March 25, 2026 – Housing Partnership – Video & Transcript
March 25, 2026 - Housing Partnership
okay this is the meeting of the wayland housing partnership on march 25th in the town building and
on zoom um do i need to read the the short piece when we're doing a hybrid meeting
i i'm okay with you not reading it um so in attendance are rachel brad kathy bounding jackie the spirit of santu and jane milburne and i'm gonna want this um is there any public comment i don't see that poll about her so we have two sets of minutes to approve and uh jim has sent comments on both of them um i think um one uh january 14th he had fewer comments um
he corrected the spelling of peter levingson and in other words it has a little edit and where is that married there's who said it was in the last um paragraph um what i would do is put the planning board in the first sentence and then put in corinne's planning board um what and what he had suggested guys put them spelling out planning board in the third sentence okay but i think if you put them whatever whatever whatever makes sense that it's fine so are you going to correct those or would you correct them since you're going to send them in yeah is that okay yeah great okay so is there a motion yes jim i'll make a motion to approve the minutes as amended okay you know just made a motion for a meant to approve as amended now second promotion all in favor hi hi i arrived late sorry everybody so that's partly just done the first set of minutes and you had more comments in the second okay and for some reason uh there's a question mark in the middle of some of the woods that we corrected all of those and a few other words uh that anybody else have well i had quite a few corrections also but i neglected to look at jim's corrections so unfortunately i think we need to go through them because there were quite a few places that um needed as i said a number of words had a question mark in them right so i corrected all of those okay um i think the next one was in the third paragraph beginning with dana share right uh and instead of auxiliary yes he had um accessory accessory yes it's okay and the next paragraph i excuse me i have in that same paragraph i had trouble understanding understanding or or actually it says and the majority of municipalities including wayland are now in compliance i didn't remember that statement that we're not everybody's in compliance with their bylaws did she say that i i tried to look in my notes but that that's a very big statement to make and i did not recall it i think i think what she said if they were tracking uh adoption of the bylaws to comply with the enabling legislation that's the way i understood it it says the majority are now in compliance and i wasn't sure i i would just say that they're tracking adoption of the bylaws okay because i don't i don't really remember the majority piece and that that doesn't mean that's a bold statement is that okay it doesn't change the no no it does we're just deleting now in compliance and and and we can say we can say semicolon wayland is now in compliance yeah because that that just clarifies our position so jim are you going to make those corrections uh if you'd like me to oh because i haven't found where that is okay i'm happy to make that so jim after the enabling legislation semicolon wayland is now in compliance thank you um so we'll get rid of the phrase including wayland and just say wayland is now in compliance after majority of which delete the majority yes okay i didn't remember that it's great if it's true but i i just didn't well just delete yeah delete the full clause um about the uh and the majority of municipalities good thank you yeah compliance the paragraph uh starting the governor uh on the last line instead of understand jim suggests overcome i i didn't quite understand the way it was phrased didn't make sense with the word understand so like i didn't remember the specific statement but i yeah i think i had taken you know that was probably her verbiage that from my notes but i think overcome uh conveys the the sense of it that you know we want this to be uh communicating for towns people you know who want to see what we're talking about at the meeting i'm sorry which paragraph this is the last paragraph or the second to last paragraph my page starting with the governor you know the very last line before barriers just change the word understand to overcome okay okay good thank you by the way i want to just say you know i thought you did a terrific job on these minutes it was a lot of information to take in and i just want to i mean we're kicking away at little pieces here but i just want to compliment you on how much you were able to capture there was a lot going on down to two pages i agree thank you you did a very good job yes um that i it doesn't bother me in the least uh to improve upon no no i i hate it but i i just when i started reading it i said oh wow she really did because i read my notes and i couldn't understand half of them maybe three quarters and this was very helpful how do we spell incentivize with the z you are with an s i was going to be i believe okay because you've got it both ways jim you're hedging your bets well i think s is the bridge you're a hedge fund guy you go up you go down i'm not a hedge fund no maybe hedge yes and the state in the paragraph the state you've got him spelled both ways i i you know i've been as oliver wendell holmes said foolish consistency is the hobgobble of small minds i thought that was that was the road it may have been somebody it was emerson i think well i think this might have put it together this got into the the law books that's how i know okay i'm not going to count to that at the top of the next page i don't think jim had it but there are two two a's together in abatement i i did get that and there's also one before that in the paragraph at the bottom of the first page which starts with dana presented yeah second line it says restrictions period comma i would get rid of the period yep and yeah and then in the next line it says w slash year round with no space and i think that's supposed to be w slash space year round or with year round it should be with i don't i don't think we should use that kind of abbreviation in minutes i will i will make that correction no problem you're welcome um then uh going on the next page below where abatement had two a's three lines further down which acts incentive this is the top paragraph that has an extra m in it which doesn't belong there and then you've got the incentive right and then the next paragraph there are two e's and restricted from the second line right and then the third line uh where it says adus can challenge quote safe harbor i added the chapter 40b oh yes that's what the safe harbor is
i hate that term safe harbor but that yeah you're absolutely right though it is but without explanation it's a little yeah for people to know what it means we should say chapter i need to go back to that paragraph the state uh after vermont has did you get that jim has used a it says here vermont has a used a similar oh get rid of the a yeah good point okay okay and then we have the the turkey incentivize in the fourth line which i changed to z you'll have to show me where i left it with us because i you know it's a correction you you you didn't you corrected it oh okay i got a correction okay i didn't read jim's limits and then we go down to the next paragraph dana's key takeaways yes uh third line egramont egramont i got rid of the word four right okay you can also make it possessive egramonts oh egramonts that's right that's exactly what i said apostrophe is tax incentives yeah okay and then uh i i'm not sure um janeau said she flagged i changed it to she noted yeah sure i don't recall the context and and then i would say a relationship instead of them relationship right oh i actually suggested a local relationship to you know indicate the particular municipalities housing authority or one close by um and then how about a relationship with the local housing authority the local okay the local that's good oh you already did that just a a relationship with the local yes okay good idea a relationship with the local much better thank you this is absolutely absolutely a uh group task um next paragraph starting with wind mallet uh second line i put a semicolon after four hundred dollars a square foot i put a comma after thus just to make it a little clearer and read after four thousand dollars a month rent i got rid of the colon and changed it to and this got rid of the equation doesn't work financially yeah or you could say which doesn't work financially which doesn't instead of this and this much better thank you um then the next paragraph starting questions were raised the very last word before we go to that so okay i must admit i had trouble remembering the sentence to bridge the affordability chasm a horizontal triple decker solution was suggested allowing multiple adus so i just what i i just couldn't remember how i remember the term horizontal triple but i don't which because that wouldn't be because that wouldn't be by right so i i wasn't sure that kathy do you have any recollection of what that was and um i wasn't sure how that you know i feel like we should understand what's in these minutes and if we can't well i thought the concept was it was a horizontal triple decker which was by right uh and it would allow i think there would allow multiple adus i mean the question is whether or not referring to a horizontal triple decker um which we probably understand and i think she was i think she was using that term in the context of the um uh the the great pains that many communities went to in redlining to prohibit triple deckers you know outside of boston but i'm not sure that including her use of that term um is necessarily uh helpful maybe we should just say um allowing um uh an alternative solution was suggested allowing oh yeah allowing multiple adus was suggested um as an alternative or or to bridge the affordability chasm um allowing multiple adus was suggested um or a suggestion to bridge the affordability chasm
allowing multiple adus um with no increases with no increase in taxes and enabling innovative septic strategies um or we could say it was it was suggested that allowing multiple adus with no increase in taxes and enabling innovative septic strategies could be an alternative solution can i ask are these win was this win suggestion or is this dana's suggestion and maybe we should be i think it was dana yeah it was dana we could say that i think we should say put in the active voice yeah instead of this so why don't we move it back up to dana's paragraph the paragraph sorry to be so picky but no no no that's okay i wasn't really sure yeah but it was suggested in response to this kind of you know financial equation that doesn't solve that win was presenting so so that goes after win's statement yeah in response to win's suggestion and the way it the way it would be a solution is because it is less expensive to to construct multiple adus in one footprint opposed alternative scenarios alternative yeah scenarios such as or you could say yes right that's what i'm saying in response to win to win or to win yeah dana proposed or dana suggested a horizontal triple-decker solution uh why don't we get rid of why don't we get rid of the horizontal triple-decker suggested the bridge availability chasm dana suggested allowing multiple adus finish the sentence allowing multiple adus which i mean i think we we may need to say with special permits or something without increases in taxes with you know increases in taxes and uh innovative septic strategies i don't think we need the word enabling right yeah okay we'll try that i'll send it out anybody can take another shot at it i think we've done a very good job cleaning this up but we are but the question is whether i will get it into print you will i know you you you've got a lot of faith in me rachel i appreciate it i have a lot of faith okay um then we go down to the next paragraph if this is okay going to the questions were raised last word changing zoning to zones yep do you have the typo relationship mine has a typo where is this yes right here relationship where the first sentence oh okay good thank you yes and then i have to condominiumized at the end of the paragraph and that many communities okay in single family zones yeah okay uh next paragraph fourth dot line down i get rid of the word and after clusters okay and then there's a typo at the end of the line houses houses and then i added a comma where it says in conclusion dana advised is and i put a comma after the word key and now that i see it that should be spaced for a new paragraph starting with in conclusion okay sounds good okay and then 212 has another question mark which has been changed and there's a period after communities i'd say community community okay great i will i will really i will i have my edit and i'll just add these edits great job thank you and i'm going to send it again because this is complex enough that why don't we bring it back for another round okay so we'll put that on the agenda for the next okay great thank you all thank you all and uh i appreciate you waiting for me to be here to to do those better getting here as for me jim i would be willing to vote on the minutes tonight because i think you've nailed it but that i don't i have to tell you my one of my grandchildren was visiting and my wife and grandchild made spaghetti with red sauce and uh so i was a little late but you know i'm this is a good way to work off the spaghetti it's a delicious treat yeah that is
nothing like red sauce and spaghetti yeah if you don't want to go to the villa
the villa is wonderful but um i guess it doesn't make it for me yeah definitely good job um okay so we will postpone that until the next meeting and then um mary we will go back to you or we will go back to the agenda well let's do the agenda and we'll pass it over to rachel and kathy so kathy and i haven't had an opportunity to debrief the meeting ourselves um and it's been so long and i did come up with a bunch of things that i think we could do need to do uh if we have the energy to do um and i'll just go through my five points um one is to trash the regulations coming out of the state and maybe to include what's going on in mccall's newsletter what the the mike mccall's newsletter his monthly updates um it would be good for someone to be checking all the various state agency websites tracking them and then communicating with the town manager's office letting people not just keeping it in the news that this is yeah this is where grants are coming from this is it's a great idea yeah i didn't know that we got monthly updates from the town manager so oh he does a monthly newsletter he does i don't know okay i guess i didn't sign up you're not paying your taxes i do pay my taxes but i'm not paying attention okay well we do get monthly updates from the town town manager and um again that's it is not a small task to do and i am not volunteering to do it but i'm just saying these are possible things that we could consider doing can you elaborate on that well remember remember dana there's something from mass housing there's stuff from executive office of livable communities um she i mean the minutes go through some of the the various places that's that um we're talking about that she was talking about where what did i do with the chimps where we should just track the updates on a monthly basis so anyway it's in that third paragraph the uh uh uh unlikely housing production commission housing assistance working group i don't know they were were i had other uh places cdac community economic development assistance corporation mass housing partnership uh there were a very mass housing the state housing finance agency there's this new accessory dwelling unit design challenge where people are going to be submitting plans um and then those plans are going to be available publicly so you know when when a design is selected people should be able to go to the website and see what designs were selected what designs weren't selected that's what i mean there were a whole bunch of that made the connection between mccall's newsletter that's what i think putting the updates in the newsletter so inviting them up and so if there were a section in the newsletter say update on accessory dwelling unit okay funding assistance grant programs then it could just be a little block within his newsletter we should be a feeder to that it would be a feeder i'm sorry that's a good idea but it's a based on state updates it's state update right anything we see in our research from another town but this is or another i'm not trivializing the amount like oh no honestly if if the town planners assistant could do that that would be a very good task because it is a piece of work every every month to go on the websites and see what's been updated what new regs are available putting the link into the newsletter making sure so and also just having it every month highlights on the accessory dwelling unit bylaw new information go seek this out that that was what i was saying does that make sense yeah i guess with the distinction i would make is the regulations this the regulations are state regulations okay and so that's going to only be that's not going to happen without all of us having notice and the towns are ready to 90 day notice of publication at all so we don't have to worry about that right right it's not right the rest of this stuff is going to be what you're talking about policy policy changes the little application guidelines right yes whatever but the first thing i think what you were talking about was and maybe yeah when we said tracking regulations i guess i was thinking we would have about tracking and this i don't think the town will do yeah but it was examining or tracking bylaw changes oh yeah where some communities are going to be really aggressive right and we could be watching them to see what they're doing that's different or that might push us and that's that to me is i don't think that's going to come out of the town of assistance or somebody but i think that could want our committee to look at and i don't mind doing that okay well
