On Sept. 29, 2021, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey sent a letter to the town of Shutesbury disapproving one sentence from a bylaw passed at their annual Town Meeting. The Shutesbury bylaw allowed associate members of the town’s Planning Board to “participate fully in procedures for a special permit, site plan review, as well as other procedural matters.”

Healey disapproved the Shutesbury bylaw language because it violated Chapter 40A, Section 9, paragraph 11, which authorizes associate planning board members to serve only when the Planning Board is reviewing special permits. “The town may not extend the authorization to review of site plans and other applications,” the AG ruled.

On Aug. 3, 2023, the Greenfield Planning Board elevated an associate member to vote on a site plan. The vote was recorded 4-0 to approve a 19,432-square-foot national chain grocery store on the Mohawk Trail. Two votes shouldn’t have been counted: the associate member — who made the motion — and the mayor, who, under Section 3-2 (f) of the city’s charter, does not have the “right to vote” on any multiple-member body she sits on ex-officio.

The site plan was approved by only two voting members of a five-member board, in violation of the Planning Board’s rules, requiring a simple majority of three votes. A special permit granted that evening for another project was also illegal. It required four votes to pass, but only had three, because the mayor voted illegally.

During the site plan hearing, the developer’s formal presentation lasted only five minutes. Their director of engineering, traffic engineer, sign engineer and architect all spoke. During the review, the city’s director of planning reported that seven people had submitted emails against the project, no one of them in favor.

I testified the board should follow its rules and hire an independent traffic engineer, at the developer’s expense, to consider the traffic impacts when the 14,962-square-feet of empty space in the Big Y plaza gets rented. One Planning Board member described the traffic at the Big Y plaza as a “nightmare,” but a few minutes later, voted to approve the plan.

I submitted a 23-page critique of the site plan to the Planning Board, saying this project will:

■Add 394,200 cars to a section of roadway that had 47 accidents over a five-year period.

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■Cause the afternoon peak hour traffic at Robbins and Colrain Road to fall to a level of service E — one of the worst rankings.

■Increase impervious surface by 121%.

■Not minimize or avoid environmental impacts to two wetlands and Smead Brook.

■Produce 181.45 tons per year of greenhouse gas from the building, plus 78.1 tons per year of transportation-related greenhouse gas.

■Have no solar roof, adding 45 tons of greenhouse gas annually.

■Create only 25 jobs, minus jobs killed at other grocers.

The Planning Board asked me no questions, gave no indication they had even read my statement.

On Nov. 17, 2023, I filed an Open Meeting Law complaint about the lack of a quorum with our city clerk. Pursuant to the Open Meeting Law, I waited 30 days to file a request that the AG review my concerns. On Jan. 10, the AG declined to review my complaint: “A gathering of less than a quorum of members of a public body does not constitute a meeting subject to the Open Meeting Law.”

This reveals a major loophole in Open Meeting violation enforcement. The Greenfield Planning Board had no legal authority to deliberate without a quorum. I will ask the mayor to clarify in regulation that an associate member of any board can vote only on special permits.

At the beginning of the Aug. 3 Planning Board review, the acting chairman revealed the limits of public involvement: “Anyone can speak just one time, up to three minutes, just for us to hear what people have to say. We can’t have a back and forth discussion.”

This is exactly the problem: There is no meaningful public discussion. Our multi-member boards and City Council rules stifle discourse. The public should be able to pose questions directly to developers and get answers.

As icing on the cake, last Nov. 9, Greenfield granted a special permit to allow two oversize signs on the grocery facade, 10 feet wide by 12 feet high — almost twice the ordinance limit — plus a sign on the Mohawk Trail hoisted on a 15-foot pylon pole 12 feet higher than the ordinance limit.

We have reached new heights in degrading our visual landscape.

Al Norman lives in Greenfield. His Pushback column appears every third Wednesday in the Recorder.