History of Veterans Park

In his weekly column in The Valley Dispatch, Warren Shaw gives a history lesson on the development of Veterans Park. It's pretty interesting stuff, see it all below:

Some might question the Board of Selectmen holding public hearings concerning lighting of certain areas of Veterans Park, but I'm not one of them.

One of the issues that dominated last year's selectmen's race between Joe Dirocco and Brian Bond was in fact the question of erecting lights at Veterans Park to allow the town's Pop Warner football program to play after dark. Bond questioned if and when any commitments had been made to the surrounding neighbors concerning lights at the park, and went as far as to say that times had changed.

It takes guts to take strong stands on controversial issues, but with so many opinions on the matter, isn't it time the town had a policy that residents can depend on?

There can be no doubt that in the early stages, when selectmen were working to get funding for the park project, many abutting residents made known their concerns about lighting.

Not a big deal, you say?

Keep in mind, this was done before the town had community-preservation funds to work with. This was a time when getting funding for a recreation project was a real battle.

So let's say the board had ignored the neighborhood residents and gone forward to Town Meeting without their support, or maybe with an angry neighborhood in opposition.

If you've been to town meetings over the years, you know how difficult a two-thirds majority is to get, and it isn't much of a leap to assume with opposition from the neighborhood, this project would have failed.

So next time you're at the park taking in a game, using the walking trail or getting cooled off , think about how close we came to not getting it. And we did almost lose it.

After receiving initial Town Meeting approval for the funds, one of the town's political groups got enough signatures to place a Proposition 2 1/2 override question on the ballot.

And as you might expect, the anti- tax-increase vote came out and voted down the override and took the appropriation for the park down with it.

The following year, selectmen went back to Town Meeting and received another appropriation, with little opposition. No neighborhood opposition ever surfaced because residents had been assured that their town government was behind them.

Just a little history of how a hay field became Veterans Park.

And as with everything in history, we should learn from it.