Time is now for affordable housing
As a new Board of Selectmen settles in and begins focusing on the many issues before them, we urge them to bring the matter of Affordable (or Workforce) Housing up front and center.
Monday's meeting included the outlines of a proposal from the Town Planner's office that appears encouraging. The appointment of newly-elected Selectman Ted Little to the Affordable/Workforce Housing Committee should also be a good choice based on what we know of him and his past works.
But the time is long past for incremental, administrative baby-steps on this issue. Every year that passes sees the town of York less and less able to house the people who make it run. And every year that this situation continues we become more and more a town of disconnected, disparate interests. A showplace town with less and less "place" and more and more "show."
Young police officers and teachers, small business owners and their employees, local graduates who want to stay here, these are all vital people to the life blood of any small town. As of today - say whatever we will - as a factual matter, these people are not welcomed as residents in York.
We profess, as a town, from one year to the next, that affordable housing is an important issue for us. Let's hope that this is the year we prove it.
Onward
Chris Cassidy was once just a York High School graduate, way back in 1988. But when he takes the stage as commencement speaker at York High School on Thursday night, he will do so as a NASA Astronaut, a Navy SEAL and a Naval Academy Graduate. We cannot think of a more fitting reminder to this year's graduating class of what possibilities lie in front of them.
The world is a big, wonderful, messy place with lots of demanding, exciting and crucial work waiting to be done. We say here that there is no reason that graduates from York High School should not be in the middle of it, and Chris Cassidy, YHS class of 1988, is proof of it. Get on out there, you grads.
