By Carole Owens and By Michael Canales and By David Adler

Carole Owens: Shared Services — Which Can We Share?

The Twenty-first century may be the era of sharing — services that is. Everything is getting more expensive, and the worker pool is shrinking. It seems prudent to share and share alike. Services such as Firemen, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), and Tri-Town Health are perfect services to share. 

If a house is on fire, no Chief would wake up the Select Board members and ask, “should I get out the fire truck?” No EMT calls an elected official to ask about using the defibrillator. Equally, no health department official is going to call the elected officials before closing a beach due to a cyanobacteria bloom or a restaurant due to rats or filth. Their responses are at the sole discretion of those professionals.

The question is: can all services be shared as easily? 

What of Town Administrator (TA) and Building Inspector (BI)? Can they be shared as easily if at all? Their decisions are not individual. They deal with decisions that fit into a government structure. While zoning bylaws and Mass General Laws are uniform throughout the Commonwealth, some decisions require discretion, and interpretation.

Conflict of interest: not conflict between two or more towns the TA or BI might represent, but conflict within the Town. Unlike the fireman and the doctor, a TA or BI do not make the decisions alone. The Fire Chief dispatches the trucks without hesitation, the BI may need to be in consultation. Elected officials get involved in the process and have the responsibility as well as these officials. It is not in the interest of the Town if they disagree or make different and conflicting decisions. Moreover, while many bylaws come from the Commonwealth and are uniform, others are local and differ from locality to locality. The TA and BI need a perfect understanding of local laws as well as local politics. A TA and BI should be unconflicted, thoroughly knowledgeable, and not stretched too thin by taking on the responsibility in two or more towns.

Finally, decisions made by TA and BI have a fair share of interpretation. For example, bylaws and Zoning laws are definitive except when they are subject to interpretation and every lawyer interprets. 

Michael Canales: Stay the Course

I would agree with some of what you stated if we were hiring a single building inspector to cover two or three towns but that is not the setup that was proposed and agreed upon. 

The setup proposed is that there would be three building inspectors. One dedicated to Great Barrington, one split between Lee and Lenox and the final position split between Stockbridge and to act as a floater for building permits in other towns. The building commissioner will oversee the inspectors and will take on the larger and more complicated projects within the communities. This setup will prevent stretching too thin.

Owens wrote, “For example, bylaws and Zoning laws are definitive except when they are subject to interpretation and every lawyer interprets.” The building department does not have much if any discretion, those areas fall to the planning board and selectboard if within those bylaws these items are subject to their authority. Elected officials do not get involved in the process that fall to the building inspectors and the elected officials only become involved if they have the responsibility to make that decision. A building inspector or commissioner has very little room for interpretation. 

Overall the setup we have is most similar to TriTown Health, which was setup as a department not a single individual just like what we have with the building department. The following statement “Equally, no doctor is going to call the elected officials before closing a beach due to a cyanobacteria bloom” would be the equivalent of a building inspector doing an emergency condemnation of a building. Trying to equate either a cyanobacteria bloom or fire/ems, which by definition are emergency services, is not proper especially in regards to the typical duties of building inspectors or TriTown Health. A lot of the work done by TriTown Health is permitting and inspections which is covered by state statues and local bylaws, similar to the building department. 

I would also point out that building inspectors often are employed by more than one community with no governing agreements, including our previous inspector who was employed by many communities therefore could have been conflicted.

A Word from an Abutter

Thank you to David Adler for this explanation of his appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals. The ZBA meeting will be on January 30 — in person and via Zoom. Interested Stockbridge residents are welcome and may wish to attend.

The Adlers reside at 7 Lee Road in Stockbridge and are direct abutters to 9 Lee Road, the Superior Propane Gas (formerly Osterman’s). The Adlers are appealing a letter from the Stockbridge Zoning Enforcement Officer (Stockbridge Building Inspector) because…

• The letter was not wholly responsive to the substantive and material violations of the Stockbridge Zoning Bylaws perpetrated at the Property that were referenced in our letter to the BI, November 9, 2023. 
• The 1973 special permit granted by the Stockbridge Select Board permitted Berkshire Gas to place one 30,000-gallon propane tank on the Property, which was connected to the Tennessee natural gas pipeline, with the possibility of installing two additional propane tanks on the property at a later date. The stored propane would be blended with the natural gas coming through the pipeline and the basic purpose of the installation was so that it would be a standby for the natural gas in the pipeline and would only be used on an average of perhaps 24 days per year. Berkshire Gas was limited to the described use until the issuance of the 1981 special permit, effectively modifying and expanding this use. 
• The 1981 special permit was granted to Berkshire Gas Company on June 16, 1981, permitting two additional 30,000-gallon propane tanks to be added to existing use at the Property. The tanks would be used for “Storage and Production of Supplementary Gas Supply”. All three propane storage tanks were filled with both natural gas that flowed from the Tennessee gas line (today known as Kinder Morgan) and propane that was only supplementing the natural gas. There was no further expansion or alteration of use granted by the 1981 special other than the addition of 2 30,000 propane storage tanks. 
• The above-described uses of the Property, memorialized by the 1973 and 1981 special permits, represent the limit of uses permitted by Berkshire Gas on the Property, unless those uses are permitted by-right under the Stockbridge Zoning Bylaws or unless they are granted another special permit modifying the permitted uses.

Accordingly, the Adlers are requesting a hearing by the Stockbridge Zoning Board of Appeals so the ZBA can make a definitive and final determination restricting Berkshire Gas’s use of the Property in accordance with the law and in accordance with the 1973 and 1981 special permits. 

In essence, the Adlers believe that the permits issued by the Stockbridge Selectboard in 1973 and 1981 are still in effect today and that Berkshire Gas has substantially altered the use of the property, as permitted. Berkshire Gas is now leasing the property to Superior Plus Propane as a daily use (24 hours/day) propane depot operation which is not in accordance with the previous permits that were granted to Berkshire Gas. The intent of the original special permits, in a residential neighborhood, were to allow Berkshire Gas to tap off of the Tennessee natural gas pipeline, for supplemental use only, which it no longer does. Therefore, the propane depot should reside in a more appropriately zoned area.

Closing Thoughts from Carole Owens

During the SB meeting on November 9, 2023, there was testimony that there have been violations for fifty years from 1973 — 2003. The Fire Chief Vini Garofoli observed that hundreds of unpermitted tanks were stored on the property, and Stockbridge Fireman James MacDonald called the situation “dangerous.”

Selectman White moved not to approve any permit because he wanted to see the corrections made not just promised before granting permits. After some discussion, the vote was unanimous NOT to approve any of the three permits requested. 

If the ZBA supports the decision of the BI, is the ZBA decision in opposition to the SB? If the Adlers then sue, how does the Town decide what to do? It is a case in point: not all services can be shared easily.