Weston MBTA 3A Multifamily Zoning Planning Update

EngageWeston’s current assessment of the MBTA 3A issue in Weston is that the Select Board and Planning Board 3A Working Group is working well in developing the best 3A plan possible, but still has no planned effort to educate enough voters about the need to approve that plan sufficient to assure it will likely be approved when it’s voted on in November, the next scheduled Town Meeting.

First, let’s analyze the 3A plan development efforts then look at the voter education strategy.

The 3A Working Group, the combined Select and Planning Boards, is working diligently to craft a plan that they hope the town will approve. Again, their actions seem based on the conclusion that Weston will not be allowed by the state to avoid the law without consequences the town finds too onerous to accept. Weston just lost it’s case against 3A claiming it is an unfunded mandate. Milton and other towns lost their cases, with the courts concluding repeatedly that 3A is legal and binding and the Attorney General has the authority to enforce the law.

The 3A Working Group’s approach to crafting a plan that will bring Weston into legal compliance involves attempting to calm unhappy neighbors of proposed multifamily zones as much as possible while still maintaining their strategies to minimize the overall disruption in the town’s character.

Those strategies are to rezone already developed commercial and multifamily areas and to avoid rezoning residential areas or open space that would likely be disruptive to existing single family residential neighborhoods.

Their latest thoughts on changes to the proposed December Town Meeting 3A plan is to reduce the number of proposed units zoned for the old Liberty Mutual campus off Rt. 30 and to move those proposed units to the Merriam Village site as well as to the 751 Boston Post Rd. development that is currently being constructed. If adopted, those changes would reduce the allowable units at the Liberty Mutual site from around 250 to 75, allow Merriam Villlage’s existing 62 apartments to expand to around 100 on undeveloped land Merriam Village owns next to their existing buildings, and to count 100 of the 170 apartments being built at 751 BPR for 3A purposes.

Merriam Village is a non-profit organization offering the most substantial affordable elderly housing campus in town, and this change could allow it to add new apartments in the future to accommodate its long waiting list, though. Merriam Village has no plans to explore expansion currently, but rezoning their excess land is the only fully publicly spirited change included in the 3A plan.

The 751 BPR development would not change the current construction plan in the Working Group’s plan as the new 3A zone would authorize fewer apartments than are already being developed under the 40b state program. The developer would not restart its current plan to adopt 3A zoning authorization without losing a huge amount of profit because they could build fewer apartments under the proposed 3A plan.

The 3A Working Group is also exploring how the Boston Property 3A zone there can be spread out across more of the 133 Boston Post Rd. campus than the current plan which mainly uses the area near the rail trail.

The 3A zone proposed for Merriam Village is the only zone in the plan that would be focused 100% on elderly and affordable housing, which is in very short supply but in great need by a good number of town residents. By contrast, under 3A up to only 20% of other 3A zones could be required to be affordable and none could be required to focus on elderly residents. Again, the 3A Working Group is working very hard and quickly to craft a plan that will cause the least resistance among the neighborhoods next to proposed multifamily housing zones.

Voter Education Plan Missing

However, so far it appears what’s missing is a plan to educate the voters to help them understand the situation well enough to overcome the misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding the law among town residents. The vote in December’s Town Meeting was 544 against and 194 in favor of the 3A proposal. Given this significant discrepancy, without a concerted campaign to educate voters all the 3A Working Group’s efforts to craft as good a plan as possible risk being inadequate to the task of convincing enough voters to change their opinions.

The 3A team seems to be strongly in favor of the town becoming compliant with 3A, however reluctantly some previous opponents have become apparent supporters. That’s a substantial change from December. They are using normal deliberative town processes of public meetings, public hearings, neighborhood meetings, and site walks to craft an updated plan in full public view and with every step thoroughly documented on the town’s website. However, it seems nearly the only people watching all that good work are civic affairs enthusiasts like us or some of the 3A adjacent neighborhood residents.

We believe an additional and substantial public education effort is needed if the town voters are to understand the situation well enough to make a wise decision on 3A when it comes to a vote in the newly scheduled Fall Town Meeting in November. With no comprehensive plan or dedicatged effort to educate the voters adequately, we believe the 3A plan will be doomed to fail. If it fails again the State has been quite clear that the repercussions would be painful and extensive, far exceeding the explicit penalties listed in the 3A act itself. Such a result would be unnecessarily expensive in many, many ways for the town and risk putting the direction of the town’s zoning and development planning in the hands of the court instead of our elected local officials.

We strongly encourage the 3A Working Group to develop a voter education plan that is up to the task of avoiding these negative consequences.

Sincerely,
engageWeston Team