My brothers and I, our families, friends, neighbors, and the many Cross St. Playground’s state-wide supporters who attended the SJC hearing in Boston yesterday, who we’ve communicated with and have just met for the first time, are most appreciative of our wonderful experience and opportunity to defend the causes of justice, fairness, and equal application of the State’s open space land protection laws. Yesterday’s SJC hearing pronounced our five-year effort to seek justice. Despite any decision by the Justices, no one can correctly deny that the State of Massachusetts’ publicly funded, and managed, recreational open spaces have been under serious assault.
The 97th amendment to our State Constitution, Article 97, was overwhelmingly adopted by the voters in 1972. From 1969 to 1972, our State Legislature authored and tweaked the Article 97 land protection bill to depict the right of the people to have continuous access to the recreational open spaces, conservation areas, clean water, and air in their environments. For Article 97’s first 30 years, municipally managed recreational open spaces were highly valued. The people entrusted their elected officials to value and manage their parks with a sense of responsibility and duty to the citizens. But that changed. Economic pressures and many hands reaching for State and Federal monies for building projects enticed short-sighted politicians to grasp for the low-hanging fruit of land available within their urban sections – the parks – for their projects. Free land. That attitude has led to urban park after park after park being chipped away and reduced acre by acre, and square foot by square foot. The assault continues.
That assault is depicted locally. The City of Westfield halved the Article 97 and National Park Service protected Paper Mill Playground in 1988 to build the Paper Mill Elementary School. Munger Hill Elementary School was also constructed on protected land. That land, along with the Paper Mill Playground land, was acquired in 1970 with HUD funds FOR PARKS, yet that didn’t deter the City of Westfield from constructing a new elementary school on either parcel.
The City of Westfield acquired the 5.32 acres on Cross St. through a tax foreclosure taking from the heirs of James Noble. Mr. Noble once lived on Main St. The playground area was once farmed. Westfield has a history of hostile dealings with the Noble Family (Senior Center legal actions). The heirs owed approximately $160 in back taxes on the land comprising the playground. Westfield never auctioned off, or sold the land to acquire the taxes owed. Yet the City DID sell four other parcels taken from the James Noble heirs in order to be compensated for tax purposes. When the tax foreclosure process was completed in April of 1944, the City obtained title to the land and held it.
In 1946, the Planning Board recommended that the land be used for a new park in then Ward 5. In 1948, the City Council transferred the care, custody and management of the former Noble land to the then Parks Commission. In 1949, the Mayor requested that $1,500 be appropriated for the grading and installation of swings, slides, merry-go-round and other climbing apparatus. The Little League baseball fields were constructed. The Cross St. Playground was born. In 1957, the City Council passed Ordinance 291 that REDIDICATED the playground to be the John A. Sullivan Memorial Playground forever after – as in permanent. The name never caught on and people continued to call it the Cross St. Playground. It has been the City of Westfield’s one and only use of that land.
In 1979, the City Council approved a $360,000 bond for the ‘Multi-Park Project’. This ‘Project’ encompassed the renovations and establishment of five public parks – including the Cross St. Playground. The City received a 50% reimbursement from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to help fund the project. Westfield’s taxpayers paid for the other 50%. In turn, the EOEEA was reimbursed from the National Park Service. That’s how the NPS obtained its recreational easement on the Cross St. Playground, Whitney, Chapman, Paper Mill, and Hampton Ponds Playgrounds. With their agreement with the EOEEA, the City of Westfield entered into a covenant to protect the Cross St. Playground – forever – as a public recreational open space. The big wooden sign at the entrance to the playground has had the NPS’ granting program sign on it since 1982. Who knew!
All through 2012 when we, and the National Park Service and EOEEA reminded Westfield of its obligations to protect the playground, the City of Westfield destroyed the Cross St. Playground anyway. Then the City of Westfield wrote to the Massachusetts School Building Authority that “We didn’t know it was protected until they started to dig”. The City had gained permission from the Westfield Historic Society, and the Massachusetts Historic Commission, to destroy the historic Ashley St. School, that was NOT on the playground land – in order to build a school on playground land that was not legally available at the time. And the City Council and School Building Committee approved it. Who knew, right? In August 2011, who DIDN’T inform the City Council that the City covenanted with the NPS to preserve the Cross St. Playground?
The City of Westfield never voluntarily took any action to attempt to follow the National Park Service’s Code of Federal Regulation to apply for permission to use the playground for a school. Westfield was happy to wait until AFTER a school was built to follow the laws that were required BEFORE building a school – just like it did with the Paper Mill Playground. Unless the good and honest citizens of the City of Westfield had taken legal action – with a fair warning to the City – the laws would have been successfully circumvented. We warned the City in March of 2012 of what we would do if the City didn’t obey the laws. The City chose not to. Now, the citizens of Massachusetts are minus an historic assets – the old Ashley St. School – and the people have been denied access to 75% of a public recreation open space. And we’re the “opponents”?
The City of Westfield claims that because the Cross St. land was acquired through the tax foreclosure process, what we believe is a mechanism of acquiring and not a “purpose” use for the land, the City argues the land cannot ever be devoted to an Article 97 recreational purpose. The City claims all of its actions from 1946 through the present are just choices to use the land as recreational land for the time being of the past 71 years, and can change the use of the land to whatever it wants to do with it without having to abide by Article 97’s requirement to gain a super State Legislative majority in both houses. We’re not arguing that Westfield can never change the use of the land. We’re arguing that the Article 97 requirement to gain Legislative authority must be accomplished FIRST.
The City of Westfield’s attempt to repeat its 1980’s Paper Mill Playground-like assault, upon even less fortunate people in the low income urban neighborhood around Cross St., was met with a spirited, persistent, and justified resistance. Who knew?
With large and available School Department parcels readily available and in not needing any approval, other than from the School Committee, to build a new school upon, that if selected, a new school could have opened in 2014. We hope one result of our efforts will prompt the awakening voters of Westfield to seek and assess the City’s true political motives and question their leader’s decision making values. Why has the City of Westfield been an “opponent” to building a new school properly?
Sincerely,
Thomas Smith
