I Suck At Conservation Commission Board Meetings

Last night, Karen and I attended a Conservation Commission board meeting for our town of Norwell. Now, I suck at Conservation Commission board meetings. I used to think it would be great to hold a governmental position and serve my community. But after last night's meeting, the allure of doing many great things while working for the government may be wearing off.

The issue at hand for last night's meeting dealt with Jacob's Pond, which is the pond located behind my house. Just from my brief time living by the pond (the area is known as the Jacob Shores), I have gotten the impression that the neighborhood historically has always... for lack of a better word... been dumped upon. Thus, rather than say that I am a resident of the Jacob Shores, I like to jokingly use the term "Pond Scum" instead.

Anyway, there is also a senior housing area on the other side of Jacob's pond. This condo has recently asked the Conservation Commission to let them opt out of an agreement to contribute funds to be used for the cleaning up of Jacob's Pond. The agreement was made when the condo was first built and has since been in the document of condo fees.

Needless to say, my neighbors were concerned about the Conservation Commission's decision. So, the neighborhood (including Karen and I) attended the meeting to which the Commission was to make their decision.

There is a reason why government gets a bad reputation. Most of the time, the reputation is deserved. Aside from the meeting running late, the whole governmental process is inefficient and somewhat embarrassing. Plus, there's always that one authoritative person in the group or board that just gets on everyone's nerve. (I bet he was picked on growing up... and is now compensating.)

As it turns out, the meeting for the Jacob's Pond decision was already closed. Thus, no new information from any of the large group of my neighbors could be added or reviewed. Apparently, my neighborhood was given a chance to attend previous meetings about the subject already. The problem was: none of the residents, or abutters to the property in question were notified in time for any of these meetings. It's like receiving an invitation today to something that occurred last week. It definitely made the Commission look bad. (Either that, or the post office... take your pick.)

Eventually, the Commission reopened the meeting in light of discovering the fact that the residents were not notified in time. And luckily, people kept their certified mail envelopes as proof. And then... the fun began.

Based on the information that I reviewed, the answer looks plain and simple: the condo should still have to contribute funds to the cleaning up of Jacob's Pond. There's documentation (which I am quite surprised that some of the neighbors still have after all these years) that even states that the condo must contribute funds annually to clean up Jacob's Pond and that these fees will never expire. The documentation was from the original applicant and was approved so that the condo could even be built in the first place. So to let the condo off the hook makes no sense to me.

Of course, things are never that easy in local governments. It turns out that the Commission has done some dealings with the Condo and have now somehow made the condo's contribution to the funds for cleaning up Jacob's Pond dependent on the condo's septic system. In other words, if the septic is not contributing any waste to Jacob's Pond, then the condo does not have to contribute to clean it up. Unfortunately, I have no idea how that came about.

So needless to say, things are a bit messy with this issue. Throw in the fact that the Commission (until recently) lost oversight of the funds and it just makes government look even worse. It turns out that the condo has not contributed to the cleaning up of Jacob's Pond for some time... several years in fact... It was just pure chance that the Commission even noticed that piece of information recently. Yay government.

Anyway, I think my neighbor (Rose) probably summed it up best last night. Rose is an old woman who lives around the corner from Karen and I. Rose cracks me up because she will say anything. Basically, Rose said "This seems useless" because one of the board members kept antagonizing what was said by the residents. Like I said, there's always one.

The eventual outcome for the night was that there would be another open meeting in August. If I thought last night was interesting, I am betting the meeting in August will be even more heated.