CIVIC REFORM PETITION
Governance Modernization for the Bridge of Flowers
A Public Asset Deserves Public Accountability
Initiated by John F. Sendelbach, Shelburne Falls, MA, May 2026
To:
Shelburne Falls Fire District (legal owner)
Shelburne Select Board
Buckland Select Board
Shelburne Falls Area Women's Club
Bridge of Flowers donors and public supporters
The Bridge of Flowers is a publicly owned landmark vested in the Shelburne Falls Fire District, drawing tens of thousands of visitors annually and serving as a vital economic and cultural asset for the region. It receives public funds, grants, and volunteer contributions while functioning as a National Register landmark of horticultural achievement.
The Governance Gap
The bridge's current management structure—a private subcommittee of the Shelburne Falls Area Women's Club—lacks the transparency, professional standards, and public accountability required for a publicly owned asset of this scale and significance.
Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 180 governs nonprofits like the SFAWC, imposing fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience on its committees (M.G.L. c. 180 § 6C). These standards require prudent decision-making, good-faith action, and fidelity to charitable mission. Recent events demonstrate systemic gaps that fall short of these expectations.
I. Documented Governance Failures
A. Technical and Operational Deficiencies
Soil Remediation Crisis (April 2026): The committee specified soil type for the $3.2 million renovation without documented professional horticultural input. Remediation cost: approximately $60,000. No public accounting of responsibility or payment source has been released.
Design and Engineering Outcomes: The 2025 renovation installed an opaque black guardrail that visually isolates the garden from the Deerfield River, breaking the original design intent of garden-river unity. Original trolley trellises—essential for shade and vertical planting—were demolished without replacement.
B. Process and Transparency Absences
No Open Meetings or Published Records: Major capital decisions occur without public notice, minutes, or formal review processes.
No Term Limits or Residency Standards: Long-serving members without rotation create entrenched control without fresh perspectives or local accountability.
No Credential Requirements: Horticultural and design decisions made without verified expertise, despite available professionals in the community.
C. Cultural and Attribution Failures
Inconsistent Art Policy: Permanent public art installations (including the 2011 Black Stones of Africa in the Pothole Fountain) receive no formal acknowledgment, while commercial signage operates without restriction.
Exclusionary Curation: 2024 art show rejected bridge-themed permanent-style works while accepting unrelated pieces, demonstrating arbitrary selection standards.
D. Institutional Response Gaps
2020 Petition Institutionalization: The committee's response to a Change.org petition (later removed for defamation violations) included an anti-racism plaque placed three feet from an existing, unacknowledged anti-racist installation. No direct communication occurred with the targeted artist despite fourteen years of prior professional collaboration.
Six Years of Documented Silence: From June 6, 2020 through May 2026, zero recorded contact between committee members and a legacy contributor whose installations remain integral to the bridge.
II. Proposed Governance Framework
Tier 1: Structural Realignment (Immediate)
Fire District Direct Authority: Shelburne Falls Fire District assumes direct governance oversight, initiating public process to dissolve current subcommittee structure.
Professional Horticultural Steward: Hire part-time, grant-funded professional (horticulture/landscape architecture credentials required) through open application, reporting directly to Fire District.
Tier 2: Process Modernization
Advisory Council: Rotating membership (2-year terms), open public meetings, published minutes, Shelburne/Buckland residency only.
Formal Review Processes: RFP for trellis replacement; independent engineering review of guardrail; public accounting of soil remediation decision.
Tier 3: Policy Standardization
Art Attribution Policy: Formal recognition of all permanent installations; consistent crediting standards applied equally.
Design Standards: Published criteria for capital improvements ensuring historical integrity, horticultural function, visual continuity with river valley context.
III. Precedent and Benchmarking
These reforms align with governance standards at comparable public horticultural landmarks:
|
Institution |
Structure |
Key Features |
|
Mass Audubon Properties |
Professional staff + volunteer advisory |
Credentialed horticulturists; published annual reports; open volunteer recruitment |
|
Public Garden Institutions |
Municipal/nonprofit hybrid |
Term-limited boards; formal RFPs for capital work; professional stewardship |
|
Historic Site Gardens |
State/local oversight |
Published attribution policies; engineering reviews standard |
IV. Verification of Fiscal and Operational Integrity
To ensure compliance with M.G.L. c. 180 § 6C and to protect the Shelburne Falls Fire District from potential claims of waste of public assets, this petition demands a full, transparent accounting of the $3.2 million renovation budget.
In the absence of voluntary disclosure regarding the April 2026 soil remediation costs and contractor specifications, the public is left with no recourse but to seek formal oversight. Such oversight ensures that all internal communications, horticultural specifications, and financial transfers—which would be subject to compulsory disclosure in a judicial review—are made available now to restore public trust.
V. Supporting Record
(Verified observations, external reporting, documented communications only)
Pre-2020:
August 26, 2019: BOFC member email containing threats of restraining order, documented and reported to Shelburne PD.
2020 Institutional Response:
June 11, 2020: Greenfield Recorder publishes "Artist's work in question following petition" without subject contact.
