Given
your comment that I was unintelligible, Phil, I should've sent this to you,
too.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: ffmaxant <ffmaxant@aol.com>
To: neel.chaudhury <neel.chaudhury@masenate.gov>
Cc: maryehadad <maryehadad@hotmail.com>
Sent:
Subject: Testimony on S1025,
Hello,
Neel,
Per
your suggestion & for the committee's consideration, this is a summary of
my testimony today.
Thank
you, Senator Welch & Representative Kane, for the opportunity to discuss
this with you today.
I
am Frank Maxant, an Ayer Selectman. No town body has
taken a stand on this legislation. When I use the collective pronoun, I will be
referring to myself & various of my colleagues on
the JBoS, & our constituents, including residents
of both Ayer & Harvard living on DREZ. The "we" will be different
people, depending upon which topics I've discussed
w/which people.
Since
I may address some questions posed earlier to DC people, I would like, if the
committee has no objections, to invite any of them to interrupt me to correct
anything I say that is incorrect.
We
think this bill is premature, for at least 2 reasons. one
on the negative side, & one on the positive side. I'll mention the negative
side 1st, so I can accentuate the positive & end on an upbeat note.
On
the negative side:
The
Devens Committee is, in many ways, similar to a Board of Selectmen for the DREZ
community. The DREZ community elects members to DC annually. In last year's
election, 17 of the ~225 DREZ residents voted. In the ensuing year, DC was very
active for the DREZ community, advocating vigorously for their interests at JBoS. In particular, they filed this bill, which will have
a profound effect on every one of their residents in every aspect of their
lives. This year's election was held a week ago today, if I'm not mistaken,
when people knew of this hearing, so interest in their community's affairs
should be at a peak. This year, only 8 people bothered to vote, & they all
voted for the same candidate.. Looking at that more
closely, I'm told that one of the votes was the successful candidate, another his wife, & 2 more his children, leaving only 4
voters from the 200+ general population who bothered to vote. (Afterwards, Rick Bernklow
& Ms. Barbadaro told me that isn't true;
that Rick wasn't even one of the 8 votes. --Sorry!)
I
think this demonstrates that the DREZ community isn't ready to assume the
responsibilities of independent self-governance. Given the fact that they have
identified themselves as a community for over 10 years, & given the trend
over the past year from 8% involvement to 4% involvement, it seems they won't
be ready for self governance any time soon, even in the 10-year timeframe of
this bill.
On
the positive side:
An
important motivation of DC in filing this bill is their frustration dealing w/MaD, as they have alluded to in some of their testimony.
The Host Towns have this frustration, too, over & over again being ignored
(to put it politely) by
The
progress we have made so far (to give you an idea of the prudent pace we're
taking) is that, before he left office, Representative Hargraves,
as a courtesy, had House Counsel vet the proposal. He
said ii is "good legislation". Then, in the October/November time
frame, we gave a draft to Senator Eldridge. It is a very rough draft in format,
but accurate in text.
(pause)
The
objective of this legislation is to get us onto history's path. In the 1860's
an East-West railroad was crossed by a North-South railroad in
Responding to the comments about objections to affordable
housing. The comment sounded as though the objections come mostly from the
Towns. I've heard these objections, loud & clear, mostly from DREZ
residents..
Responding
to the comments that allowing one town to veto changes prevents progress: I'm
not an expert on regional school systems, but when this was being said, the
Representative for
Frank
Frederick Maxant
Selectman,
Ayer