On Dec. 18, the Greenfield City Council took an action meant to, as one city councilor put it, “integrate disability justice” into local governance: passed an ordinance codifying remote access to its municipal meetings.

The state opened up the possibility of remote access to public meetings — from city councils and school committees to planning boards — amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Those temporary provisions allowing for remote access to public meetings are set to expire, however, on March 31. Gov. Maura Healey had signed the extension of hybrid access for governance meetings in 2023. 

State lawmakers have not passed any law guaranteeing hybrid access to the public. One bill, H. 4771, known as “an act to modernize participation in public meetings,” has been stuck in committee since June of last year. That has raised concerns among a coalition of groups, including the Disability Law Center, the Boston Center for Independent Living, the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, and several press organizations.

“Hybrid access to public meetings has been transformative for people who previously faced barriers to exclusively in-person meetings — people who are immunocompromised or have a disability, people who have young children or care for disabled or aging family members, people with limited transit options, and more,” the groups said in a statement. “Universal hybrid access is essential going forward.”

In the early months of 2023, the ACLU of Massachusetts conducted a survey of every city council, select board, and school committee in the state which found that “more than half of those bodies are already conducting fully hybrid or live-streamed meetings.” But some, it seems, are doing so by updating the rules of their public bodies rather than passing an ordinance — a more permanent step guaranteeing remote access in the future.

That’s what Greenfield has now accomplished. City Councilor Katherine Golub presented the ordinance to the council with an amendment. The amendment added language to ensure that all municipal hybrid meetings are “in accordance with the American Disabilities Act.” 

“What inspired it is an attempt to integrate disability justice into how I see the world and govern,” Golub said. “And an attempt to make our governing as participatory as possible.”

Golub said that hybrid meetings benefit a variety of people, allowing them to participate in their local governance. She said that hybrid meetings not only increase accessibility for those with disabilities, but for single caretakers of children like herself as well. 

Golub isn’t the only local city councilor facing that reality. In Northampton, for example, City Councilor Rachel Maiore told The Shoestring in 2023 that as a single mother of three, remote and hybrid meeting structure were “pivotal” to her ability to continue to serve on the body. 

“Our Council meetings can often run four or five hours, so for me having to secure childcare and take out food would be prohibitive,” she said at the time.

Golub said she steered and organized the developmental meetings for the ordinance. The initiative to codify hybrid meetings was presented to Golub by Massachusetts ACLU organizing strategist, Javier Luengo-Garrido, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Full disclosure: Luengo-Garrido is on The Shoestring’s advisory board, which does not have any editorial role in our independent newsroom.) But the collaborative development of the ordinance started at the beginning of last year. Over the course of the year, Luengo-Garrido proposed language on behalf of the ACLU for the ordinance to Golub. Golub then brought the language to various city officials who provided input and feedback that were “integrated and addressed.”

Luengo-Garrido said that due to the pandemic, many meetings have been held remotely. The ACLU noticed an increased engagement of people with mobility issues, disabilities, and single parents to not only participate by attending meetings, but to give testimony when given the opportunity to do so in their home. He said that elected officials in Greenfield were “highly interested” in keeping civic participation accessible and that their willingness enabled them to work proactively on the development of the ordinance.

Speaking on the broader impacts of increasing accessibility, Luengo-Garrido said that the passing of the ordinance aids in the understanding of “the ways those cities can work to protect minorities” as well as “helping people access city services” and “feeling comfortable in understanding that those cities and towns are welcoming communities.” 

The ordinance was written in collaboration with various city officials, which included staff from economic development, the IT director, the communications director, and several others. 

“It’s an example of our power to create change at a local level, especially when we collaborate well,” Golub said.

Golub said she reached out to Greenfield’s IT director, Fernado Fleury, prior to the start of the present mayoral administration and was “buoyed” by his enthusiasm and willingness to support the ordinance.

Fleury did not respond to requests for comment. 

“Anytime you can include the public more is a wonderful thing,” Greenfield Mayor Ginny Desorgher said. “We have a huge senior population here … This allows them to participate in the meeting.”

Matt Conway, the communications director for the city of Greenfield, manages the recording of meetings for boards and commissions. Conway said that Golub worked to ensure that the ordinance was “effective, actionable, and something that the city could consistently execute and maintain.” 

Conway said the establishment of hybrid meetings is a method of having increased public engagement. And having more opportunities for people to participate aids the city’s goal of consistent accessibility in a world still living with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. The city also established remote access for other governing boards, including the Board of Health, Planning Board, and the Historical Commission.

Conway said that there are also other benefits to hybrid meetings on top of increased accessibility. 

