Letter: Prisby has a few more things to say as Select Board term ends

What a crazy three years it’s been.  I want to thank Grafton’s residents from the bottom of my heart for the honor and privilege of serving you these past three years.

We’ve had our ups, we’ve had our downs.  Certainly, the last twelve months have been challenging for a whole host of reasons.  We passed our second override in six years, we dealt with an administration change, a crisis in management at the top of the fire department, and we handled all of the other pressing needs of the town, all while dealing with the pervasive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

While there were some bumps in the road, I’d say we did okay.  

While writers like Aaron Sorkin like to remind us that a handful of dedicated, thoughtful people can change the world, he never accounted for the pace of personal cost of that change.  My experience has been that even minor change on a local level is both slow and hard fought.  Even after having fought pitched battles for change while sitting on the outside of the Board in the years before I was elected, I was often taken aback by how much more difficult it seemed to be to make changes once I was on it.  The institutional inertia favoring the status quo is immense in local government.  There are no shortage of hall-monitors advising you that you should walk, not run, to your destination.

But life is short.  My philosophy toward service always has been to seek agreement where I can, but to advocate where I must.  I always believed that the best way to approach the job was without regard to re-election. If I made people mad by taking a contrary position to their own, then hopefully they would at least respect my candor and honesty, and maybe I’d be re-elected anyway on the basis of the results I delivered.  If not, I could always look myself in the mirror and say I did the best I could with what I had.

Turns out this would be my one term (so far), so no regrets.  I now am able to look back on a difficult, three-year term fraught with change and see accomplishment:

• We improved the Town’s administration in Evan Brassard’s hiring.
• We improved Town communications by establishing a Communications Director position.
• We improved the Town’s financial planning by establishing a Finance Director position.
• We effectively managed the transition from the present fire department management structure toward a “strong chief” structure.
• (Some of us) advocated for an override to provide maintained community services like our schools and revamped fire department.
• We established a clear policy for the grant of Host Community Agreements that will soon expand Grafton’s commercial base.
• There soon will (finally) be a sidewalk linking Blanchard Street to the Millbury Street Elementary School, a project that was re-booted this past fall after it had stalled out previously.
• We established additional tax relief for the needy.
• We established a rental housing assistance program during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• We granted 25 Worcester Street to the Affordable Housing Trust in an effort to create affordable housing for senior citizens.
• We created the Grafton Sustainability Commission to assist Grafton in framing the key choices that face our community as we work through our post-override years on into the ‘20s.

If I have one disappointment, it is that the GSC has not yet finished its work.  We are now in the same position we were in 2015-2016: financially stable at present while we slowly but surely work down our levy capacity.  Already, conversations that I have had with some in the municipal center and elsewhere lead me to believe that there are those who did not learn the lessons of the past decade, and may doom us to repeat them.  I hope that I am mistaken and that the GSC completes its work.

I leave you with this:

When I was in the Eighth Grade, my social studies teacher, Mr. Hyde, had a large (dot-matrix) print-out in enormous capital letters scotched taped to his classroom wall that read “BYSTANDER BEWARE.”  His message?  The world’s evils don’t just happen to other people, in other places. They are a part of the human condition and, if you don’t take an active role in your own fate, they could well happen to you.

Mr. Hyde was a ‘60s guy clearly indoctrinating young activists.  I am forever grateful.

So, when people have asked me why I do all of this, in my head I always thought “bystander beware.”  So, as I walk away from doing this for now, know that there always will be a part of me that never really walks away. 

See you around town.

Edward Prisby