Here are some brief thoughts on recent happenings in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region.
Most of the angst over passage of the Community Preservation Act by Greenfield voters seems to have spent itself in the lead-up, launched in 2019 by former City Council President Karen “Rudy” Renaud.
Some councilors had been concerned that just seeing a new tax proposal on the ballot would be an affront to citizens already nervous about the impact of major capital projects like a new library and a new fire station on their tax bill. Subsequently, the pre-election campaigning in support of the ballot question was low-key.
“We didn’t run a campaign because of the pandemic,” City Council Vice President Otis Wheeler said, “but voters read the question and voted ‘yes’ because they believe in the CPA.”
Sixty-one percent voted yes: 5,438 to 3,440.
Greenfield was one of nine communities across the commonwealth in last Tuesday’s election to vote to increase local taxes to pay for affordable housing, historic preservation and open space investments and did so “by a consistently wide margin,” according to the Community Preservation Coalition. To date, voters in 186 of the state’s 351 municipalities have approved the CPA. Of course, the more participants, the less the state match, estimated by the Department of Revenue to be 17.7 percent for fiscal year 2021.
Just as important as the match, in our opinion, is the affirmation that Greenfield residents put a priority on community preservation.
“I think it goes to show you can’t make presumptions about what voters in Greenfield want,” Wheeler said.
Always on the lookout for new ways to help older teens and young adults gain independence, DIAL/SELF Executive Director Phillip Ringwood recently relocated its Orange headquarters from East Main Street to the Orange Innovation Center on West Main Street.
His reasoning was this: The OIC was already the site of other nonprofits that could help his clients: The Literacy Project, the Center for Human Development, the MassHire Franklin Hampshire Career Center, the New England Learning Center for Women in Transition and the YMCA. Ringwood said that the agencies regularly conduct cross-referrals, so being in the same building makes it that much easier for young people to get the help they need — “much more destination shopping, so to speak,” as Ringwood describes it.
Amenities like the laundromat at the OIC augment DIAL/SELF’s own drop-in resources such as a food pantry, access to basic hygiene supplies and social service connections. Besides its North Quabbin site, Ringwood oversees operations in Greenfield and Northampton.
A former teen-age couch-surfer himself, Ringwood knows what it is like to be on your own, and has said he never forgot the challenge of getting to Greenfield Community College in the morning and worrying about where he would sleep that night. Ringwood understands what young people, bereft of family support, need. This latest move is proof of that.
Christmas came early for South Deerfield, which is celebrating the announcement that a new commercial tenant, Charlton-based Tree House Brewing, will move into the former Channing Bete Co. campus on Routes 5 and 10.
Chair of the Deerfield Selectboard Carolyn Shores Ness said that the town is “thrilled” to welcome the company, adding, “This is truly a long-term boost to the local economy and a real win for all.”
For the rest of the county, the announcement could be taken as further proof that there really are second acts for empty buildings. After all, Leyden is renting out classroom space at the closed Pearl Rhodes Elementary School to the Greenfield Commonwealth Virtual School. The East Northfield campus is occupied by Thomas Aquinas College, the Moody Center and C.S. Lewis Study Center. And two and a half years after Montague’s Southworth paper company went out of business in 2017, that building is under new ownership.
Such happy endings are hard-won. Heath and Warwick both have closed elementary school buildings on their hands. South Deerfield still owns the closed church building since accepting it as a gift in 2016. Various towns in Franklin County and the North Quabbin area have empty mill buildings they would like to revitalize. And then, of course, there is the still-vacant Wilson’s building on Greenfield’s Main Street. Plans by Green Fields Market to expand into this prime downtown space seem to have been stalled by the pandemic.
But we’re happy to hoist a celebratory pint in honor of South Deerfield’s good news.