Paid Advertisement

To Advertise Call 781-585-0037

May 11th 2008

Critique by Costa
 Neighborhood Sign Language

by Joe Costa

(July 16, 2004)You have to love this guy Dean Sears. He’s the one who got more than just a little offended when L. Knife had the trees backing up to his property cut down. The stand of good sized trees were what separated him from looking at the warehouse on the river. They probably went a long way to giving him some protection from any noise generated on site, like maybe five to ten trucks starting up at about the same time each day. Then don’t forget those same trucks returning at night. Remember too, that their business peaks in the summer months when people like to sleep with their windows open and enjoy their back yards and just maybe those trucks are coming back a little later than they normally do.

Mr. Sears decided to launch his own protest effort and put up a decent sized sign on the back of his barn facing the plant. The colored lights were a nice highlighting touch. He immediately got a barrage of flack thrown at him. If his wife is like mine he probably had to answer to her too. The Bud people weren’t amused and asked the appropriate Town Official to aid in the removal of the signs.

Dean stood his ground and went looking for a permit and any other excuse he could to justify the signs staying up. After a little consultation the decision was made to let him keep his signs, for how long I’m not sure. This is a good call because I can imagine all kinds of lawsuits and we certainly don’t want to be in a position of the Town violating any one person’s civil rights. It’s Dean’s civil right to protest what he sees as a wrong. This is what makes this country a great place to live in. The gray area seems to be how far can he push his right to put up this sign without infringing on his neighbor’s right to enjoy the scenery without having to look at his fairly crude sign. Since the trouble is in interpreting just how these things apply we need to have lawyers.

Dean Sears isn’t the only person affected by this company. The neighborhood has been ticked off for years and they never did get used to the beer warehouse in their backyards.

This area is like quite a few here in Kingston in that many of the residents have lived there for many years and have family members also living in the neighborhood. Many of them also lived there before the warehouse was built. They fought it then and are still fighting. I’m sure that they feel alone in their struggle and, in fact, they are. Town Meeting was responsible for allowing the activity to start in the first place.

As I remember the company was looking for a new home but it had to be on the rail line because the beer came by train. They were also going to pursue a direct entrance onto route 3 which never happened. There weren’t going to be many trucks and the time of operation was going to be very limited. The town bought all this and allowed the plant to be built. The ramp directly to the area was never built but a few ideas were kicked around, all of them involved acquiring property but none ever seemed to be feasible. Rail service is not the major supply for them so trucks took it’s place. The company also grew and more vehicles and other product were dispatched from the plant. So that they can expand the recycling efforts they want to add on a pretty large building.

The Bud boys went to the Planning Board for approval for the large addition but were turned down. They responded by cutting down trees that, by most accounts, were planted as a condition of their permit to serve as a buffer for the residential area abutting them. Their response was that the cutting was planned in advance and was just coincidental. They behaved just the way I would expect a business to behave. They want something and have the resources to push the issue. When it becomes financially detrimental to continue they would stop.

Mr. Sear’s sign that suggests boycotting Bud certainly isn’t going to impact their bottom line very much so why do they want him to take it down? A businessman I worked with once summed up his attitude pretty well when he said “I find that sometimes it is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.” Act first, deal with the consequences later, that seems to be their philosophy.

L. Knife and son appears to be the Goliath and Dean the David in this scenario. They came to Kingston with an idea of what their company was going to be but obviously they have gone in a different direction. Their success should be applauded because they obviously run the company well. They moved here because they outgrew their old facility, maybe they should be real Buds and look for another place where they will have the ability to grow without constraints.

A place where their trucks will be free to come and go without winding through small neighborhood streets. Most facilities like this are in places called Industrial Parks, I can think of several real close by. That’s my story, I’m sticking to it.