CPC: hearings on horizon

The Norwood Community Preservation Committee (CPC) met recently to prepare and organize information for its upcoming public hearings to kick off the new year.

The next meetings will be held at the Norwood Senior Center starting at 7 p.m. on Jan. 14, Jan. 21 and Jan. 22. CPC member Cheryl Doyle emphasized that residents interested in any of the proposed projects should attend.

“We’re going to be doing our public hearings and notices so you will know what’s coming before us, and please, everybody in the public, if you have questions or concerns or anything, that is your opportune time to come out and say something,” she said. “We need the public input. And if you don’t show up, it doesn’t serve a purpose to then go on Facebook as a ‘keyboard warrior’ if you don’t want to come and ask the questions.”

For more information on each project and to see hearing information when it’s posted, go to https://tinyurl.com/55phdjmm

Speaking of opinions, CPC member Joseph Greeley said he wanted to clarify at least his position on recent meeting coverage in this newspaper.

Greeley said that in the Dec. 11 edition of The Norwood Record – https://tinyurl.com/26rnazka – it appeared that the CPC membership were against the half-a-dozen or so school-related proposals from the Town.

“I don’t think we’re even at the stage of looking negatively at projects, I think what caught me, anyways, by surprise is that so many (school proposals) have come forward in one year,” Greeley said.

The Community Preservation Committee met recently and discussed the large number of playground pro posals coming through the group's process of late. · Courtesy photo

On the docket for the CPC funding round this year, the schools are asking for funds for the Norwood High School Athletic Fields’ outdoor restroom, playground replacements for the Callahan and Prescott schools, shade structures for the dugouts at the Cleveland School and resurfacing of the Father Mac’s Playground (which is technically a DPW project, as it’s not related to any school).

“Maybe two-thirds of all the money being asked for this year – and I’m just estimating here – relates either to the playgrounds or the high school or some aspect of this group of projects, and I think the thing we need to understand and control as much as possible with input from the other players here is knowing how big this could get,” Greeley said. “If we deal with these five projects now, what’s next? Is this going to continue to take a significant portion of our available annual funds?”

In other news, the CPC announced that the proposed facade repairs project for the Norwood Orient Masons Lodge proposal has been withdrawn. CPC Coordinator Kristen Phelps said she has been in communication with the Masons who had been going over the project with contractors, and it was deemed too expensive to keep the necessary building materials and techniques to keep the project within the historical preservation niche required by the Community Preservation Act (CPA). Only projects that serve to create open space and/or recreation, affordable housing or historic preservation are allowed for CPA funds.

Also in historic preservation is the Howitzer cannon outside the Town Hall. The project calls for $114,000, which has raised some eyebrows as being a bit more expensive than anyone expected. But Doyle pointed out this has to be done in certain historical methods and with precision and care, as it is a complex machine with a lot of pieces.

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“It’s included as a contributing object on the National Register of Historic Places,” she said, adding that Norwich, CT had a similar project priced out by Daedalus Conservation for $78,000 in 2024. “Because the cannon is on the national register, we have to follow all the proper channels to have it restored. It is not a cannon that somebody that does hobby painting or whatever can just paint the cannon. That’s what got it to the state it’s in now. It does have to be properly restored.”

Phelps said the pricing is based on the scope of work, which she said was detailed and complex in the Norwich request for proposal (RFP) that Daedalus answered.

“It was two years ago and I don’t know what sort of condition it was in, but Daedalus did get the bid for Norwich and they were the ones who provided the estimate for Norwood,” she said. “This will still go out to bid for us, but (the Norwich RFP) is basically for full restoration – including replacement parts – providing an authentic sense of the original, replica sections of the wheels and hardware will be constructed as well, and they may need to do a complete rebuild – which may also be the case for the Norwood cannon. It talks about full-scale authentic reproductions, and it is the case that this is a highly qualified historic conservator that would be engaged to do this work, which is why the price tag is higher than people might think.”

Also discussed was the annual $14,000 contribution to the Shared Housing Services Group to which the Town contributes. Doyle and Greeley said member Debbie Holmwood has asked for an analysis of what that money actually pays for and how it’s been helping the Town. The theory at least is that it helps the Town keep an inventory of affordable housing so that it can stay above the safe harbor numbers necessary to keep 40B projects out.

The Massachusetts State Law Chapter 40B states, among other things, that either “10 percent of a municipality’s housing stock in units or 1.5 percent of its land must be dedicated to affordable housing” or a developer can come in and ignore local zoning laws as a 40B project. This caused severe problems for the Town in the past – it’s actually why the Town bought the Forbes Mansion property – and Town government has been keen to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The last time the Town was found to be out of compliance, it was off in its calculations of land area dedicated to affordable housing by 0.03 percent.