Resident says nay to hay harvest
Farm that hayed town land without contract raises questions
went out last month for the harvesting of hay from a trio of town-owned properties.
But the town allowed hay to be harvested on one of the properties before the land was ever put up for lease, according to a town official, raising some eyebrows locally.
Resident Brian Bond, one of the hosts of the Dracut Access TV talk show “The Dracut Connection,” said he discovered through a Freedom of Information Act Request that a farm owned by former Selectman Warren Shaw was allowed to harvest hay on a town property last summer without being awarded a contract.
Bond says the issue raises
concerns that the town didn’t properly follow procurement law, while Shaw says it’s the latest attack in a longstanding conflict with the show’s co-hosts.
According to Community Development Director Betsy Ware, the town purchased a plot of land at 170 Crosby Road in August 2018. Shaw Dairy Farm Inc. had a haying contract with the former owner, she said in an email, and the town purchased the land with the understanding that the farm would finish out the existing agreement.
“Since the town did not go to Town Meeting in November of 2018 (my error) to get the town’s permission to lease the property in 2019 and the fields needed to be hayed,” Ware wrote, “Shaw Farm was allowed to continue to hay in 2019, as they had the haying contract with the former owner and knew the property well, having hayed the property for years with the private property owner.”
The right to hay land is typically awarded through a request for proposals, or RFP, process in which interested contractors submit bids to lease the land. Ware did not respond to an email asking what gave the town the authority to allow the haying without going through the usual town meeting approval and RFP procedure.
According to Ware, Shaw was not paid for the haying services completed at the Crosby Road property. She said she did not know the value of the hay harvested there in 2019.
“The haying contracts are put out to manage the land,” Ware wrote in an email. “The town, through the Community Preservation Committee, acquires farmland to keep the agricultural operations within the town. The main goal is to keep the open space in agricultural use and have the land managed.”
Reached by phone, Shaw declined to give a ballpark value of the hay harvested in 2019, but called it “minimal.”
He said the farm paid the town at the rate it had been paying to the former owner — $500 paid to the town manager’s office in August 2019, according to Ware — and followed instructions from town staff.
“I followed the process as outlined by the town,” Shaw said. “If someone has a beef about it, they should see the town.”
Shaw Farm’s 2017 proposal for a separate haying contract awarded at Beaver Brook Farm, which includes about 15 acres on Mammoth Road and is leased at a rate of $750 per year, indicates that the company typically cuts its fields three to four times per year.
The proposal said the harvested hay would be used for feed for the farm’s dairy herd, with an estimated production of nine bales per acre, or 135 bales per year. The document quotes the value of the feed hay at $50 per ton for a total estimated value of $3,750, and lists estimated costs for the farm at $2,605, not including rent.
The Crosby Road plot is also about 15 acres in size, according to an RFP released for the property on Dec. 4.
Bond said he raised his concerns to state Attorney General Maura Healey, who then forwarded them to state Inspector General Glen Cunha, whose office oversees municipal procurement related to land. A spokesman for Cunha said earlier this month that he could not confirm nor deny whether the office is reviewing the matter.
Bond questioned the logic of allowing Shaw Farm to continue haying the property because of the company’s previous contract with the land’s former owner.
“If I was doing your landscaping, and you sold your house, I wouldn’t be able to go to the new house after the new owner’s there and start landscaping it,” he said.
Bond and the other hosts of “The Dracut Connection” have often butted heads with Shaw in the past, with the television show making frequent references to Shaw in comments on its Facebook page, and Shaw criticizing the program on his radio show on WCAP.
“These are bad people who have been doing nothing but trying to make me and my family look bad for a number of years,” Shaw said. “And so, this is another one of those deals where they try and make things look bad. I’m disappointed that The Sun is doing a story on it.”
In September, The Sun reported that several anonymous records requests were filed with the town on behalf of “The Dracut Connection.” The requests were related to payments made to Lucky Oil and/or Leo Vezina, ethics disclosures for town officials, and leasing and/or renting of town-owned property for the purpose of farming. Co-host John Zimini, who previously confirmed to The Sun that the television show was behind the requests, could not be reached for comment.
Bond also filed several requests independently, he said, and the documents he received, provided to The Sun by the town, show that previous requests for proposals to lease two town properties for haying — Beaver Book Farm at 761 Mammoth Road and the former Yapp Farm at 650 Marsh Hill Road — only produced one bid for each contract in 2017.
Interim Town Manager Ann Vandal referred questions about haying on the Crosby Road property to Town Counsel James A. Hall.
“That’s kind of a legal question, so town counsel would have to opine on that,” Vandal said. “But they’re out to bid right now. It could have been an oversight, it could have been an agreement in the lease. I don’t know off the top of my head.”
Hall said he was not directly involved in the matter and referred questions back to Ware.
“Certainly, I would think it should have gone out for RFP. That would be the common practice,” Hall said. “That’s what she’s doing now, I believe.”
When asked if the way the town handled the haying at the Crosby Road property is a concern, Hall said the town wants to comply with all rules and regulations related to procurement. He said he has not heard anything from the Inspector General’s Office and noted that the town is currently awaiting the results of a review of town purchases being conducted by Attorney General Maura Healey’s office.
Jim Duggan, Dracut’s former town manager, resigned abruptly in October amid mounting criticism surrounding the way town projects were put out to bid. The Board of Selectmen also voted in November to hire special counsel to assist with “miscellaneous procurement issues.”
Existing haying contracts for Beaver Brook Farm and the former Yapp Farm expire this year, and responses to new RFPS for hay-harvesting leases on those plots and the Crosby Road field are due to the town by Jan. 29, according to the town’s website.