The plan cover photograph is cheerfully optimistic. What doesn’t it show you?

It doesn’t show you the facts: eg that 200 people would be cramming a narrow street from the 100 new apartments being planned for the Center.

It doesn’t show you the lack of parking and back-to-back traffic along Leonard St. at ALL times, whereas now it’s just in rush hour(s).

It doesn’t show you rats running across Leonard street, which would turn into a huge construction zone for at least 5-10 years.

It doesn’t show you the DOZEN empty storefronts, not just a handful, along Leonard, because our well loved local stores will have gone out of business, or left : the business owners have said clearly that they will be forced out if this plan is approved. 

No Toy Shop of Belmont. No Bessie Blue. No Ranc’s. No Belmont Bookstore. No Helena’s. No Revolve. No Wellington’s. No Chocolate Dream. No Westcott Mercantile. ETC.

And because the cover of the plan speaks of “overlay zoning districts”, PLURAL, and because the Planning Board and Town Planner haven’t done their due diligence and conducted impact studies, the reality for not just the Center but for you could be this:

THE REALITY: 

NOT this: THE DELUSION

This is why it’s ESSENTIAL to vote on April 1 in our local elections!  Your future in this town, your home, your neighborhood, depends on it. 

Paul Joy, Chairman of the Economic Development Committee, has a different vision for change, economic development and responsible, careful planning.

Paul’s key focuses are :

1. Parking: Eliminate business parking mandates: help businesses flourish. Pledge to maintain the Claflin St. parking lot permanently. (According to the Planning Board it has been saved, for now)

2. Upzone only areas ripe for COMMERCIAL development eg Purecoat, some areas of Concord Ave..

3. Streamline new business applications, and refresh vacant storefronts using state money via grants 

4. Hospitality on Concord Ave, where it will enhance, not outcompete, local independent businesses 

5. Yes to drive through’s! A restaurant and rooftop bar over the Bank of America building ? 

What’s so different about this plan? It has NONE of the negative downstream impacts we will suffer from Taylor Yates’ plan. And Paul listens: to every stakeholder, every resident. He is not dismissive or callous, unlike his opponent, to shop owner’s and abutter’s concerns. He is thoughtful, responsible, inclusive, a good steward – and he tells the truth.

Shape YOUR future in Belmont! Exercise your vote!

——————

Belmont Deserves Better. Our lives, homes and businesses are on the line.

– A Group of Concerned Belmont Citizens

Instead, the actual zoning bylaw posted by the town is a shocking invitation to real estate developers to a free-for-all in Belmont Center:

1. No building footprint limits are established! Even 3A zoning did that!

2. Highest impacts on allowed buildings are hidden.

3. Maximum Heights enlarged with “bonus stories”.

4. Further height buildups of towers/roof structures are allowed in the small print. 

5. Deceptively calls full stories “half stories”… .

6. Packed with problematic images – see below – which don’t accurately represent what can be built.

If you really want to know what they’re doing, spend 20 mins on Town Meeting Member Doug Koplow’s careful review and superb analysis, from which this material is borrowed, a document publicly available here:

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AjsbE6z69oxHhcJabJVbQ2t223IwtQ?e=JwHJ7E

The Belmont Planning Board Chair has been pushing this Center overlay zoning project forward at breakneck speed. So is Elizabeth Dionne, chair of the select Board, who is effectively running Taylor Yates’ campaign for the open Select Board seat, election on April 1. 

Together, they insist this project will grow the town’s commercial tax base – while simultaneously ignoring and REFUSING TO ANSWER all requests for crucial data on COSTS, such as proportion of residential to commercial, actual numbers of tax revenue to be generated AFTER costs, infrastructure costs, traffic and parking impacts, and costs to schools of 200 more children living in 100 new apartments, and being driven in at least 100 new cars into the Center every day?

The Planning Board Chair and Select Board Chair are highly intelligent people. They know what good planning is, with due diligence. They know that once in a generation change can cause huge negative downstream impacts. They know they are pushing a massive buildup that will have little ground floor commercial space, topped with tons of residential – hundreds of new condos and apartments.

The deceptions in this zoning bylaw, in Taylor’s statements to the public which are the opposite of what’s in the actual zoning are the mark of a Planning Board Chair in a tearing hurry. His mantra seems to be “get it done – and damn the consequences!”.

Consequences we in this town who care about the Center will live with – forever. 

———

Belmont Deserves Better. Our lives, homes and businesses are on the line.

The Select Board and Planning Board, working hand-in-glove, have promised us that “economic development” via a massive buildup in Belmont Center will gain revenue for the town, and substantially lower our taxes. “Higher taxes or taller buildings!” is their mantra. But do the facts bear them out?

