WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Plans to create a dog park in South Williamstown continued to draw fire at Wednesday's meeting of the Community Preservation Committee.

 

The South Williamstown Community Association is seeking $3,500 from Community Preservation Act funds to help build a fence for a dog park in the yard behind the South Center School near the junctions of Routes 7 and 43.

 

Although the creation of the park is not contingent on town meeting awarding the $3,500, opponents of the plan used the meeting to argue that the town should not go ahead with the project.

 

Arguing that the park would be a detriment to the Williamstown Historical Museum — the next tenant of the South Center School — and the adjacent historic Southlawn Cemetery, resident Thomas Bartels made an emotional appeal to the committee to vote no on the funding request.

 

Town Manager Jason Hoch, an ex officio member of the Community Preservation Committee, told his colleagues that they should go ahead and assume the dog park is going to happen with or without the committee's recommendation to town meeting.

 

"I would ask the committee to consider the town manager has decided these are compatible uses," Hoch said, referencing the Town Charter, which gives him the authority to make the call on the land's use. "For your purpose now, assume it's going forward.

 

"It's happening."

 

The Town Charter reads, in part: "The Town Manager shall have jurisdiction over and be responsible for the planning, construction, reconstruction, alteration, repair, maintenance, improvement, use and rental of all town property except as hereinbefore provided with respect to schools and library and except as otherwise specifically voted by the town."

 

SWCA President Betty Craig, appearing before the CPC on behalf of her group, said the park should be referred to as the Williamstown dog park because it will be an amenity for all town residents. She also said the dog park planners, since the last CPC meeting, scaled back the park's size to give 6,000 square feet more outdoor space to the Historical Museum.

"If they need outdoor space, we hope we can accommodate what we want to do with what they want to do," Craig said.

 

She added that the SWCA supports the museum's relocation from its current digs at the Milne Public Library, and she thinks the dog park will help draw people to the property and thereby benefit the museum.

 

None of those arguments swayed Bartels, who said that while he is a dog lover, the site makes no sense for a dog park.

 

"It never occurred to me a dog park was needed in South Williamstown, a place with large private properties and abundant space," Bartels said. "Imagine dogs being chauffeured from the population center to South Williamstown to have their social engagement. That seems problematic to me at a time when we're all trying to reduce our carbon footprint and be more energy efficient."

 

Bartels then made the discussion personal by noting that he has a son, Mathias, buried in Southlawn Cemetery and visits him often.

 

"It's a place of solitude, a place of quiet reflection, a place of remembrance and of being connected, being with your loved ones," Bartels said. "What helps is being able to listen to the wind in the trees, listen to the waters of the Green River rushing by. An adjacent dog park where dogs and owners socialize with a lot of yipping and parking is a detriment.

 

"Dog parks and cemeteries don't make good neighbors."

 

Craig said she had seen Bartels in the cemetery often as their families' plots are near one another. And she disageed with his thoughts on the compatibility of dog parks and cemeteries.

 

"I do not feel that our companion animals are incompatible with the departed who we love," she said. "I feel there can be an affinity in the space and the use and they're not necessarily incompatible."

 

Bartels and Hoch disagreed about whether the town manager had the authority to allocate the land to the dog park in light of a 2015 town meeting vote awarding a lease to the historical museum.

 

The warrant article itself does not specify the entire school grounds are part of the 50-year lease endorsed by town meeting. The article read, in part, "lease the former South Center School located at 32 New Ashford Road with a portion of Assessor Parcel 30-313 upon which the building is situated for the purpose of storing, displaying and preserving Town historic artifacts and documents..."

 

WHM President Patricia Leach, who serves on the CPC, stayed out of Tuesday's discussion but said at the Jan. 6 meeting that the museum had planned to occupy the entire school grounds.

 

The issue that brought the dog park before the CPC — the $3,500 request — may end up being irrelevant. The SWCA reported in its application that it already has raised that much to build the fence. Craig reported on Wednesday that project has received donations from 49 people. 

 

The rest of the CPC on Wednesday appeared unwilling to choose sides in the dog park debate.

 

"Clearly, it's controversial, and that makes me uncomfortable," committee member Jeffrey Thomas said. "This committee should not be put in a position to take sides. I don't think it's possible to purely look at this project based on its merits."

 

Most of the committee may share that opinion.

 

In a year when the CPC is not sure whether the town will have sufficient funds to support all 10 applicants — certainly not without spending down all the reserves in the CPA account — Chairwoman Jane Patton asked her colleagues to participate in a straw poll at the end of Wednesday's meeting to determine what projects are priorities for the group's Feb. 23 meeting, where it hopes to vote its final recommendations to town meeting.

 

The dog park was one of three projects to receive two or fewer votes in favor. One, a request from the Conservation Commission to help rebuild a foot bridge to open access to a piece of land under the commission's control, split the panel, 4-4. The other six applications garnered at least six affirmative votes.

 

The other projects with one or two supporters on the panel were a request for $32,535 to support the renovation of the historic Smedley House and a request for $50,000 to support renovations at the First Congregational Church.

 

The Smedley House application was modified in response to questions raised at the CPC's Jan.6 meeting. Applicant Bruce MacDonald rewrote his request to say that, if awarded the funds, he will put a deed restriction on the property calling for six consecutive days of public access to the historic Smedley Tavern, in the basement of the Main Street home.

 

MacDonald said he proposes a guarantee the property be available for tours May 5 through 10, which coincides with Benedict Arnold's time in the home and would allow school groups to schedule tours.

 

The committee struggled with the application on a couple of different levels.

 

"I'm not sure this qualifies now," Thomas said, referencing the fact that the historic preservation work already is complete. "We're not funding historic preservation. We're buying access to the historic site. I'm not sure this is in the remit of things we can fund."

 

CPC member Mark Reinhardt asked whether the deed restriction included restrictions on cosmetic changes to the tavern. MacDonld told the committee it did not.

 

"We're providing access, but to what is not guaranteed," Reinhardt said. "Are we buying enough public access? Are we buying public access to something that can be painted flamingo pink?"

 

MacDonald replied that it's unlikely anyone who purchased the historic home would defile it, and in any event the historic elements — the floor, the ceilings, the chimney and oven — are part of the structure and can't be changed.

 

"If you remove those things, you remove the house," he said.

 

The First Congregational Church application elicited questions on technical and principled grounds.

 

Technically, the committee members debated whether the kind of work being done amounted to preservation or renovation. The bigger question is whether CPA funds should support project in a church.

 

First Congregational Church Moderator Moira Jones cited the Boston-based Community Preservation Coalition, which lists numerous projects at churches that have been supported by CPA funds.

 

Proponents of the church project point to the Main Street structure's critical place in the town's history and its current role as a meeting house for numerous community groups with no ties to the congregation.

 

All of the applicants faced at least one followup question from the committee, and several applicants came ready with specific answers to questions raised earlier this month. Just one applicant, reacting to the CPC's budgetary constraints, lowered its "ask." The town's Spruces Land Use Committee, which is looking at how to reuse the soon-to-be-closed Spruces Mobile Home Park, lowered its request from $65,000 to $53,000.

 

The Spruces committee made that decision at a meeting earlier Wednesday evening, where committee member Andy Hogeland told his colleagues he consulted with Guntlow and Associates, one of two firms that provided an estimate of how much it would cost to survey and complete wetlands delineations a the Main Street site.

 

If its request is approved at May's annual town meeting, the Spruces committee hopes to issue a request for proposals to procure engineering services later this year. The committee has determined the work is a necessary first step before it can begin designing uses for the parcel.