Clarksburg Officials Bend Ear of Governor's WMass Director
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CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Five months into office, the Baker administration is out listening to what its constituents want.
In Clarksburg on Monday morning, it got an earful.
Like many small towns across the state, Clarksburg has been battered by school budgets, lack of funding for capital projects, unfunded mandates, shrinking state aid and declining payments in lieu of taxes.
Ryan Chamberland, director of the governor's Western Massachusetts office in Springfield, is meeting with small towns in his district as part of a listening tour to bring concerns back to the Community Compact Cabinet, an initiative Gov. Charlie Baker began shortly after being sworn in in January.
The former Blackstone selectman has already heard a litany of complaints after attending the Berkshire County Selectmen's Association dinner last month and said he's seeing trends along with economic development issues specific to certain communities.
"I can tell you about 30 problems of every town and just switch the names," Chamberland said. "Transportation costs, unfunded mandates have come up multiple times, there are similar problems."
One of the more immediate issues for Clarksburg is the cost to maintain the state's property, particularly the recent 300-acre brush fire in the Clarksburg State Forest that took four days to extinguish.
"When the state owns 53 percent of our property and only gives $20,000 or so for it, the effect on our budget ... we're $112 under Proposition 2 1/2," Town Administrator Carl McKinney said. "The bill I got for the Fire Department [for resources to fight the fire] is $2,000 ... and that's just for Clarksburg's portion ... and then there are other communities who assisted us with mutual aid.
"Where does this money come from?"
McKinney, a former selectman, blamed the state for not maintaining the forest and clearing underbrush.
"We've been warning both the state and [Department of Conservation and Recreation] as well as Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, we've been warning them for years of the fire hazard that is on our doorstep and they basically pooh-poohed the idea and indicated that our concerns were not justifiable. Well guess what," he said. "We're going to have to dip into the little money we have to pay these bills for a fire that was — in my opinion — caused by the neglect, the negligence of DCR."
He also pointed to the "hands off" attitude that has led to the poor condition of the pond at the Clarksburg State Park, better known as Mausert's, that now does not have swimming.
"It was a nice place and now it isn't, so the state is buying our land, not paying us for it, not maintaining it, and we're supposed to be happy about," McKinney said.
He suggested the state look at carbon sequestration payments to acknowledge how much Western Massachusett's green space offsets the more urban east.
"We're cleaning the air. It's a valuable task that we're doing," McKinney said. "We should be reimbursed in some way, shape or form."
Selectmen Chairman Jeffrey Levanos and William Schrade Jr. said the state should step up to maintain the properties and offer more in the way of PILOT funds.
"It's almost laughable," Levanos said. "We can't grow because we have nowhere to grow. ... My biggest thing is reimbursement of PILOT."
Schrade said a little goes a long way in small towns: "$50,000 to us is like a half-million dollars."
The town's had trouble keeping a building inspector because it can't pay enough. It would like to regionalize some services but can't afford those costs or find money for capital projects, he said.
"We have a road that's going to cost us $250,000," Schrade said. "If we use our Chapter 90 money, it's going to take us five years of not spending any of that money."
The town is looking to borrow those funds but the state Department of Environmental Protection's insistence on open-bottom culverts means some of the road's underpinnings can't be afforded. McKinney said prices for these types of concrete culverts have jumped 1,000 percent, coming in at $250,000 to $260,000.
"We got a $920,000 [MassWorks] grant, we have to use almost all of that just for culverts," Levanos told Chamberland. "We thought we would have this beautiful road ... we could dump almost that whole million dollars into culverts. It's mind-boggling the cost."
Veterans benefits are another issues for small towns, McKinney said. Clarksburg's budget for benefits is rising from $45,000 this year to $66,000 for fiscal 2016.
"It is a growing component of our budget and it's growing faster than health care, at least for us it is," he said. The state pays 75 percent but waits a year to reimburse, which is a burden for the smaller, less wealthy towns. Veterans deserve the benefits, McKinney said, but the state could ease the burden by increasing the percentage or making reimbursements more timely.
The Selectmen said they didn't want to seem dismissive of the aid the town did get or blame Baker for policies he didn't implement.
"I think we have a governor who's going to step up, being a former [Swampscott] selectman he seems — and people like yourself who was a selectman, too — he seems to understand what's going on for us," Schrade said. "But it always feels ... like we're forgotten about.
"We appreciate what the state is giving us but 3 percent doesn't cover our fixed costs. ... We're fighting over a $150 fax machine we can't afford."
Levanos wondered if anyone in Boston was listening. "It seems we keep getting the short end of the stick," he said.
Chamberland said the governor is listening, pointing to the release of $100 million in Chapter 90 money as soon as he was sworn in and $30 million in pothole money. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, a former Shrewsbury selectman who chairs the new Community Compact Cabinet, has been crisscrossing the state to meet with local officials.
"The first step is trying to be listening first and foremost," he said. "I'm out here, my office is in Springfield. Please utilize me as a resource, navigating the cabinet secretaries or any other agencies, and other issues that may come up. But I think this is a good first conversation about the issues that this town is facing specifically and we'll all kind of work together to make recommendations to the Community Compact. ...
"We want you to know the Baker administration is there for you and that's why we have an office out here."
Schrade jokingly asked Chamberland if he'd brought a check, which got the rest laughing.
"If you make one more visit to Clarksburg, you will have accomplished more than other people have done," Schrade said.
Tags: Charlie Baker, economic development, PILOT, state aid,