“There’s nothing quite like having the actual archive of the meeting itself,” Conway said. “It’s of a great benefit to our residents, the city itself, and to anyone else looking to learn about Greenfield.” 

That includes those looking to hold local governments accountable. Justin Silverman, the executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, told The Shoestring that having access to governance and the ability to engage with representatives is a “civil rights issue” and that access to hybrid meetings is “a matter of equity.” 

It’s unclear, though, whether those efforts to increase democracy will stay at the local level or receive broader backing from state lawmakers and the governor. The coalition of organizations supporting continued statewide hybrid-access provisions, which included the ACLU of Massachusetts, warned back in April 2024 of the consequences of failing to extend those protections.

“The countdown is on: If lawmakers don’t act this session, people with disabilities or other reasons they can’t attend meetings will be completely shut out when city councils, select boards, or school committees decide to hold meetings exclusively in person,” the statement said. “Accessibility makes our democracy stronger, and we can’t afford to close the door on these perspectives and communities.”

Previously, Healey had put forward a bill that would have left decisions on hybrid meeting access up to individual municipalities — a proposal the coalition including the ACLU called “a major step backward.”

Golub said she would like to see hybrid meeting laws codified at the state level and expressed concern over the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump and its broad impacts. 

“In a time of decreasing access for public participation at the federal level, I believe that we have a fierce responsibility to everything we can to protect public participation,” Golub said. “Our opportunity for doing that the most is on the local and state level.”

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Every four years, national media turn their attention to the Rust Belt, a term that describes Midwestern industrial and manufacturing states whose economies were decimated by the decline of those industries in the 1970s. This region contains the coveted states of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Many rural parts of these states have a majority of white residents. The broader Rust Belt, however, also has long and important Black and Indigenous histories and contains some of the nation’s fastest-growing minority populations – in particular Latino, Arab and Asian communities.

Yet when reporters descend on the rural Rust Belt to understand voters, the people they talk to are almost exclusively white.

I am a geographer who studies the experiences of communities of color in the rural Rust Belt. Rural is a relative term, but when it comes to policy research, it usually refers to nonmetropolitan areas. From 2021 to 2023, I interviewed 35 people who live or lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana and identified as Black, Indigenous or people of color.

I found that these Rust Belt residents have pressing concerns of political importance. Some of these issues are shared by white residents – and, as such, are well documented. But Rust Belt residents of color have additional problems that politicians and the media have long overlooked.

Local impacts

My interviewees described typical rural Rust Belt struggles.

They complained of limited internet access, few or no grocery stores, declining roads and other infrastructure-related challenges. Jobs and opportunities for career advancement were scarce in their communities, while death and suicide rates were high.

These difficulties are faced by white Rust Belt residents as well. But other struggles they mentioned are less often considered part of the rural experience.

They described feeling socially isolated and discriminated against at work and school. Many had experienced racial or ethnic profiling by potential employers and police and been verbally harassed.

One man, Miguel, who worked in carpentry, said his colleagues openly used racial slurs against him.

“I was putting away some boxes, and they said, ‘Oh that’s because you w–backs are good at packing things in trucks,’” he told me.

All names used here are pseudonyms; research ethics require me to protect the identity of my subjects.

“A lot gets brushed under the rug,” said Bao, a Vietnamese American woman whose father also works in a hostile environment. “All the management folks are white,” so “if you speak up, you lose your job or are ignored.”

These comments conveyed an overall sense of not “belonging.”

As one woman from rural Pennsylvania explained, people regularly ask her, “No, really, where you from?”

“They want to hear ‘Asian’ or ‘Korean,’” she said. “It’s very uncomfortable for me.”

These racial tensions worsen during election periods. Some people I interviewed reported having been turned away or threatened at voting stations – harassment they attributed to their religious, cultural and political backgrounds, or the way they looked.

Many Rust Belt voters of color already lack political power because they live in racially gerrymandered districts. When news coverage of the region ignores their voices, too, it compounds that feeling of not belonging.

In 2017, The Washington Post visited the small town of Jefferson, Ohio, in Ashtabula County, to interview voters described as “rural Americans who fear they’re being forgotten” after Donald Trump’s election. Their coverage focused almost exclusively on white residents.

“How did you go to Ashtabula County and not see Black people?” asked Belle, a resident who identified as African American.

Not always Republican

In the past three presidential elections, Ashtabula County has followed state trends: It backed Obama in 2008 and 2012, then voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Trump won Ashtabula with 60% of the vote in 2020. That’s 26,890 votes, which means that 16,497 people still voted for Democrat Joe Biden. In the years since, Ashtabula County residents have also voted with the state in two Democratic-backed initiatives: to protect abortion rights and legalize marijuana.

