Williamstown development: Is anybody happy?
Editor’s note: The following is the first of three parts of a special Devil’s Advocate series by Williamstown resident Dave Fehr concerning the controversy over development in Williamstown.
By Dave Fehr
How do you like your economic development: vigorous, or not at all?
People around here seem to fall into two camps, or actually two permanent camps plus special groups formed to address specific situations.
In Williamstown, some folks — perhaps most folks — want to see no change whatsoever. Not one tree felled to build a new home, not one square yard of grass paved over, no additional cars, no additional people. They like it just the way it is.
I have one foot solidly in this camp; I chose, at least in part, to retire here because I prefer our slow-paced lifestyle.
This hits me whenever I spend time in an area experiencing rapid economic development. I’m somehow uncomfortable, even though I’m staying just a few days and won’t return for a long time. I can’t wait to get out of there. Places where there were lovely farms or huge ranches, or pretty wooded hillsides, and now, bam, seemingly overnight, 1,000 cookie-cutter houses baking in the sun, a whole new infrastructure being built to support the people who moved there and thousands of people being hired to provide the required services. Or, new malls, factories and warehouses.
Phoenix comes to mind, the Valley of the Sun, where, according to Timothy Egan, writing a guest column titled “The first domed city,” which was printed in The Transcript in June, “a city equal to Rochester, N.Y., plants itself every two years” and everything is frying. But not only Phoenix — it’s happening just about everywhere in the American west and south, anywhere it’s warm and seniors want to retire, in metropolitan areas where job growth still exists, at the beach, at resorts.
That’s one kind of development, gobbling up huge tracts of available land and building new cities. There’s also infill development. Instead of building hundreds of new homes or many commercial structures at a crack, developers fill in the spaces between existing buildings. The part of southwestern Connecticut where I used to live is a good example. The empty lots, the treed patches, are pretty much gone, along with relatively modest homes which have been knocked down to make way for multi-million dollar mansions. Maybe it’s gotten much worse in the last decade, or maybe it was always that way but I just didn’t notice it. The Post Road suffers perpetual gridlock, likewise the Merritt and I-95, in both directions, at rush hour.
On the other hand, other people want to see at least a little development and worry that maintaining a status quo doesn’t work and will lead to an inevitable decline. They want at least some population growth, an influx of some new money, a bit more action, a few more choices, and more, not fewer, kids in our schools. Not rapid growth, not Arizona or Florida or California, or even Bucks County or Fairfield County, but more than we’re now experiencing, which is just about none.
I have one foot solidly in this camp, too.
Joining me are the “evil” developers (obviously), builders, contractors, real estate brokers, merchants, service providers, pretty much anybody who earns a living serving locals, and people who like living here but chafe at the few options available for shopping and entertainment and personal services. Oh, yes, and the town and school administrators, people who are trying to maintain quality in our institutions but fear for that quality unless new tax money is brought in by a growth in our taxable base. These people want some new kids to begin living in new houses in town, kids who would begin to stem the multi-year decline of public school enrollment, a decline that seems to have stabilized somewhat for 2007-08 (some good news doesn’t hurt).
The people who run the town and schools are only too aware that there are but few sources for the money they need to do their jobs. The main ones are (a) an increase in the real estate tax rate, (b) additional money from the state, and (c) “new money,” which represents tax receipts from real property which didn’t previously exist. Here’s the rub: The property tax rate can go up only 2.5 percent each year; beyond that, the town must vote to override Proposition 2.5, something that Williamstown has not automatically done in recent years. More money from the state? We now have, finally, those free-spending Democrats firmly in charge at all three levels of state government, but I’ve yet to see Brinks trucks loaded with new cash on the Trail heading west. “New” property tax receipts? Can’t have those without growth, without residential or commercial development.
So, we have the Anti-Development Camp and the At-Least-a-Little-Development-is-Necessary Camp, each happy to claim one of my feet. The smaller, ad-hoc camps are not opposed to modest economic and residential development per se — they just don’t want to look at it through their kitchen windows. (I refuse to use that cliched acronym, the one starting with the letter N.) I have no feet remaining, but I don’t take issue with these people, either. I’d feel the same way if somebody wanted to develop next to me — though I can’t imagine why anybody would.
