Williamstown MA Development

Development affects schools, families

2007-11-01T15:31:48Z

Editor’s note: The following is the third of three parts of a special Devil’s Advocate series concerning the controversy over development in Williamstown. To read the entire three-part series on development, visit blogtheberkshires.com.

By DAVE FEHR
In that juicy Clark Art Institute/WACC/Sweetwood/Greylock H.S./Phelps Knoll Water Line Brouhaha of a few years ago, the specter was raised of Route 7 south becoming another Route 2 east.
That wasn’t about to happen, water line extension or not. Williamstown simply isn’t that big. The population has been around 8,000 (including 2,000 Williams students) forever, but at least it isn’t shrinking like most of the county. Probably we could attract more families with young children if they could find affordable housing, but seemingly there’s a limit to that possibility, too.

]]> Where would they work? Williams? OK, but the college, while still growing, isn’t growing exponentially, and you can probably say the same thing about the Clark. Williams grads “coming home” to live, full or part-time, do form a market for mostly high-end real estate, and they certainly pump money into our economy, but that, too, has a limit. The college has published the number of grads living here several times over the years, and I recall it being between 200 and 300 each time. In May, I was told by the college that there were 294 alumni residing in Williamstown, including those with primary and seasonal homes. That’s not 294 houses, either, because some of these alums are married to each other.
In any case, a nice market — but not a huge one.
At the time the Bee Hill controversy began, Realtor Paul Harsch wrote a letter to the local papers pointing out that there was a limit to how fast the town would grow. There won’t be many Bee Hills or Northwest Hills in our future, even if the approvals are finally granted and the courts rule in favor of the developers, because the developers will have trouble selling that many new lots. In the 80s, I was stunned to read that one year there were only (ITAL) three (ITAL) new homes built in Williamstown. Along with most of the nation, we’re in a real estate recession and recent articles have claimed that the inventory of unsold property was double the norm.
We’ve all seen the “WILLIAMSTOWN LAND BARGAINS” ads in the papers and the “LAND PRICES SLASHED!” signs around town. The local market will eventually improve, but when it does the current trickle won’t turn into a torrent because the demand is insufficient.
An interesting test of demand is the Sweet Farm subdivision off Henderson Road; that project has been around for four or five years, since well before the market turned south. A few months ago, I drove up to have a look. Nice paved road, town water and sewer (fully developer-installed), great views from at least some of the lots. A sign indicates 18 building lots; six were “unavailable” (presumably sold), leaving 12 lots ranging from 1.5 to 11.4 acres for sale. But here’s what really surprised me: In all that time, just one house has been built, and that had a “For Sale” sign out front.
A second test of demand, this of a far different sort, will be the Cable Mills condos on Water Street, which will include 61 new residential units, including 12 designated as “affordable.” Those will be downtown, on the water and sewer lines, where everybody would like to see expansion take place. Let’s say that finally happens and the housing is attractive (well-designed, well-constructed, roomy, fairly priced). Will they sell? My guess is yes, and here the timing may be fortuitous, because by the time they come online, the real estate recession may well have ended.
In May, the New York Times, in their Friday Escape section, featured Williamstown as their “Haven” (second homes). It captured the town pretty well, including its pros and cons, and they actually call them that. They quoted Mr. Harsch regarding development: “Williamstown is highly protected from development. In Florida and Colorado, the subdivisions are springing up like flowers or weeds, depending on your perspective. That’s not going to happen here. There are zoning restrictions, topographical restrictions and limited sewer service. The town is going to change very little, and the people here like it that way.”
Fair enough. So, if I’m right, and Harsch is right, development will always be slow in The Village Beautiful. Projects will be proposed and some of them defeated (just please don’t use phony statistics or purple prose in the battle), and what does get approved may or may not sell. What does this mean for the economic well-being of the town and its institutions?
It will be a constant struggle for the town — which isn’t as rich as some people think — and the schools. Can we override Proposition 2.5 every few years to get the necessary funding? Maybe, but it’s a tough sell. Some people say they can barely afford to live here as it is, so a 6 percent or greater tax increase every few years could push them over the edge. Will we balance the budget only by employing Death by a Thousand Cuts? Not pretty, and the result would be unsatisfying. Will we have to resort to restructuring, as industry often does, take an axe to town and school costs and effectively start over? Even less pretty, and the political pressure against that type of action would be prohibitive.
Those are the primary choices, along with new money resulting from economic development. The choices involving increased taxes are hard to come by; the choices involving significant budget cuts will result in layoffs and a reduction of services, and a falloff in the quality of the schools.
It’s the schools I worry most about, especially Mt. Greylock. If our schools deteriorate, the town will follow. It’s hard for an outsider (no school-age kids) to know how good our public schools are, since we basically know only what we read and hear, and those reports have been conflicting. Just a few years ago, Mt. Greylock was being bashed in the press, including, interestingly, by some members of the school’s administration, along with some of the teachers. Just last spring, a school committee member refused to vote to approve the Greylock budget, saying that she thought it inadequate to maintain quality programs.
On the other hand, the fiscal 2008 budget was proposed and approved without rancor; the school administration, school committee, finance committee, town management and town meeting all came to agreement on a Greylock budget with a 0.5 percent year-to-year increase, resulting in a 3.46 percent assessment increase to Williamstown and 5.47 percent increase to Lanesboro. (It was made clear, however, that the long-term funding issues remained unsolved, that new sources of funding must soon be found, or costs would have to be substantially cut.) An additional positive note is that MGRHS recently won a national award.
So, do we have a quality high school, or not? I don’t know, but if it continues to be starved for money, the answer to that question will almost certainly be “no.”
The town should receive a nice boost from Cable Mills. That should generate nearly $500,000 in yearly property tax revenues and house 150 or so new people; it is shaping up to be a real winner. Another boost will come from the assisted living facility to be built at the Photech site on Cole Avenue; in addition to property taxes, that will involve about 30 new jobs while providing a needed service to our graying town. Another winner. But these projects are developing slowly (Cable Mills had a setback which shut things down for well over a year) and, as Yogi Berra would say, they’re not finished until they’re finished. If Charles Fox wins on Bee Hill, and houses are finally built, that will certainly help as well.
Northwest Hill? The neighbors retain their unblemished views (albeit at a price), the developers make a profit without incurring further risk (hmm ... I sense a business opportunity here), there’s a bit more land in conservation, Williams College buys 10 more acres to add to the King Ranch-sized parcels it already owns, and the salamanders can breath easier.
But nothing’s in it for the town ... and that is something worth thinking about.