yeah that's a brilliant service to the town because i think one of the greatest difficulties you know across the board in the town of wayland is hyper caution about you know pushing the envelope in any any way so being you know targeting the town manager's newsletter is also i think really important because the i have the impression that the housing partnership is it's either an afterthought or it's being excluded um from conversations that are pertinent um to you know the work of the partnership and i think you know demonstrating that we can provide um this service to the town is really important um you know just to to try to build a more collaborative relationship with um what would be with planning board economic development committee select board you know all these other boards that are investigating uh housing alternatives without talking to us i think that's good so if we're in their face they'll listen to us more kathy you just mentioned tracking town bylaw changes um dana had mentioned several towns wellfleet uh the lower cape uh ed vermont westboro salem and then the state of vermont i mean that is a separate task to kind of follow up on you know a paragraph on each or a link to each uh as part of the tracking if you were willing to to include those but she already gave us leads about those yeah and and also an email any point to dana you know just saying are there any other updates on that you know do you have more towns that have been filtering across you i think i don't know the answer this right off but i would think this is the kind of thing i could do to work for you yeah yeah but you might it's possible that dana or some other organization in the state is already piles this and sends it out every right week or month and so i asked her you get on there mailing i asked her about it at the time and she wasn't aware of it but it's possible you might ask again it may be it's something that they walked away and say you know yeah we were just debriefing after the meeting it was really helpful and by the way we'd like to try this out to keep up to date and let the town know and do you know of any quick sources that we could tap into and just to uh be clear about the acronym kathy just used a foyer request freedom of information act but i wonder if you know if if you're going to be doing this incredibly helpful service i mean dana might like to just you know be in cc and also you know the office of livable communities i think they might also appreciate that she may so i might get called on yeah but there you go that way when you raise your hand sure no jean had raised her hand when you know spoke up so i suggested jean move over so she could be on camera now she just has to butt in yeah yeah i'm sorry i'm i just have the mic open because i'm looking at the documents i'm not i don't even see the zoom screen nothing to be sorry for um i've been wondering if we would be permitted our town moving to produce a follow-up document uh you know how that we have the we have the tables with all the update information and stuff at town meeting um since the last town meeting we voted you know to come into compliance as the town i wondered if we'd be allowed to do a follow-up that said you know okay last town meeting you the people voted on this and you approved it and then put all these points that of new development since the last town meeting and salient to this hope the town took and um you know town meeting everybody really industry industry industrialist i can't say the word industriously industriously thank you um um reads those things you know it's like it's an active audience but those little pieces of paper it's where you do them you make your doodles i don't think we'd be allowed to do that but it's a time when you get people's attention and it is it's a good idea yeah just a hand now yeah i think and also want to check with the building department you know just how many um you know what second mary's talking just one second sorry mary i think there's going to be an article updating the adu like by law so right by this by the planning board but that's not going to include these ideas right i think i think you know the point is that we are left out or or as i used to say in grade school when i was asked what position i played in baseball it was left out so i think it's incumbent on that dead former exactly it's incumbent it's a good idea to come up with a handout and say by the way that's a great idea you may see the bylaw changes but there have been other changes behind the scenes where we're working proactively and by the way we are a committee we're not a we're not an official committee or whatever but we are okay well we are
i'm not well known committee but our job is to facilitate this and here are another half dozen items that you might be interested in and if you want to if you're interested in this give us some feedback well i like that idea a lot and i who would we ask whether we're allowed to do that you can any handouts that come up at town meeting have to have the town moderator's approval okay and so she will want to see what it is okay so we need a draft okay um so that you can shut a little time jean sure thank you well but the point is it's when you ask her permission the other thing is to produce the memo right the memo presumably you know would include some of the kind of material that we would have in the newsletters you know like updates on the state programs but also just indicating what what we've done we passed the bylaw last year the planning board has a new article related to the uh to special permit i think right yeah we met with a representative from the state yeah to get a lot of ideas and these are some of the things we're doing so what would be the timeline i forgot when town meeting is you probably have that in your head mary no it's like me first okay okay so we have a month to come up with a well at least a few weeks yeah ai makes this all so much easier than it used to be yeah so as long as i have keywords uh to plug into the prompts well let's go we can probably let's go over you want to go over the minutes that we just talked about that paragraph or two you're sending those to us right i am but you could you could just take this yeah you could just take this third parent third and you know these paragraphs from dana and that would be fabulous okay that's a great idea yeah thank you that might be sure that i think nobody knows that this really exists and does any better yeah i i think it's a great idea we have no money and we have no power but we are very we're small and local and if we set a date for a forum yeah that could also i in there but that made that there's a concern yeah no but it would be a good thing to suggest is that we had a forum this year it didn't uh it didn't get a lot of time i mean in a nice way and we'd like to have another one next year too i think it's going to take a little while to prep for that particularly i mean we want to have more policy info you know more of the state's policy programs out and available i think we need more hard information from this state yeah but we might say we're interested in having another one when the time is right and if anybody's interested please uh yeah yeah that's your name yeah yeah and yeah just that we're i want to say something stronger than interested um we're clear say yeah we're we're discussing you know the next housing forum and welcome input from residents just you know something like that yeah we need to keep in touch oh can we move on to another point that i thought of keeping in touch with the building department yeah uh you know so that we know how many adus are being uh good idea you know we want we want the numbers since the new bylaw applications yeah yeah occupancy permits right approve you know um and maybe at some point get a clear assessment of how that process is working for people coming in with units more than 900 square feet uh is the planning board giving permits you know what number special permits special right special right what how many by rights do we have tracking it since uh because we know that there were what eight nine ten or something i think at some point and is there movement on that i don't know if robert's keeping that information or not um that was kind of my immediate to-do list and it sounds like we've got some um some clear tasks and some people who have volunteered to kind of do it i am i i could be in touch with robert hummel the town planner and see if he can spare any time from his assistant to do the tracking that would be great of the of the websites like every month and to write up something on that uh and then assuming that goes forward uh i can be in touch with michael mccall's office and say you know will we put in a monthly blurb a little box about adu updates and just get that into the newsletter do you want to feed him the names of these different agencies that dana yeah i gave us so we can have that for i would do that yeah i would do that idea uh so that but again that is a piece of work that honestly it would be great if that person was on yeah doing that absolutely that would be uh i think all's uh i think he and gylan who i think does the newsletter would really appreciate that having material regular basis from a town committee yeah i think i think it would be uh informative to people and if they want to see those design plans or whatever just click on the link and they know exactly where to find it all right kathy i think you suggested that you would be willing to try to get some information about that there's any bylaw changes and the ones that dana mentioned and try to track anything else and gene you said that you would be willing to sort of begin to draft uh a handout one maybe one page or one page with the flip side handout yeah i just sent myself an email and told myself to go and then we we would have to um get the uh moderators approval to hand that out so we probably have to get that to her let's say by second third week of april everything second third week of april and um we need to be tracking any anybody want to be in touch with the building department about permitting or about how that's going and the planning board those are two more tasks well what what are you asking robert about tracking i thought i thought it was maybe robert i was going to ask but i can ask robert about tracking also robert i'm asking that somebody in his office to keep track of the state policy changes about adu funding but i can also ask him to if he can give me updated uh numbers numbers on by right and by special permit i think that makes sense yeah yeah if he is not doing that or says he doesn't have the bandwidth to do that i would volunteer to keep in touch with the building department okay thank you oh can you do that when you're in south america or i'll be back back yeah but i hope i hope robert you know would be amenable to doing some of that tracking as a backup yeah i think he probably had more staff support than nathan that would be my guess from experience with the building department yeah that was my list of what follow-up thank you anybody have anything else uh to add of what we should be doing based on dana's presentation do you want to keep in touch with dana and and ask her if she can pass you pass on to you the things that her group is doing i think i think kathy you maybe was going to get in touch with dana directly is that right with respect to the communities yeah but what what else yeah particularly the local given that she's out and about in communities all the time it's a matter of um you mentioned these communities right have any other interesting bylaws right that she's aware of and then yeah so i think i think kathy if you want to write that and then cc me i'm happy she'll she'll remember um you know she was great and i'm sure i'm sure she wouldn't mind keeping us i think she does i think she values it i think honestly that's her job in community engagement and i think she really values yeah um you know what we're doing and uh it's fabulous it's part of her work thank you for training a star yes i take much credit honestly she was the star when she walked into my class so mass housing partnership has had three uh training modules the first one right was march 11th understanding the local ecosystem i watched the one on march 18th which was the municipal role in affordable housing development which i thought was very good and i'm waiting for them to say that the video is available available i watched the one today on why building local support is critical for board and commission success and i think we pretty much know that that um but if um if they um have the one on the 18th i thought that was really um very good
and one of the things that they discussed was local preference and we have local preference and um they were describing it as having pros and cons um that many i think towns and i think are the the feeling in wayland has been it's a selling point um in town to say that there is not a wayland preference uh up to a certain i forgot what the rule is but it's only up to a certain percent of the units so some of the units can get 17 percent or something so you know it is a it is a restricted local preference of a certain percent and then it's because of equal opportunity guidelines it has to be completely open to anybody from any community but we do get a some modest local preference i think it would be crazy not to include the local preference absolutely yep yep um so um i can keep following um mass housing partnerships um but and on the um minutes um there's the governor's um um the adu design challenge and there's state housing finance home modification right program
the 495 house the 495 partnership has a housing committee um and their meetings are open um who's in the 495 partnership what is it yeah yeah and it's a partnership of communities towns in in the 495 area and it's um a business uh sort of a business uh sort of a business focus um but they have a housing committee they have a transportation committee um they're probably some others and they um they always attend the um metro west regional collaborative um and uh robert and i attend those meetings so i can um keep track of it and
