Sean Peter Kane

On September 28th, the Planning Board of Easthampton, Mass, rejected retailer Stop & Shop’s plan to build a new grocery store in the city. The topic has been an outgoing item for the city and its residents for the past ten months since the application was submitted. It however has been weighing on residents’ minds for years when the site in question was sold to Stop & Shop.

Easthampton is my home town. I hold it close to my heart. As an urban planning graduate student, I also am quite interested in the Master Plan which Easthampton approved in 2008. The plan reflects the fact that the city is growing but that the growth must be done through smart growth functions. Developed with assistance from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, the Master Plan incorporates elements to ensure the city is a community and not a strip development.

This brings us back to the topic of Stop & Shop. The residents of Easthampton have always shunned big box developments. While an effort to formalize the consent failed, the city has never approved a large retail development within its borders. A single grocery store, Big E’s, is in town – a mainstay for decades though significantly smaller than any grocery store of today. There are a few small specialty grocers in town, but Big E’s has been the only true grocery store. Big Y, based in Springfield, attempted to build a store in town back in the 1980s, however, that initiative failed and the company was forced to build in Southampton on the Easthampton border.

Discussions regarding big box developers in town have come up a number of times. Previously they were seen as a potential opportunity for economic invigoration during the town’s recessive years in the 1980s and early 1990s. Those days have since been replaced by the economic “boom” that Easthampton saw in the 1990s and 2000s, starting with the establishment of a lively artist community. People now regularly walk and shop throughout town, something we certainly did not see in the 1980s.

The latest Master Plan builds off that ideal. It focuses on strengthening the business core of the city, establishing a highway business district along Northampton St – all with a walkable community in mind.

Stop & Shop filed for development under “planned business development”. Under this type, a development must place its parking at the side or rear of the building. A number of studies have been done to show the negative impact of front-located parking lots. Easthampton has deemed this type of parking lot out of favor. Stop & Shop’s submitted development plan clearly placed its parking lot in front of the structure (though behind two minor streetside-located buildings).

It was this blatant disregard for Easthampton’s approved parking guidelines that caused Stop & Shop’s plan to be rejected. The Planning Board was not rejecting the development on the basis it was big box or that the town does not need business development. It was rejected on the terms that the public good must prevail. The city had created specific design guidelines that the public desired. Those businesses that desire to work and grow in the town must respect the desire of the public.

Unlike board chairman, Jason Duda, I too would have rejected the plan. The citizens of the town shot down a no-big-box ordinance. The Planning Board must therefore approve big box development. Those developments must adhere to the public’s design guidelines. If Stop & Shop revises their plans in accordance to town regulation, I’m all for supporting this business. The town is growing and does need additional food sources. The town however must ensure that those food sources are established with the public good and concern in mind.

Jason Duda clearly had some self interest weighing on his shoulders when he stated he supported the development. For him, the board should approve the plan (with conditions). This just leaves the door open to interpretation and additional issues with future developments. By requiring the builder to adhere to the guidelines BEFORE approval, the Board has solidified and qualified those standards. Jason Duda needs to be reminded of his duties as a board member – those duties state he is serving the public, not Stop & Shop.

Thank you Ann M. Parizo, Harry E. Schumann and Chester H. Seklecki Jr for supporting Easthampton’s desire to be a true community, in spirit and physical development.

This afternoon the No One Leaves Campaign kicked off its fall efforts by canvasing a number of foreclosed homes in the Dorchester area of Boston. With about 30 people from Harvard Law, BU Law, and Tufts, we broke into small groups to cover the recent foreclosed properties.

One of the first things we came to realize is the transit access inequity that exists in Boston. Each of the volunteers come from academic centers in the area that are all well-serviced by the MBTA. This resulted in the fact that only a few of us had cars to help get students around to each of the houses. While we are used to get around much of Cambridge, Boston, and Brighton with the T, we realized that doing so in Dorchester would not be as possible. Economically, Dorchester is not as wealthy as the rest of the city. I’m wondering if the lower value is due to the lacking public service or does the city not provide the service due to the lower value. It’s an interesting and difficult topic which we have discussed in our studies in urban planning and one that we directly faced today.

