lobbying for something with wide popularity.

Courtesy of Martin Kessel, here’s a postcard view of the Middlesex Bank building when it had 3 floors. Based on the automobiles in the view, I’d date it to the mid to late 1920s. You can see it was a completely different building back then.

From an old postcard, here’s the bank before they added the peak. I never noticed the third floor addition before.

A few years ago, the Middlesex Savings Bank spent lots of money to have this strange looking peak constructed on one corner of their downtown building.

OK, now can someone explain why?

I wonder if the trendy chain restaurant, Cheesecake Factory at Nouvelle will look like this one north of mid-town Atlanta. I sure hope it’s as quick and easy to get seated, Interior decor was pretty much the same as the one in Burlington except for the leak stained ceiling, and the food was good. Yes, they have valet parking, just like the one in Natick promised to do. To those who turn up their nose at a chain, give ‘em a chance. I’m sure they’re better than Nicholas and Blue Dolphin. But then, that’s not saying much.

This is an interesting analysis.

Natick officials are getting ready to hire another consultant, in an effort to bargain down the offer from CSX, to buy the 2 plus miles of former railroad land to construct a walking path.

I think residents should be reminded that there’s nothing else that could happen with that bit of land running behind their backyards, should the town simply leave it alone. The open space will be there for anyone who wants to wander in the woods. Don’t mistake this opinion for a position against rail trails either. Click on my previous article, to the left, titled Rail Trail Common Sense.  There are many paved commuter trails that get lots of traffic. Like the 25 mile Minuteman route from Concord to Cambridge. But Natick needs to be a bit more discriminating on how they spend the money well that some think will never go dry. And be careful about how they “bundle” the “package”. For that’s the more likely strategy.

CSX wants $14 million. Josh Ostroff wants the trail built. Now, it’s just a question of how they’ll market the cost to the voters. One way, I’m sure, will be the same way the salesmen at Bernardi Honda sell a car. “You don’t have to buy it, you can just lease it”. Of course I don’t see much of a difference. Either way, you pay a hefty price every month. In this case, the hefty price will impact your property taxes. But they’ll call it a renewable lease, just to make it sound less permanent.

Make your choices, folks, improvements to school buildings, or a place to stroll through the woods on a Sunday afternoon in the fall. I’d pick the schools. Because the place to stroll will still be there, even if we don’t buy the scheme.

From the Metrowest Daily News, comes this little bit of reasoning:

“As a town we need to be able to manage growth and the influx of people in town,” said Arthur Fair, president of Natick Center’s Associates. “We don’t ever want to add units to raise additional real estate taxes and spend more than we take in. We have to look at the costs. Obviously the Finance Committee looks hard at the budget to manage growth and not provide a bigger demand for services than revenue.”

(Sir, before I go any further, how did the “Downtown Merchant’s Association” come to be renamed in a pretentious way? Oh, never mind, it was just a marketing thing,  for the word “downtown” is just so blue collar, isn’t it?.)

I wonder if that “hard look” is what the Zoning Board has been doing while it’s rezoned so much of the town in recent years. What was the underlying reason for creation of a “HOOP” district? Certainly not a concern for managing growth.

This story has many facets, and will be continued…