Tired of having the Town Manager and Town Counsel use his appeal of Planning Board permits to the Center Park developer as an excuse to have the Town side with the developer and do nothing to stop the development, the abutter has filed a motion to withdraw his legal action.

The last fig leaf offering cover for the Board of Selectmen’s decision to do nothing has been removed.

Today is the last day that BOS Chair George Dixon can put the matter on the agenda for this coming Monday’s BOS meeting. Your e-mails and calls are more urgently needed than ever. Please contact George and urge him to put the Center Park project on the agenda for Monday, and specifically to discuss and vote on rescission of the town’s construction permit and legal action to interpret and enforce the deed restrictions intended to keep that property as an “open space conservation area.”

Even if you have contacted the selectmen already, now is the time to do so again. The landscape has changed. The town could have joined the abutter in suing the developer to abide by the law and respect the deed restrictions at a lower cost, but by applying the Town Manager’s repeated strategy of making abutters individually shoulder the burden of litigation against undesirable development, the town is now in the position of shouldering the entire responsibility and financial cost of defending Center Park. Town Counsel and Town Manager Cohen have been too clever by half, and so months have been lost, the Park has been ripped up and construction is under way.

The construction still can and should be stopped. Only the selectmen can do it. And they are required by law to protect your interests which are explicitly detailed in the deed’s conservation restriction. Besides calling George, please call and e-mail Matt Hanson and tell him it’s urgently necessary for him to assure George Dixon that he will support upholding the law, rescinding the construction permit (which, frankly, should never have been granted) and filing suit to enforce the deed restrictions.

Finally, e-mail Jon Kurland and thank him for supporting your interests and the rule of law. So far he is the only selectman who has emphatically stated that he supports the enforcement of the deed restrictions and the rescission of the construction permit by the Board of the Selectmen. Let him know you appreciate his support for our interests as residents, and for the quality of life for future residents.

Yours with best wishes and hope for the future of our town,

Roland Van Liew