The Sharon Select Board had determined that the Trustees of Willard Bass Park, and not the town, own Bass Park after a tax parcel map put ownership in to question.
“There’s no question whatsoever that the trustees own Bass Park,” park trustee Ken Callahan said at the board’s Tuesday night meeting.
The Trustees are interested in maintaining permission to manage the park and carry on with the picnic, he said. A couple years ago, when the tax map was reorganized, the park was listed as Bass Park, Town of Sharon, Callahan said, which created confusion about its ownership.
Sharon is required to have a “Reunion of Residents” summer picnic at the park every year to retain the property, otherwise ownership defaults to the adjacent Sharon Arts Center. Callahan said the consequences of the closure of the Sharon Arts Center this summer are moot as it applies to the Trustees’ ownership, as they plan to continue holding the annual picnic. The picnic and the tree lighting are the two opportunities to get the town together as there are no restaurants or other central places in town, Callahan said.
Recently, he said, the Trustees have been looking into whether it would be useful to form an LLC or a nonprofit for insurance purposes.
He said that in the future, they would like to hold the Christmas tree lighting outside the town’s schoolhouse rather than at Bass Park, which he described as an “enormous amount of work for a half hour event.”
Staging the tree lighting at the schoolhouse would involve a much shorter, safer, and more walkable commute to the party at the town meetinghouse that follows the lighting, he said.