Attention Townie Talk readers…
Occasionally, an issue of critical importance to the community will arise that requires immediate notification to the residents. As Townie Talk believes in transparency, below is a letter I received unedited for your consumption. My comments will follow…
Letter to TownieTalk02478
Hi TownieTalk authors,
Belmont Center is in grave danger of being turned into an Alewife-like monstrosity of 4 story and higher buildings, from Moore to Alexander streets, obliterating the historic center, and destroying the town’s core identity.
We – a group of Belmont Center abutters – have been talking to the MBTA zoning committee to ask them to take this off their map for rezoning for Subdistrict 5, which they did even for the Star market and car wash plot – a much more likely spot for the new required housing! They refused to do so for Belmont Center, at a meeting with us today.
It is IMPERATIVE that at the public meeting on Thursday Feb 15, 7pm, to review the skewed current zoning “scenarios”, folks who care about the center show up in force and vote for the scenarios that don’t destroy the center.
Can you please put out a call on your blog? Most people don’t even know this is happening – once in a generation change to obliterate our town center as we know it, happening now.
For informational purposes… there will be a meeting this Thursday at 7pm at the Beech Street Center (Senior Center – 266 Beech Street, Belmont MA). It will not be remote. Public comment will be allowed.
TownieTalk commentary…
Tomorrow, Milton voters go to the polls to vote on whether to comply with the controversial MBTA community’s law. The law demands communities dramatically increase housing along and near MBTA routes or risk losing State aid. We are talking about potentially adding 1,600-3,000 units in a Town like Belmont that has about 10,000 units. Gov. Healey is maintaining a zero-tolerance attitude even though certain communities will be economically and aesthetically devastated as Belmont will.
At this moment, the Select Board has refused to consider allowing Belmont to vote on compliance, so the MBTA Zoning committee is forced with creating a plan for which the meeting Thursday solicits more resident feedback. The current committee has some members who want to add as much housing as allowed and damn the consequences (familiar theme in Belmont perhaps?) and others who want to protect as much potential commercial development space as possible in Town who are trying to be creative and balance the intent of the law vs the actual impact on the Town.
Things to consider….
- To date there has been no fiscal impact analysis study requested by the Select Board on enacting this law. Ditto for environmental.
- Leaders talk a good game of increasing commercial revenue… yet this law unless meticulously configured would eat into the little commercial space we have.
- Why should Belmont bear the cost of housing and educating residents who overwhelmingly work in Cambridge and Boston while those business taxes go to those cities?
- What will Belmont Center, the Squares… Waverley, Palfrey, Cushing, and the key corridors…Pleasant, Brighton/Blanchard, and Belmont Street look like lined with six story units. (If you read the last Townie Talk then you would see the 6-floor housing planned for the Cambridge side of Blanchard Street in the old pepperidge farm site)
- How many new students will any plan unload on our school system? Could easily exceed 1,000 in a Town with 4,500 currently enrolled.
Some will say Cambridge and Somerville can do it so can we. That’s fine if you can send your kids to private school, don’t have a car, and don’t mind human excrement on the sidewalks. Some will say it will happen over years… that doesn’t solve the space issue as the Town isn’t getting any new land in the deal.
Townie Talk is 100% opposed to the new law and believes a change of this magnitude should be in front of the voters. In the meantime, the effort should be focused on the least negative fiscal and aesthetic impact to the Town and preserving commercial revenue space.
If I recover from my head cold/flu in time, I will stress the fiscal impact study being essential in any planning stages, the need to protect what little commercially zoned space we have, and the erosion of the Town’s historic and suburban aesthetics. If I can’t… someone please raise these issues and reach out to the Select Board ASAP. This is insanity. #GOMILTON.