In other words, just because a state or district backs a Republican for president doesn’t mean everyone is Republican, or that Republican voters always vote the party line. They can split their votes, and have.

Even Ohio’s largely Republican delegation in the House of Representatives is misleading about the state’s political makeup. Ohio is a heavily gerrymandered state where voting districts have been drawn to benefit Republican candidates.

U.S. Senate elections show more diversity in Ohio’s voting base.

In 2018, Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown won 53% of all votes in Ohio, including 51% of those cast in Ashtabula County. Four years later, both the state and Ashtabula County picked Republican JD Vance over Democrat Tim Ryan to replace the outgoing Republican Sen. Rob Portman.

Why it matters

In September 2024, Vance – now Trump’s vice presidential running mate – claimed that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping and eating cats and dogs. After Trump echoed that false claim on the debate stage, the city got 30-plus bomb threats and other threats of violence, and had to close multiple schools.

During the pandemic, Trump’s derogatory branding of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu” led to increased hate crimes against immigrants and people of color.

In my interviews, several participants mentioned how local restaurants and stores owned by Asian Americans had been vandalized. One woman, Lanh, who lived outside Springfield, said her favorite restaurant had to close.

“They started vandalizing the restaurant, writing graffiti and set the restaurant on fire,” she said.

The owners were from Thailand, but, Lanh said, the vandals “thought they were Chinese. Folks around the local community like my parents didn’t feel safe,” she added. “I didn’t feel safe.”

Hateful political rhetoric is known to increase hate crimes against immigrants and people of color.

When the Rust Belt is stereotyped as red and white, such experiences go unheard.

So do some good news stories.

The emergence of Black-owned bee farms in northeast Ohio, for instance, is one small example in a host of businesses started by people of color. Together, they are helping to boost the region’s beleaguered economy, much as Haitian immigrants have been fueling Springfield’s growth.

Rural America is nuanced

Nationwide, 24% of rural Americans identified as people of color in the 2020 census.

That figure is probably low because the census tends to undercount nonwhite respondents – a problem that was particularly evident in 2020. Even so, that’s a quarter of rural residents who don’t fit the national stereotype of rural America.

Rural America is white and Republican. It’s also trans, queer, Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, South Asian, Democratic and much more. Even if some are Republican, they still aren’t the rural Rust Belt Republicans portrayed in the national media.

Ignoring these nuances reinforces stereotypes that the rural Rust Belt is the exclusive domain of white conservativism. But this region isn’t now, and never has been, simply red and white.

Christabel Devadoss received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

In a highly competitive presidential election year, candidates for state and local office in rural areas know that every vote counts. While so-called down-ballot races frequently go uncontested, Democrats and Republicans alike are switching their strategies to contest candidates who would otherwise run unopposed in rural districts.

Historically, voters in rural districts in places like Missouri, New York, and North Carolina have had one option as they move down the ballot: a Republican. But this year, Democrats are running their own candidates and contesting Republicans in red rural districts.

Read More

This Year, Investment in Rural Votes Isn’t Just at the Top of the Ticket

Vice presidential candidates with rural bona fides have garnered plenty of attention this election cycle, but political strategists from both parties recognize that down-ballot races may prove just as important when it comes to rural votes. 

There’s one place though, where the reverse is true.

In Massachusetts’ three rural counties, it is the Democrats who typically run for state and local office without opposition. This year, new leadership in the Massachusetts Republican Party – Mass GOP – is working to change that. Among the races the party is paying closest attention to are those in the state’s rural districts. 

“We’re definitely more committed to down-ballot candidates than the party has been in the last two election cycles,” Mass GOP Executive Director John Milligan told the Daily Yonder.

Massachusetts has elected Democrats in every presidential race since 1984, when voters cast their ballots to elect Ronald Reagan for a second term. Currently, the state’s delegation to Congress is completely blue. At the state level, there is a supermajority of Democrats, who control both sides of the state legislature. 

For candidates like David Rosa in the Western part of the state, the supermajority is a real issue. 

“Our one-state party is really a dilemma for all concerned,” Rosa said in an email to the Daily Yonder. 

Rosa is running for State Senate to represent Berkshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Hampshire, a rural district in Western Massachusetts. Rosa will be on the ballot next to incumbent Paul Mark, who has held the office since 2022 – where he won against a candidate unaffiliated with either party. 

