It would seem that state government officials view Hawley as just one big state forest, or are trying to make this hilltop hamlet into one. Forget the 340 residents who make these 31 square miles home.
The state already owns more than 8,000 acres of Hawley land in the Dubuque and Mohawk Trail state forests. And for decades, the tiny town’s taxpayers and officials have complained the state doesn’t pay enough in lieu of taxes for all that property that has been taken off the tax rolls over the years, for the potential enjoyment of hikers, campers, bicyclists, 4-wheelers and others from across the state.
Surely, hosting that amount of recreation should be worth some cash, or consideration.
So, now the state Department of Conservation and Recreation is proposing to buy another 90-acre woodland along the closed, state-owned Middle Road. The road, ironically, is closed because it was destroyed by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and the state has declined to spend money to fix it. The state apparently is happy to spend money to buy land but won’t help host towns to maintain the very roads needed for local emergency responders to access the land.
The selectmen, who have complained in a letter to the governor, legislators and DCR, say Middle Road is “critical to providing access for emergency response to a large part of the state forest, without requiring detours of five to 10 miles … The road also is the designated emergency evacuation route for residents in the northern portion of West Hawley, should Route 8A again be severed by flooding as occurred during Irene.”
The letter says the state has been on a “land-buying spree” for the last 20 years, but that operating budgets to maintain the purchased property have been shrinking.
“The Patrick administration found $400,000 to take another 245 acres in Hawley and Ashfield off the tax rolls but couldn’t spare any money to make the roads safe,” the Selectboard said. “Rather than buying more land it cannot afford to maintain, the state should concentrate on caring for the land it already owns.”
The selectmen aren’t just complaining or whining for more money. They have taken a very rational and reasonable approach to the problem. They are proposing a law they say works in similar areas in New York State. The law would require the state to get town meeting approval for conservation land buys in towns where the state already owns at least 30 percent of the land.
This seems like a sensible approach to a long-standing problem peculiar to small rural towns like Hawley, and we urge the area’s lawmakers to propose and push such legislation. We know the state bureaucracy and most of its legislators are urban-oriented, but that doesn’t excuse them from steamrolling small towns.