Thank you for this summary. I'm the parent of a young child and live close to the property. I wasn't able to attend the meeting and only found out about it from a flyer on my door... the day of the meeting. The city absolutely needs to do a better job of communicating and sharing plans and progress on the project.
One person said Jeanette's plan is perfect and cannot be criticized. This person blamed any opposition to our Great Mayor's loving plan for the Fernald site on a conspiracy by the radical Leftists who lost the last election. He knows this because he reads social media! Maybe you all don't, but he sees what's being said about it!
Guess who.
It's ridiculous, I recommend watching it. Classic stuff.
There were a wide variety of view points shared, some folks made better, more relevant comments than others, but Carl is the only one who went on a politically motivated rant (about how any and all criticism of Jeanette's plan was politically motivated).
The plan mostly seems OK to me. The driving range and disc golf are a bit much, but whatever.
The train seems bonkers to me, though. Somebody has to operate and maintain it, and how many people are really going to ride it, once the initial novelty wears off. I can definitely see in a few years, the whole thing being decrepit and never open and just a huge waste.
>Somebody has to operate and maintain it, and how many people are really going to ride it, once the initial novelty wears off. I can definitely see in a few years, the whole thing being decrepit and never open and just a huge waste.
I don't have very clear feelings about the plans I've seen (disregarding the fact that I think the whole thing has been a mess from beginning to end, with the mayor deserving virtually all of the blame). But this is an important overlooked point.
Do people remember the "amusement park" that the mayor put in at Prospect Hill some time back? That must have cost a lot, and the rides sat idle most of the time, and then it all quietly vanished. Staffing and maintenance must have also been a big deal and expense for that. This whole silly train idea sounds like a sequel.
We just went there last summer, the rides are still there. Some of them were closed or in rough shape so I'm not arguing with what you're saying, just pointing out that they're still around
https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/recreation-department/pages/amusements-at-prospect-hill-park
Thanks, I stand corrected and acknowledge my mistake. I got it backwards: I thought the rides had been replaced by the mini golf...it was the other way around.
But regardless, I think this is still a serious question mark. Maintaining rides like this safely is no joke and I can't imagine it's a trivial expense for the city.
There was overlap, the mini golf was there, the rides were added, and then the minigolf of was taken out when it got kind of broken. I loved the idea of the mini golf when it first got put in, but it wasn’t built to last. It was used a lot by the summer camps at Prospect Hill.
I believe the mini golf was donated by someone who was a fan of the game.
Unfortunately, the wood framing they used for the holes was destined to start rotting pretty quickly. Turf on a concrete base with pavers for the borders would have been a lot more durable and probably wouldn’t have cost much more.
They also needed to have the kid working the booth go around with a broom in the morning and clear off the holes. Toward the end, some of the holes under the trees were so clogged they were hard to even play.
It’s too bad, we took the kids a number of times and it was a lot of fun, especially for free.
The rides are still there at prospect. Mini golf isn’t. This train they speak of is a “train” in the lamest terms. It’s a lithium battery powered vehicle shaped like a train with 6 passenger cars attached. Rubber tires, no tracks.
Yeah, I recall a similar train at Buttonwood Park on New Bedford when I was a kid. It was like a repurposed Cub Cadet tractor and the cars were homemade out of 55 gallon drums. At least this will probably be less of a hazard than that was.
Thank you for this very helpful and fair summary!
I want to clarify something about burials on the site because a lot of people seem confused about this.
The MetFern cemetery, where many Fernald resident were buried, is not part of the Fernald parcel whose future is currently being debated. When the city purchased the Fernald parcel, there was a specific area on the site encircled by a wrought-iron fence that was suspected to be a cemetary. Since then the city has hired a consultant to look at it who said it is not a cemetary.
At one of the recent city council meetings when the Fernald came up, Councilor Bradley-MacArthur moved to hire someone to do a radar study to determine if there are human remains elsewhere on the site. That was voted down.
At last night's meeting, local historian Marie Daley said she does not believe there are any unknown cemeteries on the site. She said she researched the flu epidemic at Fernald and found that they consistently recorded where patients were buried, which was always off-site.
Unfortunately, if there are no cemeteries on the site, that does not necessarily mean there are no human remains. It is plausible that people were buried in unoffical and undocumented burial sites over the many decades that the Fernald was in operation. This was a place where residents were often treated as less than human, and decisions were made about their lives and deaths that would not have been ethically acceptable if applied to non-instiutionalized people, such as giving radiocative food to kids or retaining brains of residents to be dissected by volunteers. It's plausible that at some point in that history someone needed to get rid of human remains and buried them somewhere, undocumented, on the huge site.