Dave Fehr writes Devil’s Advocate every now and then for The Advocate. Send feedback to news@advocateweekly.com.

Williamstown development: Is anybody happy?

2007-10-26T21:10:43Z

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.

Everyone gets in on development talk

2007-10-26T21:09:26Z

Editor’s note: The following is the second of three parts of a special Devil’s Advocate series of commentary concerning the controversy over development in Williamstown.

By DAVE FEHR
The Willliamstown Select Board elections in May were focused heavily on issues of economic and residential development.
The town meeting did so as well, especially the articles concerning an elected vs. appointed planning board. If you went to the meet-the-candidates sessions, or followed the process in the papers, you heard and read some interesting viewpoints:
Philip Guy: “I do not agree with the contention that any residential growth is costing the town money. We need this extra revenue in order to continue fully funding our schools.” (He lost his Select Board seat.)
Ron Turbin: “Persuading software companies to relocate here might be easier than imagined.” (He won, and is now a selectman.) Ron, now that you’re in office, start persuading. You’ll find that it’s excruciatingly difficult, as the Berkshire Capital Investors and Village Ventures people know all too well. Those were local venture capital efforts with twin goals: (a) Generate a financial return to the investing partners, and (b) Create jobs in the region. The net result is, 10 years later, few remaining area jobs, maybe none in Williamstown itself. It was a shot worth taking, but the projects will likely not be replicated in Berkshire County. BCI and VV actually invested seed money in companies willing to locate here or, if they had begun here, to remain in the area and grow. Even that didn’t get the job done.
Dusty Bahlman: “Private developers should be asked to increase the town’s stock of lower-priced housing.” (He also lost.) You don’t (ITAL) ask (ITAL) developers, you offer incentives to them. If Cable Mills is a go, and provides some affordable units, it will be because town and state funding grants went to the developer to offset the losses he would incur when including these alongside his market-priced units. Same for the biscuit factory in North Adams. Around here, private money alone won’t support either affordable or low-income housing. Governments, churches, Williams College (Pine Cobble development, the old elementary school apartments) and charities must provide the extra funding needed.
Turbin, again: “I’ve always thought this would be a great place for a brewery.”

]]> And again: “There’s the site of the former town garage on Water Street, now being used as an unpaved parking lot. It’s one of a few spots identified in the town’s master plan that could be developed.” Gee, why didn’t town manager Peter Fohlin think of that? As a matter of fact, he did. Shortly after the garage was demolished, the town requested proposals from parties interested in developing that site. There was just one reply, from someone who was happy to develop it using town money; Williamstown would absorb the losses, if any, while the developer would keep the profits, if any. Such a deal! Probably the town will try again, and maybe the next attempt will result in something being built which will yield some tax receipts. But it’s been quite awhile, and nobody’s knocking down Fohlin’s door.
Fohlin: “The town must add a minimum of $16.3 million of new real estate development to the tax base each year to stay even with increases in the budget.” Sarah Gardner, former (and maybe future) member of the Planning Board, said she found those numbers to be improbably high. At least one Select Board candidate agreed with her.
Fohlin: “I stand by that figure. In the most recent fiscal year, the town saw $16.8 million in new growth, which generated $193,047 in new tax revenue — about enough to keep pace with increased expenditures.”
I find it curious that Gardner, or anybody else, would question whether Fohlin knew what he was talking about. Those numbers are easy to digest — I understand them, and I’m not an accountant. Fohlin told me that if the town and schools can keep overall annual spending growth to about 3.5 percent, through effort and some give and take, Williamstown can usually build a balanced budget. Two-and-a-half percent (the maximum allowed without a Prop 2.5 override) would come from an increase in the property tax rate, with most of the remainder from new growth.
All this being said, perhaps this is but a tempest in a teapot. Most likely there will (ITAL) never (ITAL) be major development in Williamstown, residential or commercial, and the reasons will have little to do with what we’ve discussed in this series. Incidentally, I’ve read where both Bee Hill and Northwest Hill were described as “major” developments. They’re not. Sun City is a major development. Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are major developments. A new Toyota plant is major. By the more modest Berkshire County standards, Jiminy Peak and the proposed condos at Snowy Owl (which New Ashford would love to have, but I’m guessing won’t get) are major developments.
Williamstown won’t see anything of this magnitude.
Why not? Simply — lack of demand. All the barriers to development — a paucity of available land; zoning, topographical and conservation restrictions; limited sewer and water hookups; inadequate roads; challenges in court; vernal pools and Jefferson salamanders, are useful tools to fight development. But the most useful of all (which should give comfort to the tree-huggers and pause to the developers) is the fact that not that many people want to locate here or start businesses here.
Or maybe they’d like to, but can’t afford to.

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 projects already in the pipeline and their consequences on the town.

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2007-10-24T19:55:08Z

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