Duxbury to Hold Special Town Meeting

Community Preservation Surcharge, Ricker Bogs Purchase, Simmons Farmhouse Repair on Warrant

(DUXBURY) — Duxbury will hold a Special Town Meeting at the Performing Arts Center on St. George Street, at 7 p.m., on Monday, Oct. 17th.

There are a number of Articles on the warrant (i.e., the agenda; attached below), but there are three in particular to which I want to draw your attention (short version: if you are a registered Duxbury voter, vote Yes on Articles 2, 3, and 13).

The first is Article 2, which would purchase the Ricker Property on Mayflower Street, including its active cranberry bogs. I strongly urge you to support this Article. It will not only help complete the Town’s greenbelt, but will also help add critical protection for our aquifer (trees and intact glacial sand and gravel deposits filter our drinking water). The bog will continue to be used for active cranberry agriculture, per the wishes of the Ricker family.

( Mr. Ricker on his bog. Photo Credit — Town of Duxbury. )

Next is Article 3, which would increase the Community Preservation Act surcharge on property taxes from 1% to 3%. This is another article I would strongly urge the Town to support.

The Community Preservation Act is one of the best pieces of legislation around, allowing us to preserve open space, provide for affordable housing, fund historic preservation, to create public recreation areas like parks and playing fields, and to repair and maintain all of the above.

I am very sensitive to the fact that this tax increase will have a real cost to many in our community, including those of us on fixed incomes. Nevertheless, I believe it is fiscally prudent to raise the surcharge to 3%; not only will the Town benefit from more State matching funds at 3%, but it is also an issue of paying less money now rather than more money later – for development, including the luxury developments that we will likely see in this Town, ultimately will cost the Town more in services than it will bring in in revenue. We must not be “penny-wise, and pound foolish.”

Ultimately, the increase in the surcharge will allow us to continue to preserve our common resources, and to continue building a community for all. This is especially the case with regards to affordable housing -- the Community Preservation Act helps the Town actually build affordable housing that working people can afford, under the democratic control of the Town, thus remedying some of the unintended problems posed by M.G.L. Ch. 40B, which, with the best intentions, does not actually produce much affordable housing locally, though it does destroy intact and vital ecosystems while lining corporate developers' pockets. The Community Preservation Act is explicitly, as in it is mentioned in language of the statute, devoted to the end of community housing (inter alia). Contra 40B, it is not primarily a means by which large developers may extract rents from the public in the process of furnishing communal needs. It allows us to avoid any kind of false choices between our physical environment and the need for housing for working people all over the Commonwealth.

Moreover, the more we put into our Town Community Preservation Fund, the more the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will match us. It will help improve the life of the Town.

Finally, Article 13 would fund the repair and preservation of the historic, 1699 Isaac Simmons farmhouse on Temple Street, which the Town purchased in the Summer of 2020. It is not only appropriate and worthy in and of itself to fix such an historic structure that has come under our ownership; it also makes good financial sense, since it will preserve the value of a Town asset.

Thank you for reading, and perhaps I will see you at the Special Town Meeting tomorrow evening.

https://www.town.duxbury.ma.us/sites/g/files/vyhlif3056/f/uploads/stm_warrant_-_signed_-_9-28-2022.pdf