Cheshire Will Pressure Mobile Home Park Owner to Finish Roads
CHESHIRE, Mass. — The town is telling Pine Valley Mobile Home Park owner Morgan Management to fix the park's roads or return a rent increase to the tenants
The Selectmen on Tuesday said a letter from town counsel suggested that the town hold another rent control hearing requiring Morgan Management to provide proof that money has been set aside for road repair.
"To be fair to the tenants they have been paying for it and it hasn't happened," Selectman Robert Ciskowski said. "That would be our goal to get them to do what they said they would do."
The Selectmen, sitting as the Rent Control Board, approved in 2016 a $7.20 monthly rent increase, $5.12 of which was to go toward repairing and repaving parks roads that were torn up during the installation of a new septic system.
Since Morgan Management took over the park, there has been a constant stream of complaints from tenants about delayed maintenance, unfair rent increases and absent management.
Morgan Management has promised to finish the roads for some time now and Selectwoman Carol Francesconi said they are worse than ever.
"I went down there and it is worse than it's ever been," she said. "It's awful, the road is awful."
Morgan Management had been offered $1.7 million for the park in 2015. The Selectmen were not aware if that purchase had been completed or what the name of the buyer was.
In other business, Jacob Zieminski of Berkshire Boys Inc. canceled his meeting with the Selectmen over a proposed marijuana recreational cultivation development at 128 Fales Road. He did, however, spell out in an email what he would like to see in a host community agreement.
Zieminski wrote that he would like to split the 3 percent of the gross annual product that would go to the town: 1 percent for drug education, 1 percent for outreach and 1 percent for whatever the town wants.
Francesconi said this amount is not up to Zieminski and noted these funds would be to address any impact to public health, public safety and public services a cultivation site would have.
"That's not the way it goes," she said.
The Selectmen will meet with Zieminski in July.
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