Gordon Bailey, a 69-year-old retired state inspector, won Monday night’s Lee, Massachusetts select board race for a three-year term on the three-member body. Bailey previously served on the board from 2002 to 2014. A dominant local issue remains opposition to the EPA brokered deal reached in 2020 to clean up the Housatonic River after decades of pollution by General Electric. Under the agreement, some toxic materials from the waterway will be deposited in a new landfill in Lee. Bailey spoke with WAMC about that and much more.
BAILEY: We were talking at our town meeting about a potential community center. We're going back to the drawing board a little bit on that. But it is something that the committees that have looked into these things, the open space committee and whatnot, that know that we need. Also, we're in pretty dire need for an updated police, fire, ambulance building, facility. They're definitely outdated and outmoded, so we need to get some updates on that. We also need to address some issues, I think, in our zoning bylaw still to be able to encourage more housing in town, especially market rate housing. And those are some of the things that I would like to work on. And also, now that we just voted out the town representative form of government, there's a lot of people who don't understand how town meetings necessarily work here because we had a unique situation. And I'd like to work with the town moderator and others in town to create some videos for our website to lay out how a budgeting process works, how a town meeting goes, you know, sort of protocol, and I think that would be educational and very helpful as we move into the future with open town meetings like most of the other communities do.
WAMC: Now, we've talked about the rest, let's go back to the PCBs here. Obviously, you know, just this massive issue in Lee. Can you sort of explain to folks sort of where you stand in this ongoing conversation that's been such an emotional one in the Lee community?
Where I stand is, I know that no one in this town wants a PCB dump here, you know? And I also know that folks before us on the select board felt that – that members of also of the five town Rest of River committee, municipality committee – you know, they all felt they got the best deal, whatever that means, for our town, where we ended up with- Well, first, we ended up with no dump in town, and then GE appealed the agreement, and the Environmental Appeals Court judges decided that, yeah, why shouldn't GE keep some, some PCBs in town. So this really comes from the Environmental Appeals Court. And that is also working its way through some courts. So, there's not a lot I’ll say about that other than I am more than willing to do what has to be done to help move that along and hopefully overturn this whole decision to have to keep any of the PCBs here in town. So, there's many ways we can do that. I think that it also- There are people who feel that this wasn't an open process. So, I absolutely believe this needs to be done. And not just at selectmen’s meetings, but perhaps up at our auditorium and high school where everybody in town gets to come ask questions about the Rest of River agreement, get some answers from the legal minds that are around us. As far as, as long as we know what, you know, could happen that's not what we want, versus what we want, how much it might cost, and we did a community feel for that, then, you know, I think that all has to be done in the open and then the board of selectmen needs to move in that direction, whatever that direction may be.
Now, can you explain the ballot question that was approved concerning the dump in this year's election?
You're talking about Question 1, which is rescinding the Rest of River agreement. It was probably a two thirds to one thirds vote to rescind. A non-binding question. And what that really does is it also helps the board of selectmen know that, you know, the feelings in town is very strongly against having this dump, which is what we just talked about, and the Rest of River agreement. And with that knowledge that we have a very substantial support system here to rescind, we just need to make sure we understand the legal ramifications of rescinding. You know, will, would this- Like, the worst case scenario of all was, we rescind, we don't have a seat at the table anymore, GE gets to put their dump there anyway because that's what the EPA says and then we get no money. I mean, that would be like a worst case scenario. And we don't want to find ourselves in that scenario either. So that's why I'm proposing and did propose that we have open meetings with the attorneys to find out what are the legal ramifications of rescinding. We know we have the backing of the people. But let's figure out now what that means to us.
