Board votes to restore Master Plan Steering Committee
Elections do matter. In a meeting that at times grew heated, the Planning Board, led by newly elected Kara Minar, voted 3-1 to reconstitute the Master Plan Steering Committee (MPSC), to be chaired by Planning Board member Joe Hutchinson, its previous leader. The vote reverses a decision by the previous board to dissolve that group.
After completing its work on the first phase of a revised town master plan, the previous MPSC was unable to agree on next steps. There were accusations that a majority of its members favored taking back Harvard land at Devens, and calls for a more “balanced” membership. Several members resigned, and the Planning Board eventually voted to terminate its work, with Joe Hutchinson the lone dissenter.
“The MPSC foundered on the Devens question,” Tim Schmoyer, stated on Monday evening, as members debated the cause of its demise. It would be a mistake, he said, to bring back a committee that had not succeeded.
But Minar said she thought the Planning Board needed a formal way to collect and discuss the concerns of the many town boards with a stake in the future of the town. It would be impossible, she said, for a part-time planner to do that work. Minar said the board needed to hear the wishes of town residents before it could make any recommendations concerning Devens, and a subcommittee provided the best means to gather it.
Although the board split on whether to resurrect the MPSC, there was unanimity among the members that Phase I had been valuable. Schmoyer said he agreed with Minar that a formal process was needed to guide work on the next phase of the master plan update. But in the end, he voted against Jim Breslauer’s motion to make a new and improved MPSC the vehicle for doing the work.
Town Hall site plan approved with conditions
The Planning Board voted 3-2 this week to approve a somewhat revised site plan for the Town Hall renovation project. Peter Brooks and Tim Schmoyer voted against it.
In spite of a pending change to Harvard’s scenic by-law, the Planning Board retains the authority to review and approve the site plans for any municipal building project. In its previous appearance before the board, the Town Hall building committee had been asked to provide more information about parking, lighting and enclosures for a generator and air conditioning unit. Parking has been modified in the latest plan to allow better access to a fire department boat stored in the old ambulance building. And the board added a condition that the generator and “chiller” be enclosed by a solid wooden fence at least six feet high, in a style appropriate to the rest of the building.
Next stop for the building committee is the Harvard Historical Commission.
