Thoughts on the dismissal of Articles 20 and 21 at town meeting

Good Morning Medfield Patch Readers - 

During the town meeting on Monday neither article 20 or 21 recieved sufficient support to be approved by the town meeting.    Article 21 was the article providing the selectman with the power to place lot 3 behind the Kingsbury Club out for bid for private development, which could have lead to the building of a indoor sports facility.   Article 20 was to give the same piece of land to the Park and Rec department for the building of two outdoor fields.

Of the two Article 20 had more support but not near the 2/3 majority it needed to pass.  I was clearly a supporter of article 21 as I believe we should have more businesses in town to help offset the ever increasing tax burde on the town (see the DPW garage for example), but that is not important for the moment.

In retrospect I believe the non-passage of both Articles is a good decision for the town.   It was clear from the presentations from both sides that there was not sufficient amount of time for eithe party to pull together a complete plan for the potential impact of either article.

So basically we now have a year and hopefully at the next town meeting we will all be sufficiently informed of the real impact of both options on the town and the town finances.   So many questions need to be answered such as:

• What other businesses beside the sports facility could potentially get this land if it went for private development?
• What control would the town have over making sure it goes to a business that would best benefit Medfield vs. just going to the highest bidder?
• Is there really no other land for either the fields or the sports facility?
• What impact will the use of the State Hospital land have on this decision?
• As it relates to the Park and Rec article, I have the following questions:
  • What is the real budget for building two fields?  The number given (200-300K) seems very low for creating two irrigated fields out of what is now a large wooded property.
  • What is the true financing plan?  Exactly where is the money coming from?
  • Do we really need more fields?  It seems like we have enough and discussions I had after the meeting made it seem like we do have sufficient field space they are just not spread equally among organizations/sports that need them.

At the end of the day we all want what is best for the town.  We all want our kids to have enough/quality fields available for their activities.   And don't we all want to pay less in taxes?   And wouldn't it be great if those of us with kids did not need to drive to 4kicks 3x a week?

Hopefully a year will bring some much needed clarity to both of these issues.

See you next year.