WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The Select Board Monday heard what it hopes will be a compromise that will satisfy all parties concerned about a plan to place five new utility poles on Torrey Woods Road.

 

National Grid came to the board, in its capacity as the town’s road commission, to seek approval to erect the new poles that will serve 88 Torrey Woods Road, where Anddie Chan-Patera and Anthony Patera are building a new home.

 

Usually, hearings on such requests are uneventful, since the utility communicates with landowners in advance of the hearing to get “buy in” before going before the town board. But at a July 28 Select Board meeting, the residents of 150 Torrey Woods Road expressed concern that part of the plan put a pole directly in front of their historic home, which sits very close to the road.

 

On Monday, National Grid’s Nicholas DeRose was before the board with a new plan that he negotiated with Kristy Lyn Edmunds and Roslyn Kim Warby, owners of 150 Torrey Woods Road.

 

But that configuration, referred to as Site Plan 2, drew the objection of the owner of 0 Torrey Woods Road, a wooded lot across the street from Edmunds and Warby.

 

Elizabeth Heekin Bartels, who owns 0 Torrey Woods Road along with her parents, James and Jane Heekin, wrote the Select Board explaining why a solution that involved putting a pole near an environmentally sensitive section of her property would be problematic.

 

“[New] poles on south side of the road could destabilize the steep embankment down to Hemlock Brook and the existing pond; this would not just be caused by initial installation with associated tree cutting but also by ongoing maintenance cuts of vegetation in the future, on my property and without my control, leading to potential weakening of root systems, degrading of vegetation, etc.,” Bartels wrote.

 

She further explained that the embankment in question was stabilized by the town with her parents permission in 2003.

 

DeRose explained that Pole 2, the pole he sited on the south side of Torrey Woods (Bartels’ side}, was placed there to allow Pole 1 on the site plan to be positioned a little further west and out of the shadow of the Edmunds/Warby home.

 

DeRose said moving Pole 1 further east probably would mean removing a tree on the north side of Torrey Woods Road, a step that the utility was trying to avoid.

 

Thomas Bartels, who took turns with his wife at the podium at Monday’s meeting, said that the original proposal, Site Plan 1, had two new poles on the south side of the road, but neither was near enough to the stabilized bank to be concerning.

 

“Due to limitations in the length of the wire, [DeRosa] had to move Pole 2 from the original location toward the problem area,” Thomas Bartels said. “Now it’s pretty much on top of that rock retaining wall. We don’t think that’s a good idea, for the reasons we have communicated to you.”

 

DeRosa, who does “distribution design” for National Grid, at first said that both he and his line foreman believed the Site Plan 2 placement of Pole 2 put the pole “on pretty solid ground.” 

 

“Where we staked it behind the guard rail, it’s a relatively flat area where we’d be able to maintain [the pole] without impacting the steeper part of [the bank],” he said.

 

Thomas Bartels told the Select Board that Pole 2 could be moved 20 feet east and and still be an acceptable distance from Pole 1 if it was moved marginally.

 

“If you’re moving them in tandem east,” board member Peter Beck said, “is there a point – 10 feet? 20 feet? 30 feet? – where P2 is past the guard rail and P1 is not yet encroaching on a tree? Or no?”

 

“Possibly,” DeRosa answered.

 

“Where I staked it, 42 feet west, within the guard rail, it was solid ground,” he said later. “I don’t know anything about this [bank stabilization] project in 2003. But we’re already stretching [the wire] 220 feet from the second proposal with the 42-foot move for Pole 2, which is 80 feet over what we normally do. That is our compromise.”

 

After reiterating that moving the poles further east might mean taking down a tree, DeRosa said he had “no opposition” to Bartels’ proposal if all parties agreed.

 

Select Board Chair Stephanie Boyd then noted that the Select Board did not have another meeting scheduled until September if it follows its practice of skipping the second meeting of August. In order to avoid further delay for the Pateras’ building project, Boyd wondered if a special meeting of the board might be necessary.

 

In the end, the board agreed to schedule a meeting for Monday, Aug. 18, in hopes that it will not have to use that date.

 

Instead, the board took the unusual step of approving the pole siting plan contingent on the agreement of both property owners (150 Torrey Woods Road and 0 Torrey Woods Road) and National Grid.

 

“We need to say [in the motion] that Pole 2 will be moved away from the guardrail and Pole 1 will be moved in order to accommodate that, subject to the satisfaction of the property owners at 150 Torrey Woods,” Boyd said.

 

The Select Board asked that the parties discuss the particulars at the site and agree to a new plan. If they do, the vote taken on Monday will stand as the board’s assent.

 

“We need to meet [on Aug. 18] if it doesn’t work for 150 [Torrey Woods Road],” Beck said. “Because then all options are back on the table.”

 

Chan-Patera and Patera, who have a home address in Cambridge on the town’s property records, attended Monday’s continuation of the July 28 public hearing.

 

“We never thought this would be this complicated,” Chan-Patera told the board. “We met Libby [Bartels] five years ago and bought the land from her. My husband and I want to live here. We want to be full-time residents. However, we also want to be good neighbors.”

 

“Welcome to town,” Select Board member Matt Neely said to chuckles from his colleagues as the Patera’s left the room following the board’s vote.

 

The other main business on Monday was the board’s annual tax classification hearing. Following past practice, the Select Board maintained a single tax rate, choosing not to charge a higher rate for commercial property, and voted down other measures allowable under state law to shift the tax burden, like a residential tax exemption.

 

It did vote, 5-0, to make operational for the second straight year a Means-Tested Senior Property Tax Exemption enabled by a town meeting vote in 2024.

 

The motion passed on Monday included a provision that the board hopes will avoid the “seesaw” effect that potentially could impact residents who take advantage of the property tax relief measure.

 

“The Select Board hereby sets this year’s exemption amount under Section 1 as up to 100 percent of the amount of the Senior Circuit Breaker Income Tax Credit … for which the applicant qualified in the previous year, provided that in no case shall the sum of an applicant’s exemption in the previous’s year’s credit be greater than the difference between their real estate tax payment as calculated for the credit and 10 percent of their total income as calculated for the credit,” Beck moved. “The total expenditure for this tax exemption program shall not exceed $100,000 of the residential tax levy.”

 

The “in no case shall the sum … “ language is intended to avoid the seesaw effect for participants.

 

The $100,000 is the total that can be exempted from all qualified homeowners’ tax bills in fiscal year 2026. If that cap is reached before each individual receives the maximum exemption to which they are entitled, all recipients will have their benefit reduced by the same percentage to get to the $100,000 level.