DALTON — Voters by a wide margin rejected a permanent zoning ordinance during a special town meeting ballot vote on Tuesday.
The count, still unofficial as of Tuesday evening, was 195 in support of zoning and 280 against, making for a total vote count of 475.
Tuesday’s turnout was nearly double the 2021 vote that saw 135 voters in favor of extending emergency temporary zoning until a permanent ordinance was presented and 130 voters opposed to ETZ, making for a total vote count of 265 and a much narrower margin.
In 2019, ETZ was adopted in a 154-129 vote.
Dalton Town Moderator Frank Tillotson Jr. described the heavy volume of voters on Tuesday.
“Today was unbelievable, especially with all the registrations,” he said.
Tillotson estimates there were about 50 same-day voter registrations and about a 61-percent turnout among registered Dalton voters.
“It was great to see people get out and participate,” he said.
Dalton resident Pam Kathan, one of a group of residents leading the charge against zoning, was asked how she felt about the vote.
“Ecstatic, of course,” she said.
Zoning supporters and opponents of Casella Waste Systems’ proposal for a commercial landfill beside Forest Lake State Park were disappointed, but some were confident the solid waste facility will not come to fruition.
“They’re not going to get a landfill,” said Jon Swan, founder of Save Forest Lake. “This wasn’t a referendum on the landfill. It’s about zoning.”
Swan said Douglas Drive, which would be the access road to a landfill in Dalton, is in Bethlehem, and Bethlehem has zoning.
Dalton resident and landfill opponent Adam Finkel said he was astounded by Tuesday’s total vote count.
He said it can be attributed in part to the many same-day registrations, what he said was misinformation about zoning being circulated by opponents — including that zoning wouldn’t keep out a landfill — and by Casella last week withdrawing its permit applications for a landfill.
Casella, though, said its intent is to refile, and Finkel said withdrawn permits don’t mean the project is dead.
“It was a fear campaign against private property rights,” he said of the zoning defeat. “But in the three years we’ve had zoning, nothing has happened.”
Swan called the outcome of this year’s zoning vote the result of a “professional campaign waged by Casella,” which he said turned out the vote and created a process that stacked the odds against zoning supporters.
Despite the polarization between some residents on zoning, Tillotson said the day went smoothly.
“People were good, nice, and orderly,” he said.
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Allow me to translate the long comment line by line, as despite one degree from the university whose motto is “Veritas,” truthful English does not appear to be his first (or second) language:
In a town completely divided geographically between affected abutters to a ruinous environmental nuisance and others 8-10 miles away from said noxious use, the latter group has always outnumbered the former, and after two losses on zoning, turned out sufficiently to work their will.
We fear a re-submission of a very simple zoning ordinance that would restrict heavy industry to a defined location in Dalton (while giving homeowners complete free reign to ruin their land and annoy their neighbors however they please), because that might be harder for us to monkeywrench, caricature, and subvert.
Yes. we must encourage business to locate in Dalton, but I personally am far too lazy to lift a finger to help, and I find it ever so much easier to complain and sabotage.
We need new Planning Board members who will carry water for an outrageous group of foul-mouthed bullies who will say anything, threaten anyone, break any norm.
We need a new Master Plan so that the bully faction can continue to say that no change is needed, ever, anywhere (except for 18 million new tons of others’ trash—that’s the kind of change we need). Only a completely new Master Plan will give us the complete absence of change that we demand. (Huh?)
The experts who used their knowledge to point out the myriad scientific and technical flaws of the Casella project are “extremists”—but amateurs who shriek like banshees about their precious views and hypothetical partial loss of personal wealth are not “extremists” at all. No. Not at all.
F yeah! We need no out-of-towners to tell us “real people” what to do. “Real people” go to St. Paul’s School for coat-and-tie education among the other trust-fund babies, or live in Rutland, Vermont (which is really just a suburb of Dalton), or work for a political campaign and PR firm in down-and-out Wellesley, Mass., and just “commute” here once to man the phones and badger people to vote against their interests.
And the one thing left out: “we believe the real folk of Dalton will believe anything we say, up to and including telling them that we found phantom ‘no’ words in the Zoning Ordinance. They won’t read the part that tells them X, Y, and Z are completely permissible with no notice, and will lap it up when we tell them X, Y, and Z are forbidden by the ‘zoning police’ we made up to scare them.” Aren’t we ever so clever?
Well, to be honest, it was actually a wealthy, out-of-state corporation from VT that hired a slick PR firm from MA to influence and manipulate a small town election in order to remove any local control over their dangerous mega-landfill development, that spoke loud and clear yesterday. Meet Tom Ahearn of 5 Corners, who ran a control center within the voting room in Dalton, unbeknownst to all until today: https://fivecornersstrategies.com/meet-the-team/tom-ahern/ We will stop Casella's nefarious plans, no worries, despite the efforts of the few Quislings within Dalton. This denigration of the well-respected members of the Town of Dalton Planning Board by the largest landowner in Dalton should speak to what is truly in his heart. I'll take being labeled a thug and an extremist by Jim and Sandy Nimby, certainly an odd couple, as a compliment.
Dalton voters have spoken with a clear and loud voice.
Zoning is off the table. And there should be no thought about "re-proposing" zoning for another vote for the foreseeable future.
Voters have resoundingly rejected the idea of distorted and abusive zoning. Zoning that's not about what's good for the whole town. Zoning that in reality was nothing more than a misguided attack on a single landowner and a single project.
The selectboard should now face reality and appoint new planning board members whose views better match our community. People who understand that if the town is to have any zoning in the future, it must be carefully and fairly prepared, must work for Dalton families and businesses and must encourage the growth of our tax base.
The new planning board should forcefully declare its independence from the political winds of the moment. They should refuse to carry water for any faction and most certainly the Forest Lake faction. Their job is to do what's good for the town as a whole.
The new board should recognize the need to rebuild the planning board's credibility. It's taken a serious hit. That requires doing things right, such as putting any thoughts of zoning on hold until after the board has completed a serious and comprehensive new master plan for our town.
This overwhelming vote has another benefit. Voters have clearly rejected the hateful, divisive, destructive politics of the anti-landfill extremists.
Just like in the vote for town clerk, many different Dalton groups pulled together yesterday to "just say no" to the extremists who were fanatically pushing this flawed zoning proposal.
Our voters also sent a clear message to the out-of-town activists and organizations who feel they have the right to come to Dalton and tell us how we should run our own town. No thanks. We can do it ourselves just fine.
3+ years later, and no progress on the permitting front, will Casella double down on dumb? Tick tock, tick tock, 2026 is right around the clock...
As Seinfeld's Soup Nazi would say: "No Landfill For You!"
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