i'm saying i through the 495 ownership nest housing and you say you're going to do that i mean what what what what does that mean that you're going to do well i'll follow it follow those and um metro west regional collaborative okay doesn't focus particularly on on housing but it's a concern of all determinants so um that there's a state where it would be good to have somebody following um and that would include um hnc as well probably it would include eol eohlc yep and it would include um mass housing well i'm i can take mass housing as well as mass housing partnership they're different oh mass housing is the state housing finance agency no then mass housing partnership is uh you know causing public advocacy but mass housing actually is the lender for is that mass housing and finance agency it used to be it used to be it used to be mhfa mass housing and finance agency okay it's now just mass housing just to make things incredibly confusing yeah okay i mass housing partnership just informal two different entities is that what it all flows through the money flows through mass housing mass housing but that's the big bucks in the state that funds home ownership multi-family housing mass housing partnership is a much it's does uh you know uh it does have funding it does provide i think it's the state uh section eight uh statewide section eight available like i'm embarrassed more of a policy i mean that's where dana is right right she's at mass housing and they provide advocacy and technical assistance funding for various programs but it's not the big bucks i mean mass housing is actually doing construction loans long-term financing subsidized home ownership it's you know it's like a mortgage broker they float bonds state back taxes bonds it's the big entity mass housing partnership very very important but it's a quasi public it's a much smaller scale operation than mass housing it's not small mass housing partnerships not small though yeah huh yeah interesting does anybody know what the status is of the mahoney's um i don't my understanding that it's still alive boy the dead is live mary i think we're going to say something before the question about mahoney's came up um i we should just try to wrap up this uh part of the conversation and then we can hopefully go on the state housing finance agency is different than mass housing no mass housing is the state housing finance agency as opposed to mass housing partnership right so one involved but but in the minutes it says state housing finance that is mass housing okay that is known as mass housing it used to be called mass housing and finance agency created in 1968 or 69 it was one of the first maybe the first state housing finance agency in the country oh interesting should go about that that's that's in the minutes port mass housing so yes probably yes so where in the minutes is this um is it our first page uh the second um oh where it says state housing plan no no state housing plan is different yeah it's the paragraph that starts the governor has announced okay and it's the third line the state housing finance and that's the message that's mass housing okay so i'll just say the massachusetts just say mass housing the name is mass housing now known as nka mass housing okay yeah if you don't mind i you know the the agencies are the names are so confusing yeah yeah i'll just if i can use not known as i mean that's that's impressive
okay i'm all over it that's going to be fun to uh revise these minutes thank you i had a question that um i don't expect anybody to necessarily have the answer at your fingertips but i'm wondering um you know if any any projects housing projects in the town of wayland have leveraged financing through mass housing have we ever engaged with them
no well i don't know the answer to that i don't know for example the uh saint dan's whether they've got long-term financing through mass housing i would not be surprised i don't know whether mass housing was involved with river's edge they might well have been i don't know i don't know who did the long-term financing for those or whose plan to do the long-term financing for that's a good question uh saint dan's uh it's very possible it's very possible they are the long-term finances but i don't know and i don't recall the 40 b's i dealt with previously if any of them were mass housing yeah you know they typically work at a pretty large scale so they would be more likely to be involved with the saint dan's or a river's edge i don't think they would be involved with two and four unit kind of and they they wouldn't have been involved with the town center uh probably not but i because there's very little housing there well no but they've got the the condo right the condo development and there's the one that's on route 27 yeah just before you get there that i worked on but i don't remember that that was involved or willowbrook i don't remember ever hearing about that but it's well willowbrook is so old yeah mass housing has been around it's almost as old as we are married it's almost as old as we are married yeah so so you know even the um some of the green uh greenway some of the mainstone may have involved this happening i don't know doesn't the town have to uh who is funding probably i don't you know i don't know enough about that i that might be a question for robert i don't know why exactly are we interested in that good question why don't care did you know what was the what were you thinking i i was just wondering um if wayland had benefited from mass housing and um i mean if for example that mahoney's property were to free up um then we would want to be looking into um ways that we could try to attract developers who would do a better job um meeting objectives that we like and understanding where money might have come from before could be helpful i was just thinking about it let me let me add a point when mahoney's was cascade yeah which was back when zeif was the developer uh there was a position taken by the ymca and they are in a butter with camp chickamee and they had an attorney and i spoke to him because i was wondering whether the y had any interest in trying to buy that property and trying to get involved i think at that point arrowhead still owned the land oh there was and i don't know where that is but i think there are other organizations i'm just suggesting that in addition to the mass housing there may be other organizations that want to pick that up i i think it's a good point but i wouldn't listen i wouldn't limit it to mass housing i think that that is a spot that is dying to be purchased or or improved and the people at cascade and their successors have been you know it's it's outrageous it's it's true of the place on school street as well although they they were involved in appeals these people weren't involved in appeals they settled a long time ago and they've you know the problem is they agreed to put in a wastewater system which is extraordinarily expensive and it was a ridiculous idea and i can only guess that they're stuck so i think there are probably a lot of people i think robert has said at one of them of his housing meetings there i don't know that they have come back but um well if you're going to talk to robert maybe you can ask him for an update about the maloney's i mean we count on those units for our housing numbers i did did did that get taken that did that get taken out of our i don't think i think it's considered to be a done deal i that's the last i heard that would be worth checking but but frankly it's it is going so slowly yeah that one wonders why somebody doesn't just say too late i might be wrong but i thought i did look at the subsidized housing inventory not too long ago my recollection is that that might have been taken out well if it was taken out and then yeah then maybe we should say if it's been taken out then it's time to find a developer to come in and do it right well it's not up to us no but we could start to agitate i mean it just it's crazy it is just yeah daryl a piece of property it's terrible worse and worse yeah but that's sort of a segue to the you know this other issue that um i wanted to raise in this meeting um you know so the select board and the economic development committee are looking at ways to um build how you know build uh high density housing they put this um article into a proposed an article for the warrant to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to do basically a development engineering feasibility study for the school property on holiday road orchard lane one of the last remaining large you know tracts of town land the i mean the inappropriateness of the whole proposal is just astonishing the the school committee does not have control over the land uh i mean the school committee controls the land the select board doesn't have control but they want to spend you know tax money to do feasibility that by right really should be developer costs um and you know it's this sort of uh hasty cart before the horse major effort to convince the town that selling this land to a developer and putting in a hugely dense uh i think they're talking about something like you know 50 town homes um is going to help solve some of our fiscal problems and you know just the lack of uh planning of you know assessment of where does it make sense to build housing especially high density you know i mean there's no assessment of like where is medium density a good idea where is high density a good idea where are their services where is their transport you know all these kinds of planning things and the fact that they want to put in you know what is affordable by design um smaller high density units and have completely overlooked you know uh housing authority or housing partnership um it just you know further confounds the lack of transparency but also just the disconnects in planning and i mean i hate to present it this way but i think this is you know it's part of the um the service that we can provide is actually in connecting the dots and um giving a more measured you know view and input when these kinds of proposals come up well orchard lane obviously has very long history in town so that's fine to remember all the details of orchard lane but your point about um the fact that the school committee is in control of the land and uh not the board of select the select board is very important yeah does anyone know what the school committee has had to say about this and they concur with placement of this the warrant or the school committee has hired consultants um to initiate their own long-term planning process and they hired consultants who have now reported specifically on a facilities plan all the elementary schools need to be rebuilt um not renovated rebuilt and the middle school needs um um renovation so what the consultants presented um was uh about 16 different scenarios and the prices run from about half a billion to a billion with a timeline from like 2040 to 2063. so a lot of the school committee members were joking that they may not even be alive um but at the time that you know some of these scenarios i think it's a certainty actually the orchard lane property um the the the consultants proposed to use it for a first build where you would build a new school and then move kids out of clay pit or loker or happy hollow into the new school while you demolish the old one and build a new one on its place and then move kids back and forth and the school committee um of their major objections um long timeline huge cost and lots of displacement moving kids back and forth over a decade they thought was not uh not a it could be avoided um by building in different ways by consolidating and a lot of other options so the use of the orchard lane parcel for a school building is highly unlikely um based on you know the consultants and the public forum that they had presenting all these results and the school committee had mentioned they're not actually looking you know in this consultancy at this but they had mentioned that making decisions about facilities is of course in the context of a larger look at um the education of the future and what kinds of facilities where we need and mention of orchard lane as potential for a nature classroom a nature center or outdoor classroom or some other kind of act you know school use um is not off the table but they're um they're in this odd situation where uh there's a large group of over 60 residents who are strongly opposed to this article and have been going to all the meetings and uh complained to the select board that it doesn't make sense so uh members of the select board attended the school committee meeting and proposed after the fact to the school committee that how about you jointly sponsor this article with us and uh they added language that now they're not going to look at just housing but they will also look at school needs but the school committee has already paid consultants to look at facilities needs and that article is not going to look at alternative educational needs because it's looking at development options so the school committee i think kind of knows that maybe they there was an effort to sort of co-opt them because it has better optics to have them co-sponsoring um but it's very clear that uh they're not getting anything out of it
it's unfortunate it was a good article about the school plans in the post not the most recent one i remember before i think the thing that surprised me most was the time i mean i knew it was going to be big bucks but i wasn't thinking about it 20 30 years ago i'm speaking of other properties i heard the other night um that there has been talk and i i i guess i have not been tapping into things talk of um building housing uh near the longfellow club either in front of it or across the street from it i couldn't quite figure it out and david walkins is very interested in that right and i gather he owns the land and i gather there's also talk of building it up to 50 feet which some people think is a problem other people think hey you know it's it's in an area that there's not a lot of housing anyway and if there's anywhere that you would have higher housing it might be there and the other thing is there's some great uh differences in elevation the place across the street must be 30 or 40 feet below grade and even on the on the northern side there's a huge grade differential from say the suddlery dump which looms over it so um you know maybe that wouldn't be important but i don't know if we've been consulted i don't know if we would have any in that but certainly when the mbta law came up there was this concept of affordable housing and denser housing and the planning board never asked us to to be involved but this would i think be another opportunity and maybe maybe in the flyer we put into town meeting if if if there's any way to mention that we would love to be part of a discussion i think we are we're a place where it this is not a controversial committee we don't have you know we don't have hearings like the planning board or other agencies where you know when we invite speakers and i think we do research and it would be nice to think of us as a clearing house or a or a place to learn an educational forum so that might you know i think the concept of the orchard lane and this other thing and other potential projects you know would be really nice if if either town members or other committees would come to us for input guidance suggestions i think i think that our charge was changed with the advent of the town manager before that i think there was a general policy that developers were to come to us and with the town manager by law that's that's the town manager's job now so well but i don't think that means we shouldn't be consulted or considered yeah i'm not saying that that in a way it explains why we are in a way being sidelined now because of that change yeah good point we had a hearing with steven zeef and i think that was the last meeting he had with the developer i wasn't here for that meeting chris devona chair that right i was out of the country and i remember getting the low wide road information for those of you who were there interesting yes she was uh definitely interested but but when you think about it this committee i think had a great role with saint anne's we were we were a centerpiece of the early discussion we were but that's because um not um father leary was a member of our committee that's right well but i think it it's it it would be and i don't know how we get out of the woods well and into into the the playing field but i think i think the the purpose of this committee is to provide a you know space to have discussions yeah on saint anne's we were very fortunate to have father o'leary uh who was a major proponent of it and all through covet we stayed in touch with him and with the uh planning office of urban affairs which is the development entity and we kept it moving uh during that whole period to make sure it stayed on their agenda and as i understand it um the planning office of urban affairs is meeting with the cardinal in april to get his final approval because there's a new cardinal and they wanted to run it by him but there wasn't any concern in my last communication with them about him approving it but they felt it was important for him to essentially give his blessing literally figuratively on the project but are they still planning to break ground this summer this summer okay okay and i you know we can find out whether mass housing is involved i'm not sure it's i would i would guess they are but i don't know if they have the construction and long-term financing it's very likely because that's what mass housing does it's a big development and that's the kind of project they would be prone to of financing i think the diocese was working on financing i think that's really the only hold up you know because everything is pretty much been clear i have a feeling they're set with i think i i thought they were set with their finance i don't think they could break ground unless they had the construction and long-term financing well liked so well the project with david leary that when he he went off to the vatican and when he came back um he was moved to carlisle carlisle because carlisle has a similar situation uh catholic church with a lot of land and they wanted him to do the same thing in carlisle right right conquer to carlisle i don't remember the combine i don't know what church catholic diocese of them okay well but remember that with with the saint ann's project they did run into a snag with the conservation and we i'm not saying we resolved it but we were able to help to broker yes we play discussions it's fair to say without our committee that project would not happen would not happen so why