In 2010 and 2011, Annual Town Meeting allocated a total of $130,000 to update Harvard’s 2002 Master Plan, the document that is supposed to guide the town’s development relative to a desire to preserve its historical, scenic, and natural features.
Where is the town in the master planning process? It’s a question worth considering as voters weigh the cost and benefit of hiring a town planner, a step that some say will jump-start the process, which has been stalled for a year.
Phase I: Vision and goals are complete
The foundation for the new Master Plan, Vision and Goals, was completed in April 2011 with the $30,000 allocated for that purpose in 2010. “Vision and Goals,” also known as Phase I, sets the details of the Master Plan, determining, for example, which zoning laws must be added or changed to achieve the town’s vision of itself. (The Ayer Road Village zoning district is an example of an action item from the 2002 Master Plan enacted by the town and used later to allow construction of a mixed-use development of retail, office, and affordable elder apartments near the Route 2 ramps.)
To complete Phase I, the Master Plan Steering Committee worked with planning consultants to interview numerous town officials, organize focus groups and public forums, and conduct a town-wide survey taken by 684 residents. Preferences for commercial development showed residents favoring a grocery store and restaurant over big-box stores. Also favored were diversity in housing, such as empty-nester homes; preservation of open land, view sheds, natural resources, and small-town character; and promotion of a “vibrant, pedestrian-friendly town center.”
Phase II: Derailed by Devens; stalled for a year
But it was another preference revealed by the survey—that the town decide Devens disposition before continuing with the rest of the Master Plan—that derailed the process. Michelle Catalina, who until December 2012 was chairman of the Planning Board and part of the steering committee that completed Phase I, says the Devens question divided the committee.
—Peter Brooks, Planning Board chairman
“We didn’t realize until after [the April 2011] Town Meeting that we didn’t agree on a way to move forward,” she said last week. “Half the committee wanted to give a new consultant free rein with designing a process to study Devens, and the other half only wanted the consultant to perform a very detailed analysis of missing pieces of specific data we could not gather for ourselves.”
In August 2012 the Planning Board dissolved the steering committee when all but one member resigned after objecting to what one former member called a “political vetting process” by the Planning Board, which wanted to create a committee that was “balanced both politically and with regard to how committee members felt about taking back Devens,” according to Catalina. In October, the Planning Board abandoned the idea of reconstituting the steering committee and assumed responsibility for completing the Master Plan. By December, soon after pitching the idea of hiring a planner for the town to the Finance Committee, Catalina resigned from the board.
Catalina’s resignation, board members say, deprived the board of its most diligent worker and may have given traction to the board’s contention—first expressed this year—that hiring a planner could jumpstart the master planning process. This notion, in turn, introduced another rift, where some believed that a master plan is best done in-house, and others insisted on the superiority of specialized consultants. In its own reporting, the Press has found that most towns use contractors, but some work largely in-house to save money, including Boxborough, Bellingham, and Westminster. Planners say both models are acceptable, but that few planners possess all the specialized skills required to create a full plan.
“I hope a professional planner answerable to the Planning Board will insulate the process from political agendas so the facts dictate the outcome [of the Devens analysis] and not the other way around,” said current Planning Board chairman Peter Brooks last month, who also said this was his “personal opinion.”
Also last month, Lucy Wallace—the last steering committee member left standing after the mass resignation—objected to being identified by the Planning Board as one who had made up her mind in advance. “I am not for taking Devens back at all costs. I am and always have been for studying the issue fully and objectively before making the decision,” she said.
Meanwhile, Selectman (and now Planning Board candidate) Bill Johnson continues to argue the case for a salaried town planner who would direct master planning efforts in place of the defunct steering committee and create most of Phase II in-house. Using the town’s recently implemented “strategic planning process,” where all town boards submit, on a yearly basis, five-year goals and implementation plans, Johnson says a town planner can “coordinate and prioritize” the goals “against a top-down, long-range vision and set of priorities for the town as a whole.” Johnson says the planner can build on the town’s vision as defined in Phase I and complete, in-house, most of the work planned for Phase II.
“And I personally believe we can do all this work before next Annual Town Meeting and still return some of the $100,000 Master Plan monies [allocated in 2011] back to the town.”
DEAT Chairman: Premise is flawed; get on with the study
That the best approach to studying Devens played a role in side-tracking Harvard’s Master Plan might be understandable, considering the complexity of the decision facing Harvard. Towns were supposed to have until 2033 to make a decision, but pressure has been building to move sooner. In fact, says Victor Normand, chairman of the Devens Enterprise Analysis Team (DEAT), his team has a handle on what should be studied, and by whom. In an interview last month at his Acton Real Estate company, Normand said that DEAT has already suggested that the Planning Board hire a consultant “who was a former town manager, not a generalist” to study Devens-related issues.
Instead, it’s the premise that should be re-examined, said Normand. The notion that Devens disposition should be answered before proceeding with its Phase II master planning may be appealing at first glance, but is “too simplistic,” he added. Normand’s unique perspective comes not just from DEAT, but from a 10-year tenure as Vice-President of Commercial Development with MassDevelopment, the state finance and development agency that oversees re-development of Devens. He told the Press he embraces the idea of a Devens study, but rejects the serial approach to planning described in Phase I as “impractical,” given that the “situation between Harvard and Devens is unprecedented.”
“While the Master Plan needs an analysis on the probable economic and social impact of Devens, I think that there will be so many unanswerable questions that it would exceed the scope of what a master plan could do. The disposition of Devens should be studied, but it cannot be definitive enough to support the premise [of deciding disposition before writing Phase II of the Master Plan] The most significant thing a master plan could do would be to nail down operating costs,” he said, adding that DEAT has a handle on tax revenue but not on municipal operating costs.
Other issues such as access to Devens, schools, recreation, and culture, he suggested, should be explored and raised in the Master Plan as issues to be resolved.
Whether some third option for Harvard and Devens—something between taking back everything within Harvard’s historical boundaries and renouncing any claim—could be considered is one of the few disposition-related questions that Peter Lowitt was willing to answer last month. Lowitt, director of the Devens Enterprise Commission, offered this:
“We are only limited by our imaginations and ability to achieve consensus.”
