During their regular meeting on August 20, Planning Board member Jon Mathieu expressed his frustration at the Town Counsel for not responding to the Board’s repeated inquiries regarding the Jane Lane cell phone tower project, proposed by Industrial Wireless. Mathieu said that the Counsel has not answered their questions pertaining to the Planning Board’s ability to grant the tower company a special permit for construction.
Rather than being a body elected from the residents of Mattapoisett, the Town Counsel is Boston law firm Kopelman and Paige. According to their website, they perform those same legal services to over one third of the towns of Massachusetts.
Mathieu said according to the bylaw, the Planning Board is the special permit granting body of Mattapoisett, but Industrial Wireless has been arguing that because the proposed location of the tower is outside of the designated corridor, the decision should come from the Zoning Board of Appeals.
“They are less than forthcoming with answers for us. We usually have to bring it up at two or three meetings. It’s very disturbing that we can’t make decisions because we don’t have answers from Town Counsel,” Mathieu said. “They may actually have to get a variance in order to build the tower outside of the zone. In which case, they need to go the Zoning Board of Appeals.”
“Our job is to plan this town,” Mathieu said.
The rest of the Board agreed that the lack of communication was hindering their efforts to make a decision whether or not to grant a permit for the tower.
The Planning Board then unanimously passed a motion to retain outside legal counsel in order to address their questions.
There were no public hearings on the agenda for the meeting, but the Planning Board met informally with Attorney Daniel Perry, on behalf of the Village of Mattapoisett, regarding $50,000 that is being retained by the town for maintenance. He said the Village is looking for some financial relief, as they need to begin some repairs on the infrastructure of the complex. Perry said the Village pays about $8,000 a year for routine facility maintenance.
“If the Board is inclined to grant some relief, we’d have to amend the special permit to permit it to be released,” Perry said. He added that he came to the Board to investigate whether or not they would need to be part of the process.
“That retained money wasn’t for a maintenance issue, it was for an emergency repair fund,” said Ron Merlo of the Planning Board. “It’s for something catastrophic, like if the hundred year storm comes along,” he said.
Merlo also said he believed that any extra money for regular repair work should come from the condominium association.
Planning Board Chairman Thomas Tucker said that if there was enough interest accrued on the money, they may be able issue funds from the interest. He said the developer was responsible for putting up $30,000 at the outset but due to a legal loophole, the money was not deposited until after the complex was complete. The full amount of $50,000 has only been retained for the last three or four years.
“Nobody was watching what they were doing. They’ve been playing catch-up ever since,” Tucker said.
As a result, there is only about $1,100 of interest accrued on the sum.
“If he had been putting the money in from the beginning, there’d be a lot more,” Tucker said.
Perry said he would speak with the Conservation Commission in order to get their view and would investigate other means by which the Village would be able to appropriate extra money for maintenance.
The next meeting of the Mattapoisett Planning Board will be on Monday, September 17 at 7:00 pm.
By Eric Tripoli