isn't that a selling point for us whether it's to the town manager or the planning board or the citizenry to you know get us involved in discussions of well of affordable housing even if we are not the group that the developer comes to what's the point of not allowing we have been involved i mean i don't know we've we had the meeting on adus with the town manager and with board of health i mean i'm not i'm not i'm just i'm asking in if orchard lane or this place near longfellow comes to pass are we going to be bypassed i mean all i'm suggesting is that we one of the one of the maybe one of the purposes of what gene has suggested in terms of the handout is to say to people look if there's an affordable housing uh development whether it's one unit or a hundred units we want to be part of the discussion yeah before it's done because we have some expertise we have some interest whatever and and so please you know have at least one meeting in front of us yeah should we have asked for a meeting with the town manager to make sure that that that's a good idea very good idea uh it's a great idea oh my hands in the air again as the newest and least knowledgeable person on this body um so this group uh prepares the housing production plan right well we we we hire somebody the town hires somebody to do the right the oversight is this committee or has the oversight now transferred to the town manager when you say oversight what do you mean oversight of the consultant i know when you hire a consultant you have to give them objectives and then you have to decide whether you're accepting their report yes we play a major role but it's the town the town uh not manager of the town planner who essentially i think plays in that and then he conveys the word to the planning board the town manager you know but it's we we feed information in to the town planner pretty extensively i mean we sent out a draft of the rfp because i was in communication with robert um saying it is time i think for us to be hiring the consultant because our housing production plan expires next year and it's time and he said it was on his agenda and then he sent me a copy of the rfp the last go-round and then i did a few little tweaks and changes and sent it to mary and that's what you got in your in your packet it's the new rfp going out to the potential consultants uh we i think we were quite happy with the consultant we had hired for the last housing production plan we thought our company did a very good job but my guess is we will interview two or three and we were part of that interview process last time when we hired the uh barrett planning group judy barrett uh but they didn't have a vote wasn't any greater than i was in authority and i was in trust right didn't they all have input i think we all i don't even remember how that worked i think because i was thinking like susan weinstein always seemed to be the one who took the lead she wasn't on this committee right so but i thought i as what i recall about that was it was very collaborative that you know people we interviewed the candidate candidates two or three they were very i think we all thought they were all very competent very good organizations and we collectively i think chose one and i thought i don't think there was a contentious no i'm not suggesting that i'm just thinking in terms of authority though accountability yeah i don't think it came here it didn't come here but i don't i don't think the authority extends from here i think that's the question but i nor did i feel like we weren't part of the conversation and also that i felt like the other groups respected us respected us and that we were all colleagues and collaborators coming up with a good plan and i think and we had several meetings with the barrack planning group or i you know i don't really remember the details but the housing authority and um with you know whoever else was on kind of the subcommittee um it worked there were great public meetings that were organized too a lot of meetings part of that and they ran those and there was a lot of public input and you know small group discussions and that's how we came up with um i think the priority to have group homes for people with differential abilities i think that emerged as a priority there was a town survey yeah that was uh an online survey that people could fill out like we had an opportunity to critique the survey before it was done that's right so there was a lot of um input that we made along with the other groups that uh had a you know a foot in that but it mostly it goes you know we are we are asking for money um is there a warrant in the town art they came to the cpa robert came to the trust the trust right and he was going to ask the trust for money to fund the consultant but susan weinstein is on the trust and she's the chair of the community preservation committee and they they are the ones that have had already voted to to support to recommend uh sixty thousand dollars for i think the plan is purpose yeah that's great yeah so the second half of my question was about um when you have a housing production plan is there then a process where you assess how successful the town was in achieving its goals that's kind of the next it's like every five years when we have to update the plan we have to go back and assess and it's you know the state i think does a light look at the housing production plan i think they basically check off check off the boxes you know did they provide this did they provide that did they cover all the bases because there's a very detailed outline for what they present they don't assess whether you've met your goals but they if you have met your production goals then you get the safe harbor if you produce a certain number of units uh or if you've gone beyond 10 percent but um in terms of internally there's nobody year by year checking how we're doing um so it and i don't see that happening before five years is that i think one of the issues they came up with the last production plan is do we really need three housing committees and um you know couldn't the partnership be put done away with and have um the either the well it would be the trust um to take on the advocacy and the trust said that's not what we're here yeah we each play different roles i mean the trust has the funding the housing authority has the units and we have the policy and advocacy and education and not like it costs extra money for us i mean thank you i wish i could build for this me too yeah we should uh try to wrap up um well you wanted um five minutes happy did you have something no i was waiting to see what gene was going to is that boy i thought there was a zinger yeah but i was waiting for you to see that's a tool you know that if if you look at the housing production plan you set objectives if it appears we're not achieving the objectives that's the time to raise the voice to all involved parties and say you know we're not on a trajectory to get where we said we were gonna go so what are we going to do about it i don't know what that data looks like so i don't know if there's anything to be said but you know that's the tool to get people to pay attention well the issue is there really no sanctions for non-compliance with our goals we could all stand on a chair and shout i mean it would be pretty obnoxious if we need to i don't know them also thinking that the recommendation was you know do we really need three committees and at least you know seven with the budget
well well i think one of the risks is what we had five years ago when we were under 10 percent and we were scrambling because the zoning board was getting hit with proposals for 40 b's and that was that called for the edc and it called for proactive ways to find friendly 40 b's to avoid uh projects that are really not well designed and i think that's one function that this committee has or should have is being a place for proposals to come to so we can sort of separate the wheat from the chaff and and help decide what is a proposal that's in keeping with the interests of the town and one that is being jammed down our throats because we were below the you know the threshold as they say i think that the big change came with the town manager and does the town manager watch that if we invite michael to come well or if not it might be i mean he'll see when he's on the rfp not want to come to a meeting at night i don't know you know he's got so many others but if a couple of us went to meet with him during his daytime hours i think that would be a good idea that that might be sufficient uh to make our point it looks as though it's delegated to kelsey the assistant town manager that we are well you know the rfp um is under so i would assume that um we should be meeting with her not michael i i do you want um some edits to this for the hour i am happy to take edits and i i'm glad it given the lateness of the hour maybe if you want to send me the edits and then i'll incorporate them into a master document that i send back to robert i'm having to do that so i i just you know when robert sent me the rfp i just thought i wanted to swing it by our committee i want to keep us relevant and this is an important part of it is getting the housing production plan on the rfp and so i wanted mary to you know put it on the agenda so that everybody gets a chance to look at this rfp because i think the hope is to send it out sooner rather than later um so that we get the process rolling up maybe even by the summer so that by the fall we would be ready for the public meetings public comments whatever because it'll take several months to get the applications to get the interviews to get under contact so if you have uh suggestions so there are please send them to please do why don't why don't we make a deadline of let's see today's wednesday is next monday does that give you enough time and do you want a full week a week from today what i think that's monday is good uh march 30th okay and then i'll get them out to robert and and i'll talk to robert about all the other things on the list yeah speaking of march 30th yes um i got a note from tom fay that that's the day that the select board is going to take up discussion of the report from the 212 constituent robert committee and it'd be great to have some of us there uh i don't know what direction their conversation will go but uh when did you say it was it's next monday evening and you can look at the agenda to see what time the topic comes up i don't know what it is yet but um as you may may remember you know i put in a minority opinion on that in an effort to draw the select board's attention to opportunity for getting more housing units on that four acre piece of land and that's a task i want to persist in because i really think it's the right thing to do because the town's been here a long long time and the amount of housing for disabled persons is very very small um so anyway to the extent anybody else wants to get there or in the water on that topic and urge the select board to you know try something new that'd be great thank you for your efforts on that yeah thank you very much are has anybody able to go i can't i'm i'm good yeah okay can i i guess here i would i have to admit i don't remember i did read the minority report but it's not staying with me at the moment um question i have again is i took that at the time was a report from you as a member of the of that committee right and so we never took a vote in terms of any question at this point i mean i personally have a very different view in terms of um i believe in least restrictive environment and i really believe in a maximum integration and community and i've represented people with disabilities my entire legal career uh-huh um 46 years and i just i feel strongly about it um but that doesn't change the fact that i think there also could be affordable housing up there as well as not a larger facility for more people with disabilities i think people with disabilities should be living in the same kind of housing that every one of us lives in in the same communities with people next door and not in something that anyway um remotely looks like a or acts like a institution um and that might be the wrong word but i think that's the point i think it'd be great if you could go kathy well no because i don't think that helps and i don't want to undermine that gene put in a lot of work and you can say thank you i think you're very effective but but i think the people in that committee so i think that's the position they ultimately took was maximum integration i think um well i mean i don't think so because people want to draw this meeting to a close i don't want this conversation i've got a lot to say and um i think that the i'll just briefly say i think the des model may be a failing model because it's costs are too high and it's probably not going to be sustainable um so that we need to come up with new ways of thinking about how to organize the hazard and there's some beautiful models of higher density housing that we saw while that committee was meeting that i think would meet a lot of the objectives of building community for people and not isolating that uh and so i i think there is an intermediate ground to be explored um anyway maybe we can get together for coffee and talk about it oh i am i'm open to that too okay great so i'd like to introduce the two of you this is a very good coffee and tea companion but so folks are going to get me comments on the rfc by next monday right now and i will get around these revised minutes and one of the notions here in terms of revised comments should be underscoring the idea of this committee's relevance that's right and highlighting i mean one of the things that needs updating is what what has happened in the housing world over the last five years including st dan's i mean that was a major thing we've got to update our achievements um so i will look for comments on the rp i before i close and let mary get the next uh meeting set on the agenda i just want to mention that you might have seen the layland post edition before last uh where we there was an article about the highest uh property tax people and number one was uh river's edge number three was commonwealth i actually wrote an article following up on that basically underscoring the role of uh affordable housing in town that in addition to those units there are an additional 71 units scattered throughout town that are all paying property taxes i wrote what i thought was a decent article it had wasn't published last friday i sent another note saying there's apparently really no vehicle for somebody like me to write and like what we'd call an op-ed you know just letter or letter to the editor they'll take but mine was too long i don't do 250 words so and i sent one that was about that long and it was never it was not so i wrote this past week when i noticed it wasn't in the time i had forgotten i sent it in but then my husband said oh is your article in there i said oh okay i started looking through it wasn't in there so i wrote and i sent dave watkins and uh carol plumb the article directly saying i don't know you know it's too long for a letter but how about just an article you know just a little article like you know i contribute to you guys uh that wasn't why but what is commonwealth that's on route 30 that's not the south side of the apartment place um commonwealth south side of route 30 right out of the town center right out of uh co-trituate center right out of the villa you know it's really easy to drive right by and you're going going east that's the goddard the new goddard school oh okay so oh that place oh i so that's the third highest the name of that that's the third highest and i was sitting on the board so i would i just pointed out that not only do you have alta oxbow and this is at number one and three but all of the other not public housing but all of the other non-public housing units are all paying taxes and st anne's they're all they're paying taxes and that's going to be another major because that's you know over 40 units that's another major well certainly part of town center is condos which are paying taxes right but but i was just looking at the affordable ones there well they must have affordable units in town center i don't they do i'm sure they couldn't have built them but they're the first development does the second does right so that's part of what i'm saying there are some additional units all throughout town all of whom are paying taxes it was just another argument for 40 b and another argument for people but you know and it was taken through the housing good lens the affordable housing lens so check your wayward post i don't think it'll be there next week but i i will keep trying thank you it won't be the first piece i've written it doesn't you go to the next meeting yeah wednesday night continues to be it's fine that's good are we looking at the end of may april april sorry so is that the 29th that's fine for me works for me okay let's do it okay all right uh is there um no other no matters not not reasonably anticipated and uh is there a motion to adjourn so moved second oh go ahead see you get the you get the you get the privileges all in favor next