For those living in Franklin County, Massachusetts – which is among the counties in the Senate district where Rosa is running, the choices will narrow as voters move down the ballot. In Franklin County’s first state representative district, a Democrat runs unopposed. There are no Republican challengers further down either. Democrats are the only ones running candidates for lower offices like Clerk of Courts and Register of Deeds in Franklin County.

Milligan said the uncontested races in Franklin County are symbolic of the GOP’s struggles in rural parts of the region as a whole. Milligan said understanding that the rural populace in Massachusetts looks quite different from other parts of the country is essential to succeeding in these races.

“I don’t think the population of Nantucket matches the population of rural Pennsylvania,” Milligan said. 

On the other side of the state, Republican State Senate candidate Christopher Lauzon is making connections with small-town Massachusetts voters in an attempt to build a broad coalition. Lauzon is running in the Cape and Islands district, which includes Barnstable and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The district is another one where Democrats dominate.

Lauzon will be one of the only Republican candidates for a state-level office on the ballot in Cape Cod and the Islands. A Democrat, Thomas Moakley, is uncontested for State Representative, and no Republicans are on the ballot for local-level offices in Dukes County (Martha’s Vineyard) or Nantucket County. 

On the ground, Lauzon said his campaign is focused on building a broad coalition across what he described as a varied geographic district with different communities. 

“Obviously, national politics can complicate things, but I really try to separate the local from the national,” Lauzon said. “No matter who wins the presidential race, no matter who you support for that, your local races have a much larger impact.”

The post Nationally, Republicans Are the Ones Running Unopposed in Rural. For MA It’s the Opposite.  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

This article is a collaboration by The Shoestring and the Montague Reporter, and was featured in the latter’s September 19, 2024 edition.

SPRINGFIELD – In Massachusetts, it is illegal for a city or town to regulate how much a private property owner can charge for rent – except at mobile home parks. 

In 1994, state legislators narrowly passed the Rent Control Prohibition Act, which dissolved municipal rent control boards and made local regulation of rental rates, or the price of services provided to tenants, illegal. Mobile home parks and publicly-subsidized housing were excluded from the ban because they tend to house some of society’s most vulnerable: the elderly, disabled, or poor. Residents at mobile home parks typically rent the land, which comes with water, electricity, and sewer hookups, and own the homes they park on it.

In Ludlow, Orange, and elsewhere across the state, rent control boards are arbitrating bitter struggles between landowners seeking rent increases, and residents who say they fear being priced out and losing their homes. The housing advocacy organization Springfield No One Leaves (SNOL) is helping tenants at several parks in western Massachusetts organize to fight rent hikes. 

“Manufactured home parks are really one of our last truly affordable homeownership opportunities,” SNOL director Rose Webster-Smith told the Reporter. “People who built these communities should be allowed to stay in these communities – they shouldn’t be priced out.”

Last week, residents of the West Street Village Mobile Home Community in Ludlow rallied with SNOL members outside the Springfield housing court ahead of a hearing to appeal their city’s approval of a 142% rent increase. 

Veteran Springfield housing rights attorney Joel Feldman is representing the residents. “We don’t take these cases unless we believe they are wrongly decided,” Feldman told the Reporter. “This was another situation where the landlord had a lawyer, and the tenants didn’t.”

The West Street Village tenants allege that owner Tom Lennon provided the rent control board with inflated business expenses and appraisals to justify the increase. The decision to approve the hike was “arbitrary and capricious” and should be reversed, according to Feldman’s court filing, because the board failed to follow proper procedures, and lacked the proper evidence needed to justify the increase.

Members of the board must file a deposition, Feldman said, and a decision on the appeal is expected soon. 

“It’s not my job as a legislator to legislate the morality of people, but my goodness, I’ve never seen this type of greed,” said state representative Aaron Saunders, whose district includes Ludlow. “I can’t get past that type of thing happening to folks in our community.”

Saunders grew up in Ludlow, not far from West Street Village, and when he heard Lennon planned to raise the lot rent from $207 per month to $500.06, he and state senator Jacob Oliveira visited the park to hear from residents. They learned that many people in the development have been dealing with significant electrical, sewer, and heating issues that they say Lennon has failed to address.

“Setting aside the greed, the obscene greed, that’s in play here,” Saunders said, “I’m hopeful that the housing court sends a clear message – not only to Tom Lennon, but to anybody else who would try to fudge numbers to try to extract more money from folks who can afford it the least.” 

Ripple Effect

Two years ago, motivated by conditions at the park and the prospect of rent hikes, West Street Village residents formed a tenants’ association with help from SNOL. Ethan Field, a longtime resident who started talking with his neighbors about the issues, became a leader of the group.

