Patrick Fox, Chair of the Sterling Zoning Board of Appeals a/k/a The Developers’ Doormat, never met an abutter or neighbor to a local developer’s proposed development project, no matter how sketchy or objectionable that project may be when stacked up against Sterling’s Protective (Zoning) By-Laws– the very set of By-Laws that Mr. Fox is duty-bound to uphold and enforce–that he wouldn’t hose in a heartbeat.
So he put on display his true colors yet again during the 12 April 2022 Sterling ZBA Hearing on the Cider Hill Estates ‘No Touch Buffer Zone’ (off Redstone Hill Road), the VERY ‘No Touch Buffer Zone,’ recorded as a PUBLIC RECORD at the Worcester District Registry of Deeds, that the Sterling ZBA ITSELF, in 2016, imposed so as to protect abutters to the Cider Hill Estates multi-family development. In the manner of an outright hypocrite Fox moved to ELIMINATE that Buffer Zone in its entirety– https://www.sterling-ma.gov/node/2041/minutes-agendas
Under Sterling’s Zoning By-Laws Cider Hill Estates, built by SIMPSON, STERLING’S BIGGEST SNAKE, should never have been permitted in the first place because its access road is within 150 feet of not just one, but THREE (3) existing driveways to abutting residences. The Sterling ZBA members, of course, never read a Sterling Zoning By-Law prohibition they would not readily subvert and granted Simpson a ‘Special Permit’ to build Cider Hill Estates anyway.
This time around, however, Chairman Fox ran into some well overdue resistance from other ZBA members for whom Fox’s blatant hypocrisy was, perhaps, a ‘Bridge Too Far,’ so to speak. They proposed amending that ‘No Touch Buffer Zone’ with certain conditions suggested by abutters. On a Motion, the amended ‘No Touch Buffer Zone’ was adopted, the vote being 5-0, meaning that Fox flip-flopped like a fish.
J.G.
STERLING, MASSACHUSETTS, OVERWATCH 