A selectmen-backed effort to gauge the appetite of Harvard, Ayer, and Shirley, voters for taking back governance of Devens appears to be off the table.
Although representatives of the three towns have been discussing such a poll since last fall, recent developments have apparently killed the initiative. At least for now.
“We will not offer a referendum [at this year’s town election],” Selectman Leo Blair told the Press this week. “We ran out of time.” His colleagues on the Board of Selectmen (BOS) agree. Though there is continued support for a non-binding testing of the waters, “presenting it in time for the upcoming Annual Town Meeting is not going to be possible,” acknowledged Chairwoman Marie Sobalvarro.
Not enough time to educate town
“The rest of the town really hasn’t been thinking about this,” said Selectwoman Lucy Wallace, during discussion of the measure at the Tuesday meeting of Harvard’s selectmen. “I don’t want to squirrel the deal by doing it too quickly.”
What the selectmen have in mind is a scheme that would return the governance of Devens residents to the towns of Ayer, Shirley, and Harvard sooner than the 2033 date set by state law.
A so-called “overlay development district” would be established with boundaries identical to the current Devens Redevelopment Enterprise Zone (DREZ) and managed by the state of Massachusetts. MassDevelopment, the state’s agency, would continue to sell land, issue permits, and regulate all development within the DREZ, while the towns would gradually take back their traditional responsibility for providing municipal services such as fire and police protection and education.
But neither MassDevelopment nor the Devens residents themselves are in any rush to see the state pull out. In a December 30 letter to Tom Kinch, who represents Devens residents at joint meetings of the Ayer, Shirley, and Harvard selectmen, MassDevelopment President and CEO Marty Jones wrote that her agency had no plans to “walk away” from Devens.
“MassDevelopment is required [by state law] to oversee the redevelopment of Devens and carry out the functions of town government for the Devens Enterprise Zone,” she wrote. “Despite press reports to the contrary, MassDevelopment is bound to continue its…work [at Devens] even beyond July 1, 2033.”
With 650 acres of land remaining to be developed and 120 new housing units about to be built on Grant Road, she continued, “Premature plans for disposition could in reality undermine efforts to bring companies and new housing to Devens.”
Devens residents pay a usage fee to MassDevelopment for the services it provides, but that amount is estimated to be one-third of the taxes that would be paid for an equivalent house in Harvard. Yet Devens residents who live within the historical boundaries of Harvard can attend Town Meeting, approve and reject spending articles, run for town office, and vote in town elections. “It’s representation without taxation,” Blair argued, a quote that he attributes to former Selectman Tim Clark.
Any change to the governance and development of Devens requires an act of the legislature. But before then, voters in all three towns would have to agree to the changes in a “super” town election. Two previous attempts to alter Devens governance or zoning failed: Proposition 2B in 2006 and Vicksburg Square in 2012.
“What we need is to get iterative buy-in from our voters,” Blair said at a December JBOS meeting in Ayer. The idea, he said then, would be to come up with some “very rough parameters” and then go to the town and say, “here…is what we’re considering; should we be?” If the answer is yes, then the towns could go to work on “the hard part.”
