Are you being held hostage by the Lancaster Planning Board?

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

Are you being held hostage by the Lancaster Planning Board?

You heard it again at the "Annual Town Meeting" on Monday.  A resident serving on a town committee stepped to the microphone with something nasty to say about the Lancaster Planning Board.   The assertion is that the Lancaster Planning Board is preventing you from voting

Short answer:

No, you are not.    That's ridiculous.

Longer answer: 

No.  There are two proposed zoning bylaw amendments related to the development on McGovern Boulevard in North Lancaster.  One of the two bylaws was ready to consider on Monday -- you could legally have voted on amending the Enterprise Zone on Monday, but the Select Board removed it from the Warrant on April 20th.   The second bylaw, for the 40R district was submitted late and the hearing isn't scheduled for several more weeks.

Moreover:  both bylaws SHOULD be delayed, because they will be presented alongside Memorandums of Agreement signed by the Capital Group.  Neither Memorandum of Agreement is ready this week.

Even-moreover:  the Select Board has yet to report in on what happened with their last agreement with this party -- 86 acres of conservation land was not received.  

And even-MOREover: the Select Board will be resubmitting the Enterprise District rezoning article to the Planning Board for a new hearing.   Town Counsel recommended changes to the article and map you'll consider. 

Select Board should make it clear the the MOAs were not ready, and that's on them.  The 40R district bylaw was submitted late for a hearing -- it just wasn't ready in time.  The district changes now need a new hearing, and that's just the normal course of business.   The issues with the 86 acres of conservation land should have been addressed last year.  None of those things are the Planning Board's fault.

Even Longer Answer:

There are two proposed bylaws related to that project: one is a change to the Residential and Enterprise Zone districts, and the other is a 40R and the establishment of a 40R overlay district.     Both are zoning bylaw amendments, and the law prohibits the town from acting on zoning bylaw amendments until the Planning Board holds a hearing for them.    The Planning Board held a hearing for the district changes back on January 18th.  The 40R hearing is scheduled for June 6th.

The purpose of a zoning bylaw hearing is for the Planning Board to gather all the data on the bylaw, take public input, and produce a report to the town about the proposal.  It's a state requirement, and they allow almost three months for those hearings -- we sent out a memo in January advising everyone of the "drop dead" date to get their bylaws to us for a hearing before the Annual Town meeting.  This bylaw missed the drop dead date, then missed a drop-deader date after that.   There are state requirements to meet for the hearings as well, and they have to be sent to the newspapers for advertising almost three weeks in advance of the hearing -- after a point it's impractical for the Board to hold the hearing, draft the report, and approve the report before town meeting.

Beyond the scheduling issues, an important part of the 40R proposal is a "Memorandum of Agreement" that modifies how the land can be used.  Without the "Memorandum of Agreement" the 40R bylaw and district set up a high-density housing area along Rt. 70 that would allow almost 500 units of housing by-right, and would not need to include any commercial or retail development as part of a proposal.   With the MOA in place, that should be reduced to ~150 units of housing, balanced by retail and commercial development up to 49% of the floor square footage.   That MOA will clearly be crucial to how this project is received,  HOWEVER as of today the MOA is not yet finished and signed.  Moreover, the town already had an agreement with the Capital Group to exchange parcels of land --- whatever happened, the town transferred its land and never received the land it was due.   A board member asserted that he wanted to know about that MOA and outcome of the previous agreement for this hearing, and the board agreed with him.  I can't argue with that: the land agreement was pretty straightforward, and if we can't enforce that first one -- I wouldn't advise anyone to trust the next one, and that will definitely influence the report they write.

Why all the incendiary language about the Planning Board?

For some people, this is like a football game.   Go my team!  Boo the other guys!   That's not helpful.  As someone who enjoys delving into the details, empty rhetoric bothers me to no end.   In the end, as a voter you'll be the one who needs to sort out everything that's thrown into your ears -- I'll be rooting for your ability to sort the fact from the fiction and reach the right decision.

(I served on the Lancaster Planning Board from 2016-2022)