[Summit] FW: morley field alert

[Greg Gerritt]

Comments on the website welcomer, and please share with your friends in Pawtucket.  Greg gerritt

 

 

Friends and colleagues, It appears the City of Pawtucket has tried to pull a fast one, opening a public comment period around Morley field without telling anyone.  Today some of our colleagues, thanks John and Stephanie, started putting the word out.  The closing date for comments is February 2.  Next week.  so there is no time to waste.  

 

Here is the link to the public comment page.  It also includes some of the documents Pawtucket has posted.  If you read them, be careful, they often include statements that are not true.  I am attaching some comments from Stephanie Covino just as an example and it provides some food for thought for a quick note on the on line comments section.  

 


comments are due 2/2.

 

https://pawtucketri.com/news/city-pawtucket-national-parks-conversion-documents  

 

 

Please send in comments and send it around to your connections for comments.  Time is of the essence.  

 

Below is my second round of comments

 

Greg Gerritt

 

The swapping of Morley Field for a park carved out of Riverside cemetery is a pathetic attempt to hide a corrupt mayor’s phony efforts at economic development for developers who give him campaign contributions.  Pawtucket has a long and sordid record of closing parks that were created with federal Land and Waters Conservation Funds.  The law is quite clear, parks created with this funding cannot be neglected or closed without going through a federal process seeking permission, and permission will only be given if more parkland is to be created in a place that will serve the community better.  Pawtucket keeps closing, without permission parks in low income Black and brown neighborhoods, and was trying to do the same to Morley field.   For the first time they were caught red handed and the public has objected vigorously and relentlessly.    The city has stonewalled for 2 years, and now tries to slip a public comment period in without giving anyone involved any notice.  The website continues to have documents that deny that Woodlawn is an Environmental Justice neighborhood when anyone with even a basic notion of the neighborhood would have no doubt it is.  I do hope this me they corrected the story of a burning mill and in  the correction apologizing for saying a mill that burned in Woonsocket was in Pawtucket. 

 

As for why I oppose the closing of Morley Feld, it is the only athletic field in a low income Black and brown neighborhood.  It has more kids than average for Pawtucket neighborhoods.  With the illegal and secret closing of other parks, Morley Field is the last large space in the area to play.  In violation of the law Pawtucket neglected Morley for years, dug a bunch of big holes and scattered frocks across it making it dangerous to play in, and then closed it with chains and keep out signs.  All without telling the National Park service, hoping no one would notice.  So it could be turned into a parking lot.  

 

The neighborhood would be left with lots of extra traffic from a delivery warehouse and lose its only large green space, a  lose, lose for the neighborhood on air quality.   And with the river being cleaned up as part of the  Combined Sewer Overflow project, Pawtucket would be losing its only possible public access to the Moshassuck River.  The potential for a connection to the river is one that will be mourned if it is not kept available,

 

The park to be created instead is on the other side of the largest hill in town and the far side of the richest whitest neighborhood in the city.  It would mean children from 8 to 8 would be crossing the busy Hope St and walking through Oak hill.  A city as blind as unable to see Woodlawn as an EJ neighborhood is going to also be blind to the hazards to boys and young men who walk through rich folks neighborhoods while black.  There is no way that Riverside land is an acceptable swap for the kids of Woodlawn.

 

Considering Pawtucket’s record on this issue for at least the last 15 years, and their efforts to sleaze the destruction of Morley Field through it is totally inappropriate to grant permission to destroy Morley Field  and we insist the city rehabilitate and open Morley as an athletic field and improve t as a river access point.  Woodlawn wants its park back, and it is time to upgrade it. 

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