What is missing, or being hidden, in their plan? HERE ARE THE FACTS: 

1. MOST OF THE BUILDUP WILL BE RESIDENTIAL, NOT COMMERCIAL. 

The Town’s own RKG Fiscal Impact Analysis of November 2024, publicly available online, shows that the costs of school aged children, infrastructure, and new municipal services will at best – in an optimistic scenario – roughly break even in taxes. But UNDER THIS PLAN, YOUR TAXES COULD GO UP, NOT DOWN! 

These RKG tables show why: look at the result – $839,000 net revenue gain – of a moderate buildup in all of Belmont, and the LOSS from a low buildup: $29,000! 

2. While the Planning Board is trying to pack tall buildings into our small center, the construction, noise, rats, traffic clogs, disruption and higher rents will, according to the Belmont Center Business Association, DRIVE BELMONT CENTER INDEPENDENT STORES AND RESTAURANTS OUT OF BUSINESS. 

3. TRAFFIC: 100 new apartments/condos in Belmont Center – the PB’s stated estimate – will add at least 100 new cars (despite the Planning Board’s wishful thinking that folks will just walk long distances – they won’t, any more than the PB Chair does). Massive construction will clog traffic further. Which means your daily commute of 1/2 hr now will become at least 1 hour, under this plan.

4. “MONSTROUS BUILDINGS!”: At Paul Joy’s Economic Development Council meeting on March 13, over 50 people, residents and Belmont Center business owners, showed up to speak passionately against this zoning plan. Many reported this was the first meeting at which they felt heard, as the Planning Board isn’t listening. One older woman, a Belmont resident for fifty years, said the buildup was “monstrous”. Heads nodded all round. This plan destroys the unique charm and historic scale of our center, and replaces it with something like Alewife.

It’s time the Select Board and the Planning Board woke up to reality: that this plan will not deliver what they promise, and will deliver nasty consequences they steadfastly refuse to discuss. Ignoring reality is foolish, dangerous, irresponsible.

The truth may be painful, but ignoring the truth does not make it less real.

Belmont deserves better. Our homes, businesses and lives are on the line.

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.

Belmont Town Meeting is being “railroaded” by the MBTA, specifically the MBTA Communities Act.  Here’s HOPE for those who  have dutifully followed the false words of certain “town planners ” and  “town administrators.” It is unknown if conflicts of interest exist among these folks but the speed of the “railroading” causes us to wonder.

Other communities are denying this Massachusetts overreach. Milton specifically. So far while Milton was denied certain claims they still have claims pending:

1. The State failed to follow Massachusetts Administrative Procedures Act, failing to properly notify cities and towns and their residents according to the procedures the State has established. The State attempted to file it as an Emergency action but they are unable to  meet the required justification

2.  The MBTA Communities Act has been declared an Unfunded Mandate by the State Auditor.  Info on how that is determined: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/learn-about-mandate-determinations

3.  The  Milton case did not address the Home Rule Currently MBTA Communities Act fails the State’s Home Rule provision. There is also a Federal Home Rule provision that may have been violated. Possible additional lawsuit.

4. Additional Lawsuit: During October 2024 a group of Rockport citizens sued the state on the basis of the unconstitutionality of the MBTA Community Act. Several Belmont residents joined this lawsuit as Intervenors. Most recently citizen groups from 35 different Massachusetts communities are also joining this lawsuit which will move forward as a Class Action suit.

“The question of Housing affordability is not even incorporated into this law. It falls into a law favoring the special interest of a few and not the people as a whole. The State argues that this law is needed to address a housing shortage but they have not substantiated that claim. Although many believe we have an affordability crisis, the affordability crisis has been exacerbated by the State’s inept, heavy-handed and bumbling attempts to make rentals and homes more affordable. In reality, Massachusetts is an expensive State to live in primarily due to its burdening taxes, wasteful spending and poor management all of which ultimately drives up the costs for homeowners and landlords. In addition,the State’s  Section 8 Policies have actually driven up the general costs of rentals. Based on this, Massachusetts affordability problems are government created and not easily corrected by the entity that incompetently generated them in the first place, namely our Government.  Although now the State is claiming that all these additional units they are dictatorially demanding will drive down the costs of rentals and homes, history does not support that claim. ” (Rockport resident, January 2025)

Belmont Center businesses are very worried about the Planning Board’s overlay zoning project being rushed to completion by May. They think it’s delusional and dangerous. We do too. 

They are worried they won’t survive the disruption and construction over years. Stores are already super challenged, customers would be deterred by 3-year construction, and it doesn’t take much to push a small store out of business.

They are particularly distressed that the new zoning plans will take away critical parking in the Claflin Lot, and replace it with a 4 story overshadowing building, as per the current plan.

