PLAINFIELD, CABOT – Flood-related projects were on yesterday’s ballots for voters in Plainfield and Cabot.
In Plainfield the select board was looking to borrow $600,000 to purchase land for the proposed village expansion project. If its application for a $9.7 million grant is approved, the loan will fund the purchase of land for the project, which will allow the town to keep 100% of the proceeds from the sale of that land for 40 proposed housing lots. The select board said the bond will not be needed If the grant is not approved.
Social media posts over the past several days have raised concerns about community member’s conflicts of interest and about building in wetlands, which others say will not happen.
In a post on the eve of the vote, Walker Usenza Blackwell wrote, “Increasing the housing stock will add to the town’s coffers and lower people’s tax and water/sewer bills. This plan keeps hard-earned money IN OUR HANDS if it goes forward and if we get the DR grant and if the development happens.
“We all lift each other up in this tiny financial pond. We need more lifters!”
Commenting on that post, election day, Tuesday, Plainfield’s emergency management director Michael Cerulli Billingsley wrote, “We have a total of 27 residential buildings in for buyout right now [containing] 41 housing units, counting 4 units earlier buyout-approved from 2023. (Two had dropped out.) 21 of those 41 housing units were lost and unliveable after the 2024 flood, and the remaining 20 continue to be occupied. 15 of the 21 lost and unliveable housing units were occupied by renters at the time of the flood, including one mobile home, and 6 were owner-occupied. Many of the displaced are of modest income.”
Cabot is asking voters for permission to use up to $250,000 of the roughly $1,000,000 currently in its Cabot Community Investment Fund for flood related capital projects.
$150,000 of that would serve as the 10% matching funds for a grant application currently pending for approximately $1.5 million to fund the replacement of the bridge at Menard Brook, the Rec Field tributary, and raising of the adjacent road beds.
Up to $30,000 would cover the cost of obtaining legal easements from adjacent landowners to allow for the the bridge reconstruction;
Then, an additional amount of not more than $20,000 to cover the cost of test borings on Lyford Brook (the Village Center tributary) to determine the feasibility of installing debris catchers to limit damage in future floods.
Results of those votes were not available at press time.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
