Watertown board votes to pave over park named after fallen Vietnam War Marine

The Watertown School Building Committee unanimously backed paving over a park named after a fallen Vietnam War soldier for a temporary high school after a heated Zoom meeting Wednesday evening.

“I’m pissed,” one resident said, repeatedly, about tension surrounding the vote.

“I’m begging you, don’t destroy this field,” said longtime Watertown resident Marilyn Devaney, who also sits on the Governor’s Council.

“Let’s move on, please,” said Mark Sideris, Town Council president and chair of the School Building Committee. He soon called for a vote that was unanimous for seizing the park.

The committee also voted to recommend naming the temporary high school after Pfc. Richard Moxley, who died in a firefight in 1968 in Quang Nam province in Vietnam. He was 21 years old.

As the Herald reported over the Memorial Day weekend, the field will be used for a $22 million temporary high school with 33 two-story modular buildings and a parking lot for 119 cars. The new Watertown High School, as the planning goes, will go up where the old one is now.

That project, it was also touched on Wednesday night, will cost about $200 million or more, depending on what’s finally approved.

That means Moxley Park will be lost as open space between 2022 up to 2027, according to all the plans.

“We’re not making everyone happy tonight,” Sideris added, calling the loss of the park a “shared sacrifice.”

Committee members said once the temporary high school is no longer needed, the plan is to restore the park and bring back the field that will always be dedicated to Moxley’s memory.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2SSXdxT