Is Fitchburg Serious About Sustainability?

By Phyllis Hasbrouck

Once in a while we see flashes of brilliance among the alders of Fitchburg, and they must be acknowledged. Though I no longer haunt each and every Fitchburg Common Council and Plan Commission meeting, being too busy organizing and fundraising for Fitchburg Fields, I do catch up on what happened by reading that excellent publication, the Fitchburg Star. And I was delighted to read that on Aug. 5, Alder Jay Allen took a principled stand and voted against the Lacy Rd. interchange with Hwy. 14!

Why did Alder Allen do it? Because the interchange is integral to the current plan for Green Tech Village, and he wanted to get people's attention as to how far the city has strayed from its original conception of that development. He said that the city "lacked the political will to enforce the standards it had once deemed essential. He referred to the protracted discussions involving the development of Orchard Pointe, the failure of the [Green Tech] Sustainability Task Force to endorse standards, and continued pressure by developers to create just 'another run-of-the-mill development.'"

I admire someone who can admit that something that they have supported is turning out differently than they had hoped. Conditions change, commitments are not always kept, and a person with flexibility and intelligence can change their vote if they realize that a project is no longer in keeping with their values. I want to know what happened to the rest of the alders? Why didn't they vote with Alder Allen?

As we parents know, if there are no consequences for bad behavior, children will stop taking our pronouncements seriously. Likewise, if developers' initial statements about how "green" a development will be are discovered to be just window dressing, but no one says, "Meet our standards or go somewhere else" then developers will just learn to give lip service and then do what's best for their own bottom line.

Stopping that interchange would have gotten the attention of all those who aren't taking sustainability seriously. I hope that we'll continue to see such leadership from Alder Allen, and that the rest of the alders will follow suit.