“I said, ‘You have problems, and so do the rest of us, and it’s in all of our best interests to come together to fight this thing,’” Field told the Reporter. “This is an aging park in need of repair, with zero amenities, but it is the highest-priced all-ages community of its kind in the greater Springfield area… This has a potential ripple effect, across the board, for [setting] the new bar for so-called affordable living.”

Lennon did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The sole listed manager of the southeastern Massachusetts-based real estate investment firm Gold Rush Properties 1, LLC, Lennon purchased the Ludlow park in 2021. He also owns the Hillside Valley Mobile Home Community in the same city, and the Residences on Mill Pond in West Stockbridge.

“He just seems money-hungry,” said Russ Lemon, a resident at Hillside Valley, where the monthly lot rent increased from $288 to $386 after Lennon’s arrival. “There is just no consideration for the people here, many like myself who are disabled or of retirement age.”

Unlike in Ludlow, the West Stockbridge rent control board closely scrutinized Lennon’s application for a 230% rent increase at the Residences on Mill Pond, and in May denied his request. Lennon is now appealing that decision, Webster-Smith said.

In Chicopee, tenants at Bluebird Acres Mobile Home Park are currently appealing an approved increase, while at the same time some are trying to purchase the park and establish it as a cooperative. Feldman and SNOL organizers, who are helping with both efforts, said they believe Lennon is also trying to purchase Bluebird Acres, and possibly two additional parks in the region. 

“We’re seeing a lot of these Boston investors coming out and buying property in the area, and it’s going to gentrify it,” Webster-Smith said. “A lot of our seniors are living in these parks, a lot of our differently-abled people… People are desperate right now. We have a huge housing crisis, and a huge shortage of affordable housing.”

Dead on the Hill

Today, about two dozen of Massachusetts’s 351 municipalities have mobile home park rent control boards. The laws establishing the entities are typically decades old, and many towns struggle to fill them with volunteers willing and able to follow complicated – and high-stakes – decision-making procedures.

“Unfortunately, many rent control boards don’t do this correctly,” Feldman said. “It’s really a shame, because it’s very important to the lives of the people living there.”

In recent years advocates have had a hard time getting housing protection legislation through the Joint Committee on Housing. Six bills filed in the most recent legislative session would have implemented some form of rent control in the Commonwealth, according to Webster-Smith, and each of them ended in a study committee.

One bill sent to study, co-sponsored by Springfield senator Adam Gomez and supported by the Homes For All Coalition, would have repealed the ban on rent control statewide. The city councils of Boston and Somerville have requested permission to enact rent control on a local level, but were not approved. Another bill would have created a “rental arbiter” position within the attorney general’s office, while another would have capped the rent increases that can be imposed on senior citizens.

“What the hell is our state legislature doing?” Webster-Smith said. “If you look at the amount of bills that were filed versus what is passed, what are we doing?”

Legislative pressure is also being applied from the industry side. 

“[W]hile rent control is often initially viewed as a safeguard to protect residents, it ultimately undermines the stability it seeks to create,” Lesli Gooch, CEO of the Manufactured Housing Institute, told the Reporter. “In reality, rent control policies result in decreased investments for necessary community repairs and upgrades, and negatively impact residents.”

Hometown America, an Illinois-based corporation that owns 80 manufactured home communities in 12 states, has spent $300,000 since 2021 lobbying to change the Massachusetts law requiring that all residents of a mobile home park be charged the same rent, WBUR’s Simón Rios reported this summer.

Residents of Miller’s Woods and River Bend, a manufactured-home park for seniors in Athol, have partnered with tenants of another Hometown park in Middleborough to sue the company for not complying with the uniformity law. Hometown, which has lost once in court, is now trying to overturn the law.

This year, for the second session in a row, a bill to create a mobile home park rent control board in Athol was sent to study. Attleboro and Plainville have also passed home-rule petitions in recent years to establish rent control boards, with little success.

“It’s a difficult policy to pass but a little frustrating as there is a rent control board in Orange for a similar property which lies a mile or so away as the crow flies from the River Bend,” state representative Susannah Whipps wrote in an email to the Reporter.

Rates of Return

Orange’s rent control board has been meeting since June to decide on a proposed 43% rent increase at that park, Leisure Woods Estates. It would be the second significant hike in two years, and Leisure Woods management is requesting that it be applied retroactive to the date of their initial request last fall. 

In justifying the request, the company’s lawyer has suggested that due to the depressed economic condition of Orange, “a higher rate of return is warranted as such conditions pose more of a risk.”

