Plainfield voters rejected a $600,000 bond for a land purchase on Election Day, but supporters of the housing project say they are still moving forward.
Plainfield residents voted 238-298 on a ballot question that would have allowed the town to borrow the money to purchase about 24 acres of land near the village center.
The select board, and some people in town, want to encourage housing developers to build about 40 homes there — roughly the same number the town lost during two consecutive years of flooding. The town hopes to receive a $10 million disaster recovery grant to build out roads and utility connections to support the housing development.
The first step would be to purchase the land, but voters on Nov. 4 said they did not want the town to borrow the money.
Arion Thiboumery, who is a member of the East Village Expansion Advisory Committee, said the town will pursue the project despite the outcome of the vote.
“It is not a referendum on the project,” Thiboumery said. “This certainly would have been convenient and expeditious, but there are totally other ways to continue to move forward. It’s not a deal breaker.”
Thiboumery suggested voters may have had concerns with paying the loan back but still support the housing.
“If we receive the grant funding that we applied for we’ll find another way to buy the land,” he said. “The word I’ve heard from the select board is a willingness to just find another way to make this happen.”
Michael Birnbaum is a part of the group, Plainfielders for Responsible Growth, which came together to oppose the project.
He says the vote was the first time for the town to fully weigh in, since a Town Meeting Day vote in March showed broad support for the proposal.
The project at that time was estimated to cost about $2.5 million, and it has since grown to almost $10 million.
Birnbaum says the vote this month was absolutely a message to the select board.
“This vote served as the referendum we’ve been seeking for a long time,” Birnbaum said. “It’s an overblown proposal that’s rife with problems. Now the town can right its tipping ship. It can determine what growth it wants for itself, and it can develop new housing in a more appropriate way than what was proposed.”
Only about half of the land can be developed, because it includes protected wetlands.
Birnbaum says the vote shows residents don’t support clustering 40 homes, and building roads, on a steep embankment in their town.
“Six-hundred-thousand-dollars against a $10 million project is a trifle. That isn’t why people voted it down,” he said. “People voted it down because they thought the overall project didn’t fit Plainfield, and wasn’t appropriate. Now we have an opportunity to look at other housing solutions.”
