“Where is the Town?”

First published in the Wakefield Daily Item, August 22, 2023.

Driving through the gate to the Voke parking lot on our way to walk the dogs in Breakheart Reservation, my wife and I saw the signs of construction everywhere – heavy equipment, fencing, supplies, an actual sign with stern, red-and-white lettering just beyond the gate, at the head of a dirt road entering the Northeast Metro Tech Forest, with a warning: “DO NOT ENTER, CONSTRUCTION TRAFFIC ONLY.”

“The cutting and blasting are about to start,” I thought, an ache in the pit of my stomach. As I strode through the beauty of Breakheart, the dogs trotting happily, obliviously alongside, I couldn’t stop thinking about the thousands of birds and mammals and reptiles and bugs and plants living their last season in the neighboring forest. I felt a wave of sadness and anger break over me.

I knew that the cutting and blasting had been delayed just a little longer. Earlier in the week, I had taken a few afternoon hours off work to attend a hearing at the Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn. Advocates for preserving the NEMT Forest, and building the new vocational school on an alternative site, had filed an injunction to stop construction from moving forward in order to prevent imminent environmental damage.

Judge Salim R. Tabit asked a few probing questions. Do the plaintiffs have standing to file such an injunction? Counsel for the NEMT School Building Committee argued that tree cutting was outside any jurisdiction including that of the Wakefield Conservation Commission – who voted unanimously not to approve the project – and that the NEMT SBC had the permits they needed to cut the forest. The pro-forest lawyer disagreed.

As the attorneys jousted back and forth over statutes and legal process and whether this huge project to be built in Wakefield can move forward, Judge Tabit asked a simple, stark question:

“Where is the Town? If these site preparation activities will violate municipal regulations, I can’t imagine that the Town would allow it. Why aren’t they here, as an interested party?”

Yes, why weren’t they? The silence of Town Administrator Steve Maio and members of the Wakefield Town Council throughout the dispute over the new NEMT site location has been consistent and complete – one might even say disciplined. I spoke with one Councilor very early on, as many Wakefield residents, myself included, became aware and were shocked to learn that the new Voke school would be built on a forested hilltop site that would require clear-cutting thousands of trees and blasting off the top of the hill, rather than one of the already-developed alternative sites, which would be far less expensive and much more practical. The Councilor acknowledged to me that the site selection process had not been ideal, and that COVID had complicated things. I’ve heard that other Councilors, when asked, have said that NEMT issues are not in their jurisdiction. I read one account of someone asking Steve Maio about the issue and that he responded: “Don’t worry, it’s going to be great!”

It's not going to be great. But NEMT and Wakefield leaders know that there will be a shiny new school at the end of this and they're betting that this will create amnesia around what’s been lost, and around the fact that it didn’t need to be this way, as well as the fact that taxpayers will be paying much (much) more for this site than the alternative options.

Moreover, the idea that this is not within the Town Council’s jurisdiction just doesn’t fly. After the injunction hearing, when a group of forest advocates told the attorney representing them that Town Council members had responded this way, he was incredulous. “They’re the primary lawmaking authority in the town. Of course they have jurisdiction.”

People seem to think that because the Voke serves many local communities who send students there, Wakefield has little say in matters involving the new school. But, as I’ve noted before, there is one big difference between Wakefield and these other towns: we are the host community. This school will be built in Wakefield. This beautiful, irreplaceable forest that will be destroyed is a Wakefield forest. Of course this is a Wakefield issue.

So, again, why the silence of town leaders? In a sense, the answer seems obvious: they have been silent because the issue was already decided. At some point during the murky period between the early feasibility study that found the hilltop site infeasible and too expensive, and the charts and documents the NEMT SBC posted later, in which the hilltop site had become the chosen one, someone came up with an idea. This idea seems to have involved building a future hockey rink elsewhere on NEMT property. A decision was made. The fact that no Town Council members have spoken up, either to dispute the site selection or to clarify their views on it, leads me to an assumption that they agreed to go along with this decision. I don’t think I’m alone in making this assumption.

It’s not easy for me to write this. I like Steve Maio and I believe he’s done a tremendous amount of good for the town of Wakefield over the years. Also, I’m friends with most members of the Town Council, I’ve supported them in their campaigns and in the good progress they’ve made on many important issues. But on this issue, involving the destruction of a unique and priceless Wakefield natural treasure, their lack of transparency, their lack of engagement with the community, and their silence – have been sorely disappointing. The more cynical Wakefieldians out there may read all of the above and shrug. “That’s politics,” they might say, and they would be right. But my expectations were higher and I cannot shrug off this tragic loss.

The new Voke school is needed – something I and my fellow forest advocates have always acknowledged (indeed, almost all of us voted to approve funding for it); and these Wakefield leaders will no doubt go on to do other good works for the community. But sadly, a prominent part of their legacy will always be that they chose to destroy a beautiful forest unnecessarily. I, for one, will not forget.

© Jeff Kehoe