Aside from the transit issue, my group of six volunteers decided we would use the Red Line to at least get us to our general canvasing area and then walk around to the houses. The group of six (made up of myself and two other Tuft students, two BU Law students, and a Harvard Law student) then broke down to two groups of three. This was done so as not to scary or oppress the resident who came to the door and saw a number of people at the stairs.

This turned out to be a moot point. My group had four houses on our list of foreclosures to visit. Each house (except for two) had three units in it. It was our task to determine if the residents still lived at the house and if so, assist them by providing information about their legal right to remain in the unit as well as the community effort to buy back the property. Out of the eight doors that we went to, we only spoke with one resident (who actually did not speak any English). Another one of the homes had since been vacated, leaving us to be concerned that the bank may have wrongfully persuaded the tenant out of the building. We did leave information at all residences (except the vacated one) in hopes that the tenants would look it over either when they got home or after we left – we had a feeling people were at some of their homes when we came but chose not to answer the door.

While it was a bit of a letdown to not actually interact with a majority of the residents, we did what we could on this trip to inform them. Thankfully, we do redouble our efforts for residents who do not get a direct interaction so we (or another volunteer) may be back to try to help them out. Our biggest concern is that they don’t move out of their home unless they are fully aware of their rights and truly want to do so.

I’m still pumped and ready for the next canvasing event. Until next time…

Former President Bill Clinton made an exciting and surprising statement yesterday – he now supports gay marriage. After a presidency that was marked by mixed support for sexual orientation equality, one of the country’s greatest presidents ever has finally acknowledged that equality should be all-inclusive.

During Clinton’s leadership, he enacted the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy as a method to open military positions to homosexual citizens. Prior to this policy, the military restricted its ranks to only heterosexuals. While the intent was noble, it has had its issues. The first of which is that be establishing the policy, Clinton simply created a bandaid to hide the military’s discrimination. The policy doesn’t actually allow you to serve if you are not heterosexual. It simply forbids officials to inquire about your orientation. If a serviceman/woman is found to be homosexual, they can be discharged. The policy did not correct and abolish the discrimination.

This was all too clear as demonstrated in the story of Private Barry Winchell. The film, Soldier’s Girl, is about Winchell who falls in love with a transgendered woman, while he is training for the military. One of his squadmates becomes enraged by the idea that Winchell may be gay and decides to get rid of the issue. After the ruthless murder of Winchell, Clinton requested a review of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Sadly, nothing came of it.

While many may praise Clinton for bringing some equality with the DADT policy, this was completely overshadowed in 1996 when he wrote into federal law the Defense of Marriage Act – a truly bigoted article that still stands today. This legislation states that the federal government of the US only recognizes marriage between a man and a woman. It goes on to state that no state is required to recognize a same-sex relationship as marriage even if it is considered a marriage in another state. The act laid the potential foundation for a federal ban on same-sex marriage. It has been used as rationale for many states in the country to actually restrict marriages to only heterosexual.

In Clinton’s statement yesterday, he acknowledged that it is not the federal government’s place to step into the marriage discussion and that each state is free to decide on marriage rights within their own borders. While I’m glad he’s finally had this insight, it does nothing for the country that still has the Defense of Marriage Act on the books.

In the past few years, we’ve seen nearly all of New England (Maine and New Hampshire are in the works, Connecticut does not) as well as Iowa stand up for equal rights. These six states have pledged to their residents the open freedom to wed their partner, whether same or opposite sex. While this equality struggle has some great news, it is overshadowed by the 29 states that have constitutional bans on gay marriage – the biggest shock was California which repealed the gay marriage right in 2008. Over 18,000 same-sex couples were married in those five months of freedom in California.

