This is peak time for Acton democracy: A Special Town Meeting on Wednesday April 17, Town elections on April 30, and the annual Town Meeting on May 6 and 7.
Here are some thoughts on these events. This is a long post, so for those that don’t have the time or inclination to read this long letter, let me start with the main conclusion:
Please come to the Wednesday April 17 Special Town Meeting that starts at 7 PM, to vote NO on this Trojan Horse citizen petition. The article is designed to set back attempts to bring a variety of less-expensive housing to Acton, in places that support the environmental changes we need: walkable to public transit, and buildable without any need to clear out greenspace.
Here’s more background, with some side trips on the way.
Annual Town Meeting, Monday and Tuesday, May 6-7,
The final warrant isn’t totally ready, but here’s the latest draft as of April 11: https://doc.actonma.gov/dsweb/Get/Document-90697
I wanted to bring your particular attention to two articles scheduled for the second night:
Article 12: Amend Zoning Bylaw and Map – MBTA Overlay District (starts on page 44)
Article 13 Amend Zoning Bylaw and Map – South Acton Village Districts (starts on page 55)
These have been under development, with a plethora of public workshops, for almost two years. They are in response to the MBTA communities law (article 3A) and the input received as part of updating the South Acton Village plan.
Some background: The period in the 1960s and early 1970s when multi-family housing was allowed by-right in Acton resulted in the construction of most of our existing apartment buildings, which provided a nice range of affordability in a town that has since developed extremely high housing prices. But these buildings are mostly more than 50 years old, and many are at risk of becoming unsafe, or at risk of being replaced by higher-cost homes. To allow more of the people that work in Acton to live in Acton, and to allow more economic diversity in Acton, we need more places to live that aren’t huge single-family houses on large lots.
Articles 12 and 13 are designed to help do that.
Article 13 allows two new development patterns in the commercial core of South Acton and along the rest of the historic district.
- It allows residential uses above commercial uses, which is a pattern that many developers find attractive, but it is not currently allowed. These sorts of apartments have market rents in the lower end of what’s available in Acton, and there are very few of them currently.
- For the many old large residential buildings in the area, it lifts some restrictions on converting these houses into (up to) 4 separate units. These sorts of units will also be more naturally affordable than large stand-alone single-family houses,
- The zoning changes have additional regulations to support walkability and a safe and pleasant pedestrian experience.
Article 12 allows multifamily development by-right in some areas in South Acton. By-right development means that no special permit is required. Acton’s bylaws still need to be adhered to: our building code, our wetlands and stormwater bylaws, etc. Three districts are defined:
- Along Main street, from Central St to Prospect, the same pattern of residential over commercial defined in Article 13 is allowed
- Along Central Street, almost up to Windsor Ave, multifamily development (duplexes or multi-story apartment buildings at up to 10 units per acre) is allowed. Since this area is already built up, very few multifamily buildings will be built anytime soon. The MBTA zoning law does not require the local bylaw to force any housing production, just zoning changes that would allow more multi-family housing.
- In two special areas, multifamily development is allowed up to 25 units/acre.
- The first is the 25 acre parcel that includes the Dover Heights apartments, which has 71 units on 3 acres. The owner there has said that he would be interested in adding an additional building or buildings at that same density, in the 5 – 6 acres of buildable land on that lot. Since the existing building is already close to that 25 units per acre maximum, there would be no economic incentive to tear down the existing building. (Right now, the zoning there only allows single family housing).
- The second is the area north of Powdermijll Road, between Old High Street and the Maynard border. This area has a multifamily development already in the permitting process.
The law allows Acton to require that that at least 10% of the units in any multifamily development be deeded as affordable to families living at 80% of median area income. Acton has included that requirement in our bylaw. The rest of the units would be sold or rented at market rates. Market rates for units at 10 or 25 units per acre are naturally lower than most of the housing in Acton, which is at 4 units or less per acre.