‘Sublime treasure’
Let’s get to the meat of the development issue: how this is playing out around Williamstown. Within the last two years, there have been two controversial residential developments proposed, one off Bee Hill Road and the other off Northwest Hill Road. There was also the Great Water Line Debate. The May Select Board election turned into a referendum on development, and the anti’s won.
We’ll focus on Bee Hill. (Northwest Hill has become a non-issue, because neighbors and others bought out the developers and the land will remain untouched.) Charles Fox bought about 65 acres from Joan Burns and proposed to develop the infrastructure (road, drainage, etc.) and sell seven to nine prime building lots. The neighbors were not amused. Many contentious meetings followed, then committee/commission approval to proceed, and now a lawsuit against the town. It was far more complicated than that, but you get the picture.
What was printed in the local papers was most entertaining. A woman wrote a letter to The Transcript claiming “the millions of people who have passed by Bee Hill have experienced the breathtaking views across the valley and become speechless.” She said this spot is “a God-given gift to all who encounter it. Bee Hill remains one of the most sublime treasures of the world.” (Italics mine.) Wow! Sublime treasures of the world! Glacier National Park. Yosemite. Acadia National Park. The Big Sur coast. The Oregon coast. Crater Lake. Atop Haleakala at sunrise. Mt. Kilimanjaro. In any case, I’d better get up there before they chop down all the trees.
So I went. Alone, so nobody knew that I was rendered speechless. It is a very nice view, especially from the little parking area Rural Lands Foundation has installed at the top of Sheep Hill, but it was unclear to me where that spot was in relation to the proposed subdivision. Nevertheless, the entire road is pretty, as one would expect of a sublime treasure of the world. The neighbors are fighting this development mainly on the basis of rainwater runoff, plus Bee Hill Road being inadequate to support construction vehicles and, following construction, the “unsafe” traffic generated by the new residents.
Well, that road is, as always mentioned, unpaved, steep and narrow, but it’s not, as often mentioned, one-lane. There was almost no traffic the afternoon I was there, and the FedEx truck and my car passed each other with no problem.
But here’s what really frosts me. The neighborhood group fighting the development tried to sway public opinion (and this carried over to the Select Board election campaign) by claiming that these eight or so houses would cost the town more than they would generate in additional real estate taxes. First Mr. Turbin, their spokesman, claimed that the median cost of community services would be $1.25 for each new tax dollar raised, and then said that was a mistake, that it was actually $1.15. Bickering ensued over the source of this statistic before it was revealed that it came from a study done for the American Farmland Trust. And what does the American Farmland Trust do for a living? Bingo! It fights to keep farms out of the hands of developers.
Based on their location at one of the sublime treasures of the world, the size of the lots and the price Fox is likely to charge, these will undoubtedly be high six-figure or even million dollar homes. That means most, or all, of them will be built either as second homes or by wealthy retirees as primary homes — with few, if any, school-age children from that demographic. How else does the town spend money to support its citizens? Health and welfare for the aged and less well-to-do? Probably not much demand from Bee Hill. Domestic disputes requiring police involvement? Not so much. As a private road, the town wouldn’t even be required to plow the subdivision access street, though it would likely choose to do so. Thus, an extra five minutes with the plow and a few additional pounds of salt per storm.
Or, put another way, would the town or schools have to build anything new, or buy so much as one additional truck, or hire even one new person in order to support the people living in these new homes? Well ... no.
Off the top of my head, I’d guess, at most, a nickel incremental cost for each dollar of incremental property tax revenue.
But what if my school-age assumptions are wrong? What if there are a few dozen new little Bee Hillers bound for our schools? The administration would welcome them with open arms, along with the additional state money they’d represent, the better to fill empty classrooms and keep teachers employed.
This is such a glaring and obvious disconnect on the issue of incremental cost vs. revenue, between what may (or perhaps may not — remember that Farmlands Trust was the source) be the case in areas experiencing runaway expansion, vs. locally, where we’re experiencing very little expansion, that you’ve got to question where these people are coming from. Are they stupid and actually believe this nonsense, or do they believe we’re stupid because we’ll buy it?
Given their spokesman’s impressive credentials (along with those of some bright Bee Hill residents I’m acquainted with), I doubt they’re stupid.
So what does that say about us?
Dave Fehr writes Devil’s Advocate every now and then for The Advocate. In the next installment of this series on development, Fehr looks at official attitudes toward development.