Situation Report, June 21st, 2022

Chiltonville Land Question, Da Silva on the campaign trail, and Sand Mining

Readers, I have resorted again to my expedient of a quick Situation Report, or Sitrep, introduced to me by some former Army Intelligence officers I have become acquainted with over the years. I wish I could write a full article for each, but something is better than nothing, I am told. So here it is for today, the Summer Solstice:

( The Plymouth County Observer’s rough geographic range. Photo credit — Wikimedia Commons )

Sandwich Road Land Acquisition in Chiltonville

Plymouth will hold a Special Town Meeting this evening, at 6 pm via Zoom/virtual meeting [correction: the meeting is only held virtually, not at Town Meeting as originally stated; the PCO regrets the error], to discuss the acquisition of a parcel of land at 46 Sandwich Road by the Town, for $3.75 million.

Plymouth, which has a representative Town Meeting, will see its legislative branch, made up of the Town Meeting Members and the Moderator,¹ meet to discuss the Article brought forward by the Select Board to purchase the 24.38 acres in Chiltonville, near the Rt. 3 overpass. [UPDATE: I neglected to add that there is an approximately 30,000 square foot building on the property that is in usable condition, according to the Select Board.]

The Select Board supports the measure, while the Finance Committee opposes it, [UPDATE; by a 6 to 5 margin].

 The Select Board argues that the land must be acquired now, so that it will not be developed by Mr. Vayo, and so the Town can use it for a police and fire/public safety center; likewise, the neighboring parcel, owned by a member of the Balboni family, is slated to be developed if the Town does not buy the property, according to statements made by a member of the Select Board on social media.

Opponents argue that the process has been sudden and haphazard, and that simply purchasing this parcel to prevent development in Chiltonville leaves the town open to similar claims in the future from the other villages of the Town. They point to the fact that the funding is currently tied up in three different scenarios: one with Community Preservation Committee (CPC) funds, one with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, and one with neither, that would require borrowing approximately $1.4 million.

The history behind this is complex and somewhat opaque to this observer. The property was originally a religious establishment of some type, was switched to a safety facility for Edison/Entergy/Holtec, and with the decommissioning of Pilgrim, is no longer active. The Town sought it from Holtec as part of a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT), but Holtec’s price, $7.5 million, was too high for the Town, according to the Select Board’s presentation in favor of the article.

Then, Holtec sold it to local developer Rick Vayo for $2.3 million, who, I am told, was surprised to find out that the parcel had long been sought by the Town of Plymouth. Vayo agreed to sell the property to the Town for $3.75 million, which would recoup, he said, the funds that his development company had put into the parcel.

Town Meeting is broadcast live on PACTV.

Da Silva On the Campaign Trail

Hingham’s Carlos Da Silva continues to hit the trail in his campaign to be elected Plymouth County Commissioner (full disclosure: he paid for our cup of coffee prior to the May 11th Boston South Public Meeting at Memorial Hall in Plymouth, and I am eager to see someone unseat Ms. Wright).

 Da Silva campaigned in Hingham and Brockton at recent Juneteenth celebrations, continuing his effort to unseat current Plymouth County Commission Chair Sandra Wright (R-Bridgewater), who refused to take public comment at the meeting of the County Commission on March 31st at which the lease of the County Woodlot with Boston South Group, the cut-out company formed by the O’Connell family of Quincy developers and their local compradores.²

The Committee to Elect Carlos Da Silva is holding a meet and greet with the candidate at Brewery 44 in Carver, on Sunday, June 26th, from 1-4 p.m. More information can be found at www.CarlosDaSilva.org

( Carlos Da Silva campaigns at a Juneteenth event; photo credit — The Committee to Elect Carlos Da Silva. )

Developments on the Sand Mining Front

   The struggles continue on the sand-mining front in our region. Attorney and environmental activist Meg Sheehan informs us of several recent successes in exposing illegal sand-mining in the region that threatens the aquifer, and sees our common inheritance being sold off by the truck-load to enrich a few private actors.

  On June 14th, the Carver Planning Board met. The Board continued an item related to strip-mining by SLT Construction, an excavation company in Carver, to June 28th. The Board also rejected proposed sub-divisions — likely in actuality sites for proposed solar facilities, and opportunities to extra- (if not il-) -legally strip mine the valuable sand that underlies so much of Plymouth County — by A.D. Makepeace, Slocum Gibbs Cranberry, and Franklin Marsh/Gary and Craig Weston.

  In Plymouth, Attorney Sheehan and Attorney Jonathan Polloni, of Falmouth, showed at a public meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) in April that the 214-acre Makepeace strip mine in the headwaters of Frogfroot Brook has been operating outside of the law for years, quite literally since its inception – the Town of Plymouth’s Building Inspector failed to carry out the required inspections of the property (about which the current Building Inspector, Mr. Mayo, was largely unrepentant) for 8 years running, that the permit expired in 2020, and that Makepeace has been mining since then extra- or illegally.

One of the things that Makepeace’s attorney pointed to in April as somehow mitigating their illegal activity was the fact that MAkepeace was supposed to have placed 300 acres of land into conservation.

However, at the June 15th meeting of the ZBA, the Board asked them to show where they had donated said land, and were unable to do so.

Meanwhile, a new report on the hydrology of the Fearing Hill area in Wareham has been released. I haven’t read it yet, but intend to and to write more about the proposed industrial scale solar “farm” [sic] there.

Corporate greenwashing certainly seems to pay well, but it is hard to fool all the people all of the time, as Abraham Lincoln put it.

That’s it for today, folks, as supper won’t cook itself!

1. My view as a student of New England Town Government, is that the functions of Head of State, as it were, of each Town, are undertaken by the Moderator, though she or he will still have legislative duties akin to the Speaker of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, who decides upon mostly parliamentary-procedural matters and does not take part and active part in debate).

The Select Board are Head of Government, akin to the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Of course, as a multi-person executive, they also share features with the short-lived Directory during the French Revolution (post-Jacobins, pre-Napoleon).

The Finance Committee, School Committee, Planning Board, and other Executive Branch Town Boards do not have a direct equivalent in either the American or Westminster systems of government. It would sort of be as though different cabinet ministers or department secretaries were independent both constitutionally and electorally from the Prime Minister/President. But the analogy is necessarily inexact.

2. Originally from early modern Portuguese via their empire in the Indian Ocean and Asia, a comprador was a local merchant or other economic or political elite who sold the goods, and often the people and substance, of their own country to powerful outsiders — not just the Portuguese, but other European powers as well — for personal advancement.