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Conversations on the Commons: The Community Preservation Act
March 4, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
The Community Preservation Act: In Your Backyard
March 4, 2022, 12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
With
Massachusetts History Alliance Advocacy Committee
Chase Mack, Communications Director, Community Preservation Coalition
Jason Molina, Chair of Shrewsbury’s Community Preservation Committee
Linnea Servey, Chair of Lancaster’s Community Preservation Committee
What is the Community Preservation Act? How can it be used to preserve history on the local level? What are allowable uses? How can your community adopt this bylaw? What kinds of local advocacy need to be done to pass CPA in a town? What are some of the strategies used in running a successful grassroots CPA adoption campaign? Join moderator Erika Briesacher of the MHA Advocacy Committee for a conversation about Community Preservation!
Registration is free. REGISTER HERE.
This Conversation will be livestreamed. We will do our best to monitor your questions and comments during the livestream. A recording will be publicly available in the Conversations on the Commons Archive.
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- Linnea Servey worked to bring the CPA to Lancaster with educational forums presented to Town Boards and via zoom meetings. The article passed at ATM with an overwhelming margin and passed at the ballot with a comfortable margin.
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- Chase Mack has been the Communications Director for the Community Preservation Coalition since 2016. The Coalition is a nonprofit organization that helps municipalities in Massachusetts understand, adopt, and implement the Community Preservation Act (CPA), as well as advocating for CPA at the state level.
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- Jason Molina was the Campaign Manager for the ballot question committee, Community Preservation Shrewsbury, which led the Town of Shrewsbury to successfully adopt CPA in November 2020. The road to adoption was challenged by local opposition which necessitated the use of a citizen’s petition to trigger the ballot question. Despite uncertainty with a pandemic raging, the committee still made great progress to champion Town Meeting and voter support through campaign efforts such as a road show with town boards, public outreach, mailers, newspaper articles and letters to the editor, and a structured social media presence. Despite a pandemic, a local debt exclusion on the ballot at the same time, and no support from town officials, Shrewsbury voters welcomed CPA with an impressive 59% approval. Following the successful campaign, Jason was appointed as an At-Large member of the Community Preservation Committee and currently serves as their chairperson.
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- Dr. Erika L. Briesacher is an Associate Professor of History at Worcester State University, where she specializes in German History and museum studies, teaching in the areas of museum studies, material culture, German/French/European history, public history, and nationalism. She got her Ph.D. in European History from Kent State University in 2012, and her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Museum Studies and MA in Historical Studies from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2005 and 2006 respectively. She has two books forthcoming: Nordic Days: Festival, Identity, and Culture in Lübeck, 1920-1960 (Lexington Books, 2022) and Make Me a Mask: Material/Cultural of a Pandemic (Kent State University Press, forthcoming).
Questions? Be in touch with Caroline Littlewood: commons@masshistoryalliance.org
Conversations on the Commons
Where people from Massachusetts history organizations get to vent, empathize, laugh, complain, think, collaborate, brainstorm, plan, and in general be up to no good.