It’s All About the People and Process!
The article profiling the three Select Board candidates last week in the Gloucester Daily Times didn’t capture accurately my thoughts on the MBTA overlay district or the people keeping our Town running. Just to set the record straight:
I don’t object to the Bohler Plan per se – it’s carefully thought out and argued; I appreciate the work the consultant and Planning Board have put into creating and presenting it. The process, however, I find challenging, for it doesn’t appear that citizens had effective input up-front into planning our Town-wide response to the Commonwealth’s requirement. Voters are now offered only one plan to vote on in person on the evening of April 29th, to take or leave. If such a potentially seismic and permanent change to our Town is to work out in a positive manner, it seems a process of give and take, compromise and final agreement, might be a better path, voted on by more than 150 people at one evening’s Special Town Meeting. Perhaps a ballot vote is in order. The process for managing such Town-wide change should be greatly improved when we hire a full-time Community Planner.
Secondly, I want to note that the powerful volunteer efforts around Town supplement – certainly not supplant! — the dedicated work of our Town employees. I’d like to call out one Town employee who retired recently, Chris Martin, who spent his career at the DPW and did a fantastic job managing our water supply. He grew up here and knows how the water flows through the rills and brooks and quarries. Many thanks to him.
In the same vein, we’re lucky to have such an approachable and competent team at Town Hall, a team that is friendly and responsive. As a small town, we are able to forego a lot of the red tape and faceless bureaucracy of larger communities, but in the end, it is the people that make it work, and hats off to Rockport employees.