I find it ironic that, in the same issue that celebrated the tenuous success and illustrated the existential threats to the Harvard General Store, the town of Harvard advertised construction bids for the Complete Streets Program. Despite numerous informed objections to the program’s plan, the Planning Board abrogated its responsibility to protect such a valuable asset, and the Select Board, driven solely by a need to spend grant money, approved moving to construction. The Select Board abused the authority over the parking area in front of the store, given to it a dozen years ago, for the expressed purpose of preserving the store.
The approved plan includes such ludicrous elements as the use of a pedestrian walkway as a barrier to separate parked cars from traffic and that routes pedestrians from the center to the Bromfield School and churches along that walkway. You know how bad this plan really is when: 1) the DPW head will protest to anyone who will listen that he inherited the plan from the last guy, 2) an embarrassed Select Board spent its meeting time determining the color of the sidewalk surface to avoid addressing deficiencies in the plan, and 3) the only response from the Select Board’s chair to the objections raised is the need to get another grant to fix the problems they created with the first one.
Perhaps it is time for more than one member of this board to realize they’ve been there too long, have lost sight of the town’s priorities, and need to find a new hobby.
Bill Marinelli
Stow Road