“There’s going to be a lot of homeless people with no housing to go to,” Orange Council on Aging director Tracey Gaudet testified at a June hearing. “I just can’t imagine where the money is going to come from, or how these people are going to survive.”

At the Orange hearings, several residents expressed frustration with the park owner, particularly concerning paving, tree removal, and stormwater management. After being asked for more information to justify the increase from $410 to $588, including vendor invoices, Leisure Wood’s management is threatening to sue the town.

Glenn Gidley, who co-owns Leisure Woods and six other parks in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, also owns Salem Manufactured Homes, which builds, transports, and sells homes to park residents. The company’s website describes it as a “thriving, vertically integrated family business,” though Gidley has testified that the companies are entirely separate.

Years ago, Feldman helped Leisure Woods residents win a suit forcing the owners to address flooding, neglected road maintenance, and other infrastructure concerns. Longtime resident Alfred Henderson was one of the plaintiffs. Today Henderson, a widower in his 90s, says that if the rent increase is approved in full, he plans to pay the difference into an escrow account until the matter is appealed in court, and he hopes others will do the same.

An Uneven Game

Eviction from a mobile home park is a much faster and less forgiving process than a foreclosure. Residents are frequently left with no way to relocate the structures they own, which once arrived on trailers but are now immobile. 

“The [park] owners have tremendously more leverage in that situation than they do in any other landlord-tenant relationship,” Saunders argued. “And then, not only are these folks without a place to live, but the value they did have in their property is sold for a fraction of what it’s worth.”

Since Tom Lennon’s purchase of Ludlow’s West Street Village park, a number of residents have moved out and sold their homes to him. According to Ethan Field, new arrivals then bought the homes from Lennon for a much higher price.

“Many who purchased from him also financed through him,” Field added. “It’s not only lot rent – they also pay a mortgage directly to him.”

Field said many of his neighbors feel “trapped,” paying too much in rent but unable to move or sell their homes. “The astronomically high lot rent, for what you’re getting, is preventing you from selling it at a reasonable fair market rate,” he said. “You may be stuck having to take some incredibly low offer.”

Webster-Smith also accused Lennon of trying to intimidate and discourage residents at his parks from organizing. Tenants, she said, have been told to call Lennon – or the police – if anyone knocks on their door to discuss issues with management.

“These are all human beings that live in these parks, and they deserve to be treated as such,” she said. “Every tenant has the right to organize.”

Saunders lauded the West Street Village residents for their ongoing efforts. “They have done incredible work, and they have done it in the face of veiled threats and pushback, and every type of divisive tactic you can imagine,” he said. “They stuck with it, and getting that far is an inspiration. It should be a model to folks in other parks to see how to do it right.”

The rent control cases in Orange and Ludlow are ongoing, and decisions could be made in the coming weeks. The Orange board will continue to deliberate on Leisure Woods’s proposal at its next meeting on September 24, and a decision on the Ludlow appeal is expected at the end of the month. 

“The case is going to be instrumental in directing us in what changes need to be made to this statute in Ludlow,” Saunders said. “If they say, ‘Yes, this thing is unfair, and it’s greedy, but it’s not illegal,’ then we need to have a conversation about what needs to change.”

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In recent years, one of the biggest political battlegrounds in Easthampton have been its parks projects. A skate park, pickleball courts, a dog park, and places to play basketball have filled discussion in public meetings.

But as those parks projects advance through planning phases, some Parks and Recreation Committee members and maintenance staff workers are skeptical that the city has done all the necessary groundwork to support this expansion of maintenance demands. Facing multiple logistic limitations, including a moldy and water-logged maintenance office, staff and committee members are questioning how Parks and Recreation will be able to meet increased maintenance demands.

“It seems logical that in order for the department to successfully take on further expansion of services, basic infrastructure needs need to be met,” Parks and Recreation Commission Vice Chair Eric Poulin told The Shoestring. “The city seems to want to put the proverbial cart before the horse.”

A new skate park and a new dog park are planned for the city, both of which the Department of Parks and Recreation would maintain. In July, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported on the loss of a public gymnasium at the former Pepin Elementary School due to a handful of municipal departments, including parks and recreation, being unable to take on the maintenance responsibility. The parks department currently maintains six parks — including the 260-acre Nonotuck Park — a playground, the Mount Tom North Trailhead, and the Manhan Rail Trail. It also operates three city-owned cemeteries.

Maintenance staff for the Department of Parks and Recreation and the cemetery department staff currently work out of a number of buildings, with some built between 1938 and 1939. All of them are facing significant infrastructure challenges.

