To the editor:
Two letters to the Current addressing the MBTA zoning legislation, published on April 4 and April 8, besmirch the authors and the town with their personal attacks against town officials and journalists trying to cover important issues. One letter refers to farts, the other to the Founding Fathers. I believe that when John and Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, John Hancock and Robert Paine signed the Declaration of Independence, they had something better than toilet humor in mind.
The letter writers’ central grievance is that a Current journalist, Will Dowd, did not interview one of the letters’ authors in relation to a public petition that person initiated in opposition to the gentle upzoning the town has proposed to comply with state law. Apparently, the searing insight that this denied Mr. Dowd was the Planning Board’s uncertainty about how much state funding Marblehead’s failure to upzone might put at risk.
But there’s nothing revelatory about this. As the Planning Board, Finance Committee and Select Board have explained repeatedly at multiple meetings I have attended, the reason this figure cannot be determined with certainty is because the state continues to add to the list of grants it is willing to withhold. We know the floor is millions of dollars, but we can’t yet see the ceiling.
More broadly, one of the authors, both in his letter to the Current and in a separate letter to another masthead, argues that we should await the outcome of a lawsuit filed by a Rockport resident against the state law requiring gentle upzoning. Readers should be aware the individual who filed the suit, John Kolackovsky, has donated to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz’s campaigns multiple times since 2016. FEC individual contribution data shows he has donated to MAGA causes 21 times to the tune of nearly $2,000.
This town voted for Joe Biden by 45 points in 2020. Are we certain the lawsuit from the MAGA donor is the lawsuit we want to rally around?
Ultimately, however, all this is a sideshow from the core issue which is should Marblehead comply with a state mandate supported by Marblehead’s then-state representative and a governor we also voted for by 45 points? On the merits, yes.
Young families are being forced out of this state because there is nowhere for them to live. The state’s mandate requires towns and cities served by the MBTA to gently increase their zoning to enable the construction of market-rate housing. Because the requirement is divided among 177 cities and towns in proportion to their existing housing stock, the impact on any single city or town is negligible in terms of the total potential increase in housing.
If every community in the Commonwealth does its part, we will build a few more houses and apartments, there will be a little more laughter from kids in the streets, some grandparents will get to keep their grandchildren close, our budgets will be stronger for town services and schools, and most importantly, we will leave the Bay State in better condition for the generations that follow.
A final word. This issue has aroused passionate debate. That is good, our country needs more civic engagement. But incivility and ad hominem attacks are bad. To anyone in Marblehead considering speaking up on this issue in a respectful way, I will be by your shoulder, whatever you have to say.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Ward
Rolleston Road
