To the Editor:

At the Wrentham Special Town Meeting of May 12, the Town voted to exercise its right to buy 2095 West Street and deny Howard Bailey, a local builder and developer, his plan to develop that property.  Although I was happy with the vote, I was uncomfortable with the characterizations made regarding Howard at that meeting.  Atypical of many builders, Howard has been a friend to Conservation and Open Space in Wrentham for more than 50 years.  As the Agent for the Conservation Commission, I offer my apology for not rising to speak to that at the meeting but also believed such was tangent to the subject and that Mr. Bailey could weather the mischaracterizations.

I’ve been the Conservation Agent in Wrentham since 1989 and have worked with Howard over that time on several projects.  He can be difficult, but he is a businessman hewing to the regulations and decisions of the Town’s boards.  The local builders, like Howard, have reputations to protect and always finish their projects as the boards direct.  Some out-of-town builders showered the Town boards with promises and then ran away to the next town after the profit was wrung out.  That sticks the Town with paying to finish the work correctly, which can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Several local builders, with Howard in the fore-front, have used the Open Space Preservation Development (OSPD) Bylaw to permanently protect natural, open spaces.  Although some of that Open Space wasn’t the best it could be, some of the blame could be assigned to a badly outdated OSPD Bylaw and not completely the developer.

With the many new residents in Town, I would like to provide some background on Open Space and Mr. Bailey.  Howard was a good friend of my late father-in-law, Luke Schensnol – one of the founders of the Conservation Commission, and together they acted during the 1970s and early ‘80s to preserve many of the open spaces that we have today.  Much of that work has been forgotten.  But one example that springs to my mind is a 100-acre area south of Crocker Pond that serves as the upper watershed for our Town Well #4.  Howard worked with the owner, Mr. Simeone, to deed that property to the Conservation Commission to maintain it in a natural state.

The primary reason to preserve Open Space is to protect the quality and quantity of our drinking water.  This not only gives us and downstream communities cleaner water but keeps our taxes low by lessening the need to treat that water.  Secondary benefits are fewer homes and thus cars on the road and a town that retains some of its rural appearance and heritage.  Regardless of the math and circumstances, study-after-study have found that residential development costs a town money.  The fact that so many came out to protect this one property was encouraging and hopefully it persists.

Sincerely,

Darryl Luce, Agent

Wrentham Conservation Commission