Heath Fair is the town’s festive yearly event, and neighborliness is our daily habit. We talk to each other and trust one another; we need each other and we know this — it’s an intrinsic value. We pitch in. I have lived in Heath for more than 20 years, and have always known it as a compassionate collective. But this is breaking down.
Communication — the heart of any community — is breaking down. The counsel of various town committees is being refuted or ignored by the Selectboard; the terms of grants are violated and rewritten; detailed reports are swept under the rug; committees are cherry-picked to advance an unspoken agenda; and taxpayer money is subsidizing pet projects that citizens know little about and have not approved. Power is being consolidated and dissent is being squashed.
This is a crisis of community and of confidence. It’s a war on facts. It’s a lack of candor and clarity. It is bullying, plain and simple.
The people of Heath deserve to be told what the plan is. If the town government’s intention is to sell, mothball, or demolish town property — in particular our senior center and emergency shelter — the people of Heath need to know this. We need to be asked. We deserve to have a voice in the shaping of any plan that has dramatic, long-lasting, and irreversible consequences for our town. We do. All of us. Not a select few.
The people of Heath need to know that they’re financing a small school housed in a large building after they voted for fiscal reasons to shut their school down. We are financing an intermittent theater project — wild and inventive and beautiful — in one room of a high-ceiling building. We’re paying the energy bill for meetings convened on Jacobs Road that could easily be held elsewhere, in smaller, occupied, and already heated buildings. This patchwork does not pay for itself.
The former school building on Jacobs Road is costly. A detailed report of comparative costs of all kinds was provided to the Selectboard, and should be made available to every resident of our town. This report — like the report from the Finance Committee — confirms that the former school building uses considerably more energy while sitting empty than all other occupied town buildings combined. It’s a 25,000-square-foot building. Renovation costs are daunting, and Heath has many competing needs — lights, insulation, and heating upgrades in other town buildings, for a fraction of the price; a new salt shed; widespread internet, and many others.
I think running a school is a great idea; a theater program is a great idea — but I don’t think citizens should be subsidizing these without being asked if they want to. I think the people who run the projects ought to buy the building and fund the projects. This is a sensible, obvious, and simplifying fix that has been rejected without discussion.
Heath center might not matter to folks who are pushing to mothball and relocate, but it has been the heart of our town since 1785. It is a quintessential New England town center recognized by the Historic Register. Town center is, quite possibly, what the people of Heath would choose to preserve. That choice is being taken from us in a slow and insidious process. It is not too late to change this. We can demand a vote when a vote is due. We can insist on transparency and candor.
The choice itself is important. What do we demolish? What do we preserve? These are questions of property and also of ideals, of democratic processes and the use of power. Heath was once a compassionate collective. Neighborliness sweetened and sustained our town. We can go back to this but we — the big, reaching, inclusive we — are going to have to buck up and work at it.
Noy Holland is a Heath resident.