10/26/2005 - WNNA Introduction and Thank You
Thanks to everyone who came to the meeting last night. We had about 125 neighbors in attendance, as well as a whole contingent from the town.
Just to be clear, last night's meeting was simply the outgrowth of 3 neighbors who have raised concerns over the years with traffic on Speen Street. We started attending the Planning Board hearings on the Mall and kept telling the board that the neighborhoods were very concerned, even though no one other than some bicycle and union folks were showing up at the hearings. The Board, leveraging on the perceived concerns, was able to extract a lot of mitigation money from the mall.
Last night's meeting grew from several roots:
1. We have some new leadership in the Safety Office of the Natick Police Department, and they are truly concerned with responding to the neighborhood's concerns over traffic - particularly truck traffic. However, there are a limited number of things they can do because the trucks originate from businesses outside of Natick. They have strong armed the mall about their trucks, they have used the truck unit to pull over every truck to "encourage" the trucks to use other routes, they have met with Adesa to let them know the Speen Street residents are not happy, and they are looking into whether the state will allow a truck exclusion. But they also want to make sure than they are are hearing all our concerns, and they will need us to back them up.
2. We took it on ourselves to attend every Planning Board hearing on the mall, and the Board required significant mitigation. However, we need to continually push that the money be spent in our neighborhood, as there are lots of people who will have other ideas on where to spend it.
3. The proposed mitigation is based on the best ideas of traffic and planning experts - however, when it was developed, there were only a few neighbors in the audience, and last night's meeting was in part the town's attempt to try to plan this mitigation in response to what the neighborhoods actually want or need, and not simply to have things imposed on us by the town. This mitigation needs to be designed to make Speen Street a residential street and a gateway to Natick, not just a connector road that people race down.
This is your forum. None of us are running for office. We were just tired of the traffic, and when we saw the mall ready to provide mitigation, we tried to make sure that our interests were heard. Frankly, we used the power of this group of neighbors behind us to move the town along. What we found is that the town is perfectly willing to do what it can. They are looking to all of you for direction. We are not imposing anything on you. We are just neighbors who have just been involved in the process, and wanted to make sure that before stuff starts happening out there, the town asked for your input. We want to make sure that what comes out of this makes our neighborhoods better places to live.
One of your neighbors has graciously create a website for us - www.wnna.org. There is only a meeting announce on it at this time, but we will be placing the questions raised last night on the site, adding additional concerns and questions as you send them in, and as we receive answers, we will post them on the website.
Again, thanks for coming last night. We have the town's attention, we have a group of town officials and employees who are committed to working with us, we have some mall money behind us, and we now need to use this opportunity to create something good.
Alan Grady
John Wadsworth
Skip Savoia
