News

Petition forces vote on park in Boxford

By Mike Stucka
Staff Writer
Published: September 25, 2008

BOXFORD — The area around the town's Round Top park trained soldiers to fight in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and then World War I. Now, activists are launching the latest round in a war to forever preserve a 4-acre piece of the land.

On Monday, the group's petition with more than 200 signatures was certified, forcing a fall Town Meeting vote on conservation restrictions for the land.

Leslie DiNanno, a petition organizer who is a member of Friends of Round Top, said she is angry that selectmen opted not to vote on those conservation restrictions last month, even though a 2005 Town Meeting vote authorized them to do so.

"I find it really appalling that all of a sudden they're going to change directions," DiNanno said of selectmen.

The Town Meeting proposal would create a public trust that wouldn't need selectmen's approval.

Selectman Barbara Jessel said the town has no plans to develop the property, but it's a mistake to prevent that from ever happening.

"I would oppose it, because I think it is a waste to put a conservation restriction on land that's already town-owned," she said. "I don't want to develop anything on it at this point. I just think it's unreasonable to prevent the possibility of ever using the land at any point in the future."

The latest fights surprise Seth Kelsey Jr. of Washington state, who thought the land was permanently protected after the Town Meeting vote three years ago. His father donated the land in 1955 so it would be protected, he said.

"That was the intent of my father's donating the land to Boxford, so it could be preserved and utilized as a conservation area. That was the intent of the family to have that saved and not developed," Kelsey said.

At 4.35 acres, the Round Top land is a tiny fraction of the training grounds known as Camp Curtis Guild and Camp Stanton, near Round Top Road and Ipswich Road. Yet the land is still large enough to serve as a picnic area, a campground — or two Boxford house lots.

Before the 2005 Town Meeting vote, the then-chairman of the town's Housing Partnership, Neil Olansky, said the property could host two five-bedroom affordable houses and still preserve most of the open area.

Jessel said the town couldn't develop the property for anything without a Town Meeting vote anyway. She questions whether preservation was part of Seth Kelsey Sr.'s goal in 1955.

"Mr. Kelsey donated it to the town in order to get the town to approve his subdivision," she said.