CPC reverses course on Shattuck repairs

The Norwood Community Preservation Committee (CPC) met last week and voted to now allow the proposed study and repair design for the Shattuck Park stone wall to go before Town Meeting.

The vote at the previous meeting – https://tinyurl.com/63w5d8k2 – came after CPC members had discussed the fact that they had repeatedly asked the proponents of the project to solicit community support and engagement for the wall repair, and none had come. The request had been written in the application itself as well: https://tinyurl.com/bdhknsr2

But the CPC returned to this wall for another round, and voted, eventually, to put the $32,000 design and feasibility study back on the Town Meeting docket for Town Meeting Members to vote on.

The basic idea of the project is that the wall – facing the Highland Cemetery side of Shattuck Park – is in disrepair, and the stones need to be placed back in their positions to make it an actual wall and not a line of fallen stones. Such walls are common across the newly-grown woods of Massachusetts, as much of what is now forested area was once farmland (farmland that needed to dig up all these stones to make food production feasible).

CPC Member Cheryl Doyle said the first and second times the park was up for repair, they were different projects. In the first go, the applicants wanted to do a full renovation of the park with lights and benches, and residents came out against this, as the wooded feeling of the park would be lost. In the second go, the Town pitched design, study and construction for the stone wall rehabilitation. The CPC voted not to bring it forward specifically because neighbors hadn’t weighed in.

Doyle said she felt like a lot of outreach on the project had been done, simply by the fact it had gone through so many iterations in Town Meeting, the CPC process, and public meetings.

“They have already talked to some of the neighbors as well,” she said. “This is the problem I have, because every time an application has come before us regarding Shattuck, it was suggested to the neighbors that they put together a ‘Friends of Shattuck Park’ group, and they never did it… And then in their email they’re saying there’s no notification. This Board, along with a lot of the other boards, is constantly posting. It’s posted on Norwood Now, it’s posted on the Town website, it’s in The Norwood Record, it’s all over the place that these are the applications, we’re opening our cycle, etc. etc.”

And CPC Chair Christine Walsh pointed out they did have a letter regarding Shattuck from one of the neighbors there.

“Joe reached out to them and then they reached out to us,” Doyle said. “They don’t have a problem with the wall; they have a problem with going into the park and doing what the first application wanted, which was install lights, clear all the undergrowth, and do this and that – basically change the aesthetics of the park. Not the wall.”

Doyle pointed out also that many other projects did not necessarily reach out to every neighbor within a given radius of the project and they were heard at Town Meeting, and suggested that Town Meeting is the place for the project to be approved or denied.

Advertisement

CPC Member Julie Barbour-Issa said however she felt while the funds were small, so was the urgency.

“What is the prioritization of this?” she said. “When I look at this wall, it feels like it was thrown together in a way, ‘Well let’s propose some projects,’ but it’s not necessarily [urgent]. This wall isn’t falling apart any faster between now and five years from now. I don’t know priority-wise, and I know it’s not a ton of money, but is this the most efficient use of our open space funds? Is this is what the community going to be getting the most out of? And maybe that is a Town Meeting question.”

Doyle showed the thickness of the application, and detailed the history of the wall, the condition, site visits, etc., to argue it wasn’t thrown together. Members estimated – based on the rule of thumb that design is usually costing about 15-to-20 percent of the project – that the final wall restoration would come in at $200,000 (however that’s not including any site work that the Department of Public Works could provide).

The Board voted 4-0 to reconsider the vote and voted 3-1 to put it back on the Town Meeting docket, with Walsh voting against.