June 18, 2020: Recorder reports plaque installation as petition response. Photo cropped to exclude adjacent anti-racist installation.
June 9, 2020: Change.org removes petition for defamation/misinformation (unreported by Recorder).
Recent Operational Failures:
2024 Art Show: Theme-based rejection followed by unrelated works exhibition.
April 2026: Contractor confirms BOFC-specified soil required $60K remediation.
August 2025 Ribbon Cutting: Committee chair denies 2020 published quotes (witness present).
Absence Documentation:
June 6, 2020–May 2026: Zero committee communications to artist with permanent bridge installations.
VI. Legal Context
M.G.L. c. 180 § 6C establishes fiduciary standards for nonprofit committees:
“Directors and officers shall discharge their duties… with the care that an ordinarily prudent person… would exercise… in like circumstances… in good faith… in a manner the director or officer reasonably believes to be in the best interests of the corporation…”
Absence of documentation makes compliance evaluation impossible. Transparent governance enables verification; opacity precludes it.
VII. Call to Action
The Bridge of Flowers belongs to its visitors, its region, its stewards. Modern governance strengthens rather than diminishes its legacy.
Decision-makers are invited to implement these reforms without prejudice to past events. The structural changes proposed address current deficiencies while preserving all that works.
Signed,
John F. Sendelbach
Shelburne Falls Resident and Legacy Contributor
May 2026
APPENDIX A: Supporting Record
(Verified Record and Reported Observation only. Facts, quotes, and observations without interpretation of intent or motive. Not required for adoption of the petition.)
[A] August 26, 2019 — Personal communication (email) — Joanne Soroka (then and current Bridge of Flowers Committee member) sent the following email to John F. Sendelbach (quoted verbatim):
“Get this through your head. I have not told anyone your personal information… If you slander me, mention me, accuse me or anything that resembles that, I CERTAINLY will get a restrain order against you… I have many many threads from you where you are threatening and ranting… Keep hitting me and I will not hesitate. You don’t know who you are fucking with… You are dead to me. Only when you call my name out, will I reawaken and I promise it will get ugly. All on you.”
This email was reported to local law enforcement as a matter of public record.
[B] November 2020 — Firsthand observation — John F. Sendelbach first met Ann Loftquist (Bridge of Flowers Committee member) at The Mill after leaving his 9-year studio at 44 State Street.
[B] 2024 Bridge of Flowers Art Show — Firsthand observation — Ann Loftquist informed John F. Sendelbach that his proposed permanent-style pieces did not fit the bridge/flower theme. Sendelbach withdrew the pieces. At least a dozen pieces exhibited had no relation to flowers or the bridge.
[C] June 11, 2020 — External reporting (media source) — Greenfield Recorder published “Artist’s work in question following petition” by Mary Byrne. Article quoted committee members endorsing the “anti-racism spirit” of the petition. Carol Angus quote buried at bottom.
[C] June 18, 2020 — External reporting (media source) — Greenfield Recorder published “Bridge of Flowers Committee installs anti-racism memorial.” Chair Annette Szpila quoted endorsing the petition. Plaque placed three feet from Pothole Fountain containing Black Stones of Africa. Published photo cropped to exclude the stones.
[B] April 2026 — Firsthand observation (contractor reported on-site) — Contractor reported on-site that BOFC specified the soil type for the $3.2 million renovation. Remediation cost: approximately $60,000. No public accounting of responsibility or payment released.
[B] August 2025 Ribbon-Cutting — Firsthand observation — No PA system present. Chair Annette Szpila stated to John F. Sendelbach (in presence of witness) that she had never made the quoted statements in the 2020 Recorder articles.
[B] June 6, 2020 – present (2026) — In publicly available records provided by petitioner — No documented communications were identified between any Bridge of Flowers Committee member and John F. Sendelbach.
APPENDIX B: Narrative and Contextual Material
(Interpretive Claim and personal narrative only. Explicitly labeled as interpretive and not required for decision-making or adoption of the petition.)
THE ANN LOFTQUIST HYPOCRISY — LACK OF FORMAL PROCESS AND EXCLUSIONARY PRACTICES
Ann Loftquist is a current and long-standing member of the Bridge of Flowers Committee. I first met her in November 2020 at The Mill, right after I had been forced to leave my 9-year commercial studio/store at 44 State Street because of sustained harassment from the Hennessey crew. At that time she was one of the very few committee members who actually spoke to me directly and was the one who first told me about the secret BOFC Zoom meetings being run by Kay Berenson to coordinate the institutional response to the petition.
Later she rejected my 2024 art show pieces despite my history as a legacy bridge artist with two major permanent installations already on the bridge. I accepted the exclusion and withdrew my pieces.
