Ask yourself: who is going to run this town in twenty years? Who will sit on the Selectboard, staff the town offices, volunteer for the Planning Board, and plow the roads? Who will buy the old farms, send kids to the school, and care enough to show up at Town Meeting? These are not abstract questions. They are the most urgent ones facing Worthington right now, and I do not think we are talking about them enough.
I have spent this past year participating in what it takes to keep a small Hilltown running. During my last year on the Selectboard, town officials built two budgets, watched an override fail, hired a new Highway Superintendent, and absorbed real cuts in federal and state funding. What I have come to understand is that financial pressures are serious — but having people to work on these issues is just as serious. Our town and workforce is aging. Our boards have trouble filling seats. And we do not yet have a plan for moving forward.
This past year also brought the solar debate, which divided neighbors and continues to test all of us. I will be direct: I am a conservationist, and I do not believe large-scale solar belongs on Conservation Reserve land. That is my honest view. At the same time, I believe landowners have the right to do what the law permits. I also believe that large-scale solar is and will continue to change the very nature of Western Massachusetts unless we change or enact new laws and regulations. The permitting authority for solar rests with the Planning Board — not the Selectboard. I have watched our Planning Board rise to this challenge exactly as it should: with thorough review, genuine community engagement, hard questions for applicants, and thoughtful by-law revisions. What I want now is for us to move forward together.
Moving forward means making deliberate choices instead of just reacting to whatever comes next. It means sitting down as a community and asking: what do we want Worthington to look like in ten years, and what do we have to do — starting now — to get there? That is the work I want to lead in a second term. Not a binder that sits on a shelf, but a real, resident-driven conversation that produces a plan we actually use.
I brought nearly 25 years of federal conservation and planning work to this role, and I have spent the last year learning how Worthington works from the inside. I am ready to put both to use. I am asking for your vote so we can figure out what comes next — together.
Deb