i i'm okay with you not reading it um so in attendance are rachel brad kathy bounding jackie the spirit of santu and jane milburne and i'm gonna want this um is there any public comment i don't see that poll about her so we have two sets of minutes to approve and uh jim has sent comments on both of them um i think um one uh january 14th he had fewer comments um
he corrected the spelling of peter levingson and in other words it has a little edit and where is that married there's who said it was in the last um paragraph um what i would do is put the planning board in the first sentence and then put in corinne's planning board um what and what he had suggested guys put them spelling out planning board in the third sentence okay but i think if you put them whatever whatever whatever makes sense that it's fine so are you going to correct those or would you correct them since you're going to send them in yeah is that okay yeah great okay so is there a motion yes jim i'll make a motion to approve the minutes as amended okay you know just made a motion for a meant to approve as amended now second promotion all in favor hi hi i arrived late sorry everybody so that's partly just done the first set of minutes and you had more comments in the second okay and for some reason uh there's a question mark in the middle of some of the woods that we corrected all of those and a few other words uh that anybody else have well i had quite a few corrections also but i neglected to look at jim's corrections so unfortunately i think we need to go through them because there were quite a few places that um needed as i said a number of words had a question mark in them right so i corrected all of those okay um i think the next one was in the third paragraph beginning with dana share right uh and instead of auxiliary yes he had um accessory accessory yes it's okay and the next paragraph i excuse me i have in that same paragraph i had trouble understanding understanding or or actually it says and the majority of municipalities including wayland are now in compliance i didn't remember that statement that we're not everybody's in compliance with their bylaws did she say that i i tried to look in my notes but that that's a very big statement to make and i did not recall it i think i think what she said if they were tracking uh adoption of the bylaws to comply with the enabling legislation that's the way i understood it it says the majority are now in compliance and i wasn't sure i i would just say that they're tracking adoption of the bylaws okay because i don't i don't really remember the majority piece and that that doesn't mean that's a bold statement is that okay it doesn't change the no no it does we're just deleting now in compliance and and and we can say we can say semicolon wayland is now in compliance yeah because that that just clarifies our position so jim are you going to make those corrections uh if you'd like me to oh because i haven't found where that is okay i'm happy to make that so jim after the enabling legislation semicolon wayland is now in compliance thank you um so we'll get rid of the phrase including wayland and just say wayland is now in compliance after majority of which delete the majority yes okay i didn't remember that it's great if it's true but i i just didn't well just delete yeah delete the full clause um about the uh and the majority of municipalities good thank you yeah compliance the paragraph uh starting the governor uh on the last line instead of understand jim suggests overcome i i didn't quite understand the way it was phrased didn't make sense with the word understand so like i didn't remember the specific statement but i yeah i think i had taken you know that was probably her verbiage that from my notes but i think overcome uh conveys the the sense of it that you know we want this to be uh communicating for towns people you know who want to see what we're talking about at the meeting i'm sorry which paragraph this is the last paragraph or the second to last paragraph my page starting with the governor you know the very last line before barriers just change the word understand to overcome okay okay good thank you by the way i want to just say you know i thought you did a terrific job on these minutes it was a lot of information to take in and i just want to i mean we're kicking away at little pieces here but i just want to compliment you on how much you were able to capture there was a lot going on down to two pages i agree thank you you did a very good job yes um that i it doesn't bother me in the least uh to improve upon no no i i hate it but i i just when i started reading it i said oh wow she really did because i read my notes and i couldn't understand half of them maybe three quarters and this was very helpful how do we spell incentivize with the z you are with an s i was going to be i believe okay because you've got it both ways jim you're hedging your bets well i think s is the bridge you're a hedge fund guy you go up you go down i'm not a hedge fund no maybe hedge yes and the state in the paragraph the state you've got him spelled both ways i i you know i've been as oliver wendell holmes said foolish consistency is the hobgobble of small minds i thought that was that was the road it may have been somebody it was emerson i think well i think this might have put it together this got into the the law books that's how i know okay i'm not going to count to that at the top of the next page i don't think jim had it but there are two two a's together in abatement i i did get that and there's also one before that in the paragraph at the bottom of the first page which starts with dana presented yeah second line it says restrictions period comma i would get rid of the period yep and yeah and then in the next line it says w slash year round with no space and i think that's supposed to be w slash space year round or with year round it should be with i don't i don't think we should use that kind of abbreviation in minutes i will i will make that correction no problem you're welcome um then uh going on the next page below where abatement had two a's three lines further down which acts incentive this is the top paragraph that has an extra m in it which doesn't belong there and then you've got the incentive right and then the next paragraph there are two e's and restricted from the second line right and then the third line uh where it says adus can challenge quote safe harbor i added the chapter 40b oh yes that's what the safe harbor is
i hate that term safe harbor but that yeah you're absolutely right though it is but without explanation it's a little yeah for people to know what it means we should say chapter i need to go back to that paragraph the state uh after vermont has did you get that jim has used a it says here vermont has a used a similar oh get rid of the a yeah good point okay okay and then we have the the turkey incentivize in the fourth line which i changed to z you'll have to show me where i left it with us because i you know it's a correction you you you didn't you corrected it oh okay i got a correction okay i didn't read jim's limits and then we go down to the next paragraph dana's key takeaways yes uh third line egramont egramont i got rid of the word four right okay you can also make it possessive egramonts oh egramonts that's right that's exactly what i said apostrophe is tax incentives yeah okay and then uh i i'm not sure um janeau said she flagged i changed it to she noted yeah sure i don't recall the context and and then i would say a relationship instead of them relationship right oh i actually suggested a local relationship to you know indicate the particular municipalities housing authority or one close by um and then how about a relationship with the local housing authority the local okay the local that's good oh you already did that just a a relationship with the local yes okay good idea a relationship with the local much better thank you this is absolutely absolutely a uh group task um next paragraph starting with wind mallet uh second line i put a semicolon after four hundred dollars a square foot i put a comma after thus just to make it a little clearer and read after four thousand dollars a month rent i got rid of the colon and changed it to and this got rid of the equation doesn't work financially yeah or you could say which doesn't work financially which doesn't instead of this and this much better thank you um then the next paragraph starting questions were raised the very last word before we go to that so okay i must admit i had trouble remembering the sentence to bridge the affordability chasm a horizontal triple decker solution was suggested allowing multiple adus so i just what i i just couldn't remember how i remember the term horizontal triple but i don't which because that wouldn't be because that wouldn't be by right so i i wasn't sure that kathy do you have any recollection of what that was and um i wasn't sure how that you know i feel like we should understand what's in these minutes and if we can't well i thought the concept was it was a horizontal triple decker which was by right uh and it would allow i think there would allow multiple adus i mean the question is whether or not referring to a horizontal triple decker um which we probably understand and i think she was i think she was using that term in the context of the um uh the the great pains that many communities went to in redlining to prohibit triple deckers you know outside of boston but i'm not sure that including her use of that term um is necessarily uh helpful maybe we should just say um allowing um uh an alternative solution was suggested allowing oh yeah allowing multiple adus was suggested um as an alternative or or to bridge the affordability chasm um allowing multiple adus was suggested um or a suggestion to bridge the affordability chasm
allowing multiple adus um with no increases with no increase in taxes and enabling innovative septic strategies um or we could say it was it was suggested that allowing multiple adus with no increase in taxes and enabling innovative septic strategies could be an alternative solution can i ask are these win was this win suggestion or is this dana's suggestion and maybe we should be i think it was dana yeah it was dana we could say that i think we should say put in the active voice yeah instead of this so why don't we move it back up to dana's paragraph the paragraph sorry to be so picky but no no no that's okay i wasn't really sure yeah but it was suggested in response to this kind of you know financial equation that doesn't solve that win was presenting so so that goes after win's statement yeah in response to win's suggestion and the way it the way it would be a solution is because it is less expensive to to construct multiple adus in one footprint opposed alternative scenarios alternative yeah scenarios such as or you could say yes right that's what i'm saying in response to win to win or to win yeah dana proposed or dana suggested a horizontal triple-decker solution uh why don't we get rid of why don't we get rid of the horizontal triple-decker suggested the bridge availability chasm dana suggested allowing multiple adus finish the sentence allowing multiple adus which i mean i think we we may need to say with special permits or something without increases in taxes with you know increases in taxes and uh innovative septic strategies i don't think we need the word enabling right yeah okay we'll try that i'll send it out anybody can take another shot at it i think we've done a very good job cleaning this up but we are but the question is whether i will get it into print you will i know you you you've got a lot of faith in me rachel i appreciate it i have a lot of faith okay um then we go down to the next paragraph if this is okay going to the questions were raised last word changing zoning to zones yep do you have the typo relationship mine has a typo where is this yes right here relationship where the first sentence oh okay good thank you yes and then i have to condominiumized at the end of the paragraph and that many communities okay in single family zones yeah okay uh next paragraph fourth dot line down i get rid of the word and after clusters okay and then there's a typo at the end of the line houses houses and then i added a comma where it says in conclusion dana advised is and i put a comma after the word key and now that i see it that should be spaced for a new paragraph starting with in conclusion okay sounds good okay and then 212 has another question mark which has been changed and there's a period after communities i'd say community community okay great i will i will really i will i have my edit and i'll just add these edits great job thank you and i'm going to send it again because this is complex enough that why don't we bring it back for another round okay so we'll put that on the agenda for the next okay great thank you all thank you all and uh i appreciate you waiting for me to be here to to do those better getting here as for me jim i would be willing to vote on the minutes tonight because i think you've nailed it but that i don't i have to tell you my one of my grandchildren was visiting and my wife and grandchild made spaghetti with red sauce and uh so i was a little late but you know i'm this is a good way to work off the spaghetti it's a delicious treat yeah that is
nothing like red sauce and spaghetti yeah if you don't want to go to the villa
the villa is wonderful but um i guess it doesn't make it for me yeah definitely good job um okay so we will postpone that until the next meeting and then um mary we will go back to you or we will go back to the agenda well let's do the agenda and we'll pass it over to rachel and kathy so kathy and i haven't had an opportunity to debrief the meeting ourselves um and it's been so long and i did come up with a bunch of things that i think we could do need to do uh if we have the energy to do um and i'll just go through my five points um one is to trash the regulations coming out of the state and maybe to include what's going on in mccall's newsletter what the the mike mccall's newsletter his monthly updates um it would be good for someone to be checking all the various state agency websites tracking them and then communicating with the town manager's office letting people not just keeping it in the news that this is yeah this is where grants are coming from this is it's a great idea yeah i didn't know that we got monthly updates from the town manager so oh he does a monthly newsletter he does i don't know okay i guess i didn't sign up you're not paying your taxes i do pay my taxes but i'm not paying attention okay well we do get monthly updates from the town town manager and um again that's it is not a small task to do and i am not volunteering to do it but i'm just saying these are possible things that we could consider doing can you elaborate on that well remember remember dana there's something from mass housing there's stuff from executive office of livable communities um she i mean the minutes go through some of the the various places that's that um we're talking about that she was talking about where what did i do with the chimps where we should just track the updates on a monthly basis so anyway it's in that third paragraph the uh uh uh unlikely housing production commission housing assistance working group i don't know they were were i had other uh places cdac community economic development assistance corporation mass housing partnership uh there were a very mass housing the state housing finance agency there's this new accessory dwelling unit design challenge where people are going to be submitting plans um and then those plans are going to be available publicly so you know when when a design is selected people should be able to go to the website and see what designs were selected what designs weren't selected that's what i mean there were a whole bunch of that made the connection between mccall's newsletter that's what i think putting the updates in the newsletter so inviting them up and so if there were a section in the newsletter say update on accessory dwelling unit okay funding assistance grant programs then it could just be a little block within his newsletter we should be a feeder to that it would be a feeder i'm sorry that's a good idea but it's a based on state updates it's state update right anything we see in our research from another town but this is or another i'm not trivializing the amount like oh no honestly if if the town planners assistant could do that that would be a very good task because it is a piece of work every every month to go on the websites and see what's been updated what new regs are available putting the link into the newsletter making sure so and also just having it every month highlights on the accessory dwelling unit bylaw new information go seek this out that that was what i was saying does that make sense yeah i guess with the distinction i would make is the regulations this the regulations are state regulations okay and so that's going to only be that's not going to happen without all of us having notice and the towns are ready to 90 day notice of publication at all so we don't have to worry about that right right it's not right the rest of this stuff is going to be what you're talking about policy policy changes the little application guidelines right yes whatever but the first thing i think what you were talking about was and maybe yeah when we said tracking regulations i guess i was thinking we would have about tracking and this i don't think the town will do yeah but it was examining or tracking bylaw changes oh yeah where some communities are going to be really aggressive right and we could be watching them to see what they're doing that's different or that might push us and that's that to me is i don't think that's going to come out of the town of assistance or somebody but i think that could want our committee to look at and i don't mind doing that okay well