The planning department has a lot more information here:
http://doc.acton-ma.gov/dsweb/View/Collection-17878
(This also covers two other zoning articles which the Select Board also recommends, but seem to be less controversial)
The only citizen petition for the Spring Town Meeting is article 16, about phasing out the use of gas leaf blowers. The Select Board recommends this article as well. There is a plethora of information about this one at https://greenacton.org/leafblowers
Town Election Tuesday April 30
The big item on the election ballot is the operating override. Serving on the Acton Leadership Group this year, I worked with the finance committee and school committee representatives to grapple with big gaps between expenses and revenue, in this year and next year, and we all slowly but surely came to the same conclusion: an operating override was needed. Even after pressing the schools and town hard to reduce their budgets and find additional ways to increase revenues, we were left with a gap that could only be filled by raising the tax levy beyond the 2½ percent allowed by law without an override vote. It’s been 20 years since we’ve had an operating override in Acton. We don’t want to make it a habit. The size of the override leaves room for some unused levy capacity to be used in future years, and the schools and towns have additional structural ideas for increasing revenues and decreasing expenses that will take a couple of years to research and implement. We know that even if this override passes, residents will look unfavorably on another operating override in the next few years.
A group has come together to educate and advocate for the override, a registered ballot advocacy committee called “Together For Acton”. Their material is over at TogetherForActon.org. That group includes two people from the Select Board, two people from the School Committee, and many other folks. Another source of information is the Town’s website: https://actonma.gov/813/FY2025-Override-Information
The Select Board unanimously voted to put this operating override on the ballot.
There is also a contested School Committee election on that ballot, but I have no recommendations to pass on. Do you have any recommendations about the choice between Benjamin Bloomenthal, Andrew Schwartz, and Jason Fitzgerald?
Special Town Meeting, Wednesday April 17
You may have already gotten the mailing already, for a one-question special town meeting on a citizen’s petition with this language: “We urge Town leaders, before recommending any major zoning proposal, to perform [and release for public review] detailed impact studies, which examine the maximum impact of such a proposed zoning proposal”. The person who filed the petition has been clear that the reason for this petition was to add extra time for persuading town meeting voters to vote against the MBTA zoning bylaw, and, if this resolution passed, to stand up at Town Meeting and encourage people to vote against Article 12 because there are not “detailed impact studies” in the “maximum impact” of the zoning proposal. The filing of the petition was timed to require a special town meeting before the regular town meeting. If it had been filed earlier, it could have been discussed at the regular Town Meeting as a citizen petition. If it had been filed later, we would have been able to insert a special town meeting at the beginning of night 2 of the regular town meeting. Instead we were required to have a special town meeting on its own night, with all the extra time and expense that entails. The main signature gatherer for the petition, Acton’s most frequent citizen petition filer, explained that this timing was deliberate.
The Select Board urges a NO vote on this article. To defeat it will require folks to show up. Here are some of the reasons I heard from Board members:
- The language of the petition requires the impact study to be of “the maximum impact”. That’s putting time and money into a very unlikely outcome. Studying the range of likely outcomes is useful, but that’s not the language of the petition.
- ‘Impact studies’ is not defined. The planning department already studies the possible impact of zoning articles. What else would this require?
- Petitioning for a special town meeting just to debate a non-binding petition is a waste of the Town’s money, and we would like to discourage that. If this had been done earlier, this could have been done as a petition at regular Town Meeting. If it had been done later, we could have called a special town meeting on the second night of Town Meeting. The timing was chosen deliberately to require the extra expense of a Special Town Meeting on its own night.
- The purpose of the petition is to help gather additional ‘no’ votes for the MBTA zoning article at the regular Town Meeting. That is, the language is expressed as a message to ‘town leaders’, but it’s really just an extended advertisement against a particular zoning article, done at Town expense.
Thanks for reading this far! I’m happy to talk or exchange emails with any of you about these topics, especially if your recommendations are different from mine, or if you have questions.
Please, if you can, come to the Wednesday Special Town Meeting, and let others know. You are welcome to point others to this post, or copy & paste & edit any parts of it you like.
Yours in community,
-Jim