Dear Joseph Newberg,

Thank you for sending your piece to SU. I am so sorry you did understnad my position. I understand and respect that you oppose RTE and want you to understand that I am neither pro- nor anti-RTE. I am pro-decent discussion and debate. I note one thing: I was told RTE is a 3% increase not 15-20%. I am pleased to print your article in SU if you are happy for me to do so. Please confirm. Carole

Many thanks for the reply, Carole! I am happy for you to publish it and appreciate it.

I do realize that you meant “did not understand”; and I, too, very much want to keep the dialogue decent, respectful, and focused on the issues and always the best for Stockbridge.

Respectfully, Carole

Dear Editor,

I am writing this letter partly in response to a letter in the Berkshire Edge by Roxanne McCaffrey, who was recently replaced on the Stockbridge selectboard by Jamie Minacci. It lists existing methods our town and the Commonwealth have already put into place to help needful residents pay their taxes. The letter also refers to the residential tax exemption, legally available in Massachusetts, and equally legitimate. The letter seems to indicate that you can’t do both, but you can.

Curiously, the selectboard has already voted on this issue, so why all this after-the-fact fuss?

I have lived in Stockbridge as a full-time resident since 1980. During this time many homes have been built or renovated by quite wealthy people who have built huge, often extravagant houses for their part time visits, sometimes for just a few days a year. They tell me they do not want to commit to full-time residence here (and thereby get the right to vote here about taxes) because they save more taxes keeping their residences elsewhere (usually New York or Florida).

Also, during that time, although Stockbridge tax rates are lower than all the more-developed towns in Berkshire County, home valuations have constantly risen, so all the while Stockbridge residents have been paying more taxes because of these expensive homes.

Ms. McCaffrey obviously wants to continue to encourage building expensive homes by making our town more user-friendly to people who own them, unfortunately, at the expense of some of the full-time residents who may be too proud to speak up.

Many of the people who can afford to move here have an intrinsic vein of altruism. It shows up in their donations to not-for-profits. It shows up in their efforts to help unfortunate people elsewhere in the world. I hope they will not overlook the as-of-yet unmet needs of some of the deserving residents in their own town because of the distracting rhetoric of some of our local politicians.

Charles Kenny

To the Editor,

The More Things Change….

I love to drive over to West Hawthorne Road just above Gould Meadow and watch the majestic cloud formations over Yokun Ridge, lit up by the rays of the setting sun, the Bowl below, Monument Mountain in the distance. And I sometimes imagine a huge resort/housing development that would be visible from this same spot, lights and buildings rising above the trees below the ridge line, dimming the sunset glow.

I often think about this. Some people just see every piece of land as a building project waiting to happen. This solves the tax problem! It will bring jobs to a dying town! True, residents might make minimum wage at all kinds of new jobs. But slinging a mop at the new Inn at Interlaken is not a great second career choice for living here. I imagine seeing those big waving balloons that car dealers use to attract customers from my spot above Gould Meadow, giant Norman Rockwell heads and arms, paint brush in one hand, pipe in the other, floating in the breeze. Boy, are we gonna make some money now!

‘Cause that’s what its all about…

We have not found a moderate solution for development in town that preserves our character. The Cluster Housing at Stockbridge is not a project most would sign on to.

The 2020 report from our Finance Committee led us to believe we could be in desperate shape, and the Planning Board pushed their development bylaw. But we were not losing population, kept our low tax rate, survived the pandemic. Was our bond rating really hurt because we were mainly a tourist economy? I don’t know. But if Molly and Norman Rockwell came back to visit the Berkshires, I wonder if they would book a room at Miraval or some similar venue.

My experience here goes back only 50 years. But I remember Rockwell’s town. If you are someone who came here to retire from the banking world, large scale building, the finance industry, the wide world of attorneys, real estate, industry, etc., this is fine. All are welcome. And we greatly appreciate your expertise. But we may not need to duplicate the settings you came from here in Stockbridge. This place is different for many good reasons. The real threat to Stockbridge is not financial. It’s that we get less different than other places every year.

Bruce Blair