yeah that's a brilliant service to the town because i think one of the greatest difficulties you know across the board in the town of wayland is hyper caution about you know pushing the envelope in any any way so being you know targeting the town manager's newsletter is also i think really important because the i have the impression that the housing partnership is it's either an afterthought or it's being excluded um from conversations that are pertinent um to you know the work of the partnership and i think you know demonstrating that we can provide um this service to the town is really important um you know just to to try to build a more collaborative relationship with um what would be with planning board economic development committee select board you know all these other boards that are investigating uh housing alternatives without talking to us i think that's good so if we're in their face they'll listen to us more kathy you just mentioned tracking town bylaw changes um dana had mentioned several towns wellfleet uh the lower cape uh ed vermont westboro salem and then the state of vermont i mean that is a separate task to kind of follow up on you know a paragraph on each or a link to each uh as part of the tracking if you were willing to to include those but she already gave us leads about those yeah and and also an email any point to dana you know just saying are there any other updates on that you know do you have more towns that have been filtering across you i think i don't know the answer this right off but i would think this is the kind of thing i could do to work for you yeah yeah but you might it's possible that dana or some other organization in the state is already piles this and sends it out every right week or month and so i asked her you get on there mailing i asked her about it at the time and she wasn't aware of it but it's possible you might ask again it may be it's something that they walked away and say you know yeah we were just debriefing after the meeting it was really helpful and by the way we'd like to try this out to keep up to date and let the town know and do you know of any quick sources that we could tap into and just to uh be clear about the acronym kathy just used a foyer request freedom of information act but i wonder if you know if if you're going to be doing this incredibly helpful service i mean dana might like to just you know be in cc and also you know the office of livable communities i think they might also appreciate that she may so i might get called on yeah but there you go that way when you raise your hand sure no jean had raised her hand when you know spoke up so i suggested jean move over so she could be on camera now she just has to butt in yeah yeah i'm sorry i'm i just have the mic open because i'm looking at the documents i'm not i don't even see the zoom screen nothing to be sorry for um i've been wondering if we would be permitted our town moving to produce a follow-up document uh you know how that we have the we have the tables with all the update information and stuff at town meeting um since the last town meeting we voted you know to come into compliance as the town i wondered if we'd be allowed to do a follow-up that said you know okay last town meeting you the people voted on this and you approved it and then put all these points that of new development since the last town meeting and salient to this hope the town took and um you know town meeting everybody really industry industry industrialist i can't say the word industriously industriously thank you um um reads those things you know it's like it's an active audience but those little pieces of paper it's where you do them you make your doodles i don't think we'd be allowed to do that but it's a time when you get people's attention and it is it's a good idea yeah just a hand now yeah i think and also want to check with the building department you know just how many um you know what second mary's talking just one second sorry mary i think there's going to be an article updating the adu like by law so right by this by the planning board but that's not going to include these ideas right i think i think you know the point is that we are left out or or as i used to say in grade school when i was asked what position i played in baseball it was left out so i think it's incumbent on that dead former exactly it's incumbent it's a good idea to come up with a handout and say by the way that's a great idea you may see the bylaw changes but there have been other changes behind the scenes where we're working proactively and by the way we are a committee we're not a we're not an official committee or whatever but we are okay well we are
i'm not well known committee but our job is to facilitate this and here are another half dozen items that you might be interested in and if you want to if you're interested in this give us some feedback well i like that idea a lot and i who would we ask whether we're allowed to do that you can any handouts that come up at town meeting have to have the town moderator's approval okay and so she will want to see what it is okay so we need a draft okay um so that you can shut a little time jean sure thank you well but the point is it's when you ask her permission the other thing is to produce the memo right the memo presumably you know would include some of the kind of material that we would have in the newsletters you know like updates on the state programs but also just indicating what what we've done we passed the bylaw last year the planning board has a new article related to the uh to special permit i think right yeah we met with a representative from the state yeah to get a lot of ideas and these are some of the things we're doing so what would be the timeline i forgot when town meeting is you probably have that in your head mary no it's like me first okay okay so we have a month to come up with a well at least a few weeks yeah ai makes this all so much easier than it used to be yeah so as long as i have keywords uh to plug into the prompts well let's go we can probably let's go over you want to go over the minutes that we just talked about that paragraph or two you're sending those to us right i am but you could you could just take this yeah you could just take this third parent third and you know these paragraphs from dana and that would be fabulous okay that's a great idea yeah thank you that might be sure that i think nobody knows that this really exists and does any better yeah i i think it's a great idea we have no money and we have no power but we are very we're small and local and if we set a date for a forum yeah that could also i in there but that made that there's a concern yeah no but it would be a good thing to suggest is that we had a forum this year it didn't uh it didn't get a lot of time i mean in a nice way and we'd like to have another one next year too i think it's going to take a little while to prep for that particularly i mean we want to have more policy info you know more of the state's policy programs out and available i think we need more hard information from this state yeah but we might say we're interested in having another one when the time is right and if anybody's interested please uh yeah yeah that's your name yeah yeah and yeah just that we're i want to say something stronger than interested um we're clear say yeah we're we're discussing you know the next housing forum and welcome input from residents just you know something like that yeah we need to keep in touch oh can we move on to another point that i thought of keeping in touch with the building department yeah uh you know so that we know how many adus are being uh good idea you know we want we want the numbers since the new bylaw applications yeah yeah occupancy permits right approve you know um and maybe at some point get a clear assessment of how that process is working for people coming in with units more than 900 square feet uh is the planning board giving permits you know what number special permits special right special right what how many by rights do we have tracking it since uh because we know that there were what eight nine ten or something i think at some point and is there movement on that i don't know if robert's keeping that information or not um that was kind of my immediate to-do list and it sounds like we've got some um some clear tasks and some people who have volunteered to kind of do it i am i i could be in touch with robert hummel the town planner and see if he can spare any time from his assistant to do the tracking that would be great of the of the websites like every month and to write up something on that uh and then assuming that goes forward uh i can be in touch with michael mccall's office and say you know will we put in a monthly blurb a little box about adu updates and just get that into the newsletter do you want to feed him the names of these different agencies that dana yeah i gave us so we can have that for i would do that yeah i would do that idea uh so that but again that is a piece of work that honestly it would be great if that person was on yeah doing that absolutely that would be uh i think all's uh i think he and gylan who i think does the newsletter would really appreciate that having material regular basis from a town committee yeah i think i think it would be uh informative to people and if they want to see those design plans or whatever just click on the link and they know exactly where to find it all right kathy i think you suggested that you would be willing to try to get some information about that there's any bylaw changes and the ones that dana mentioned and try to track anything else and gene you said that you would be willing to sort of begin to draft uh a handout one maybe one page or one page with the flip side handout yeah i just sent myself an email and told myself to go and then we we would have to um get the uh moderators approval to hand that out so we probably have to get that to her let's say by second third week of april everything second third week of april and um we need to be tracking any anybody want to be in touch with the building department about permitting or about how that's going and the planning board those are two more tasks well what what are you asking robert about tracking i thought i thought it was maybe robert i was going to ask but i can ask robert about tracking also robert i'm asking that somebody in his office to keep track of the state policy changes about adu funding but i can also ask him to if he can give me updated uh numbers numbers on by right and by special permit i think that makes sense yeah yeah if he is not doing that or says he doesn't have the bandwidth to do that i would volunteer to keep in touch with the building department okay thank you oh can you do that when you're in south america or i'll be back back yeah but i hope i hope robert you know would be amenable to doing some of that tracking as a backup yeah i think he probably had more staff support than nathan that would be my guess from experience with the building department yeah that was my list of what follow-up thank you anybody have anything else uh to add of what we should be doing based on dana's presentation do you want to keep in touch with dana and and ask her if she can pass you pass on to you the things that her group is doing i think i think kathy you maybe was going to get in touch with dana directly is that right with respect to the communities yeah but what what else yeah particularly the local given that she's out and about in communities all the time it's a matter of um you mentioned these communities right have any other interesting bylaws right that she's aware of and then yeah so i think i think kathy if you want to write that and then cc me i'm happy she'll she'll remember um you know she was great and i'm sure i'm sure she wouldn't mind keeping us i think she does i think she values it i think honestly that's her job in community engagement and i think she really values yeah um you know what we're doing and uh it's fabulous it's part of her work thank you for training a star yes i take much credit honestly she was the star when she walked into my class so mass housing partnership has had three uh training modules the first one right was march 11th understanding the local ecosystem i watched the one on march 18th which was the municipal role in affordable housing development which i thought was very good and i'm waiting for them to say that the video is available available i watched the one today on why building local support is critical for board and commission success and i think we pretty much know that that um but if um if they um have the one on the 18th i thought that was really um very good
and one of the things that they discussed was local preference and we have local preference and um they were describing it as having pros and cons um that many i think towns and i think are the the feeling in wayland has been it's a selling point um in town to say that there is not a wayland preference uh up to a certain i forgot what the rule is but it's only up to a certain percent of the units so some of the units can get 17 percent or something so you know it is a it is a restricted local preference of a certain percent and then it's because of equal opportunity guidelines it has to be completely open to anybody from any community but we do get a some modest local preference i think it would be crazy not to include the local preference absolutely yep yep um so um i can keep following um mass housing partnerships um but and on the um minutes um there's the governor's um um the adu design challenge and there's state housing finance home modification right program
the 495 house the 495 partnership has a housing committee um and their meetings are open um who's in the 495 partnership what is it yeah yeah and it's a partnership of communities towns in in the 495 area and it's um a business uh sort of a business uh sort of a business focus um but they have a housing committee they have a transportation committee um they're probably some others and they um they always attend the um metro west regional collaborative um and uh robert and i attend those meetings so i can um keep track of it and
i'm saying i through the 495 ownership nest housing and you say you're going to do that i mean what what what what does that mean that you're going to do well i'll follow it follow those and um metro west regional collaborative okay doesn't focus particularly on on housing but it's a concern of all determinants so um that there's a state where it would be good to have somebody following um and that would include um hnc as well probably it would include eol eohlc yep and it would include um mass housing well i'm i can take mass housing as well as mass housing partnership they're different oh mass housing is the state housing finance agency no then mass housing partnership is uh you know causing public advocacy but mass housing actually is the lender for is that mass housing and finance agency it used to be it used to be it used to be mhfa mass housing and finance agency okay it's now just mass housing just to make things incredibly confusing yeah okay i mass housing partnership just informal two different entities is that what it all flows through the money flows through mass housing mass housing but that's the big bucks in the state that funds home ownership multi-family housing mass housing partnership is a much it's does uh you know uh it does have funding it does provide i think it's the state uh section eight uh statewide section eight available like i'm embarrassed more of a policy i mean that's where dana is right right she's at mass housing and they provide advocacy and technical assistance funding for various programs but it's not the big bucks i mean mass housing is actually doing construction loans long-term financing subsidized home ownership it's you know it's like a mortgage broker they float bonds state back taxes bonds it's the big entity mass housing partnership very very important but it's a quasi public it's a much smaller scale operation than mass housing it's not small mass housing partnerships not small though yeah huh yeah interesting does anybody know what the status is of the mahoney's um i don't my understanding that it's still alive boy the dead is live mary i think we're going to say something before the question about mahoney's came up um i we should just try to wrap up this uh part of the conversation and then we can hopefully go on the state housing finance agency is different than mass housing no mass housing is the state housing finance agency as opposed to mass housing partnership right so one involved but but in the minutes it says state housing finance that is mass housing okay that is known as mass housing it used to be called mass housing and finance agency created in 1968 or 69 it was one of the first maybe the first state housing finance agency in the country oh interesting should go about that that's that's in the minutes port mass housing so yes probably yes so where in the minutes is this um is it our first page uh the second um oh where it says state housing plan no no state housing plan is different yeah it's the paragraph that starts the governor has announced okay and it's the third line the state housing finance and that's the message that's mass housing okay so i'll just say the massachusetts just say mass housing the name is mass housing now known as nka mass housing okay yeah if you don't mind i you know the the agencies are the names are so confusing yeah yeah i'll just if i can use not known as i mean that's that's impressive