They are unhappy the Planning Board hasn’t engaged with them sufficiently or consistently, to create a plan more sensitive to their life-or-death concerns, and more sensitive to preserving the character and charm of the Center itself. 

And they, like neighbors, abutters, and Town Meeting members, are disillusioned with the Planning Board’s lack of transparency and disclosure, its failure to do due diligence, its irresponsible denial of potential negative impacts, and its pie-in-the-sky decisions, which make a mockery of their talk about “consider the neighbors” (by destroying their businesses?)

Deran Muckjian, owner of The Toy Shop of Belmont, has lived here for 63 years, and is passionately opposed to the current plan. As he put it: 

“Why aren’t we focusing on other parts of Belmont like Purecoat or Pleasant Street, which could take a commercial build up?

We need to focus on what we HAVE, not take away the character of the Center, and we need to realize we are not Arsenal Mall.

Why don’t we fix the train station instead, which we can revive with state funds?

This zoning plan not only WON’T succeed in expanding commercial tax revenue, it WILL kill the small businesses which make the Center what it is.”

You can hear Deran commenting at the Feb 12 public meeting above.

*****

WHY isn’t the Planning Board actively studying impacts on area businesses, lives, and traffic? 

The Board hasn’t done its homework, or even basic due diligence on impacts. At the public meeting on February 25, Chris Ryan said he would do fiscal impact analysis ONLY focusing on revenue – but with no analysis of costs! 

You and I can’t manage a household budget without costs. And we’d be fired from jobs where we had to manage budgets and ignored costs. It’s delusional.

Planning without any information on costs is lazy, deceptive, and a recipe for a disaster which we and our children will have to live with for decades. 

Or is it not just laziness, but active deception, because they KNOW the costs on the town and the strain on services and schools, and fiscal impacts, will be huge? 

The Town Planner’s contention that they can’t do a cost analysis because it’s too expensive is bogus and laughable. In 5 minutes, any of us can download apps and spreadsheets which model impact scenarios, after plugging in the numbers. 

As an example of negative impacts, one Belmont Ctr business owner points out that if rents go up to the level of neighboring towns, after the buildout, to $65/sq foot, small businesses which can’t pay would quickly be driven out of town.

Yet that is exactly what the Planning Board is inviting. 

How would you like a Center with a CVS, but no Belmont Bookstore, no Toy Shop of Belmont, no Didriks, Revolve, Helena’s, Chocolate Dream, or Champions, no Wellington, Patou, Butternut Bakery, Qebrada, Stone Hearth Pizza or Rancatores? 

Trust in the Planning Board, after months of manipulated meetings, is already broken for many of us, and is steadily breaking for others. 

The PB can start to repair this trust, if it wishes, by doing the following:

1. Walk your own talk about “consider the neighbors”. 

Translation: HONOR the community’s and the consultant’s advice. Return to Map Option 1 – lower building heights, under 3 stories – on West Leonard Street.

2. LISTEN to business owners. Remove the pending seizure of the Claflin Lot.

3. Put taller-than-3-story buildings ONLY on Concord Ave, where neither abutters nor small businesses’ lives and livelihoods are endangered.

4. Plan creatively for available spaces in Belmont Ctr – eg the railway station.

5. Do a responsible fiscal analysis with costs as well as revenues projected under different scenarios. 

*****

Trust must be earned. This Planning Board and Town Planner are losing it fast. 

BELMONT DESERVES BETTER. OUR LIVES, HOMES AND BUSINESSES ARE ON THE LINE. 

– A Group of Concerned Belmont Center Residents.

It will kill the Center, not refresh it.

This plan packs tall buildings into little Belmont Center, ignores the public’s wishes expressed clearly at the design workshop and the consultant Ablecity’s recommendations – to be sensitive to impacts on neighbors – and worst of all, would kill our existing small businesses in the Center by taking away their parking! 

Look at the proposed overlay zoning maps attached, shown by Town Planner Chris Ryan at the meeting.

They show 3 to 3.5 stories high buildings on West Leonard Street, ignoring the public consensus at the January 22 design workshop to AVOID building high on West Leonard Street, to prevent overshadowing abutters. Our neighbors, even when strangers, seem to care more about this town and our community than the Planning Board – which has refused repeatedly to do neighborhood, traffic, schools impact or financial impact studies. 

And they remove most of the parking which Center businesses rely on to survive! 

WHY ARE WE DESTROYING BELMONT CENTER BUSINESSES IN THE NAME OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, WHEN MUCH BETTER COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS ARE BEGGING FOR REDEVELOPMENT eg PURECOAT and PLEASANT ST?

WHY IS THE PLANNING BOARD VIOLATING THE AIR, LIGHT AND VIEWSHED RIGHTS OF THE NEIGHBORING ABUTTERS, AGAINST THE STATED WISHES OF THE PUBLIC CONSENSUS AND THEIR OWN CONSULTANT? 

