Dear Board of Selectmen and Selectwomen,
I would like to thank you most sincerely for your diligent and unstinting labors in service to our town this past year. I'm sure that you and your families have made considerable sacrifices in order for you to have devoted so much time and effort to your roles, especially over the past year. My husband and I are grateful to live in a town that is governed with care by people of good will and good faith.
I am writing to express my sincere hope that you will not vote to endorse the proposed development at Shingle Hill. This project is wildly out of scale for our little town. It has profound life-safety flaws, would be a blight to a beloved landscape, and does little to advance our goals of creating truly affordable housing. CIMAH's lawyer Stephen Nolan has noted that a BOS endorsement of this building would likely be used by SLV against the ZBA in an appeal to the state in the event of a ZBA denial.
Recent efforts to increase our affordable housing inventory are bearing fruit, and there is a reasonable chance that the town can attain safe harbor in the relatively near future with the NSCDC Powder House Lane project.
Residents overwhelmingly oppose this development. If the project is built, I will nonetheless remain grateful to you for representing our will and creating a united front of opposition. I, for one, won't hold you responsible for the fact that we didn't get a fire engine and other (mostly one-time) concessions from SLV. It seems likely that an unfriendly outcome will probably put more kids in our schools. That would be a fiscal strain, but I believe that we have the balance sheet and the tax base to manage through that. I've seen towns with declining enrollment and that is a far worse situation. To me, it is worth taking this risk in order to have unified opposition to an ill-conceived project that is simply not in the best interest of this town.
With respect and appreciation,
Nicie Panetta
