Old Promise Honored

Nancy Eames intended the proceeds from the sale of four acres of well protection property to be used for the education of her children. But that was a long time ago.

Thirteen years after Mansfield Town Meeting approved the sale, agreeing to pay the Eames family the then-assessed value of about $6,000, a second promise by Mansfield selectmen has finally made the town's word good.

Nancy Eames and her son Scott listened to individual selectmen make their cases for and against the sale Wednesday, after more than a month of delays on a decision.

The four acres of land near the Witch Pond well field in West Mansfield were a small part of a much larger piece of wooded land that surrounds the well. Town voters in 1998 voted to purchase the whole piece in several parcels, to protect the well, for a total of $950,000. Another proposed use for the protected land was to create playing fields. All the sales were finalized except for the Eames piece.

In the spring, Nancy Eames contacted Town Manager Bill Ross and asked one more time for the town to make good on its promise. Selectmen agreed to put the question in front of voters on the spring town meeting warrant, but declined to support the present assessed value of $18,000 the family requested as payment, and the article failed.

The Eames family then decided to ask the board again, this time for the 1998 price of $6,000, and the members have been tossing the request around for weeks. Opponents have been saying the land is not even accessible any more and too pricey in this economy, and proponents were saying going back on a promise to a resident and thwarting a Town Meeting vote both cheapens the town's moral integrity and undermines the democratic Town Meeting form of government.

Wednesday's discussion was more of the same.

"I maintain my original opinion," said Doug Annino. "I think we have a moral obligation. This was passed at Town Meeting to buy it for $6,000... It's not in the best interest of the town to do this to these people. We've been taxing them for years."

Kevin Moran agreed. "Given the intent of Town Meeting in 1998, and the discretion we have now, I want to honor the Town Meeting vote. The town didn't execute this very small piece."

But George Dentino stuck to his original opinion too. "I have always tried to keep personalities out of it," he said. "The board voted not to support this - the moral obligation has disappeared...The obligation we have is to carefully spend the money of this community. You can't get to it - if you could you could stand there and talk to the trees. It will only stay in its pristine state."

Moran said, "It's as though I borrowed a tool from Jess (Aptowitz) and then broke it and gave it back to him. I was unaware of the context at the time we voted not to support it. The town would not have voted the $950,000 lightly."

Board member Olivier Kozlowski is a lawyer, and had taken it on himself to research the intent and wording of the 1998 articles, and he concluded that the intent indeed was to purchase the whole thing. He asked if the town could put up its own cell tower on the property, as one Boston based developer had recently wanted to do, and Ross replied it was certainly a possibility.

The board voted 3-2 to purchase the four acres from the Eames family for the original assessed cost of $6,000, with Dentino and Chairman Jess Aptowitz opposed.