It’s difficult to tell where the marriage equality road will lead us. Sadly, many people have allowed their religious beliefs to blind them. I know that it’s been used before, but it’s so relevant – if we allowed religious beliefs to dictate our legal rights, African-Americans and women today would not have the right to vote or own property. Regardless of whether a person believes homosexuality is a choice or genetic/natural, the fact remains that there are homosexuals. We live and breath just like everyone else. We obey the law and pay our taxes just like everyone else. And we harm no one by living our lives as who we are. If the thought of same-sex couples causes you mental distress, that is born out of your own inner workings. The oppressors have no idea what it’s like until they’ve put on the oppresseds’ shoes.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Last night I went to a training session for the No One Leaves program. Started by the Harvard Law School and the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, this is an outreach program that helps to let residents of foreclosed homes learn about their legal rights. The home foreclosure crisis has hit the majority of the nation very hard. No One Leaves intends to make sure that these residents do not suffer any longer.

Thanks to Massachusetts law, residents are provided security with regard to their homes. While many banks are taking possession to private homes and apartment buildings due to foreclosures, the residents have the ability to remain in their home until they receive a fair hearing in court. Many homeowners and renters however are unaware of these rights.

Myself and at least 50 other undergraduate and graduate students attended the training session last night at Harvard. Coming from Harvard, Harvard Law, Tufts, Suffolk Law, and Northeastern, each student was certainly inspired by the stories and the potential to help. While we will not be giving legal advice, we go to the foreclosed homes to provide information for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.

The foreclosure crisis, brought on by faulty and poorly conceived mortgages, has blindsided both homeowners and renters. The banks then make the situation worse by illegally telling residents they need to move out immediately. Thankfully, we will be able to help make sure they don’t have to actually leave. I’ll be sure to update the blog after each outreach session.

Admittedly I came to the Twitter game kind of late. I’d heard plenty about the service through friends, television news, and tons of magazine writeups (I’m pretty sure some Mac|Life employees do double-duty at Twitter). I kept my distance, having only joined Facebook in March ’08. It seemed to me that they were pretty much one in the same, so why should I complicate my online-self. Needless to say, I broke down and set up a Twitter account this past April and haven’t looked back.

I’m sure I don’t need to extol the advantages of Twitter – from simple informational postings to cross promotion to immense and timely news – it’s really an unbelievable platform. While I’ve fine tuned the consistency between my website, blog and Twitter presences, I’ve also played around with a number of Twitter clients. There are numerous reviews for these applications, so I won’t bore you with a running evaluation of each one. I do however want to reflect on my one true Twitter love – Tweetie.

Tweetie offers a clean and unobtrusive interface. The user window is compact and definitely Mac. The beauty in the product is in its seemingly simple and straight-forward design. Like Seesmic and TweetDeck, Tweetie offers the ability to view “columns.” Seesmic and TweetDeck however take up enormous screen space to truly utilize them. Tweetie on the other hand places the “columns” on the left side via beautiful access buttons. You can add a number of additional columns (saved searches). Also like other Twitter clients, Tweetie can manage multiple Twitter accounts. I haven’t gone down that route just yet, but it’s nice to know that I won’t have to switch software (again).

If you tweet from a Mac, I would definitely suggest checking out Tweetie. The software is free (ad-version) and is also available for the iPhone. I haven’t bought into their iPhone version (I’m really not into the blue/grey iPhone email design they use) and will stick with TweetDeck for iPhone for now. Happy tweeting!

UPDATE

Yesterday (Sept 27) I went all-Tweetie. I decided to try out the Tweetie iPhone app and surprisingly love it. I wasn’t as excited about it due to its design (looks just like the blue/grey iPhone email app). The application however acts so smoothly, just like Tweetie for Mac. I’m sticking with Tweetie for both my laptop and iPhone going forward – and just in time.