Following negative testimony from the public and the discovery of a clerical oversight, the Planning Board will scale back the bylaw proposals it presents to the Oct. 28 Special Town Meeting. At its Sept. 23 meeting, attended by no members of the public, the Planning Board decided to withdraw three of its seven proposed bylaw changes, and it may be withdrawing or amending two more.
The withdrawn bylaws were changes to the small-, medium-, and large-scale commercial uses allowed in the commercial district, aimed at both simplifying the bylaw and allowing a few new uses. Other sections of Harvard’s zoning bylaws directly reference the sections that would have been changed, which would have caused the bylaws to be in conflict with one another. To also change the other bylaw sections, the board would have to hold public hearings, and there is insufficient time to do so before Oct. 28, so the board has instead decided to postpone those changes until the spring 2020 Annual Town Meeting.
The Planning Board is still considering what to do with the proposed Rural Life Preservation bylaw and the changes to the Ayer Road Village Special Permit bylaw. The former would allow the board to issue special permits for limited commercial activity on up to nine parcels of 10 or more acres in the agricultural/residential district in exchange for the permanent preservation of open space or historical landmarks.
At the board’s Sept. 9 meeting and Sept. 20 public outreach event, members of the public opposed the boards’s Rural Life Preservation bylaw proposal. Agricultural Advisory Commission Chair Kerri Green and member Nicky Schmidt, both acting as private citizens, told the Planning Board that the Rural Life Preservation bylaw would fail if town meeting voted on it, with Schmidt describing it as “a bad fit for Harvard.”
An informal poll by Planning Board Vice-Chair Justin Brown showed that most members of the board favored withdrawing the proposed rural life bylaw. Director of Community and Economic Development Chris Ryan voiced arguments for both sides of the question, saying, “According to many of my colleagues in the state, a lot of zoning like this takes three tries to get through. You have to expect that you will fail the first time, but that failure is a lot more educational than these meetings, because town meeting is where people release their real feelings about it.” On the other hand, he agreed with the board members that they had waited too long to begin outreach regarding the bylaw and that the poorly attended summer meetings had left them in the dark about the public’s opinion until too late.
Why are we doing this now?
According to Planning Board member Fran Nickerson, who hosted the outreach meeting at the General Store, “People kept asking me, ‘Why are we doing this now?’ The reason is, we are trying to be proactive.” Board member Stacia Donnahue said, “It’s not about the business, it’s about preserving the open space, but I don’t think we got that across,” and suggested that voters might be more amenable to the proposal if the board waited until a large property was developed, so that the bylaw would be seen as addressing an immediate problem.
Board members also discussed reducing the scale of proposed changes to the Ayer Road Village Special Permit bylaw. These changes would make the existing bylaw more permissive, mostly by increasing the allowed floor area ratio (FAR) from 0.2 (20%) to 0.5 (50%). FAR compares the square footage of all buildings on a lot (including multiple floors) to the total area of the lot. For example, a two-story building with 500 square feet on each floor in a 2,000-square-foot lot would have a FAR of 0.5 (50%).
At the previous hearing, members of the public expressed shock at the size of the proposed increase. According to Ryan, decreasing the proposed FAR to 0.3 (30%) might still be enough to spur some new development along Ayer Road, and board members agreed that this would be an appropriate response to public opinion.
The board did not vote on any of these measures beyond informal polls but has instead scheduled another hearing meeting for next week, Sept. 30, in addition to holding another outreach meeting at the General Store this Friday, Sept. 27, from 5 to 7 p.m. Board members hope to use feedback gained at these two meetings to reach a final decision by the end of the Sept. 30 meeting.
