Well folks, you just knew this was coming. Here’s the Notice for the Planning Board’s 16 September 2025, 6:30 p.m. ‘MBTA Zoning’ Public Propaganda Session—
https://www.sterling-ma.gov/home/news/mbta-zoning-question-answer-session
Doubtless the smarmy, evasive, fact-omitting, smoke-blowing, dead-weight drone ‘Town Planner,’ Stephen Wallace, will be Sterling Municipal Building’s mouthpiece on this while self-dealing developer weasel Carl Corrinne, Planning Board Chair, will be sitting there at the laptop table advancing the Power Point slides. That’s the same Carl ‘Multi-Family Housing’ Corrinne who claimed as required ‘Open Space’ for ‘walking, horticulture, agriculture, forestry,’ etc., under Sterling’s Multi-Family Zoning By-Laws, in order to build his ‘Multi-Family’ development at 100 Clinton Road, Sterling, his land under the triple-parallel high voltage towers/lines there. New England Power Company/National Grid has the power line the easement. In a letter to Sterling’s virtually useless, developer-friendly Zoning Board of Appeals during the Special Permit process, I warned that NEPC/National Grid controlled that easement and could undertake additional infrastructure work there in the future, thereby limiting or eliminating purported ‘Open Space’ there. That’s EXACTLY what is taking place there now. The place looks like a sun-baked ecological wasteland. OF COURSE, the Sterling ZBA, employing its usual intellectual dishonesty, ignored my letter and granted Corrinne the Special Permit. You’d have to be a moron to buy a Corrinne duplex unit there now. That property is UGLY.
At the 16 September 2025 Planning Board ‘MBTA Zoning’ Propaganda Session you may have questions but you won’t get any straight answers setting forth the ‘MBTA Zoning’ legal constraints, limits, and nuances set forth in the case interpreting the controlling statute, Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 40A, Section 3A, that being Attorney General vs. Town of Milton et al.. You can read it here—
INSTEAD, Wallace/Sterling Planning Board will harp on the ultra vires, completely bogus ‘Emergency Compliance Guidelines’ that the Mass. Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (an Oxymoron) ‘Guidelines Team’ pulled out of their asses soon after the Supreme Judicial Court, in that decision, ruled that their original ‘Compliance Guidelines’ were promulgated in violation of the Massachusetts Administrative Procedure Act.
VOTERS in MANY Massachusetts towns have voted down bogus so-called ‘MBTA Multi-Family Housing Zoning Districts,’ the latest being in Dracut, Marblehead, and next-door Holden. This map DOES NOT show any post-March 12, 2025 rejections, including those by Dracut, Holden, and Marblehead annual town meeting voters—
KNOW that the ‘MBTA Zoning’ propaganda peddled by the Sterling Select Board, Planning Board, and out-of-town blow-in paycheck patriots Bill Caldwell and Stephen Wallace, Town Administrator and ‘Town Planner,’ respectively, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT IS LEGALLY CORRECT. IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THEM GROVELING FOR POTENTIAL FUNDING THE COMMIE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS WILL CUT OFF IF STERLING REJECTS BOGUS ‘MBTA ZONING.’ Those funding categories are set forth in Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 40A, Section 3A—
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/mass-general-laws-c40a-ss-3a
As Spectrum News 1 reported after 2025 Holden Annual Town Meeting voters shot down bogus ‘MBTA Zoning’—
“Ultimately, it seems like it all comes down to funding. According to the MBTA Communities Law, cities and towns who fail to comply will not be eligible for funds from the Housing Choice Initiative.”
Voters in all the Towns that have rejected bogus ‘MBTA Zoning’ KNOW that preserving local autonomy and character is more important than MERELY POTENTIAL state grants, BUT STERLING’S TOWN GOVERNMENT WHORES DO NOT.
NOTE: Two or three (2-3) years ago I served a Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 66, Section 10 Public Records Request on the Town of Sterling for all Town documents showing funds received by the Town of Sterling, in the previous five (5) years, from funding categories listed in Ch. 40A, Section 3A. Town Administrator Bill Caldwell replied in writing that there were NONE.
It will be up to Sterling voters to REJECT bogus ‘MBTA Zoning’ at an upcoming Special Town Meeting. Let us do so as have voters in the towns of Dracut, Holden, Marblehead and others at their recent Annual Town Meetings.
Stay tuned.
J.G.
STERLING, MASSACHUSETTS, OVERWATCH 