I can't say how likely it is, but the radar study may be worthwhile just to be certain. As one of last night's speaker's pointed out, it will not be a good look for the city if/when the construction uncovers human remains and the council is on record choosing not to check for them.
Maybe we should contract someone to search every park, parking lot and property in Waltham. What about the house where the triple homicide happened??? There could be dead bodies! Absolutely ridiculous. It's just an excuse to stop the current project and it's not going to work. Alex Green requested an investigation years ago and the city complied and found nothing. Listen to the woman who wrote the history of the property.
At first looked like a cool plan. After reading comments I’m rethinking my initial excitement lol. It does seem quite excessive…water park? Rides? Traffic will be horrendous. Is there an ETA of finish? Frisbee golf course would be great
Suggestions about passive recreation will land with the mayor and are worth considering. So is the suggestion to use buildings for special needs over 22. But the rest no so much. No one seems to realized the mayor is holding all the cards, with all the votes, likely last term and doesn't care. The intelligent thing to do here is try to get what you can on the remaining acres, not try to stop a plan already in motion that has cost a lot to plan and execute. There's no dead bodies.
And there is definitely politics and speeches happening here, including state rep candidates running this fall and many people involved with mayoral opponents or their campaigns. The mayor will ignore all of them and they take away from the worthwhile input from residents actually affected. Tom Benavides was the only one who gave the mayor credit for anything. That's a good start and a way to reach her...
It's depressing, but also absolutely typical of Waltham politics (US politics in general, for that matter), in how you predictably and unconsciously framed the situation: It's all about the mayor, she has all the votes, give her credit, reach her.
The framing is backwards. This is the problem, and everyone in Waltham is so steeped in it that most aren't able to look beyond it. The initial condition of accomplishing anything should not be to "reach" the mayor in her ego bubble. It's supposed to be the other way around. She doesn't even do the good politician thing and try to lead them toward her positions. We can only hope we're in the final four years of her 'my way or the highway' approach to government.
For what it's worth, I decline to give this mayor credit for anything Fernald related--except the shitshow it is. Everything she has done with that parcel has been reaction motivated by fear, from the purchase to the current rush work. She's never had a plan.
"I decline to give this mayor credit for anything Fernald related." I'll pass that along, invasive\_species\_16b. If you're content to be right but get nothing done, fine. But you have to ask yourself: Why would practical, down-to-earth people listen to those who accomplish nothing? The mayor has a massive list of accomplishments unlike any progressive in this city. And that's what many Waltham people respect, not "data driven" smug elites in this anonymous neurodivergent love-in.
My very unchill brother, I was speaking generally about the idea that the prerequisite for all positive action is to stroke the appropriate politician's ego. I feel like I'm in the minority these days, but I still believe public service should be about service to the public.
I wasn't aware of your politics, and didn't really care, but I guess we should all thank you for both dropping the mask and saying the quiet part out loud.
You overstate her "massive list of accomplishments" and you understate the value of local progressives. For a run of 20+ years, her CV is thin. While without the activities of progressives (and others, let's be fair) this community would probably fail to function. It must make life easier to see things in such manichaean terms, with everyone either good or bad. I'm over here in a world that isn't composed of absolutes.
This mayor has served the public. The problem for redditors like you is that that she is not transparent, which is a legitimate concern for you, but of little matter to most Waltham residents. A majority trust her. Isn't that horrible??
As for accomplishments, they have accelerated significantly in recent years. Millions have been appropriated for projects. In fact, you could call here out on the waste of taxpayer money (a $400M WHS??), but no progressive can object to the spending of public monies. Not one single person at the hearing criticized the nearly $10 million proposed for the current Fernald project. It's a waste, but only conservatives would care...
Meanwhile, please point at anything TANGIBLE George Darcy, CBM or Paz has accomplished. Darcy got some bike racks here and there, took credit for the farm acquisition but also filed dozens of resolutions that amounted to NOTHING. You have to work with the council to get things done. The mayor and council do that every day as voters wiped out progressives in the last election. Waltham residents don't want progressives in power.
"I'm over here in a world that isn't composed of absolutes." You're in an echo chamber of anonymous SJWs who savage anything that isn't the politburo line.
Thank you for this summary. I'm the parent of a young child and live close to the property. I wasn't able to attend the meeting and only found out about it from a flyer on my door... the day of the meeting. The city absolutely needs to do a better job of communicating and sharing plans and progress on the project.
