When Town Meeting voted last spring to spend $100,000 to update Harvard’s 2002 Master Plan, residents handed responsibility for getting the job done to the Planning Board.
But on Tuesday night, after failing to make any progress for the first seven months of the fiscal year, the board voted to contribute a fifth of its money—$20,000—to the first-year salary of a full-time professional planner, a position yet to be approved by Town Meeting, whose funding has yet to be identified, and whose job description and lines of reporting are yet to be decided.
The vote in favor was 3-1, with Chairman Peter Brooks and members Tim Schmoyer and Rich Marcello voting in favor, and member Joe Hutchinson opposed. The board lacks a fifth member due to the resignation last year of former chairman Michele Catalina. Lucy Wallace, the nonvoting liaison from the Board of Selectmen, was absent. The sole attendee—besides the board members themselves—was Selectman Bill Johnson, an advocate of the planner position.
Since Town Meeting, the Planning Board has been unable to agree on how to update the Master Plan, for which it is responsible. A master plan is a written document intended to guide town planning boards in their decision-making. It must be updated at least once every 10 years.
Planning boards, under Massachusetts state law, are responsible for writing the protective and scenic bylaws of their towns, which include zoning bylaws and so-called overlay districts, such as the new Ayer Road solar overlay district.
Last year, a steering committee appointed by the Planning Board completed what it termed “Phase I” of the planning process at a cost of $80,000. Among the documents produced by the committee was a town survey, which identified the concerns of residents at that time and was meant to inform Planning Board decisions over the next decade.
The vote to give the Planning Board an additional $100,000—to be spent by the end of June, 2014—passed by a simple majority that did not require a headcount, according to Town Meeting minutes. The measure had the backing of the Finance Committee, which, in recommending passage, noted that a plan “engages experts and residents to explore and understand critical issues affecting our growth, set practical goals and policies, and create a task-oriented implementation plan to manage development in Harvard.”
In the months since Town Meeting, however, the Planning Board has been unable—until Tuesday—to reach consensus on how to allocate the money. Recently, a majority has seemed to favor spending $40,000 to analyze the impact that a return of Devens land to Harvard would have on town revenues and expenses, a step advocated by the Devens Economic Analysis Team (DEAT). Another committee, the Economic Development Committee, has asked for $15,000 for a study of its own. No budget exists to guide expenditure of the $100,000, though the Phase I report of the Master Plan Steering Committee, which Hutchinson chaired, did contain recommendations.
The vote Tuesday night, however, signals that a different approach is gaining support among some town officials. Many towns among Harvard’s neighbors do employ professional planners to assist town boards in their work, and those planners are often given the task of updating a town’s master plan. Examples include Lancaster, Acton, and Groton.
At the meeting, Marcello reported that Town Administrator Tim Bragan had devised a plan to pay the first-year salary of a town planner—an estimated $80,000—provided the Planning Board agreed to contribute $20,000. Johnson confirmed that such a plan existed, but no one was able to produce a written document. The Press was unable to learn any additional details before this week’s edition was published.
“Paying $20,000 to get a planner makes perfect sense,” said Brooks before the vote.
Other boards need planning support, argued Marcello, adding that Bragan was “only trying to spread the pain.” Besides, he said, if the board could get a planner for $20,000 along with the 500 to 800 hours of that person’s time to update the master plan, there would still be $80,000 left to fund any additional expert studies that might be required.
Hutchinson disagreed. He argued that the town had given the money to the Planning Board and expected it to be used to create a master plan. He questioned the legality of using the money for other purposes. Without a job description for the planner, Hutchinson said, there was no guarantee the Planning Board would get the help it needed. “Why the sudden rush?” he asked.
The answer, according to Brooks, was that Bragan needed a commitment from the board in order to draft an article this week for Town Meeting that would authorize the hiring of a professional planner in the coming fiscal year. Any articles that require new funding must be submitted to the Finance Committee by Jan. 18.
“We’ve done what Tim needs us to do,” said Brooks, following the vote.
What remains to be decided is how to spend the board’s remaining $80,000. Schmoyer was to have presented draft requests for services Tuesday, but was not ready. Instead, he moved that any discussion of how to use the remaining money be tabled until a town planner had been hired, an event unlikely to occur before the end of the fiscal year. But that motion failed 1-1-0, with Brooks abstaining. By then Marcello had left the meeting, as he previously stated he would, to watch a football game, and Brooks did not want to make a decision in his absence.
But postponing work on requests for proposals for the master plan “makes perfect sense,” added Brooks, “if we can live with the shame” of not having produced a master plan this year.
“I’m embarrassed for the board,” said a rueful Hutchinson. “We’ve accomplished nothing.”
