For many months now, we Belmont residents have been told by the Planning Board and Select Board that building up Belmont Center with developer-friendly rezoning is essential to curbing our real estate taxes and getting rid of overrides. The equation seems to be: More Buildings = much reduced taxes.

This is false. Here’s why: let’s walk through the town’s most recent fiscal impact analysis, of Nov 2024, available publicly online.

The equation the Planning Board offers is simple: zone for 4, 5 and 6 story buildings, with retail on ground level, and many floors of residential above, and hey presto, developers will swarm in and build, Belmont will rake in their taxes, and ours will go down..

At its February 27 public hearing, the Planning Board also told us that the Town is doing a fiscal impact study, but looking only at revenue, not costs! Could we run even our household budgets, much less a town, with no understanding of costs? It’s irresponsible.

Yet Chris Ryan insisted that doing a fiscal impact analysis looking at revenue only was fine, and that studying costs would cost too much! That’s absurd, and a bit lazy: any budgeting app can be filled out in minutes to model scenario impacts. 

The reason for these evasions is not hard to find. 

Take a look at the Town’s RKG Fiscal Analysis, commissioned November 2024, projecting income and costs of a high-build scenario and a moderate-build scenario in ALL OF BELMONT, NOT JUST THE TWO BLOCKS OF BELMONT CENTER. 

Look at the two charts below. The numbers project the final net income we could expect after all the buildup, assuming developer-friendly zoning would result in a rush to build as tall as possible on every offered spot.

The high-build scenario, at a MAXIMUM, would produce just $1,697K in additional income after building up in the whole town, after accounting for the fiscal impact of School Aged children (assessed at a ratio of .35 ).

The moderate- build scenario produces just $839K after accounting for a reasonable School Aged Children ratio: 10% of the $8.4 million we are looking at in overrides! And that’s after building up the whole town! 

And all this at what cost? At the cost of destroying our historic Center, driving out the many small businesses who won’t survive construction, adding tons of cars, straining the schools, exacerbating traffic, stressing town and emergency services, ruining the many Center abutters’ lives, and turning spacious Belmont into Somerville or Alewife. 

So, it seems the Planning Board has been selling us a delusion, or a lie.

But the numbers don’t lie. 

Which Belmont do YOU want?

Belmont Deserves Better. Our lives, homes and businesses depend on it.

– A concerned group of Belmont residents.