by Eli Boling
To the Editor,
Last week’s Cricket had a letter by John Kolackovsky on the Chapter 3a zoning. I was initially struck by the tone of the first few paragraphs, in which the author compared town staff members to cartoon characters. I couldn’t help but be offended, having personal familiarity with the professionalism and dedication of town staff.
Aside from disagreeing with most of the rest of the letter, I wanted to point out a few things, some of which might not be obvious. First, the author is from Rockport, not Manchester; what business is it of his what Manchester does with its zoning? The name rang a bell, and so I refreshed my memory with some searches.
He wrote an opinion piece once before in The Cricket, on the same topic, but the more interesting recollection is that he is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought by a small set of residents of Rockport vs. the Town of Rockport related to the MBTA zoning. Reading through the short list of plaintiffs in the case was educational, but what really jumps out is the attorney on that case: Michael C. Walsh. That’s the same attorney whose misguided, and by some objective measures incompetent, representation led to the utter destruction of the Manchester Community Center organization. As a direct result, the town no longer has a community center.
So now comes John Kolackovsky, perhaps following the siren call of this attorney, telling Manchester to follow his lead on Chapter 3a zoning requirements. This is not advice we should take. You don’t retain control of a thing by sticking your head in the sand, which is what a no vote here will do. You retain control by exercising your authority over policy and law in areas where you have jurisdiction, in response to external forces, be they natural, sociological, economic or legal. Taking no action just guarantees loss of control, whereas approving the required zoning changes allows us to retain significant resources (grant money we would otherwise lose), while continuing to have strong control over where and how some limited development in town might occur.
Eli Boling
Manchester
