While in Greenfield Town Hall about a month ago, I happened to see a flyer inviting town residents to a meeting with a designer of skateboard parks who had been contracted by the Recreation Department to design and build a skateboard park in the southern half of the parking lot behind Wilson’s.
As a 22-year resident of the neighborhood I was shocked to learn that the town had unilaterally decided to place the park in this largely residential neighborhood without notifying the people who lived there that a change was to be imposed on them that could have a huge impact on the quality of life they enjoyed, as well as on the value of their property. Heck, they notify us when a neighbor is putting an addition on their house, or converting a two-story house into two separate apartments. A skateboard park is a much bigger deal. But no one I spoke with knew anything about it.
I got copies of the flyer, which I distributed to the houses on Chapman and Davis streets that surround the parking lot. With a couple of neighbors I attended the “design” meeting on April 7. When we began to express our dismay at not having been notified by the town about this development we were shouted down by the skateboarders who had been attending these meetings for years, and by an authoritative voice coming from a woman who I guessed was the recreation director: “This is a done deal. This meeting is only about the design. If you want to talk about something else, talk to me later.”
This comment did not calm anyone. The presenter, probably having had more experience dealing with unruly audiences, took over the facilitation and invited us to voice our concerns as abutters before he launched into his presentation. The first thing he said was that the location of the skateboard park had been changed that very day from the south side of the lot, closest to Wilson’s, to the north side, which was much closer to the houses. This felt like a final blow. Someone howled; I think it was me. I didn’t need to read the stories of homeowners who could no longer sit in their backyards or open their windows because of the noise of skateboard parks to learn that distance from the houses was a key factor in controlling the noise.
The recreation director was quoted in the April 28 Recorder that this has been a “true community effort,” but there was no transparency or democracy in this process. We homeowners apparently were not considered a part of the community.
After the meeting we talked with a woman who had worked on the search for a suitable site for the park when they were considering putting it on Beacon Field. She said that all the abutters to Beacon Field had to be notified by mail about the plan, and were invited to participate in the meetings involved. She assumed that this was a town regulation, and was surprised that we had not been similarly notified. This is a clear instance of treating a more affluent neighborhood more respectfully than slum neighborhoods.
I had known that Greenfield had designated my neighborhood as a “slum” or — and here I’m not sure of the euphemism used, maybe “degraded” — ever since I received a letter from the town about 10 years ago telling me so, and asking me what I was doing to improve the neighborhood. I rather liked the bluntness of the language. I enjoy living in my neighborhood, as I had enjoyed living in the slums of Berkeley for some years. In my experience slum residents are both more diverse and more friendly than those in more affluent neighborhoods. I knew of course that slum or degraded districts throughout the country are not treated to the same services as the more affluent parts of a city, but somehow I expected more from Greenfield.
In looking online at the fate of skateboard parks in other towns, it did not surprise me to learn that the noise from the parks is the biggest issue. When complaints filtered in, some towns put up high stone walls to buffer the noise, and some just moved the park to a less residential part of their town. When we raised the issue of noise control, the presenter said that they would rely on trees and bushes as a sound barrier. I understood this to mean that they had not budgeted any funds for walls.
I am deeply disappointed that the city did not use this placement of a skateboard park as an opportunity to build community, an opportunity to show that it cares about the needs of all its residents, rich and poor, to show that it is willing to listen to its people and to protect the quality of life for everyone in our lovely town. This is one of the main goals of good government. Instead the city did not give its lower class residents the respect and voice that it gave to its more prosperous districts. This results in the resentment and distrust of government that widen the class divisions that are breaking our country apart. Everyone’s needs matter.
Lorraine Pearson lives in Greenfield.