Steven Greffenius's blog

During the run-up to the special town meeting on March 8, I wrote three pieces to support a better plan for the Colburn school. I've collected those posts, along with some other material, in a short ebook titled Colburn School and the New Library. To help preserve this building, please download the file and have a look at it in your PDF reader. Thanks!

Here's a report from the front lines. On Monday, March 8, Westwood town residents met in the high school's main theater to discuss the Finance Commission's warrant to fund a new library, and to vote on the proposal. The Commission's warrant needed a two-thirds vote in favor to appear on the ballot for the town's April 27 election. “When it came time to vote,” writes Ed Burns in Westwood's Wicked Local, “the chorus of 'Ayes' crushed the sprinkling of 'Nays'.”

That language describes the atmosphere in the theater pretty well. Rather than permit the town to discuss the proposed library at length, library backers presented their case for almost an hour and a half. The presentation included details about how the town intends to finance the project. Since those details bear on the question of whether to issue a $9.3 million bond to build a new library, that information belonged in the meeting.

Too much of nothing
Can make a man ill at ease.
                             ~ Bob Dylan

Your neighbors might ask you, how can you oppose this project, when we've been planning it for ten years? We've already invested a lot of money in these plans. I'd turn the question around and ask, how can we plan a new library for ten years, at such a high cost, and come up with a plan for Colburn school that's no better than this one? From the earliest proposal in 2000, we knew that a new library would affect the Colburn school. In 2004, a year before the school district administration moved their offices to the new high school, we knew the building would stand empty in 2005. So it has stood for nearly five years. We have had five years to decide what to do with this empty landmark; and this is the best we can do: mothball the building, put it on rails, move it again, and then decide what to do? That's not a plan - that's procrastination.

It's plainly procrastination to let a well constructed, historic building deteriorate for so long, then spend so much nmoney on a plan that's not actually a plan. Everything about the building says don't let me go downhill anymore. Please don't let this happen to me. Everything about the library directors' proposal says we don't k now what to do with the building. We want to push the problem down the road to see if someone else can solve this nuisance for us. The proposal might not be so wasteful if we were not talking about $300,000 in extra cost. The proposal might not be so insulting if we were not talking about a building that stood as Westwood's handsome historical symbol for so many decades.

Do you want to be among the voters who condemn the Colburn school to destruction?

The Finance Commission held its first hearing on the proposed new library on February 8. At the hearing, members of the Finance Commission asked the library director, why can't we apply for the next round of funding, when the state covers 50% of the project cost, rather than only 30%? Tom Viti replied that the wait would be at least three years, with an uncertain outcome. Most critically, the wait would affect the library's ability to raise private donations for the project. People are reluctant to contribute when the project remains only on the drawing board, with ground breaking far in the future.

Historic Colburn School in Westwood, MA

The same reasoning goes for the Colburn school. Who wants to donate funds for its preservation, when the town cannot decide what to do with it? A prospective donor has to ask, why has the town not faced this question? Because plans to restore the Colburn school with private donations would compete with fundraising for a new library? Because the problem is inherently difficult? Because library planners know that the chances of preservation are low, and the painful decision to raze the building is best deferred to keep plans for a new library on track?

The Finance Commission voted 12-3 this week to recommend passage of the tax override required to fund Westwood's proposed new library. I find myself wondering who opposed the measure, and whether their reasons for voting no are the same as mine.