On June 28, The Shoestring visited the department’s maintenance building, storage garage, and sheds at Daley Field, as well as the cemetery maintenance building, and spoke with staff members.

Mayor Nicole LaChapelle did not return an interview request for this article.

***

Evidence of regular significant flooding was apparent upon entering the Parks and Recreation maintenance building. In addition to a powerful damp smell, a water line on walls, equipment, and boxes was easily visible throughout the building, coming up roughly 2 to 4 inches. On the drop ceiling tiles above were large swaths of water damage and what appeared to be a significant amount of mold in several areas.

Green Environmental Consulting, a company based in Florence, conducted a “baseline mold evaluation” of the maintenance building in 2011. This evaluation consisted of a visual inspection and air and surface sampling. The report findings, obtained via a public records request, outline a significant presence of mold in the building.

“Approximately 16 square feet of suspect black mold growth” was observed on the ceiling in the bathroom and confirmed in sample testing, according to the report. The GEC report also cited water stained carpet, standing water, and mold findings from sample analysis that amounted to a level high enough to qualify as a significant health risk.

GEC’s report recommended remediation and the removal of all damaged materials and building repairs to prevent water intrusion and resampling to ensure the removal of the mold. However, GEC ultimately concluded that “the inspection techniques used are inherently limited in the sense that only full demolition procedures will reveal all building materials of a structure and, therefore, all areas of potential fungal growth. Other unidentified microbiological impacts may be located within walls, ceiling cavities, below flooring or grade, and other non-accessible areas.”

Despite the results of the mold evaluation report, maintenance staff say they are still working out of the building and no significant efforts for removal or remediation have been made.

Jeff Craig, who has worked for the Parks and Recreation Department on and off since 1986, recalled a few updates to the maintenance building he had seen during his time, some done by staff themselves, but nothing that would amount to the recommendations made in GEC’s report. He said the parks office staff did receive a much-needed new building around 2010.

The Shoestring requested records to verify what building renovations, or updates, were done in the past, as well as any future work planned for the parks department maintenance building and any building inspection records for the maintenance building. The city responded three weeks later saying that they had no records.

In addition, the city does not currently have a building commissioner and the Building Department was closed for a period of time starting June 28. The email address listed for the Building Department’s clerk is also defunct.

This situation seems to draw a stark contrast between priorities for working conditions for the Parks and Recreation Department maintenance staff in comparison to some of the other municipal work centers in the city.

In July 2023, the City Hall building on Payson Avenue, built in 1970, shut its doors to staff and the public for air quality concerns amid HVAC repairs. The air quality concerns were triggered by the presence of concrete dust in work areas from a basement wall being opened to install new HVAC equipment.

“Our primary focus is protecting the health and well-being of our  employees and residents who may enter the building,” LaChapelle said in a press release at the time. “This may be an over abundance of caution, but this decision has been made to ensure a safe working environment for all. We are committed to reopening City Hall quickly, but only when we are assured by experts that it meets the highest standards of safety and functionality.”

An air quality report conducted a few days later by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels, relative humidity, fine particulate levels, and volatile organic compounds to all be “undetectable” or “below range.” The state also found the temperature to be “within or close to the recommended range of 70°F to 78°F.” The report recommended implementing up-to-date contamination protocols during the renovation to avoid further potential migration of potential pollutants from the construction.

City Hall remained closed to staff until August 21, 2023. A press release from the mayor’s office that day says the building underwent “a deep cleaning by ServicePro” and that staff should “notice improved air quality and comfort within their workspaces.”

By contrast, just down the road, parks maintenance employees are still contending with many challenges in their work environment. In addition to water and mold, ventilation and heating in the maintenance building are seemingly inefficient as well.

There is one small air vent on the building’s ceiling surrounded by water damage and what appears to be mold. There is a large garage bay door that can be opened for air flow, but this is not practical in the winter and leaves staff little respite from extreme heat in the summer. In the winter, the space is heated primarily by a wood stove with a supplemental propane heater in the bathroom kept just warm enough – around 55 degrees fahrenheit – to keep the pipes from freezing. Staff said they were also responsible for gathering and splitting the wood for the stove.

Outdated electrical service in the maintenance building also added some challenges for efficiency and functionality with regular daily activities, like warming up lunch in the microwave, causing outages.

In addition to these limitations and frustrations, there is not a lot of dry storage space in any of the department’s buildings. In the garage where supplies like tractors and limestone are stored, the roof and slatted sides have significant gaps, offering clear views to the outside.