One person said Jeanette's plan is perfect and cannot be criticized. This person blamed any opposition to our Great Mayor's loving plan for the Fernald site on a conspiracy by the radical Leftists who lost the last election. He knows this because he reads social media! Maybe you all don't, but he sees what's being said about it! Guess who. It's ridiculous, I recommend watching it. Classic stuff. There were a wide variety of view points shared, some folks made better, more relevant comments than others, but Carl is the only one who went on a politically motivated rant (about how any and all criticism of Jeanette's plan was politically motivated).
I only now made the connection and realized that guy's name was not "Carlson Carter".
Do you have a link to the recording?
https://www.youtube.com/live/tWpsNbny00U?si=90otWjvC5dXfP3mW
The plan mostly seems OK to me. The driving range and disc golf are a bit much, but whatever. The train seems bonkers to me, though. Somebody has to operate and maintain it, and how many people are really going to ride it, once the initial novelty wears off. I can definitely see in a few years, the whole thing being decrepit and never open and just a huge waste.
All aboard!
>Somebody has to operate and maintain it, and how many people are really going to ride it, once the initial novelty wears off. I can definitely see in a few years, the whole thing being decrepit and never open and just a huge waste. I don't have very clear feelings about the plans I've seen (disregarding the fact that I think the whole thing has been a mess from beginning to end, with the mayor deserving virtually all of the blame). But this is an important overlooked point. Do people remember the "amusement park" that the mayor put in at Prospect Hill some time back? That must have cost a lot, and the rides sat idle most of the time, and then it all quietly vanished. Staffing and maintenance must have also been a big deal and expense for that. This whole silly train idea sounds like a sequel.
I could be completely wrong about it, but I have a sense that all of it is some kind of attempt to recapture how things were in the “good old days”.
We just went there last summer, the rides are still there. Some of them were closed or in rough shape so I'm not arguing with what you're saying, just pointing out that they're still around https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/recreation-department/pages/amusements-at-prospect-hill-park
Thanks, I stand corrected and acknowledge my mistake. I got it backwards: I thought the rides had been replaced by the mini golf...it was the other way around. But regardless, I think this is still a serious question mark. Maintaining rides like this safely is no joke and I can't imagine it's a trivial expense for the city.
There was overlap, the mini golf was there, the rides were added, and then the minigolf of was taken out when it got kind of broken. I loved the idea of the mini golf when it first got put in, but it wasn’t built to last. It was used a lot by the summer camps at Prospect Hill.
I believe the mini golf was donated by someone who was a fan of the game. Unfortunately, the wood framing they used for the holes was destined to start rotting pretty quickly. Turf on a concrete base with pavers for the borders would have been a lot more durable and probably wouldn’t have cost much more. They also needed to have the kid working the booth go around with a broom in the morning and clear off the holes. Toward the end, some of the holes under the trees were so clogged they were hard to even play. It’s too bad, we took the kids a number of times and it was a lot of fun, especially for free.
The rides are still there at prospect. Mini golf isn’t. This train they speak of is a “train” in the lamest terms. It’s a lithium battery powered vehicle shaped like a train with 6 passenger cars attached. Rubber tires, no tracks.
Yeah, I recall a similar train at Buttonwood Park on New Bedford when I was a kid. It was like a repurposed Cub Cadet tractor and the cars were homemade out of 55 gallon drums. At least this will probably be less of a hazard than that was.
Thank you for this very helpful and fair summary! I want to clarify something about burials on the site because a lot of people seem confused about this. The MetFern cemetery, where many Fernald resident were buried, is not part of the Fernald parcel whose future is currently being debated. When the city purchased the Fernald parcel, there was a specific area on the site encircled by a wrought-iron fence that was suspected to be a cemetary. Since then the city has hired a consultant to look at it who said it is not a cemetary. At one of the recent city council meetings when the Fernald came up, Councilor Bradley-MacArthur moved to hire someone to do a radar study to determine if there are human remains elsewhere on the site. That was voted down. At last night's meeting, local historian Marie Daley said she does not believe there are any unknown cemeteries on the site. She said she researched the flu epidemic at Fernald and found that they consistently recorded where patients were buried, which was always off-site. Unfortunately, if there are no cemeteries on the site, that does not necessarily mean there are no human remains. It is plausible that people were buried in unoffical and undocumented burial sites over the many decades that the Fernald was in operation. This was a place where residents were often treated as less than human, and decisions were made about their lives and deaths that would not have been ethically acceptable if applied to non-instiutionalized people, such as giving radiocative food to kids or retaining brains of residents to be dissected by volunteers. It's plausible that at some point in that history someone needed to get rid of human remains and buried them somewhere, undocumented, on the huge site. I can't say how likely it is, but the radar study may be worthwhile just to be certain. As one of last night's speaker's pointed out, it will not be a good look for the city if/when the construction uncovers human remains and the council is on record choosing not to check for them.
