Everyone with an interest the Capital Groups 40B application should cut out some time to review the town's response. (Once it's available for you to review.) The town gets 30 days to respond to an application, and will be submitting that response this week. We should town does pushes back on the application with all the issues raised by board's and residents.
Residents and boards submitted their comments to the Town Administrator for Friday, 5/13. The Select Board reviewed an initial memo drafted by the Town Administrator, Kate Hodges, last night.
For whatever reason that draft memo wasn't posted as meeting materials, and the resident and board comments haven't been made publicly available for review. I requested them this morning.
Apparently at least some of the resident comments were shared with the Capital Group for feedback last week. I don't have a good explanation for why the town would seek the Capital Groups feedback for it's response latter to it's application, but I also requested that the town share the Capital Group's feedback with residents.
If they're not posted on the website, I'll try to share them.
I've heard comments from residents, and share the concern, that the Select Board may "pull their punches" in the response letter because they've been so closely partnered with the Capital Group. Typically a town will respond strongly to a 40B proposal, thoroughly reviewing the application to identify inaccuracies and omissions. In this case the board has a conflict of interest, because the 40B application is less a real project than a part of the marketing plan for the project -- their Select Board's pitch has been that the town should adopt the enterprise zone change to prevent a 40B project, and from that perspective would actually be a setback for them if MassHousing rejected the Capital Groups application.
In reality, I have yet to see any decisive indication that the Capital Group would not still pursue a 40B in Lancaster if they Enterprise Zone change was approved. When I was on the committee drafting the MOA, I pushed for language to be added to to the MOA forbidding the Capital Group from pursuing a 40B if the Enterprise Zone change was approved. There was a suspicious amount of pushback to that proposal, for something that shouldn't be controversial, and I still have a close eye on it.
The Select Board didn't discuss the memo in any great detail last night, and the chair frankly didn't really seem to understand the purpose of the response. (He actually directed criticism at residents who focused on the details of the application, apparently unaware that the application is the focus at this point.)
The Planning Board seemed to have a better handle on the technical requirements for the response letter. The Select Board's liaison to the Planning Board (Alix Turner) appeared at the Planning Board meeting later in the night, and from the discussion it seems clear that some technical points that the town needed to make are omitted from the response letter. Hopefully they will be able to review the memo and fill in the gaps before the town responds.
If you did send in comments to the town, or you find gaps in the town's response letter, I'd suggest you also send them directly to the state. "Cut out the middleman." Here's the pertinent addresses:
mbusby@masshousing.com
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