I still attended the show. At least a dozen pieces on display had nothing to do with flowers or the bridge — directly contradicting the reason she gave me for rejecting my work. Ann Loftquist is the single non-white member in ninety-seven years of the committee’s existence. This highlights the lack of documented diversity and formal selection processes for committee membership and art curation. At the same time, Ann Loftquist continues to be one of the main organizers of the annual plate sale and the Bridge of Flowers art shows — good work that deserves recognition. Yet that positive activity is completely overshadowed by the same governance failures that allowed secret Zoom meetings, public defamation, six years of total silence, and the active sidelining of a legacy artist.
SIX YEARS OF NO CONTACT — A DOCUMENTED INSTITUTIONAL ABANDONMENT
From June 6, 2020 through the date of this petition: not one Bridge of Flowers Committee member has contacted John Sendelbach. Not an email. Not a phone call. Not a letter. During this period: he was falsely accused of racism in a petition the committee endorsed; he had his studio closed by the community pressure that followed; he sustained documented atrial fibrillation attributed by his physician to the harassment stress. Through all of it, the committee whose endorsement launched the cascade maintained total silence. This is not an oversight. It is a posture.
At the August 2025 ribbon-cutting for the $3.2 million renovation — a once-in-a-generation civic event — there was no PA system, so prepared speeches were lost to street noise. Chair Annette Szpila denied to my face, in the presence of a witness, that she had ever made the quoted statements endorsing the petition. The archived Recorder articles contain her direct quotes. This is documented denial of the public record.
The Greenfield Recorder published two front-page articles endorsing the 2020 petition that called me a racist disruptor full of hate.
On June 11, 2020, the Recorder ran “Artist’s work in question following petition” by Mary Byrne. The article amplified the petition’s narrative without contacting me. It front-loaded quotes from committee members endorsing the “anti-racism spirit” of the petition while burying the one accurate characterization — committee co-chair Carol Angus stating I had been “a great supporter of the bridge and very responsive to us when we’ve had particular needs” for fourteen years. The Recorder never reported that Change.org removed the petition for defamation and misinformation violations.
On June 18, 2020, the Recorder ran “Bridge of Flowers Committee installs anti-racism memorial.” Chair Annette Szpila was quoted saying the committee wanted to “honor the anti-racism spirit of the petition.” The article described the new plaque as a response to the petition while placing it three feet from the Pothole Fountain — the permanent installation I designed with mason Paul Forth, which includes the Black Stones of Africa embedded as a structural anti-racist tribute to his biracial daughters. The committee never publicly acknowledged those stones in nine years of the fountain’s existence. The Recorder cropped the published photo to exclude them.
These articles gave institutional legitimacy to a petition that falsely labeled me a racist disruptor. The committee endorsed that narrative without ever contacting me.
The structural case for dissolution — and the fiduciary breach
The BOFC is a subcommittee of the Shelburne Falls Area Women’s Club, a Massachusetts nonprofit corporation organized under M.G.L. Chapter 180. As members of a committee of that corporation, BOFC members owe clear fiduciary duties under M.G.L. c. 180 § 6C: the duty of care (to act with the prudence of an ordinarily careful person), the duty of loyalty (to act in good faith and in the best interests of the corporation), and the duty of obedience (to faithfully carry out the organization’s charitable mission).
The documented record raises serious questions about compliance with these duties:
A $60,000 soil remediation decision made without professional horticultural input violates the duty of care.
Secret Zoom meetings, threats from long-serving members (including Joanne Soroka’s 2019 email), active exclusion by Ann Loftquist, and six years of total silence toward a legacy artist whose work remains permanently installed on the bridge raise duty-of-loyalty concerns.
The failure to acknowledge the Black Stones of Africa while installing a new plaque three feet away, and the refusal to correct the public record, suggest a breach of the duty of obedience to the charitable and public purpose of the asset they steward.
The physical bridge — what needs to change
THE GUARDRAIL PROBLEM
The new guardrail installed during the $3.2 million renovation is black, dense, and visually impenetrable. Where the original structure had a nearly transparent railing that allowed the garden and the river below to read as a unified experience, the current rail functions more like a prison enclosure — dark, heavy, and visually separating the visitor from the landscape the bridge was built to celebrate. This should be corrected: either paint the existing rail green to blend with the garden environment, or replace it with a lighter, more historically appropriate option such as the chain-link style the bridge originally used — which, while not a typical recommendation for residential or commercial applications, is historically correct for this structure and from a distance reads as nearly transparent, exactly as the original did.
THE GHOST FRAME TROLLEY TRELLIS — A PROPOSAL READY TO BUILD
In place of the demolished vine supports, Sendelbach has proposed a Ghost Frame Trolley Trellis: a stainless steel structure built to the exact dimensions of one of the J.G. Brill trolley cars that crossed this bridge in its original life as a streetcar trestle. Light, delicate, and structurally integrated into the existing framework, the trellis would provide the shaded space the bridge currently lacks while making the trolley’s absence permanently present. Morning glories for seasonal coverage; perennial climbers for long-term structure. The design is grant-fundable, low-maintenance, and connects the bridge directly to the valley's transportation and industrial heritage — the heritage the Bridge of Flowers was literally built on top of.
John F. Sendelbach, Shelburne Falls, MA, May 2026
©2026 John Sendelbach