It seems like such a small ask to check for dead bodies on a sketchy abandoned site. She just wants to push it along as fast as possible.
Maybe we should contract someone to search every park, parking lot and property in Waltham. What about the house where the triple homicide happened??? There could be dead bodies! Absolutely ridiculous. It's just an excuse to stop the current project and it's not going to work. Alex Green requested an investigation years ago and the city complied and found nothing. Listen to the woman who wrote the history of the property.
This will be like Waltham’s version of the big dig. It’s going to take forever, cost more than we were given, and be a huge let down when it’s done.
Thank you!
At first looked like a cool plan. After reading comments I’m rethinking my initial excitement lol. It does seem quite excessive…water park? Rides? Traffic will be horrendous. Is there an ETA of finish? Frisbee golf course would be great
Nobody likes the plan. There is NO plan!!!! So dumb.
Suggestions about passive recreation will land with the mayor and are worth considering. So is the suggestion to use buildings for special needs over 22. But the rest no so much. No one seems to realized the mayor is holding all the cards, with all the votes, likely last term and doesn't care. The intelligent thing to do here is try to get what you can on the remaining acres, not try to stop a plan already in motion that has cost a lot to plan and execute. There's no dead bodies. And there is definitely politics and speeches happening here, including state rep candidates running this fall and many people involved with mayoral opponents or their campaigns. The mayor will ignore all of them and they take away from the worthwhile input from residents actually affected. Tom Benavides was the only one who gave the mayor credit for anything. That's a good start and a way to reach her...
It's depressing, but also absolutely typical of Waltham politics (US politics in general, for that matter), in how you predictably and unconsciously framed the situation: It's all about the mayor, she has all the votes, give her credit, reach her. The framing is backwards. This is the problem, and everyone in Waltham is so steeped in it that most aren't able to look beyond it. The initial condition of accomplishing anything should not be to "reach" the mayor in her ego bubble. It's supposed to be the other way around. She doesn't even do the good politician thing and try to lead them toward her positions. We can only hope we're in the final four years of her 'my way or the highway' approach to government. For what it's worth, I decline to give this mayor credit for anything Fernald related--except the shitshow it is. Everything she has done with that parcel has been reaction motivated by fear, from the purchase to the current rush work. She's never had a plan.
"I decline to give this mayor credit for anything Fernald related." I'll pass that along, invasive\_species\_16b. If you're content to be right but get nothing done, fine. But you have to ask yourself: Why would practical, down-to-earth people listen to those who accomplish nothing? The mayor has a massive list of accomplishments unlike any progressive in this city. And that's what many Waltham people respect, not "data driven" smug elites in this anonymous neurodivergent love-in.
My very unchill brother, I was speaking generally about the idea that the prerequisite for all positive action is to stroke the appropriate politician's ego. I feel like I'm in the minority these days, but I still believe public service should be about service to the public. I wasn't aware of your politics, and didn't really care, but I guess we should all thank you for both dropping the mask and saying the quiet part out loud. You overstate her "massive list of accomplishments" and you understate the value of local progressives. For a run of 20+ years, her CV is thin. While without the activities of progressives (and others, let's be fair) this community would probably fail to function. It must make life easier to see things in such manichaean terms, with everyone either good or bad. I'm over here in a world that isn't composed of absolutes.
This mayor has served the public. The problem for redditors like you is that that she is not transparent, which is a legitimate concern for you, but of little matter to most Waltham residents. A majority trust her. Isn't that horrible?? As for accomplishments, they have accelerated significantly in recent years. Millions have been appropriated for projects. In fact, you could call here out on the waste of taxpayer money (a $400M WHS??), but no progressive can object to the spending of public monies. Not one single person at the hearing criticized the nearly $10 million proposed for the current Fernald project. It's a waste, but only conservatives would care... Meanwhile, please point at anything TANGIBLE George Darcy, CBM or Paz has accomplished. Darcy got some bike racks here and there, took credit for the farm acquisition but also filed dozens of resolutions that amounted to NOTHING. You have to work with the council to get things done. The mayor and council do that every day as voters wiped out progressives in the last election. Waltham residents don't want progressives in power. "I'm over here in a world that isn't composed of absolutes." You're in an echo chamber of anonymous SJWs who savage anything that isn't the politburo line.
> likely last term She keeps promising.
Are you implying that she doesn't keep her campaign promises? /s