If you care about small town Massachusetts, then you have to salute former Charlemont leaders Beth Bandy and Toby Gould.
Our rural towns face a range of economic challenges foreign to those from the densely settled communities of the Boston metropolitan area: rising costs of school busing, shrinking public school enrollments, high per-capita costs of infrastructure of every kind but especially roads and bridges, lack of broadband.
The region’s towns also have a long and well-deserved reputation for banding together to confront our problems and to meet our needs in ways not seen in larger communities. When the state dissolved county government, it was replaced in Hampshire and Franklin counties by a Council of Governments to economically provide shared services.
Two years ago, as our small, rural towns increasingly felt they were getting shortchanged by state spending priorities and formulas, Charlemont leaders, including Bandy and Gould, held the first Small Town Summit to consider how to get a share of the state budget pie that was bigger, but more importantly, that was fairer to small towns.
Since that lobby effort began — along with a parallel education-oriented effort spearheaded by Mohawk Trail Regional school leaders — state government has created a small bridge program to help cash-strapped rural towns pay for needed bridge repairs too expensive for them to afford locally, advanced broadband infrastructure build-out, and approved $1.5 million in special rural school aid, to help low-enrollment schools offset rising costs unique to their sprawling, sparsely settled landscape.
The Small Town Summits that addressed these and other rural problems are now run by Rural Commonwealth — a nonprofit organization created by former Charlemont Select Board members Bandy and Gould — which is working to continue the conversation about the needs of rural communities throughout the state but especially in this region.
Now based in the former Lamson & Goodnow complex in Shelburne Falls, Rural Commonwealth will hold a series of summits from September through next August in several town halls to advance the cause of rural Massachusetts.
A Sept. 27 meeting at the Peru Town Hall at 7 p.m. will address payments in lieu of taxes for state-owned land. Such PILOT money is a critical issue for low-population towns like Hawley, Warwick and Monroe. In those communities, the state owns 40 to 50 percent of the land, but pays much less than what towns would collect in tax revenue if the land were in private hands.
Rural transportation is the topic at the 7 p.m. Nov. 1 meeting in the Belchertown Town Hall. Not all businesses these days exist within a town center, and fixed-route buses that only serve a village center or travel major state highways a few times per day may not meet the needs of employees trying to get to work in remote locations. Also, elders who don’t drive but who live in rural areas may lack options for getting to medical appointments or shopping areas.
Rural school financing will be addressed at 7 p.m. Jan. 10 in the Gill Town Hall. For many years in rural schools, the cost-per-pupil has risen while the number of students enrolled has dropped. As a result, many schools are threatened with being merged or closed.
“Lobbying 101 for Municipal Leaders” will be discussed at 7 p.m. on March 7 in the Williamsburg Town Hall. Many town officials who have spoken up at past Small Town Summits have strategized about having “a voice” in state government.
Even ZIP codes are an issue that in western Massachusetts impacts taxes, town clerks and schools. Many of the smallest towns are served by a multitude of post offices and may have four or five ZIP codes. That topic is the subject of a summit at 7 p.m. June 13 in the Heath Community House.
This list of topics Rural Commonwealth wants to take on is ambitious, but we are encouraged by its achievements so far, including financial help that it has wrung from the Legislature for broadband, schools and bridges.
Rural Commonwealth’s economic development work is based on the idea that every rural resident deserves to make a good living in an environment that provides a good life — the same shake that government officials in Boston give the state’s larger communities.
The leaders of this rural lobby deserve our praise and support because they are working for us — and there’s lots more work ahead.