“We store all of our equipment in here, so if it gets rained on there’s a potential for damage,” Nick Laprade, an employee of the department since 2017, told The Shoestring. He recounted a few times limestone for marking the baseball fields was also damaged by rain and that it remained a challenge to keep the supply dry enough to use.

The Parks Department is also using Daley Field’s stone bathroom building, built in 1937, for storage since it can no longer be used by the public. The stone bathroom is the only bathroom on Daley Field and has not been usable for nearly a decade. It has since been replaced by a portable toilet  that has some accessibility limitations. The department does have access to three small sheds for storage. However, two of those sheds are collapsing, one of which has a caved in roof. Parks staff said the newest shed, that is in the best condition, was a donation from a private group.

The maintenance building bathroom, which suffers from regular flooding, sometimes has some uninvited guests, too.

“We’ve had a snake in there once, or I guess more than a few times,” Laprade said. He added that chipmunks, spiders of all sizes, and birds were not uncommon either.

The Parks and Recreation Department and the cemetery staff are also struggling with insufficient and unreliable vehicles, causing some to use their personal cars for work. Craig said the department has four vehicles, one donated, and two “buggies,” one of which was also donated. Craig told The Shoestring one of the department’s trucks is from 1994, and most are in need of regular repairs. He said parks security also has one “hand me down” vehicle the Easthampton Police Department donated. A new vehicle was funded in both the Parks and Recreation Department and its cemetery budget this year and both of those new vehicles arrived in mid-July.

Transportation needs for the Easthampton police, however, have seemingly dominated municipal transportation priorities in recent years.

The Shoestring was not able to get up-to-date fleet records and recent vehicle purchase records from the Easthampton Police Department (the state supervisor of records determined on Thursday the department is not complying with public records law). Records from 2022, however, show five cruisers and a “patrol boat” from 2019, three from 2018 — including two motorcycles — one from 2017, and two from 2016. At that time, the police had roughly 20 vehicles registered and in use. The police also purchased two Teslas in 2022, two hybrid vehicles in 2020, and an unspecified “police interceptor” in 2021.

What’s more, current city practices have removed the ability of the Easthampton Police Department to hand down vehicles to other municipal departments, which has historically been a main source of upgrades for those departments. Grant funding the city has used for the transition to electric and hybrid vehicles has required the trade-in of EPD cruisers.

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The city does have a “master plan” for the Department of Parks and Recreation spanning from 2021 to 2027, and some items are broken down into phases or have accompanying cost estimates. Strong timelines, however, are missing from the plan. Renovation and re-opening of the Nonotuck Park pool, which is listed on this plan, was completed earlier this summer. The maintenance building does receive a single-paragraph mention in the plan. It references “many in-house repairs” by parks staff over the years, and includes a $250,000 cost estimate for a new building.

This is not the first time the parks maintenance building has appeared in a renovation plan. The Shoestring obtained a letter the Parks and Recreation Committee wrote in March to the City Council, which  recalled that the replacement of the maintenance building was included in a 1998 “five-year plan.” The letter says that the current parks director, John Mason, had also previously submitted a 2014 plan to replace the building and add a meeting space for youth groups. His efforts were unsuccessful.

“There is a strong consensus among members of the Parks and Recreation Commission that this Nonotuck Park Maintenance Shop is unsuitable for further use and must be replaced as soon as possible,” the commission wrote. “Funding requests to accomplish this have been submitted on each capital improvement plan since FY 2019. The FY 2023 capital plan includes a request for the funding needed to purchase a new, prefabricated metal workshop to replace the outdated structure.”

The city’s master plan for the department would add two staff positions — a $16-an-hour offsite park maintenance job and a program director with a salary range of between $30,000 and $35,000 yearly — but also comes with additional maintenance needs because of the addition of two new basketball courts. No timeline or cost estimates are currently listed on the plan for those courts. There are also plans to increase bike- trail connectivity through the park, likely leading to increased park use and maintenance needs.

Neither the skatepark nor the dog park appear on the city’s master plan; however, both have moved through several design plans and received support from the City Council. In 2021, the city approved the use of $42,500 from the Community Preservation Act for the skatepark design and site selection. Councilors also approved $30,000 for soil testing and concept designs in 2023. So far, there have been two designs proposed for the skatepark and one design proposed for a combined skate park and dog park off of Ferry Street. Another design has been made for a dog park that would be located inside Nonotuck Park — a space inaccessible to cars in the park’s off season.

Two additional pickleball courts have also been moving forward through planning stages and will be located next to the existing pickleball courts in Nonotuck Park. The parks department will be in charge of maintenance for those courts, which are not mentioned in the city’s master plan.

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