okay i'm all over it that's going to be fun to uh revise these minutes thank you i had a question that um i don't expect anybody to necessarily have the answer at your fingertips but i'm wondering um you know if any any projects housing projects in the town of wayland have leveraged financing through mass housing have we ever engaged with them
no well i don't know the answer to that i don't know for example the uh saint dan's whether they've got long-term financing through mass housing i would not be surprised i don't know whether mass housing was involved with river's edge they might well have been i don't know i don't know who did the long-term financing for those or whose plan to do the long-term financing for that's a good question uh saint dan's uh it's very possible it's very possible they are the long-term finances but i don't know and i don't recall the 40 b's i dealt with previously if any of them were mass housing yeah you know they typically work at a pretty large scale so they would be more likely to be involved with the saint dan's or a river's edge i don't think they would be involved with two and four unit kind of and they they wouldn't have been involved with the town center uh probably not but i because there's very little housing there well no but they've got the the condo right the condo development and there's the one that's on route 27 yeah just before you get there that i worked on but i don't remember that that was involved or willowbrook i don't remember ever hearing about that but it's well willowbrook is so old yeah mass housing has been around it's almost as old as we are married it's almost as old as we are married yeah so so you know even the um some of the green uh greenway some of the mainstone may have involved this happening i don't know doesn't the town have to uh who is funding probably i don't you know i don't know enough about that i that might be a question for robert i don't know why exactly are we interested in that good question why don't care did you know what was the what were you thinking i i was just wondering um if wayland had benefited from mass housing and um i mean if for example that mahoney's property were to free up um then we would want to be looking into um ways that we could try to attract developers who would do a better job um meeting objectives that we like and understanding where money might have come from before could be helpful i was just thinking about it let me let me add a point when mahoney's was cascade yeah which was back when zeif was the developer uh there was a position taken by the ymca and they are in a butter with camp chickamee and they had an attorney and i spoke to him because i was wondering whether the y had any interest in trying to buy that property and trying to get involved i think at that point arrowhead still owned the land oh there was and i don't know where that is but i think there are other organizations i'm just suggesting that in addition to the mass housing there may be other organizations that want to pick that up i i think it's a good point but i wouldn't listen i wouldn't limit it to mass housing i think that that is a spot that is dying to be purchased or or improved and the people at cascade and their successors have been you know it's it's outrageous it's it's true of the place on school street as well although they they were involved in appeals these people weren't involved in appeals they settled a long time ago and they've you know the problem is they agreed to put in a wastewater system which is extraordinarily expensive and it was a ridiculous idea and i can only guess that they're stuck so i think there are probably a lot of people i think robert has said at one of them of his housing meetings there i don't know that they have come back but um well if you're going to talk to robert maybe you can ask him for an update about the maloney's i mean we count on those units for our housing numbers i did did did that get taken that did that get taken out of our i don't think i think it's considered to be a done deal i that's the last i heard that would be worth checking but but frankly it's it is going so slowly yeah that one wonders why somebody doesn't just say too late i might be wrong but i thought i did look at the subsidized housing inventory not too long ago my recollection is that that might have been taken out well if it was taken out and then yeah then maybe we should say if it's been taken out then it's time to find a developer to come in and do it right well it's not up to us no but we could start to agitate i mean it just it's crazy it is just yeah daryl a piece of property it's terrible worse and worse yeah but that's sort of a segue to the you know this other issue that um i wanted to raise in this meeting um you know so the select board and the economic development committee are looking at ways to um build how you know build uh high density housing they put this um article into a proposed an article for the warrant to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to do basically a development engineering feasibility study for the school property on holiday road orchard lane one of the last remaining large you know tracts of town land the i mean the inappropriateness of the whole proposal is just astonishing the the school committee does not have control over the land uh i mean the school committee controls the land the select board doesn't have control but they want to spend you know tax money to do feasibility that by right really should be developer costs um and you know it's this sort of uh hasty cart before the horse major effort to convince the town that selling this land to a developer and putting in a hugely dense uh i think they're talking about something like you know 50 town homes um is going to help solve some of our fiscal problems and you know just the lack of uh planning of you know assessment of where does it make sense to build housing especially high density you know i mean there's no assessment of like where is medium density a good idea where is high density a good idea where are their services where is their transport you know all these kinds of planning things and the fact that they want to put in you know what is affordable by design um smaller high density units and have completely overlooked you know uh housing authority or housing partnership um it just you know further confounds the lack of transparency but also just the disconnects in planning and i mean i hate to present it this way but i think this is you know it's part of the um the service that we can provide is actually in connecting the dots and um giving a more measured you know view and input when these kinds of proposals come up well orchard lane obviously has very long history in town so that's fine to remember all the details of orchard lane but your point about um the fact that the school committee is in control of the land and uh not the board of select the select board is very important yeah does anyone know what the school committee has had to say about this and they concur with placement of this the warrant or the school committee has hired consultants um to initiate their own long-term planning process and they hired consultants who have now reported specifically on a facilities plan all the elementary schools need to be rebuilt um not renovated rebuilt and the middle school needs um um renovation so what the consultants presented um was uh about 16 different scenarios and the prices run from about half a billion to a billion with a timeline from like 2040 to 2063. so a lot of the school committee members were joking that they may not even be alive um but at the time that you know some of these scenarios i think it's a certainty actually the orchard lane property um the the the consultants proposed to use it for a first build where you would build a new school and then move kids out of clay pit or loker or happy hollow into the new school while you demolish the old one and build a new one on its place and then move kids back and forth and the school committee um of their major objections um long timeline huge cost and lots of displacement moving kids back and forth over a decade they thought was not uh not a it could be avoided um by building in different ways by consolidating and a lot of other options so the use of the orchard lane parcel for a school building is highly unlikely um based on you know the consultants and the public forum that they had presenting all these results and the school committee had mentioned they're not actually looking you know in this consultancy at this but they had mentioned that making decisions about facilities is of course in the context of a larger look at um the education of the future and what kinds of facilities where we need and mention of orchard lane as potential for a nature classroom a nature center or outdoor classroom or some other kind of act you know school use um is not off the table but they're um they're in this odd situation where uh there's a large group of over 60 residents who are strongly opposed to this article and have been going to all the meetings and uh complained to the select board that it doesn't make sense so uh members of the select board attended the school committee meeting and proposed after the fact to the school committee that how about you jointly sponsor this article with us and uh they added language that now they're not going to look at just housing but they will also look at school needs but the school committee has already paid consultants to look at facilities needs and that article is not going to look at alternative educational needs because it's looking at development options so the school committee i think kind of knows that maybe they there was an effort to sort of co-opt them because it has better optics to have them co-sponsoring um but it's very clear that uh they're not getting anything out of it
it's unfortunate it was a good article about the school plans in the post not the most recent one i remember before i think the thing that surprised me most was the time i mean i knew it was going to be big bucks but i wasn't thinking about it 20 30 years ago i'm speaking of other properties i heard the other night um that there has been talk and i i i guess i have not been tapping into things talk of um building housing uh near the longfellow club either in front of it or across the street from it i couldn't quite figure it out and david walkins is very interested in that right and i gather he owns the land and i gather there's also talk of building it up to 50 feet which some people think is a problem other people think hey you know it's it's in an area that there's not a lot of housing anyway and if there's anywhere that you would have higher housing it might be there and the other thing is there's some great uh differences in elevation the place across the street must be 30 or 40 feet below grade and even on the on the northern side there's a huge grade differential from say the suddlery dump which looms over it so um you know maybe that wouldn't be important but i don't know if we've been consulted i don't know if we would have any in that but certainly when the mbta law came up there was this concept of affordable housing and denser housing and the planning board never asked us to to be involved but this would i think be another opportunity and maybe maybe in the flyer we put into town meeting if if if there's any way to mention that we would love to be part of a discussion i think we are we're a place where it this is not a controversial committee we don't have you know we don't have hearings like the planning board or other agencies where you know when we invite speakers and i think we do research and it would be nice to think of us as a clearing house or a or a place to learn an educational forum so that might you know i think the concept of the orchard lane and this other thing and other potential projects you know would be really nice if if either town members or other committees would come to us for input guidance suggestions i think i think that our charge was changed with the advent of the town manager before that i think there was a general policy that developers were to come to us and with the town manager by law that's that's the town manager's job now so well but i don't think that means we shouldn't be consulted or considered yeah i'm not saying that that in a way it explains why we are in a way being sidelined now because of that change yeah good point we had a hearing with steven zeef and i think that was the last meeting he had with the developer i wasn't here for that meeting chris devona chair that right i was out of the country and i remember getting the low wide road information for those of you who were there interesting yes she was uh definitely interested but but when you think about it this committee i think had a great role with saint anne's we were we were a centerpiece of the early discussion we were but that's because um not um father leary was a member of our committee that's right well but i think it it's it it would be and i don't know how we get out of the woods well and into into the the playing field but i think i think the the purpose of this committee is to provide a you know space to have discussions yeah on saint anne's we were very fortunate to have father o'leary uh who was a major proponent of it and all through covet we stayed in touch with him and with the uh planning office of urban affairs which is the development entity and we kept it moving uh during that whole period to make sure it stayed on their agenda and as i understand it um the planning office of urban affairs is meeting with the cardinal in april to get his final approval because there's a new cardinal and they wanted to run it by him but there wasn't any concern in my last communication with them about him approving it but they felt it was important for him to essentially give his blessing literally figuratively on the project but are they still planning to break ground this summer this summer okay okay and i you know we can find out whether mass housing is involved i'm not sure it's i would i would guess they are but i don't know if they have the construction and long-term financing it's very likely because that's what mass housing does it's a big development and that's the kind of project they would be prone to of financing i think the diocese was working on financing i think that's really the only hold up you know because everything is pretty much been clear i have a feeling they're set with i think i i thought they were set with their finance i don't think they could break ground unless they had the construction and long-term financing well liked so well the project with david leary that when he he went off to the vatican and when he came back um he was moved to carlisle carlisle because carlisle has a similar situation uh catholic church with a lot of land and they wanted him to do the same thing in carlisle right right conquer to carlisle i don't remember the combine i don't know what church catholic diocese of them okay well but remember that with with the saint ann's project they did run into a snag with the conservation and we i'm not saying we resolved it but we were able to help to broker yes we play discussions it's fair to say without our committee that project would not happen would not happen so why isn't that a selling point for us whether it's to the town manager or the planning board or the citizenry to you know get us involved in