This letter is from a group of concerned citizens sent to Belmont Briefing about the push to rezone Belmont Center…
The Belmont zoning process being conducted by the Planning Board and the Town Planner is raising alarms among Town citizens, Town Meeting Members and residents and abutters of Belmont Center.
Chaos has attended the first month of a 3-month zoning process in the Center. At its public hearing on Jan 28, even the Planning Board wasn’t clear about who was driving the 5 early, invited-only meetings (in lieu of public meetings) and workshop. So, on whose authority were the vast majority of the public excluded from information and invitations to a “design workshop” for Belmont Center?
Even worse, the Planning Board Chair and the Town Planner have refused to answer these questions, which will critically impact our lives and homes:
1. PROCESS: What’s the process for genuine conversation with all the public?
- Jan 28’s so-called “public hearing” only allowed public comment on Center rezoning at close to 11pm – 4 hours into the meeting. This is unacceptable.
2. Increased density in Belmont Center may be one route to economic development, but what will it cost us in impacts? How many extra residential units in a 4-story building on the Claflin lot are anticipated? How many more kids in the schools? What overshadowing and privacy impacts on neighbors and abutters?
3. What will the impact be of one way traffic on Leonard Street through Belmont, as has been proposed, and of diverting major amounts of traffic through the Claflin lot, under the bridge, onto Pleasant St or into Concord Ave logjams?
- The town planner on Jan 28 said “not much impact”. That is just plain wrong.
4. Why are private meetings held by our elected and unelected officials with real estate developers and owners eg Purecoat – meetings which are opaque to us and even to half the Planning Board – I.e. no announcements or records kept?
5. Attendees at public hearings of the Planning Board have been dismissed, denied when seeking information, and disrespected by the Chair and the Town Planner. They have cut them off, and simply refused to answer questions about their plans to assess the impacts of their zoning plans, and about why the breakneck pace to deliver Belmont Center to developers in 3 months is proceeding without considering negative or unintended consequences.
Zoning and “designing” a new center in a data-free vacuum, with no financial or impact information, based on only comments from a tiny subset of the public at invited-only meetings, is both irresponsible and prescription for a zoning disaster.