As our regular readers are aware, the enactment of the MBTA Communities Act (commonly known as 3A) has generated more controversy in our community than any other issue in decades.
There have been many controversial matters over the past 70 years that we covered extensively (such as the the former Suffolk County jail on Deer Island, the expansion of Logan Airport, the MWRA sewage treatment plant on Deer Island, and the former MDC’s lack of maintenance of Winthrop Beach), but in each of those, our community was united in its opposition to the manner in which outside agencies impacted our town.
However, 3A has divided us as no other issue has in the more than six decades that we have been doing this. In addition, this divisiveness has turned personal — it has devolved from an ad hoc discussion into an ad hominem one — violating the precept set forth by our long-time publisher, the late Andrew P. Quigley (who certainly was no shrinking violet ), “We can disagree without being disagreeable.”
We have printed numerous letters to the editor from both sides — as well as written countless news stories — about 3A in the past two years. However, the letters on both sides of the issue are repeating the same points ad nauseam and, as we noted, they contain comments of a personal nature that are irrelevant to the issue.
In short, we will write about 3A, both from a local and state perspective, as news develops. But at this point, we no longer will be accepting letters to the editor on this subject.