Right On or Way Wrong?
Two takes on ‘Stay Off the Damn Grass’
Thank you, Kristin Palpini, for your article (“Stay Off the Damn Grass,” May 21-27, 2015) on the new, oppressive South Hadley law imposing rigid standards of lawn and garden care. This town has a knack for generating embarrassing headlines about itself. Not long ago the politically correct contingent over at Mount Holyoke College shot down the Vagina Monologues, not out of a prudish respect for founder Mary Lyon’s memory, but because the transgender community was not adequately represented. Now at the other extreme, the stuffy townies, obsessed with taxes and property values and eager to make life miserable for the less fortunate, are requiring that all lawns get a crew cut, among other things, with fines of $100/day for transgressors.
Fortunately, our attorney general, Maura Healey, will be reviewing this law for constitutionality. Hopefully it will not survive such scrutiny. It seems unconstitutional by any rational standard. No constitution can be expected to list every protected right. By implication, extrapolating from the Bill of Rights’ First and Ninth amendments, people have the right to do anything that does not cause harm to other individuals or society in general. There is no right to cry “Fire” in a crowded theater. There is a right to carry a sign saying “Fire the mayor” in front of City Hall. And there is a right to manage your lawn and garden and home exterior according to your taste and budget.
No one is trying to defend unsanitary conditions, breeding pools for mosquitoes, lairs for coyotes, or neglected trees falling on neighbors’ houses. We simply want to have our property the way we like it, consistent with community safety.
If the town solons had any real, sincere concern for community welfare they would ban polluting pesticides and herbicides, damaging runoff from excessive use of fertilizers, noise and air pollution, and the whole host of environmental abuses required to produce a lawn resembling a putting green. But this law has nothing to do with community welfare. It has everything to do with harassing “undesirable” eccentrics and extorting money by doing so. Let freedom ring!
The editorial, “Stay Off the Damn Grass,” is totally uninformed of the issues that our “Good Neighbor” bylaw addresses. There have been many properties in South Hadley that are seriously neglected, abandoned, health hazards over the years, the same as in Springfield. The authorities try to deal with these with repeated calls, visits, etc., with no success. Eventually, if they are taken to Housing Court the court asks what laws are in place and the town has to say we have none, therefore there is no avenue for enforcement. The bylaw is to address this issue.
Town Meeting did not pass the new bylaw without much discussion and unfortunately the one stand-out sentence of the “6-inch grass” seems to be the only thing that everyone sees in the bylaw, even some of our townspeople. Further reading makes it clear that the law attends to “excessive grass clippings … damaged branches” (there are still some yards with branches from the October storm of years ago) “… and other debris or litter”. It was made clear that the $100 fine would not be at first look/contact, but only after many attempts to contact the property owners and resolve the issue(s).
Our town administrator and the members of the Select Board, as well as the health and police Departments have been dealing with these issues for many years. The Good Neighbor policy was discussed two years ago and left with the plan that citizens would be asked to be good neighbors, offer help, work with neighbors, to try to clean up the town. Many of our citizens are doing just that, but the noncompliant, those refusing help, those abandoning homes have made this action necessary. Current homeowners trying to sell their property and living next door to these properties have been looking to the town for action. It was made clear that the bylaw, if not working well, could be brought back to a future Town Meeting to be amended or rescinded.
I feel you owe our town an apology for your incendiary editorial. Such statements as “The South Hadley law addresses a problem that does not exist,” “This law is unnecessary and punitive and South Hadley officials know it,” indicate that you did not do any research Re: the background nor the intention of the bylaw and that it does not “smack of the same attitude that requires drug testing for welfare recipients …, etc.” I have enjoyed Palpini’s editorials and most speak to important issues, but I strongly disagree with this one.
