This year three candidates—Tina Allen, John Lee, and incumbent Elizabeth (Beth) Williams—are competing for two three-year positions on the Community Preservation Committee (CPC).
The Community Preservation Committee recommends how the town spends its Community Preservation Fund, revenues generated from a 1.1 percent property tax surcharge and a state match of up to 100 percent from real estate transaction fees. The funds can be used only for acquisition and restoration of open space and recreation assets, development of affordable housing, and historic preservation and initiatives, areas that are frequently dropped from tight municipal budgets. A minimum of 10 percent of incoming funds must be allocated to each of the three areas.
A source of vital community funds
The committee has nine voting members, four citizens elected at large and five representatives, one each from Conservation Commission, Historical Commission, Harvard Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, Parks and Recreation, and Planning Board. Each year, the committee reviews grant applications from groups in town and recommends to Town Meeting which to approve.
With requests usually exceeding the available funds, the CPC also recommends the level of funding for each request. For example, this year the Conservation Commission and the Municipal Affordable Housing Trust both asked for $200,000, and the CPC recommended allocating $100,000 to the commission and $150,000 to the trust.
Beth Williams
A few years ago, Beth Williams had a medical wake-up call that made her ask, “What do I really want to be doing?” Now she is doing it: social and civic engagement and traveling with her husband.
Beth Williams (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Along with joining the Woman’s Club and helping out at the senior center once a week, Williams was appointed to the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) in 2012 to fill a vacancy and was elected last year to complete the vacated term. After 12 years as an administrative assistant to local attorney Albert Barbieri, Williams left a job she enjoyed last September to be free to accompany her husband on his occasional international business trips. So far she has been to Hong Kong and Australia, with a possible European trip in the fall.
Williams and her family moved to Harvard in 1999, after their son Rob, who graduated from Bromfield in 2007, had been a Choice student here for six years.
A committee that ‘covers everything’
Williams finds the CPC a good fit. “I wanted to be involved in the town. It was around the time there was all this stuff brewing about the Shaker cemetery, the preservation of town buildings, open space issues, just a lot going on. I had a little interest in this and a little interest in that and I couldn’t decide what. The CPC kind of covers everything,” she said. “I’m not stove-piped into one area. I can see what the Historical Commission is into, Parks and Rec, a nice overview.”
When asked if there were any challenges ahead for the CPC, Williams said, “This year there were about the same number of requests, just for larger amounts. I don’t think we’re going to see as much state funding come this year, so we’re going to have to be tougher.”
An ability to work in teams
What makes it all work? “People come in with all these competing things, but it’s really not a heavy competition. Everybody understands we have a certain amount of funds. Right now we’ve been trying to make everybody happy. They might not get as much as they want, but we’re trying to help as much as we can. We tried to give everybody something.”
“The strength of the committee is its innovativeness and creativity,” she said. “We’re presented with all these proposals, and we’re sitting there listening to all the presentations and what’s important now, short-term issues, long-term issues. I don’t think a lot of people know what it does or that it’s even there.”
Asked what she brings to the CPC, Williams said, “The ability to work in teams and be a team player.” The CPC process reminds her of being on cross–functional teams when she worked in an engineering group at Digital. “There were representatives from different groups—engineering, manufacturing, marketing. Once a week you listened to where everyone was coming from.”
One thing she would like people to know about the committee, she added, is “that we are there and that we try to make a difference in the preservation of the town.”
John Lee
Former Parks and Recreation Commission Chairman John Lee was its representative to the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) for four years before resigning from Parks and Rec last August. Now, he hopes to return to the CPC as an elected citizen.
John Lee (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Lee’s family is the third generation of Harvard Lees, descendants of an Irish farmer who settled in Littleton in the late 1850s. After graduating from Bromfield and earning advanced degrees in chemistry, he returned to Harvard with his wife, Susan. When not working on drug discovery at Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry in Wilmington, a company that looks for ways to make products more environmentally friendly, Lee walks the Harvard trails with Susan and their two dogs, runs, and volunteers on town groups and committees. “I like to keep busy,” he told the Press.
30 years as a volunteer
Lee’s volunteer participation stretches back to the mid-1980s, when he joined the Park and Recreation Commission, a committee he served for 15 years and rejoined in 2010. He also joined the School Needs Study Committee and later participated on the building committees for the Harvard Elementary School (now Hildreth Elementary) and Bromfield’s Cronin Auditorium.
Since then, Lee has been a trustee of the Harvard Conservation Trust, a member of the Land Stewardship Committee, and, for more than 10 years, a trustee of the Bromfield Trust. After taking over the Harvard Fourth of July Road Race from Jim DeZutter, Lee started the Harvard Road Race Association. He participated in the formation of the Harvard Athletic Association and was an original member of Harvard Park Association that built Harvard Park and the McCurdy Track on Lancaster County Road.
In a letter to the editor explaining his resignation from the Parks and Recreation Commission last August, Lee said, “This one issue [Bare Hill Rowing Association’s use of Bare Hill Pond] has consumed so much time at every meeting that other Parks and Recreation business has suffered. I will find other ways to make my contribution to the town.”
Lee said he would like to return to the CPC because “it is an important board that has to make decisions that balance the needs of open space, historical, and housing needs,” something he thinks the committee has done a good job of, while acknowledging that “housing has always been difficult.”
Commenting on the recent turnover on the CPC, Lee said, “It takes some kind of experience to know what you can do within the CPC restrictions.”
What should the town know about him? “I love being here. I grew up here. I love the town,” he said.
Tina Allen
Tina Allen, a native of Knoxville, Tenn., still has a southern lilt and enthusiasm to her voice after 28 years in Massachusetts. Passing through the General Store to find a place for an interview, she had a friendly hello for people she knew.
John Lee (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Allen and her family—her husband, Simon, and their three sons, now 10, 13, and 17—came to Harvard eight years ago, drawn to the town’s rural character.
When asked what attracted her to the Community Preservation Committee, Allen said, “I feel it has to do with public space, preserving the public space.”
Until deciding to run for the CPC position, Allen had focused her attention on the schools, but said she preferred not to take a chairing role. She has helped with Celebration and was in charge of decorating the ’70s-themed Fall Fete at Fruitlands a few years back. “I’ll volunteer for anything and everything,” she said. With only one child still at Hildreth Elementary School, she wants to move her volunteer time beyond the schools.
“I like to be a part of something. I don’t want to be a part of something that is super controversial. I don’t have any agenda. I don’t have any ideas coming in that I want to change this or that. But it seems to me to be a good committee to be on,” she said. “I’ve done so much volunteering after school, for the fun fair, and such, and I wanted to be on something a little bit more permanent, a little bit more involved,” said Allen.
Looking for volunteer work with ‘more permanence’
Allen recently began a job providing sales support for a semi-conductor company in Acton. She said the job might not be as challenging as her previous jobs—internal operations manager at RT Engineering and an administrator for Dibbitt Inc. (where she worked for current CPC member Leo Blair)—but she appreciated something “closer to where my kids are and it’s a new industry and it’s the most wonderful group of people to work with.”
When Allen was asked about balancing Community Preservation funds among the CPC’s three restricted uses, Allen was curious about CPC’s role in 40B developments. “How much of the 40B is part of the discussion? Are they the ones who decide if a particular 40B gets done or not?”
Summing up she said, “I’d like to put my volunteering time into something that’s got a little more permanence with the group and makes a difference with the town,” Allen said.
