To the Editor:
New England in the fall is renowned for its beauty—the trees are blazes of color, birds, squirrels, and other animals are busily preparing for winter, and the occasional whiff of woodsmoke floats in the air. Driving up Prospect Street, one is met with the pleasant sight of the pristine lawns and stately brick buildings of the Belmont Hill School—a self-described educator of “men of good character,” where “boys are expected to collaborate and become part of something larger than themselves.” Which is why it’s such a shame that the Belmont Hill School is apparently ignoring its own fundamental tenets in its quest to expand—not its educational buildings, not the scope of its outreach to the community, not the quality of its programs . . . but its parking lot.
If you haven’t yet heard, everyone in Belmont should be aware of the Belmont Hill School’s recently submitted plan to replace decades-old woodlands with a 140+ space parking lot (larger than the lot at the Belmont Star Market) and a 7,000 square-foot maintenance building with accompanying parking and above-ground fuel tanks—both of which clearly demonstrate an utter indifference to both local and global issues facing us today, in direct opposition to their stated values. If the Belmont Hill School can’t or won’t recognize this, it is absolutely necessary that we, as residents of Belmont and members of the greater community, make it clear to both the school and the Belmont Planning Board that their plans are unacceptable.
With climate change at the forefront of our concerns for the future, institutions all over Massachusetts and Belmont in particular have taken steps to limit their environmental footprint, reduce their use of fossil fuels, and encourage community members to do the same. Over a decade ago the town of Belmont approved a goal of 80 percent greenhouse gas emission reduction by 2050. In 2019 the Belmont Town Meeting overwhelmingly endorsed a move towards electric power for transportation, as opposed to use of fossil fuels. But not Belmont Hill School—unlike Belmont’s public high school, which recently eliminated 90 planned parking spaces in an effort to encourage carpooling and alternative methods of transportation, the Belmont Hill School has chosen to add a total of 150 parking spaces, a number which it admits is greater than that required for its students and faculty, but claims is needed for “overflow parking” for events. Adding insult to injury, the planned heavy maintenance facility, which will service buses, trucks, and boats, will be constructed at the edge of protected wetland areas, encroaching on animal habitats and increasing the risk that leaks in the facility’s new fuel tanks might affect not only neighbors, but also our vanishing wetlands.
Does that expansion come at the cost of the school’s own rolling green lawns or elegant buildings? No. Instead, Belmont Hill School has submitted plans to raze more than 7 acres of woodland in the middle of a residential neighborhood—cutting down all those beautiful trees, eliminating homes for wildlife, and replacing the smell of woodsmoke with the pollution caused by trucks, delivery vans, and over 140 individual vehicles, all of which will be funneled away from the Belmont Hill School’s campus and into an area directly abutting residences.
Neighborhood residents can look forward to the 6 am sound of heavy equipment being serviced, to the headlights and noise of vehicles mere feet from their backyards, and to the increased water runoff and pollution caused by the replacement of woodlands with asphalt. Residents of Belmont as a whole will be treated to increased traffic along Prospect Street and Park Avenue, where vehicles are already regularly at near-standstill conditions during the morning and evening commutes (emitting gasoline fumes the entire time), and the removal of several residential properties from Belmont tax rolls, straining the already-limited town budget.
In the words of its founding head of school, Dr. R. Heber Howe, the underlying purpose of the Belmont Hill School is “service through scholarship.” As he said in a 1924 speech quoted on the school’s website, “it is only by ‘finding ourselves,’ by discovering our capacities and aptitudes, that we can be of service to the community.” Belmont Hill School was founded in 1923—almost a century ago—but those words ring as true today as they did when they were first spoken. Sadly, rather than looking towards the future to determine how it and its students and graduates can be of service to the community, it is increasingly apparent that Belmont Hill School is mired in the past. Please join other members of our community in expressing your opposition to the Belmont Hill School’s plan—perhaps a resounding “No” will be the wake-up call Belmont Hill School needs to start seeing its historical roots as a springboard, rather than an anchor.
Contact the Planning Board today to make your voice heard, and sign this petition at www.change.org/belmontwild.
Tanya Austin
Hello Belmont Citizens Forum,
I really enjoyed the article by John Dieckmann, “Mass Central Rail Trail Continues Expansion” (BCF Newsletter July 2022). It’s a fantastic summary of the trail from Boston to Hudson!
If possible, I’d like to forward a small correction to John Dieckmann regarding the section “MCTR west from Route 20.”
To the best of my understanding, the Eversource/DCR project in Sudbury and Hudson (and tiny segments in Marlborough and Stowe) goes from Hudson to the Eversource Sudbury substation only. Please see this map for reference: www.eversource.com/content/wma/residential/about/transmission-distribution/projects/massachusetts-projects/sudbury-to-hudson-project.
I believe the DCR trail from the substation to Wayland Town Center/Russell’s Garden Center is a separate project, a short segment that has received $3 million in construction funding from the 2021 Massachusetts Transportation Bond Bill.
In terms of design, the most recent update I know of is from December 2021 from www.mass.gov/service-details/mass-central-rail-trail-wayside, ”DCR is at 25% design of the connecting section between Wayland Town Center and the Eversource substation in Sudbury.”
Ben Bayes
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