At last Thursday’s Joint Boards of Selectmen (JBOS) meeting, representatives from Ayer, Devens, Harvard, and MassDevelopment agreed that an amendment to raise the housing-unit cap at Devens from 282 to 682 units, as requested by the state, would be a “substantial revision” to the Devens bylaws. Therefore, it would require simultaneous town meeting approval, or so-called “super town meetings” in Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley. JBOS members in attendance included the full board from Ayer; Harvard Selectmen Tim Clark and Ron Ricci; and two members of the Devens Committee, the governing body for Devens. Representatives from MassDevelopment were in attendance as well. No selectmen from Shirley were present.
The JBOS has been meeting monthly to discuss the jurisdictional disposition of the land at the former army base, which was originally part of the three towns and is now under development by the state as an enterprise zone. On the agenda for this meeting was a proposal from the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) to raise the housing cap specified in the Devens bylaws by an additional 400 units of “workforce” housing to address an estimated 1,640 new jobs “in the pipeline” at Devens.
“There are two ways of changing or raising the cap—legislatively or through town meetings,” said Alana Murphy, director of policy at DHCD, in attendance at the request of the JBOS. She explained that any substantial change would require the latter process.
Tom Kinch of the Devens Committee, current JBOS chairman, gave examples of precedence for petitioning the legislature to amend the bylaws, the method used to obtain additional liquor licenses for Devens and a height variance for the Bristol-Myers-Squibb facility. Kinch then asked the members to define “substantial change.”
In Murphy’s opinion, amending the housing cap would qualify as a significant revision to the bylaws. According to Section 10 of Chapter 498, the governing legislation for Devens until disposition, such an amendment would require adherence to the same process followed when the Devens Reuse Plan and bylaws were initially adopted by the three towns in 1994. The process includes a series of public hearings and approvals by MassDevelopment, the developer and provider of municipal services, and by selectmen at the individual town level, followed by simultaneous town meetings in the three towns.
On Wednesday Ricci said he was unclear about the next steps, but he believed that the process of public hearings and “super town meetings” would not be initiated until the JBOS receives a detailed housing proposal from the state.
