Tell Waltham Mayor Jeannette McCarthy and the Waltham City Council to stop toying with our community's historic farmland and the tenants* who use the site.

Four years ago it became clear that UMass was preparing to sell Waltham Fields to a university or hospital for development, and that the current Mayor and a number of city councilors were prepared to allow that to happen.

This land is special. A century ago, Cornelia Warren--one of America's first major environmentalists--deeded it for preservation as open space and farmland in perpetuity. It became a UMass Field Station and for the last 28 years, the land and building were farmed and stewarded by Waltham Fields and a handful of other essential community non-profits.

Thanks to those who signed this petition (more than 7800 people!) and with the support of our state legislative delegation and substantial community pressure, the city council voted instead to purchase the land under the condition that it would remain open space. 

But the city--which arguably never wanted to own this land--has rewarded the community by subjecting the non-profits based here with a punishing mixture of disdain and incompetence including:

• Keeping tenants on month-to-month leases,
• Refusing to consider them tenants at all despite legal obligations as a landlord,
• Forcing tenants to do city services on behalf of the Mayor under political pressure,
• Shutting them out of any planning process

All of this raises questions about whether the city purchased the land from the state in good faith. Just before Christmas, the Mayor presented the Council with approximately 1,000 pages of environmental remediation documents, immediately prior to their meeting, without time to read the documents.

The plan and notice were not shared with tenants (*or as the city has coyly called them "licensees") prior to the meeting. The council was then asked to take a vote on the remediation proposal, which will actually split the property, block access, and begin the first steps of hobbling the operations of the tenants to the point where they can no longer survive.

The council's Committee of the Whole voted to approve this plan, and if they follow up with a second vote on Tuesday, December 27 then the plan will be enacted. The city says that the urgency is for environmental remediation, but it's all too suspicious. The city has long-presented politically unpalatable plans to the council around Christmas to hide them from public scrutiny and none of the 1,000 pages of documents show why there is sudden urgency to manage remediation. City documents from the Conservation Commission show that the city has know about the need for remediation at a portion of the site for twenty years.

While this is painful for the tenants, it is also part of a pattern, citywide, that is clear and demonstrable, involving the misuse of state community preservation funds, the willful destruction of city property, and harassment of city tenants, most of whom are public service focused non-profits. 

The Farm (which we are not representatives of) has asked for a 30 day moratorium on any action.

It is our belief that unless the council addresses the political interference and legal liability created by the city executive regarding the maintenance of city contracts and the treatment of tenants, this will not be the last emergency involving the farm the city is doing everything it can not to keep.