discussions of well of affordable housing even if we are not the group that the developer comes to what's the point of not allowing we have been involved i mean i don't know we've we had the meeting on adus with the town manager and with board of health i mean i'm not i'm not i'm just i'm asking in if orchard lane or this place near longfellow comes to pass are we going to be bypassed i mean all i'm suggesting is that we one of the one of the maybe one of the purposes of what gene has suggested in terms of the handout is to say to people look if there's an affordable housing uh development whether it's one unit or a hundred units we want to be part of the discussion yeah before it's done because we have some expertise we have some interest whatever and and so please you know have at least one meeting in front of us yeah should we have asked for a meeting with the town manager to make sure that that that's a good idea very good idea uh it's a great idea oh my hands in the air again as the newest and least knowledgeable person on this body um so this group uh prepares the housing production plan right well we we we hire somebody the town hires somebody to do the right the oversight is this committee or has the oversight now transferred to the town manager when you say oversight what do you mean oversight of the consultant i know when you hire a consultant you have to give them objectives and then you have to decide whether you're accepting their report yes we play a major role but it's the town the town uh not manager of the town planner who essentially i think plays in that and then he conveys the word to the planning board the town manager you know but it's we we feed information in to the town planner pretty extensively i mean we sent out a draft of the rfp because i was in communication with robert um saying it is time i think for us to be hiring the consultant because our housing production plan expires next year and it's time and he said it was on his agenda and then he sent me a copy of the rfp the last go-round and then i did a few little tweaks and changes and sent it to mary and that's what you got in your in your packet it's the new rfp going out to the potential consultants uh we i think we were quite happy with the consultant we had hired for the last housing production plan we thought our company did a very good job but my guess is we will interview two or three and we were part of that interview process last time when we hired the uh barrett planning group judy barrett uh but they didn't have a vote wasn't any greater than i was in authority and i was in trust right didn't they all have input i think we all i don't even remember how that worked i think because i was thinking like susan weinstein always seemed to be the one who took the lead she wasn't on this committee right so but i thought i as what i recall about that was it was very collaborative that you know people we interviewed the candidate candidates two or three they were very i think we all thought they were all very competent very good organizations and we collectively i think chose one and i thought i don't think there was a contentious no i'm not suggesting that i'm just thinking in terms of authority though accountability yeah i don't think it came here it didn't come here but i don't i don't think the authority extends from here i think that's the question but i nor did i feel like we weren't part of the conversation and also that i felt like the other groups respected us respected us and that we were all colleagues and collaborators coming up with a good plan and i think and we had several meetings with the barrack planning group or i you know i don't really remember the details but the housing authority and um with you know whoever else was on kind of the subcommittee um it worked there were great public meetings that were organized too a lot of meetings part of that and they ran those and there was a lot of public input and you know small group discussions and that's how we came up with um i think the priority to have group homes for people with differential abilities i think that emerged as a priority there was a town survey yeah that was uh an online survey that people could fill out like we had an opportunity to critique the survey before it was done that's right so there was a lot of um input that we made along with the other groups that uh had a you know a foot in that but it mostly it goes you know we are we are asking for money um is there a warrant in the town art they came to the cpa robert came to the trust the trust right and he was going to ask the trust for money to fund the consultant but susan weinstein is on the trust and she's the chair of the community preservation committee and they they are the ones that have had already voted to to support to recommend uh sixty thousand dollars for i think the plan is purpose yeah that's great yeah so the second half of my question was about um when you have a housing production plan is there then a process where you assess how successful the town was in achieving its goals that's kind of the next it's like every five years when we have to update the plan we have to go back and assess and it's you know the state i think does a light look at the housing production plan i think they basically check off check off the boxes you know did they provide this did they provide that did they cover all the bases because there's a very detailed outline for what they present they don't assess whether you've met your goals but they if you have met your production goals then you get the safe harbor if you produce a certain number of units uh or if you've gone beyond 10 percent but um in terms of internally there's nobody year by year checking how we're doing um so it and i don't see that happening before five years is that i think one of the issues they came up with the last production plan is do we really need three housing committees and um you know couldn't the partnership be put done away with and have um the either the well it would be the trust um to take on the advocacy and the trust said that's not what we're here yeah we each play different roles i mean the trust has the funding the housing authority has the units and we have the policy and advocacy and education and not like it costs extra money for us i mean thank you i wish i could build for this me too yeah we should uh try to wrap up um well you wanted um five minutes happy did you have something no i was waiting to see what gene was going to is that boy i thought there was a zinger yeah but i was waiting for you to see that's a tool you know that if if you look at the housing production plan you set objectives if it appears we're not achieving the objectives that's the time to raise the voice to all involved parties and say you know we're not on a trajectory to get where we said we were gonna go so what are we going to do about it i don't know what that data looks like so i don't know if there's anything to be said but you know that's the tool to get people to pay attention well the issue is there really no sanctions for non-compliance with our goals we could all stand on a chair and shout i mean it would be pretty obnoxious if we need to i don't know them also thinking that the recommendation was you know do we really need three committees and at least you know seven with the budget
well well i think one of the risks is what we had five years ago when we were under 10 percent and we were scrambling because the zoning board was getting hit with proposals for 40 b's and that was that called for the edc and it called for proactive ways to find friendly 40 b's to avoid uh projects that are really not well designed and i think that's one function that this committee has or should have is being a place for proposals to come to so we can sort of separate the wheat from the chaff and and help decide what is a proposal that's in keeping with the interests of the town and one that is being jammed down our throats because we were below the you know the threshold as they say i think that the big change came with the town manager and does the town manager watch that if we invite michael to come well or if not it might be i mean he'll see when he's on the rfp not want to come to a meeting at night i don't know you know he's got so many others but if a couple of us went to meet with him during his daytime hours i think that would be a good idea that that might be sufficient uh to make our point it looks as though it's delegated to kelsey the assistant town manager that we are well you know the rfp um is under so i would assume that um we should be meeting with her not michael i i do you want um some edits to this for the hour i am happy to take edits and i i'm glad it given the lateness of the hour maybe if you want to send me the edits and then i'll incorporate them into a master document that i send back to robert i'm having to do that so i i just you know when robert sent me the rfp i just thought i wanted to swing it by our committee i want to keep us relevant and this is an important part of it is getting the housing production plan on the rfp and so i wanted mary to you know put it on the agenda so that everybody gets a chance to look at this rfp because i think the hope is to send it out sooner rather than later um so that we get the process rolling up maybe even by the summer so that by the fall we would be ready for the public meetings public comments whatever because it'll take several months to get the applications to get the interviews to get under contact so if you have uh suggestions so there are please send them to please do why don't why don't we make a deadline of let's see today's wednesday is next monday does that give you enough time and do you want a full week a week from today what i think that's monday is good uh march 30th okay and then i'll get them out to robert and and i'll talk to robert about all the other things on the list yeah speaking of march 30th yes um i got a note from tom fay that that's the day that the select board is going to take up discussion of the report from the 212 constituent robert committee and it'd be great to have some of us there uh i don't know what direction their conversation will go but uh when did you say it was it's next monday evening and you can look at the agenda to see what time the topic comes up i don't know what it is yet but um as you may may remember you know i put in a minority opinion on that in an effort to draw the select board's attention to opportunity for getting more housing units on that four acre piece of land and that's a task i want to persist in because i really think it's the right thing to do because the town's been here a long long time and the amount of housing for disabled persons is very very small um so anyway to the extent anybody else wants to get there or in the water on that topic and urge the select board to you know try something new that'd be great thank you for your efforts on that yeah thank you very much are has anybody able to go i can't i'm i'm good yeah okay can i i guess here i would i have to admit i don't remember i did read the minority report but it's not staying with me at the moment um question i have again is i took that at the time was a report from you as a member of the of that committee right and so we never took a vote in terms of any question at this point i mean i personally have a very different view in terms of um i believe in least restrictive environment and i really believe in a maximum integration and community and i've represented people with disabilities my entire legal career uh-huh um 46 years and i just i feel strongly about it um but that doesn't change the fact that i think there also could be affordable housing up there as well as not a larger facility for more people with disabilities i think people with disabilities should be living in the same kind of housing that every one of us lives in in the same communities with people next door and not in something that anyway um remotely looks like a or acts like a institution um and that might be the wrong word but i think that's the point i think it'd be great if you could go kathy well no because i don't think that helps and i don't want to undermine that gene put in a lot of work and you can say thank you i think you're very effective but but i think the people in that committee so i think that's the position they ultimately took was maximum integration i think um well i mean i don't think so because people want to draw this meeting to a close i don't want this conversation i've got a lot to say and um i think that the i'll just briefly say i think the des model may be a failing model because it's costs are too high and it's probably not going to be sustainable um so that we need to come up with new ways of thinking about how to organize the hazard and there's some beautiful models of higher density housing that we saw while that committee was meeting that i think would meet a lot of the objectives of building community for people and not isolating that uh and so i i think there is an intermediate ground to be explored um anyway maybe we can get together for coffee and talk about it oh i am i'm open to that too okay great so i'd like to introduce the two of you this is a very good coffee and tea companion but so folks are going to get me comments on the rfc by next monday right now and i will get around these revised minutes and one of the notions here in terms of revised comments should be underscoring the idea of this committee's relevance that's right and highlighting i mean one of the things that needs updating is what what has happened in the housing world over the last five years including st dan's i mean that was a major thing we've got to update our achievements um so i will look for comments on the rp i before i close and let mary get the next uh meeting set on the agenda i just want to mention that you might have seen the layland post edition before last uh where we there was an article about the highest uh property tax people and number one was uh river's edge number three was commonwealth i actually wrote an article following up on that basically underscoring the role of uh affordable housing in town that in addition to those units there are an additional 71 units scattered throughout town that are all paying property taxes i wrote what i thought was a decent article it had wasn't published last friday i sent another note saying there's apparently really no vehicle for somebody like me to write and like what we'd call an op-ed you know just letter or letter to the editor they'll take but mine was too long i don't do 250 words so and i sent one that was about that long and it was never it was not so i wrote this past week when i noticed it wasn't in the time i had forgotten i sent it in but then my husband said oh is your article in there i said oh okay i started looking through it wasn't in there so i wrote and i sent dave watkins and uh carol plumb the article directly saying i don't know you know it's too long for a letter but how about just an article you know just a little article like you know i contribute to you guys uh that wasn't why but what is commonwealth that's on route 30 that's not the south side of the apartment place um commonwealth south side of route 30 right out of the town center right out of uh co-trituate center right out of the villa you know it's really easy to drive right by and you're going going east that's the goddard the new goddard school oh okay so oh that place oh i so that's the third highest the name of that that's the third highest and i was sitting on the board so i would i just pointed out that not only do you have alta oxbow and this is at number one and three but all of the other not public housing but all of the other non-public housing units are all paying taxes and st anne's they're all they're paying taxes and that's going to be another major because that's you know over 40 units that's another major well certainly part of town center is condos which are paying taxes right but but i was just looking at the affordable ones there well they must have affordable units in town center i don't they do i'm sure they couldn't have built them but they're the first development does the second does right so that's part of what i'm saying there are some additional units all throughout town all of whom are paying taxes it was just another argument for 40 b and another argument for people but you know and it was taken through the housing good lens the affordable housing lens so check your wayward post i don't think it'll be there next week but i i will keep trying thank you it won't be the first piece i've written it doesn't you go to the next meeting yeah wednesday night continues to be it's fine that's good are we looking at the end of may april april sorry so is that the 29th that's fine for me works for me okay let's do it okay all right uh is there um no other no matters not not reasonably anticipated and uh is there a motion to adjourn so moved second oh go ahead see you get the you get the you get the privileges all in favor next