When the great Northampton development machine gets rolling, it will roll right over you. And more development is in the cards, especially in the western and northern areas of the city. Only an economic meltdown will stem the tide of proposals. The position of developers has been strengthened by the new so-called "informal" methods of approval now in vogue among cities and towns around here. They have smoothed out the regulatory bumps by gathering all the major players in the same room with the developer. No more will you go gaily off making your plans on the assurance of a city planner only to be hauled up short months later by the DPW or the Fire Department, where you find what you want to do is forbidden by some ordinance you never heard of.

In Amherst, the meetings are only for staff people and the developer. In Northampton, however, the informal meetings are unposted and normally not open to reporters or residents, and are attended by selected planning board and conservation commission members. The spirit if not the letter of the open meeting law is traduced when both city agency staff and some board members attend. It makes for a big meeting and an important meeting to be held behind closed doors. If the key members of the planning board, like the chairman, are the ones who come to the meeting, it further threatens to reduce the role of public hearings to an empty ceremony where minds are already are made up and everyone has heard it all before.

At the planning board meeting that would eventually approve the revised Beaver Brook plan, the chairman of the board, Daniel Yacuzzo, seemed to be doing a lot of the talking and the thinking for all the board members. He quoted the law forcefully and staff backed him up and that seemed to be that. Not only fatigue but passivity seemed to be present. Yacuzzo is, as I remember, also the head of the Chamber of Commerce. Is it a good idea having the same person who speaks for the business community head the city's principal planning agency? I don't think so. Not when so many people with an interest, direct and indirect, in development also are members of the Chamber. Not when critical leadership in city boards is dominated by people who earn their bread and butter from the development process. In the desire to be pro-business, Northampton is pro-development. Union people, who get the jobs that build the developments, help elect mayors in this town.

On June 16, 2000, residents of Grove Avenue sent Yacuzzo and all the parties involved a letter signed by 69 neighbors saying that they did not want their street connected into the new development. Two people who did not sign the new petition were the original organizers of the neighborhood action, George Kohout and Daniel Keith.

Hanley responded to the neighbors with hurt and outrage. It is hard not to feel a little sympathy for him after reading his four page Aug. 28 letter. Click to read Hanley letter He points out, quite correctly, that his original proposal for the land was relatively modest and effectively isolated the Skibiski land and made it harder to develop by not having a connector road. It was the city and the neighbors, he says, that pushed him into the larger development, and cost him a great deal of additional expense for engineering.