Williamstown Coordinating Committee Convenes
 The town's new coordinating committee is hoping to heal a rift between opposing camps over affordable housing development. |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The committee charged with coordinating the town's efforts to address land-use issues discussed its specific objectives at its inaugural meeting Monday.
The Long-term Coordinating Committee created earlier this month decided to set goals including a recommendation to the Selectmen about where to situate replacement housing for homes lost at the Spruces Mobile Home Park after 2011's Tropical Storm Irene.
The new committee also will aim to prepare an objective analysis of potential sites that can inform voters if and when the issue of land use comes before a potential special town meeting.
But much of the Monday's meeting focused on how the committee can heal the divisions that led up to last month's special town meeting, at which voters decided to take no action on whether the town should develop a conserved parcel known as the Lowry property.
"The whole process of where to spend this $3 million quickly became a divisive issue," Planning Board Chairwoman Anne McCallum said, referring to the amount the town anticipates to have left over after its required expenditures from a federal Hazard Mitigation Grant.
"The idea is this group is supposed to get everybody on the same page without the idea that we're trying to push one agenda or another. ... Right away, we can look around the table and put people in camps."
McCallum did not go so far as to put labels on other committee members, but she did identify herself as belonging to the camp that questioned the pace at which the town appeared to be moving toward development of Lowry.
"I was at the (November 2012) meeting when (Town Manager) Peter Fohlin announced [the grant]," McCallum said. "He said, 'One place where I think it might be very good [to build] was on the Lowry property. It seemed like it was the only serious proposal. People talked about other sites. Cathy (Yamamoto) often did. ... But what got done was very much only on the Lowry site."
Yamamoto, who chairs the town's Affordable Housing Committee and shares a spot on the Coordinating Committee with McCallum, lamented the use of the word "camps" and emphasized the AHC's efforts to develop other town-owned sites, not just Lowry.
"The Affordable Housing Committee has been looking at this issue for years," she said. "We ramped up in September 2011 after the flood. The game-changer was when Peter announced the grant in November 2012 and mentioned the Lowry property as a possible site.
"The Affordable Housing Committee has always been considering Lowry, but it was further down the list. We were focusing on town-owned sites that already had been approved for (development) ... and we've spent a lot of money on those sites getting them ready."
Specifically, Yamamoto mentioned two brownfield sites: the former town garage site on Water Street and the former PhoTech property on Cole Avenue. She resisted the notion that she or her committee were in a camp aligned against any other group in town.
 Hank Art marks up goals for the coordinating committee. |
"I don't feel I'm in a camp," Yamamoto said. "I'm in the affordable housing camp. But I'm not in a Lowry camp or a brownfields camp. ... I want to advance affordable housing in town because it's an important need."
The chairman of the town's Conservation Commission said that from his perspective, people in town are choosing up sides.
"I have been receiving emails from both of these 'camps,' " Hank Art said. "Some have been accusing me of negligence, of not being a good steward of open space and conservation land on the one hand and on the other saying that I'm inhibiting the development of affordable housing.
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I get these things."
Art advocated for more joint meetings among the various town committees represented on the Long-term Coordinating Committee, including his Con Comm, the Planning Board, the AHC, the Affordable Housing Trust, the Finance Committee, the Council on Aging, the Agricultural Commission and the Selectmen.
The committee discussed how it could facilitate such meetings and how it could add to the community discussion by bringing in outside experts from the housing development field.
But the next order of business on the committee's agenda will be a meeting with local experts: specifically the residents who remain at the Spruces Mobile Home Park. The committee's next meeting will be Friday, May 31, a listening session to learn about the needs and desires of those residents, who will need to relocate from the park.
In other business Monday, the committee heard a report from Art about his efforts as Con Comm chairman to seek clarity on the legal issues surrounding Lowry.
The commission, he explained, has treated Lowry and other lands in its purview as if they are protected by Article 97 of the Massachusetts constitution. But in the months since the announcement of the FEMA grant, that status has been very much called into question.
"On Friday, I got a call from Gary Davis of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, and he said the conversation would be less than I was hoping for in terms of clarity," Art said.
"He made two comments: No. 1, their office is most concerned with coordination among differeng state agencies and ... as a result they'd be very respectful of whatever town counsel's judgments are. No. 2, in matters referring to Massachusetts constitutional issues, the attorney general's office is the main responsible agency."
Art said Davis recommended Art wait until after Tuesday's annual town meeting to seek further opinion from the attorney general.
Tags: affordable housing, conserved land, coordinating committee, lowry property,
