Before Greenfield moves ahead with creating its own needle exchange, it might want to take a look south to a recent legal entanglement regarding a similar program in Holyoke.
A Hampden Superior Court judge this week ordered that Holyoke’s nearly 4-year-old needle exchange be shut down because it was never approved by the city council. The ruling allows Tapestry Health Systems to continue running the program for four months to allow a council vote, but if nothing happens by then, the exchange will end. so it may behoove the Greenfield Board of Health to start talking now about putting a measure in front of its council, lest it suffer the same fate.
Of course, there’s no guarantee such a proposal would pass Greenfield’s Town Council, the current version of which is a tad more conservative than its predecessor, which I’m pretty sure would have celebrated what is, for some, still a controversial idea, largely because of the view that it promotes, or at least gives tacit approval, to illegal drug use.
The recent spike in opioid use may have taken some steam out of that talking point, but it nonetheless remains and will likely be at the center of the Greenfield debate, assuming it ever happens.
It looks like the end may finally be near in the battle over a proposed Greenfield French King Highway big box store, and there will be no one happier to see that day come than Greenfield Planning Board Chairwoman Roxann Wedegartner.
“Well, it may be the end, but we’ll see,” Wedegartner said with a chuckle. “I certainly hope so, but I’m not ruling anything out.”
Wedegartner says she’s confident that the board’s vote to issue a special permit for the project will be upheld, regardless of which court hears it.
“We did our jobs, and I don’t think I would change much about how we handled it,” Wedegartner said.
Wedegartner, however, is not wild about the perception that still exists that the board didn’t try at all to reduce the size of the proposed store from the 135,000 square feet that ultimately wound up in the permit.
“In one of the final meetings, Linda Smith made a motion to knock it back down to 125,000 square feet.” Wedegartner said. “I voted for it and it didn’t pass, but I did vote for a smaller store, but people seem to forget that.”
Sure. Why let the facts get in the way of a good narrative? That has, unfortunately, been one of the hallmarks of this case, almost from its inception.
Fear not conservatives — Isaac Mass is still one of you.
Mass says he has no plans to leave the Republican Party, even if Donald Trump is its standard-bearer.
“I’m not leaving because there are too many good people there, and beliefs and ideas I share,” Mass said.
But Mass still hates Trump, whom he says would do well to head back to the classroom, especially when it comes to economics and trade.
“I wish he could go back in time to the 1990s and sit in Mr. Tenney’s Greenfield High School economic class because then he might learn something,” Mass said. “The man is spouting rhetoric and protectionist trade policies which haven’t been part of Republican philosophy since the days of William McKinley.”
Mass does believe, however, that if Trump wins the nomination, he’ll win the presidency in November.
“And that’s what scares me, because if he does, I have absolutely no idea what he is going to do,” Mass said. “I think he could wind up being either the best president we’ve had or the absolute worst.”
Either way, it’s sure not going to be boring, and that’s not necessarily a good thing in a world which seems to get smaller and more politically volatile every day.
Chris Collins, who worked in local radio in a number of capacities, has observed political life in Franklin County for years. He also is a former staff reporter for The Recorder and a Greenfield native.