One question trumps every other question about the future of land use in Harvard, say members of the Master Plan Steering Committee: What does the town want to do about Devens?
The Planning Board is asking for Town Meeting approval of $100,000 to complete updating the town’s now 10-year-old Master Plan. At the end of this process, say the steering committee members, the town will have its Devens answer.
“The first thing that the town told us, in this master planning process that we’ve gone through so far, is we need to fix Devens,” said Joe Hutchinson, chairman of the Master Plan Steering Committee and an unopposed candidate for Planning Board. “We need to figure out what the town wants, with respect to Devens.”
Results from a town-wide survey done as Phase I of the master planning process were inconclusive. In that survey, said steering committee and Planning Board member Michelle Catalina, 44 percent of respondents said they would like the town to take back jurisdiction of Harvard’s portion of the former military base, 30.1 percent don’t want to take back jurisdiction, and 21 percent said they need more information.
“So if we were to go to a vote…to decide on a direction, we can’t,” Catalina said. “These numbers are way too close for us to make a decision on what to do.”
When the Master Plan was created in 2002, Catalina said, it didn’t touch on Devens because the committee at that time felt it didn’t have enough information.
“What we learned from doing this master plan is many things are unchanged, but there’s more fiscal pressure on us now than there was in 2002,” Catalina said. “And that’s asking Harvard maybe to consider creating a different balance in our land-use decisions.”
Although the Master Plan is primarily a land-use document, Catalina said, property tax revenue from a piece of land is generated by what the town allows that land to be used for.
“Different land-use decisions lead to being able to have more money,” she said. “So unlike the 2002 Master Plan, where Devens wasn’t really a part of it, we heard that Harvard needs to make a decision about Devens.”
Phase II of the master planning process, then, Hutchinson said, will involve hiring a consultant to complete a “municipal impact” study of Devens.
“What we need is the study of Devens as it impacts Harvard’s revenues and expenses, as it impacts its schools, as it impacts housing, as it impacts open space and recreation, all the elements in the master plan,” he said. “…Because Devens affects everything else in the master plan, we would then inform everything else that gets done in the scoping process of Phase II with what we learn about Devens and its impact on Harvard.”
The committee members say it’s necessary for a consultant to do the study, rather than the town handling it in-house, so that it is, among other things, “independent of the politics of the town, ” Catalina said.
“You want a professional,” Hutchinson said. “You want someone with expertise, and you want somebody who’s independent to give you this data.”
Lucy Wallace, a member of the steering committee and a candidate for Board of Selectmen, added that an independent consultant would bring in perspectives from beyond Harvard’s borders.
“With a consultant, because they have experience with different clients, they can bring different ideas to the table that we don’t think of in our own myopic little world here of Brigadoon,” she said.
Whatever the consultant discovers will be passed on to the residents of Harvard, the committee members say. They plan to use part of the $100,000 for education efforts.
“One of the things that needs to happen in Phase II is public outreach and education at a very high level and in an ongoing way,” Hutchinson said. “If we’re asking this consultant to go discuss impact, we have to make that impact known to our residents and we have to know how they feel about it, and that’s what we’ll do throughout.”
Ultimately, the steering committee members say, Harvard could take the Devens issue to a Special Town Meeting vote, informed by the data in the consultant’s report. This vote could take the form of a resolution on how the town wants to proceed regarding Devens.
“Joe has been the strongest advocate of this, and I think, in a sense, he’s right, because whoever has to go negotiate has a stronger sense of commitment of the community,” Wallace said. She noted the large turnout for the recent Special Town Meeting on the redevelopment of Vicksburg Square in Devens. “If we were going to have something like this, I imagine you might get a really big group in there, which means you would really feel confident saying the direction we’re preceding is ‘this way.’ And you wouldn’t get to the end of the road, which has happened the last three times [Town Meeting has voted on Devens issues], where your legs were cut out from under you.”
Completion of Phase II could happen within the next 12 months, the committee members say, if Town Meeting approves their funding on April 28. If not, Catalina said, “We’ll probably regroup and try again.”
The funding article has been recommended by the Finance Committee. Selectmen, however, voted 3–2 earlier this month against recommending it.
“Rather than blindly approving a ton of money for a series of tasks that have been put together by a very small collection of people,” Selectman Bill Johnson said at the time of the vote, “I’d rather give our working boards and committees the time they need to review the vision” and incorporate it into their own five-year plans. “Let them define the external services they need to collect and analyze data to resolve questions that they’re unable to resolve [on their own].”
“To me,” Johnson said, “it’s like putting a $100k chauffeur on retainer, when you don’t know where you want to go, how many trips you’re going to take, or how far you need to go on each trip.”
Catalina said last week she’s not sure the steering committee was “clearly represented” to the Selectmen or others around town who say Harvard has studied Devens enough.
“I think when we explain to them what we’re going to put together, what the goal is going to be, and the way it’s going to work, hopefully they’ll decide it is a good thing to do,” she said.