Why are they aligning proposed building heights on West Leonard St with the one ugly big building at #68 which violated every zoning regulation when it was built?

Why don’t they care at all about the historic character and scale of our Center?

We want to cut taxes by doing commercial development where it will flourish! 

Not build more residential on top of small businesses which just drains town services, does nothing net-net for revenue, and destroys neighbors’ lives!

TOWN MEETING MEMBERS, PLEASE VETO THIS PIE-IN-THE-SKY, DESTRUCTIVE AND IRRESPONSIBLE PLAN. The damage it will do will be irrevocable. 

THERE ARE MUCH BETTER REDEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN BELMONT.

BELMONT DESERVES BETTER. 

OUR HOMES, LIVES AND BUSINESSES DEPEND ON IT.

– A concerned group of Belmont residents.

An Open Letter to Belmont Housing Authority from Tomi Olson:

Shortly after I left the Housing Authority Board, the then Chairs, Gloria Leipsig and Donna Brescia made the decision to bring Cambridge Housing Authority on board to manage Belmont Housing.  This was intended to alleviate the administrative burden of managing the Belmont Housing Authority which at the time did not offer a competitive salary to a BELMONT dedicated manager.  Since then salary figures for managers have been increased and the pool of talented managers exists ready to dedicate themselves to the Belmont Housing Authority and not serve 2 masters.  

By bringing in “professional managers” from Cambridge the Board exposed all of Belmont, especially the Belmont Housing residents to Cambridge’s repeated acts of putting Cambridge tenants in need of “emergency” housing in Belmont Housing units, including 5 Clark Lane which is a large family residence.

Yesterday’s police action for multiple shots fired that required patrols from Belmont, Watertown, Arlington and Waltham is the SECOND since Cambridge took over.  Cambridge’s trick of favoring their residents over Belmont residents by using the “emergency” powers demonstrates that Cambridge is more interested in offloading its criminal tenants than in providing a safe environment for Belmont residents who deeply need low income housing.

I call for the Board to immediately remove this family on Clark Lane. I also call for the immediate dissolution of Cambridge’s Management contract.  Once both are done, I demand that the members of the Board who authorized the Cambridge management contract step down as Commissioners.  By allowing Cambridge to preferentially install its own residents over Belmont residents on Belmont Housing property, they have failed their responsibility to keep safe Belmont Housing Authority residents.

I also call for the Belmont Police to fully prosecute the offenders and further to charge Cambridge Housing Authority with the public safety costs sustained by all the police departments who attended this call to secure the Belmont Family Housing from the 12 to 15 shots fired in their neighborhood.

Tomi Olson

The Belmont Planning Board last night continued what’s become an ongoing charade, a travesty of due process, in its first “public meeting” on the Belmont Center zoning process. Last evening’s meeting attempted to put lipstick on a pig, the residents’-rights-violating Leonard Street zoning project, but we could still see and hear the pig. 

VIOLATION 1: the meeting was never called to order. Only 1 member of the Planning Board spoke up and participated actively. Maybe Taylor Yates IS the Planning Board now? Where were the other Board members’ voices?

VIOLATION 2: A Quorum of the Select Board was present and participating, with no prior announcement, an open law violation. Not only were their members present and participating, but Matt Taylor gave a long political speech, putting pressure on Town members to accept the Planning Board’s process, and Elizabeth Dionne did the same. Ms. Dionne even opened and closed this alleged Planning Board meeting! So: was it a Select Board Meeting or a Planning Board meeting?

SUBSTANTIVE VIOLATION 3: Despite repeated requests from the public in SEVEN EARLIER Planning Board meetings addressing Belmont Center, (a “design workshop”, 4 “focus groups” and 2 regular Planning Board meetings ) there WAS NO CLEAR INFORMATION ON – or regard for – TRAFFIC, REAL IMPACTS ON ABUTTERS, or FISCAL IMPACTS TO THE TOWN.

We, the public, are sick of vague generalities instead of real information.

We are upset to see our Town’s planning process hijacked by a tiny cabal of Select and Planning Board officials – Elizabeth Dionne, Taylor Yates, Matt Taylor, Chris Ryan – who run things dictatorially and ignore long-standing fair process laws.

And we question their real and actual conflicts of interest, and ask: who stands to gain financially from selling real estate in Belmont Center to developers and clients? Is that why they are rushing to build up in Belmont Center so fast instead of in perhaps less desirable – to residential buyers – areas of town ripe for commercial development such as on Brighton Street, which could be just as effective, or MORE effective generators of revenue Belmont so sorely needs?

Belmont residents deserve better. Our lives and homes depend upon it.

— A group of concerned Belmont citizens

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. 

Belmont deserves better. Our lives and homes are on the line.