Harvard’s Master Plan made its official debut last week in front of an audience of more than 40 residents at Volunteers Hall, who listened attentively to Town Planner Bill Scanlan’s presentation of its highlights. The launch of the 219-page document, which sets out a detailed, 10-year action plan to guide development in the town, comes after nearly four years of intermittent work by consultants, volunteers, and Scanlan, who filled in the gaps left by a contractor that fell short in delivering the required material. “This is the culmination of a lot of hard work by the Master Plan Steering Committee,” he said, referring to the committee that managed the project under the direction of the Planning Board. “The hard work of implementation begins after this.”
A job for the Planning Board
An implementation-related question was soon asked by John Ruark of Orchard Hill, who asked if Master Plan action items were prioritized and if risk assessments had been undertaken to determine whether “bad things start to happen” if tasks aren’t achieved. Risk assessments were not part of the Master Plan, Ruark was told, but a detailed implementation plan could be found in the plan’s Chapter 11, “Action Plan.” Selectwoman Lucy Wallace, a veteran of both the 2002 and 2016 Master Plan Steering committees, explained that the chapter specified action items, timelines, and the boards that needed to be involved. The Planning Board, she said, would “keep charge of the progress.”
With more than 60 action items to keep track of or work on, the board is likely to be busy during the 10-year implementation period. The plan’s action items are in keeping with its “vision,” as derived from citizen surveys and forums conducted for the new plan and for the Master Plans of 1969, 1988, and 2002. By contrast, the 2002 Master Plan contained about half that number of tasks. (A 2011 analysis by the Press concluded that out of the 32 actions specified in the 2002 plan, 14 were achieved, and 18 were either not achieved or were partially achieved.)
Wallace added that “it’s really up to the town” to decide which action items are achieved, noting that zoning changes, a key component of the action plan, require a two-thirds vote of the Annual Town Meeting.
Given the declining attendance at Town Meeting, realizing any part of the action plan could present a challenge, pointed out Billy Salter of Elm Street. The Master Plan, he said, “fits together and sounds terrific,” but the “painful graph” showing low turnout at Town Meeting was indicative of a chronic problem of declining community participation. “To function as a community, we must act as one … and make trade-offs as one,” he said, referring to the difficulty of making decisions about goals and outcomes that are popular but cost money or entail risk. The graph illustrates a Town Meeting in decline, with an average attendance rate of 326 voters for the years 2010 to 2014 compared to an average of 518 voters from 2001 to 2005. (The graph was included in Scanlan’s presentation and is part of the Master Plan, Chapter 7, “Community Services and Facilities.”)
Devens
The topic of Devens cropped up as a concern several times during the two-hour hearing, with Salter describing the topic as “the gorilla in the room” and Selectman Ken Swanton speaking of “the intergalactic question.” The question is about jurisdiction over Devens. According to Chapter 498 of Massachusetts law, MassDevelopment—the Devens redevelopment authority—and the towns of Shirley, Harvard, and Ayer must agree to a recommendation for permanent governance of Devens by 2033, 17 years hence.
Accordingly, and unlike the 2002 Master Plan, each chapter of the 2016 Master Plan includes a section addressing Devens-related issues, a fact Wallace pointed out. Planning Board Chairwoman Kara Minar urged people to read Chapter 9, “Devens,” calling it a deeper dive [on the topic] than has ever been done.” The plan also contains the 2015 report of Harvard’s volunteer committee, the Devens Economic Analysis Team (DEAT), which, like the Master Plan, shows that by the mid- to late 2020s, the cost of resuming jurisdiction at Devens would be offset by a modest surplus generated by tax revenues. (An “operational surplus” of $62,000 could be realized by 2023, according to the Master Plan.)
Victor Normand, who worked on the DEAT report, said that residents’ thinking about Devens as a potential part of Harvard is different from the state’s perspective. The state, he said, “designed Devens as a project with a 40-year lifespan,” where the project might be considered complete when the environment and infrastructure were in good shape and when “90 percent of the development parcels are sold.” Harvard, on the other hand, is faced with a monumental planning task, “for which there is no precedent.” In the decision-making process, “the Master Plan is a good resource to keep referring back to,” he said.
Zoning reform
The many zoning changes recommended by the Master Plan, such as creating a moderate-density, mixed-use zone in the town center, prompted Stow Road resident and independent planner Bonnie Heudorfer to highlight a significant problem in achieving the goals of any master plan. “There is no requirement that the zoning supplied by the town relate to the Master Plan,” she said.
A mismatch between planning goals and zoning regulations has been a persistent problem in the state Legislature, spurring a series of zoning reform bills, all failed. The latest bill, “An act promoting the planning and development of sustainable communities,” would still not require a town’s zoning bylaw to enable the kind of development called for in a master plan; however, it would make it easier for towns to change their bylaws to be consistent with their master plans. The bill was “reported favorably out of the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses and is now in the Senate Committee on Ways and Means,” according to a Feb. 26 “Legal News” posting on the website of the Massachusetts Municipal Lawyers Association.
Harvard’s new Master Plan is available at harvardmasterplan.org.
