Over the past two years, thanks to this amazing community, DIRC has raised almost $50,000 to fund efforts to stop the 20 Elm Street development. Wow -- that sounds like a lot of money -- and it is!
Over the last 24 months, we have put your donations to work, retaining the top 40B attorney in the Commonwealth. Our engagement of Hill Law led to the determination that North Reading meets the GLAM (land area) requirement for safe harbor, followed by continual effort, along with that of Town counsel, to navigate complex 40B proceedings. We are now traversing an extended appeal process by Yebba's team, which seeks to discredit the State-provided GLAM documentation through an unlawful request to access confidential group home personal information. We've also hired wetland and hydrology experts to research the property's intermittent stream and significant Ipswich River impacts, keeping focus on the environmental harm that will come with extensive development of the parcel. Through the prolonged process, DIRC has evolved to become an official 501(c)(4) non-profit entity, which requires start-up expenses as well as complex annual tax filings.
All of these expenses have yielded truly promising results towards our goal, but have also been very costly -- even while volunteers contribute hundreds of hours of their time and we negotiate reduced rates for services. The chart below shows how your valuable dollars have been put to work. Going forward, we will continue our mission of using every dollar to maximum benefit to defeat this oversized development.
