Tragedy In The Making
All indications are that the Millbury Board of Selectmen intend to enter a Chapter 40B Local Initiative Program (LIP) agreement with Steven F. Venincasa and James Venincasa under the entity name of SJV Investments, LLC for 17 Rice Road in Millbury, Massachusetts even though the developer did not concede on much of anything that the Town of Millbury had requested for public safety. As background, the Millbury Planning Board previously denied a proposed 46-condominium project at the same location submitted by Steven Venincasa and James Venincasa under the entity name of Whitney Street Home Builders, LLC mostly due to the developer’s failure to address public safety concerns and the dismissal of the same.
If Steven F. Venincasa and James Venincasa failed to address public safety and failed to negotiate with the Millbury Board of Selectmen in good faith, then why would the Millbury Board of Selectmen even consider entering a Chapter 40B LIP agreement? Makes no sense, right? However, this is exactly what the Millbury Board of Selectmen intend to do.
Our neighborhood and all residents of Millbury should attend the Millbury Board of Selectmen meeting in person on Tuesday, January 10, 2023, starting promptly at 6:00 PM at the Millbury Town Hall, 127 Elm Street, Millbury, Massachusetts to speak up during the first agenda item of Citizen Speak (limited to 5-minutes per person). If the proposed Chapter 40B LIP project is approved, then it will have implications for well beyond Rice Road, Thomas Hill Road, Aldrich Avenue, and Captain Peter Simpson Road. At a minimum, it will have implications on the traffic volume on South Main Street, Woodland Street, Herricks Lane, Sycamore Street, Curve Street, Providence Street, Riverlin Street, Dudley Road (in Sutton), etc. We are talking about approximately 400± additional vehicles per day in and out, in addition to even more delivery and service vehicles. Consider how these additional vehicles will travel over the Providence & Worcester Railroad crossing that is only 19-feet in width with a bad angle (no visibility), a steep grade (treacherous in winter months), and no railroad crossing gates. Rice Road is less than the minimum road width of 22-feet in Millbury, when for a development of this magnitude should be 32-feet in pavement width minimum, plus a 3-foot grass strip, and at least one 5-foot-wide sidewalk. Next are the intersections at both ends of Rice Road, and the impossible right turn southbound on Providence Street onto Rice Road. Oh, by the way, Mary Krumsiek, David Delaney, and Sean Hendricks omitted these critical public safety matters from the negotiations with the developer. This will be another problem, like McCracken Road 2.0, that taxpayers will be forced to fund and fix after there is some avoidable tragedy.
It is time that Millbury residents to get involved and speak up. People complain all the time, however, the time to act is before a decision is made. These ill-conceived development plans need to be mitigated, redesigned, scaled-back, or outright stopped. We need some “common sense” applied to discussions and decisions. The Millbury Planning Board made the right decision, even though the Millbury Board of Selectmen wrongly blamed them for making the correct decision. We demand that the Millbury Board of Selectmen to do the same and apply some “common sense”, rather than simply passing the buck (and blame) onto the Millbury Board of Appeals next.
We need appropriate and responsible development in the town of Millbury. This is not that. This is an avoidable tragedy in the making.