In a late-breaking development, David Dukeshire, the chair of the Hartland Planning Commission (HPC), resigned from the town planning body late Tuesday evening.
In a one-sentence email to the Hartland Selectboard, town manager John Broker-Campbell, and his fellow HPC members, Dukeshire stated, “Effectively immediately, I have resigned from the Planning Commission.” The resignation came in the wake of HPC members Daniel Jerman and Jay Boeri taking Dukeshire to task in an email earlier in the evening for “a comment to the [Hartland] listserv on the Sunnymede project: “Dan and I discussed that comment and found it most unfortunate, resulting in inflammatory listserv replies at a time when the HPC is trying to approve a new town plan and create a bylaw.”
Contacted early Wednesday morning, Dukeshire expounded on the reasons for his resignation. “There are two things to be said,” Dukeshire told the Standard. “One — and it is very important — is that I admire the work the Planning Commission has done and I am certainly not resigning out of anger. Secondly, I just can’t live pissed off all the time. I joined the Planning Commission two years ago and worked on Sunnymede. I guess I have never gotten over why it is that the selectboard never took a position on supporting the town plan against a developer abusing the system. That’s not a comment about any individual — it’s just about the board in general.
“There are going to be other ways to help out the town,” the former HPC chair concluded. “Emotionally, I just can’t live pissed off all the time. We fought a good fight and maybe we didn’t win, but we are certainly coming out of this talking about a unified bylaw and an updated town plan. That’s where we are — and I’m going to go and grow some tomatoes.”