On Brookline

I’ve heard from some readers that Ed Hsieh of Brookline’s Greenspace Alliance is not an abutter to the property at 150 Princeton Road (the subject of Article 20 at this week’s Brookline Town Meeting). [See the earlier update]

I said it was a stretch for him to consider himself an abutter. But that he does, as evidenced by this sign-in sheet from a June 12, 2007 Conservation Commission public hearing on the matter. So, he was an abutter in June of 2007 but he’s not now when he put his signature on this letter urging town meeting to refuse the easement at Princeton Road?

I think there has to be a serious look into the Brookline Greenspace Alliance. They have their fingerprints all over the DPW mob scene preventing an investigation into an allegedly misleading footbridge grant, they sent illegal mailings over the CPA vote and now this.

Something smells in that swamp.

Archie says that an abutter to an abutter is of some significance in zoning matters. But if I’m an abutter two blocks removed, doesn’t that make me the property law equivalent of margarine?

Jim,

There is such a thing as an “abutter to an abutter” that zoning and other land use provisions address, including requiring notices for matters before a board, agency or commitee. If this “character” is not either an abutter or an abutter to an abutter but describes himself as such at a public meeting/hearing, he perhaps makes more of an impression as a person of interest to the members of the board, agency or committee than as one with a general interest, sometimes referred to as a gadfly.

Archie Mazmanian