Royalton
Michael Sacca, of Tunbridge, who serves as the group’s president, said the proposed article language is meant as a signal to the developer, David Hall, that residents do not support his plans.
“Our understanding, generally, is that the people in the four towns are not interested in this development,” Sacca said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “And we just want to put a number to that.”
The general format for the article, Sacca and town clerks said, is “Will the voters of the town oppose the NewVistas development?”
Hall, an engineer who lives in Provo, Utah, based his vision for a carbon-neutral, self-sustaining city on the writings of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet who was born in Sharon. He already has accumulated more than 1,400 acres of land toward a goal of 5,000 acres.
The Alliance for Vermont Communities was formed this fall to oppose his plan, which the advocacy group’s members say is out of scale to the community.
Officials in Royalton, Sharon and Strafford said that selectboards in those towns asked the alliance to submit its articles by petition.
Sacca said the Tunbridge Selectboard agreed to put an article on the ballot without a petition, but added that Alliance members would still go door-knocking in town to identify supporters.
“It’ll give us a fantastic opportunity to reach out to the public,” Sacca said.
Tunbridge officials could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
The Selectboard clerk in Sharon, Margy Becker, said the board met on Monday night and agreed to ask Alliance members to submit a petition, which requires signatures from 5 percent of registered voters, or about 60 people.
The matter was resolved in less than 15 minutes, Becker said. “There wasn’t a discussion about why. It’s just a preference, I think. Just a better reflection of public opinion.”
Becker said members of the anti-NewVista group had also consulted the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office at the suggestion of Sharon officials.
“General questions like this can run the risk of being rejected by selectboards as not being municipal business that we have control over,” she said.
The secretary of state advised that there was precedent to bring nonbinding general resolutions to the warning, she said.
This past spring, Hall told the Valley News that he too would reach out to Vermont residents who he believed might support the project, given its potential to combat rural sprawl and the state’s espousal of a green economy.
Hall also has said repeatedly that NewVista will take decades to come to fruition — longer than he has left to live — and once residents began to speak out against his brainchild, he appeared to modify his stance on winning over the locals.
“It’s for their grandchildren,” he told the Valley News in September. “I know that this generation and the next generation won’t want it.”
In Tuesday’s interview, Sacca said he was “well aware (that Hall) has changed perspective on that,” but said “ours remains pretty much the same.”
The Alliance for Vermont Communities, in advancing these articles, is speaking past Hall to generations to come, Sacca said.
“They do not wish to see this,” he said. “Others their age, other young people, will continue this for as long as they have to.”
Hall further clarified his stance on Tuesday, saying that residents would eventually come to understand that they must respond to economic and development trends such as rural sprawl, which strains municipal services and put pressure on the environment and the economy.
“I can understand why they’re doing that now and even sympathize with it,” Hall said of the proposed warning articles. “If I was a local owner I’d be up in arms too, but I think in time people will realize — it’s so far out in the future. All we’re doing now is land consolidation. Essentially our mission is to reverse the trend that’s happening everywhere, which is to subdivide.”
Sacca added that Hall’s ideas were not “all bad.”
“We would love to work with him on something like this, but the scale is way off,” he said.
By putting forward resolutions against NewVista, the Alliance wants to send a message, Sacca said, that “our future is self-determined. The people who live here will determine our future, rather than those who have a lot of money changing the future for us and those unborn.”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.
Correction
The Alliance for Vermont Communities is working to put an article on the Town Meeting warnings in Royalton, Sharon, Strafford and Tunbridge that would express opposition to a NewVista development in the White River Valley. One of the four towns was incorrectly identified in an earlier version of this story.