BELLOWS FALLS — In the past few weeks, I, like many fellow Vermonters, have been following the editorial debates appearing in these pages involving the subject of the Greater Falls Warming Shelter, the denial of a zoning permit for its intended location, and the resulting effects on our community.
Like most readers, I've had strong feelings about many different aspects of this topic of local turmoil, but until now I have been content to voice those opinions within my social circles, and I have resisted the allure to climb onto a soapbox.
Now, I feel the need to speak up, for my own peace of mind, and on behalf of those who feel likewise.
Unlike most of these “Shame on you, BF!” detractors, I am a business-owning, home-owning, tax-paying resident of the village of Bellows Falls, a place I grew up in, where my wife and I are deeply invested, where my sons live and work, and my grandkids attend school.
I can tell you in absolute frankness and candor that the foremost, overbearingly wrong conclusion fanning the flames in this debate is that there are people in Bellows Falls who oppose a warming shelter opening here.
To the best of my knowledge, there aren't!
Not one person that I've ever spoken with, or heard quoted, anywhere in the Village, in the last seven weeks or so, opposes BF hosting a warming shelter - only its proposed location, 83 Westminster St., an address that happens to be just two doors south of my own.
It would seem also that too many people keep overlooking that there has already been a warming shelter here in BF for the last two winters now, and last winter it was operating right there at 83 Westminster St., from mid-November through late March.
I remember it well, as my wife and I prepared and delivered hot meals for the patrons of that shelter on a weekly basis.
We also have cause to remember the impact on our little neighborhood during exact span of more than 130 nights: sudden, obvious increases in littering, loitering, trespassing, after-dark foot traffic, street noise, recurrent outbreaks of petty theft from yards, porches, and parked cars, and even a few reports of breaking and entering.
These aren't just rumors I'm repeating; they are situations I have witnessed and experienced as a neighbor or that I have discussed with other neighbors who were directly affected.
Anyone who thinks I'm exaggerating can ask the Bellows Falls Police Department. Their night-shift calls last year from or about the Warming Shelter totaled close to 30.
So you see, just like the three blind men and the elephant, a Bellows Falls warming shelter is assessed very differently depending upon one's perspective.
I can tell you, it looks, feels, and sounds very different when observed from the Exner Block, or the east end of Hapgood Street, than it does to those judging it from the cozy, remote environs of Saxtons River, or Gageville, or Cambridgeport, or Walpole, N.H.
The village of Bellows Falls has done its part, shouldering more than its fair share of the load for two years. Maybe now it's time for another community to step up.
Finally, I'd like to address the recent, knee-jerk trend of characterizing the citizens of my hometown as uncaring, or heartless, or less than humanitarian, because that is absolutely opposite to the actual, current facts, and to the time-proven track record of the town of Rockingham, in general, and the village of Bellows Falls, in specific.
Even discounting the successful, if problematic, past two years of winter-sheltering the homeless right here in BF, one would still be hard-pressed to walk or drive too many blocks in any direction from The Square without encountering an agency, church, club, lodge, temple, fraternity, or civic foundation whose members are ready, willing, and able to come to the immediate aid of any individual or family in genuine need.
In fact, anyone really familiar with BF just in the last decade likely knows that Rockingham and Bellows Falls, together and separately, annually raise charitable donations for regional, state, and local causes far out of proportion to our actual population, making us, per capita, among the most “giving” communities in southern Vermont.
In closing, I'd like to ask the critics and detractors of Bellows Falls this simple question: “Where do you live?”
If you don't live here in the Village, maybe the time has come to mind your own business, and stop telling me what's okay for my neighborhood.