Voke truthers
Can we get a few things straight once and for all regarding the new Northeast Metro Tech building project?
First, the site that the school would be built on is not protected land, despite what the “Save the Forest” activists would like you to think. Nor is it part of Breakheart Reservation, although you could easily get that impression listening to the activists. And they are perfectly happy to let you believe that.
In truth, the 13-acre, wooded hilltop site across from the current NEMT campus is property that is owned by the school. Its environmental significance does not rise to that of the Amazon Rain Forest as the activists would have you believe.
Second, Northeast Metro Tech officials did not try to “hide” the location from the public. Why would they? Why would it even occur to them that anyone would object to their using this small, wooded parcel for their new school – especially considering that they own the land and there are more than 700 acres of permanently preserved forest right next door?
Contrary to what the loudest voices would have you believe, plenty of people knew where the new school was going to be built prior to the overwhelming favorable votes at the November 2021 Town Meeting and in the Jan. 25, 2022 Special Election to approve the plans.
The exact location of the site was discussed in detail at open Conservation Commission public hearings as early as March of 2021, eight months before the Town Meeting vote and 10 months before the Special Election. At that March 2021 ConCom meeting, NEMT representatives presented an Abbreviated Notice of Resource Area Delineation (ANRAD), which is exactly what it sounds like. They showed maps delineating the location of any wetlands on or near the site.
It’s pretty hard to “hide” the location that you plan to build on when you’re showing maps of the site at public meetings.
Residents whose homes abut the planned site of the new school were at that meeting and subsequent ConCom hearings. Those residents knew where the school was going to be built because they were sent the required notices. How do you go about “hiding” the location from the public when you’re legally required to notify residents of where you plan to build?
Nonetheless, a small but very loud group is doing their best to scuttle the whole project. They claim they didn’t know the planned location of the new school when they voted in favor of it because NEMT officials hid that information from them.
Despite the claims of the tinfoil hat crowd, the Northeast Metro Tech building plan is not some grand conspiracy concocted by the evil geniuses on the NEMT School Building Committee for the purpose of giving Wakefield a hockey rink.
The forest activists see the Voke project as one big conspiracy theory because they suspect their opponents of the same deceptive tactics that they employ. All’s fair when you’re saving the planet one thicket at a time.
Like all true believers, the Save the Forest martyrs cannot fathom how anyone could have a different opinion from theirs. In their minds, if you support the new school plan, you must hate trees and birds and frogs. Even the Town Council has come under fire for not vocally siding with the opponents of the Voke project.
But it’s not a Town Council matter. If they were to take sides, I would expect them to side with the Wakefield voters who twice voted overwhelmingly in favor of the NEMT plan.
It’s called democracy. You don’t get a do-over because you weren’t paying attention before the vote.
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[This column originally appeared in the August 24, 2023 Wakefield Daily Item.]
Filed under: Columns & Essays, Humor, Nature & Wildlife, News, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 4 Comments
Tags: activists, Amazon Rain Forest, ANRAD, Breakheart Reservation, building project, campus, conspiracy, democracy, education, election, forest woods, Humor, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, NEMT, Northeast Metro Tech, Opinion, Politics, Save the Forest, school, students, Town Meeting, trade school, trees, truthers, vocational school, Voke, vote, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Town Council
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Mark Sardella 
Mark, facts matter — and if you go through the archives of your own newspaper, you will find that all of the land that the Voke now owns was part of the Breakheart Reservation back in 1968(?) when the Voke was formed and the current building built.
If you look it up, you will find that the MDC (which no longer exists) donated that chunk of land to the new school. (The high school (then the junior high) had been built a few years earlier on land which the Town owned because it had been the poor farm.) Hemlock Road was a new road built to access the new school and that’s why it’s such a screwed up and dangerous intersection, why it doesn’t align with Nahant Street and is on a curve.
Hence way back when we were bulldozing wetlands and dumping raw sewerage into Boston Harbor, those 13 acres were carved off the Breakheart Reservation and that’s why the Voke is located in Wakefield, at the extreme edge of a district that stretches all the way to Chelsea and Winthrop. (Had it been built a few years later, when much of downtown Malden was bulldozed in the name of urban renewal, it would have been located there, which would make a lot more sense.)
The interested parties can fight everything else out on their own — may I suggest overly ripe tomatoes at 20 paces — but the fact remains that those 13 acres and the trees on them *was* part of Breakheart — along with whatever protected swamp creatures may dwell there.
Facts do matter….
The United States was part of Great Britain.
But it’s not now.
And yes, some 240 years later, we are still fighting over the border, i.e. the fishing grounds around Machias Seal Island, but I digress.
I just wanted to point out that the land *was* part of Breakheart — although back then, Breakheart was a good place to stay out of!!!
As an educator, I’m surprised that they are building so close to the property lines because ideally you want to have a couple hundred yards of cleared land around a school — lawns, athletic fields, whatever — so that you can see who is leaving the building and who is approaching the building. The goal is to make it more difficult for students to sneak unnoticed into the woods and that’s not just because of truancy but because they’ll be doing drugs & having sex — and often interacting with non-students that you really don’t want them interacting with.
And the reason you want a second road is so that the cops can loop through — if there is only one road in, the miscreants can see them coming.
But you are right, the land hasn’t been part of Breakheart for some 55 years — although I do wonder if various real estate agents mentioned that to people buying adjacent houses. And were any of those houses even there back in 1968???
My God!! I agree with Mark! Finally someone is saying what I’ve been trying to drill into the heads of ” the tin foil hat crowd”. No conspiracy… No secrets…just those that choose not to listen and want their own way so badly, the skew the truth.