“We’re taking three hours out of your day to come create the next year of your life,” began Select Board Chair SusanMary Redinger as she called the board’s yearly goal-setting session to order last Thursday morning.
Gathered around a table on the Hildreth House porch, members met to decide what they wanted to achieve on behalf of the town in the coming year. With only a five-minute break and running just 15 minutes past its scheduled three hours, the board drafted six goals for fiscal 2026. The board will show its work at its next meeting, June 24, when it plans to vote on the goals.
Discussion focused broadly on strategies for sustaining the town financially and improving communication and collaboration among town employees and volunteers. Along the way, the board reaffirmed its plan to buy land for new athletic fields and added a new goal focusing on the town’s commercial district. It discussed but did not create separate goals to promote affordable housing and environmental sustainability.
Economic sustainability and opportunities
The conversation about how to improve the budgeting process and increase tax revenue focused on several possible remedies covering a wide range of topics, from the town’s commercial district, to the budget process, to jump-starting the jurisdiction planning at Devens.
Member Kara Minar kicked off the conversation about how the town could generate more revenue with a 25-minute discussion about the Ayer Road commercial district. “We have about 400 acres that are developable; there’s not a lot there. So it’s how much juice you can catch out of that.” It’s important to understand, Minar said, that although so-called triple-A office buildings create the most revenue, “that’s not necessarily where the market is.” That fact was borne out by the 2024 Ayer Road Vision Plan, a marketing and fiscal analysis of the district’s potential. Minar said the traffic on Ayer Road, measured at about 15,000 vehicles per day in 2023, was insufficient to sustain a business such as Starbucks, another takeaway confirmed by the Vision Plan. Hiring a consultant in 2026, she said, might “help us understand what—in coordination with the form-based code—is the best we can do there.” She asked whether the lack of water and sewer also presented a barrier.
“That should be our number one goal,” responded Town Administrator Dan Nason. “We certainly can’t dictate who comes, but we can make it more enticing by having water and sewer.”
The town is a bit closer to that goal. Using a $1.145 million state grant, the town hired the engineering firm Woodard & Curran in April to create a preliminary design for water and sewer infrastructure to serve the 8-acre multifamily district that voters approved in 2024 to comply with the MBTA Communities Act. The district consists of part of 203 Ayer Road (where a badminton gym is under construction) and 185 and 187 Ayer Road—both vacant buildings. The system for the multifamily district would end at Gebo Lane, near the post office.
In response to questioning from Minar, Nason said the piping could be extended down the length of Ayer Road, so it could eventually serve the rest of the commercial district. But it’s too late, he said, to get that cost included as part of the 2026 renovation of Ayer Road.
Nason said his goal would be for developers to pay, or help to pay, for water and sewer. Referring to Minco Development Corporation’s interest in building more than 200 units of housing in Harvard’s multifamily district, he added: “If we don’t get the MBTA project, if that is not successful, then you’re not going to get water and wastewater there. I can guarantee that, because it’s going to be cost prohibitive.”
Enhancements planned as part of the road’s renovation, such as a shared-use path and six pedestrian crosswalks, could also attract businesses, Nason said.
Seeking to create a goal out of the discussion, newly elected Select Board member Eve Wittenberg suggested, “Beginning the process of developing the infrastructure that would permit further development on Ayer Road,” perhaps with use of a consultant. Ahmet Corapcioglu, also new to the board, said the plan must include “a road map for revenue.”
Improving efficiency and communication
Board members vowed to improve the budget process, noting that the need for this year’s tax override might have been realized sooner if the boards had collaborated earlier. Members nodded in agreement when Redinger said some version of the budget kickoff meetings—involving all boards or at least the Finance and School committees and Select Board—should be revived. The board will work on a “pilot process” for this fiscal year, Redinger said, and will need to ensure that new policies and procedures align with the Harvard Charter—or whether any changes to the charter might be necessary.
Assistant Town Administrator Ally Mitchell agreed that communication could be better, but reminded the board of factors outside its control such as insurance costs and the state’s timing in releasing its budget and cherry sheets.
Enhancing training for employees and volunteers—and tuning up related policies and procedures—was another goal the board wanted to pursue. Wittenberg and Minar said they would document procedures for new volunteers, especially the requirements for taking and filing minutes and for creating and submitting agendas. Such direction, Minar pointed out, was particularly important for boards that had begun to meet in person, since their meetings—unlike Zoom meetings—are not available online at the town’s public access website (theharvardmediacoop
erative.com). Corapcioglu suggested automated reminders of required procedures could be useful in spreading the word.
Improving communication across the board was a recurring theme that the board picked up again when, near the end of their meeting, each member chose either eight or nine other committees to liaise with, a longtime practice that Wittenberg praised. “I think Select Board involvement in [other committees] … adds to volunteers feeling like their work is important and valued—because we are looking at it.”
Advancing stalled Devens planning
Securing Harvard’s jurisdiction in Devens could be “a transformational opportunity for long-term fiscal sustainability and shared prosperity,” according to the board’s handout from the June 7 meeting. But according to members of the Harvard-Devens Jurisdiction Committee, its progress on a plan to resume jurisdiction over the Devens land that had belonged to Harvard when Fort Devens was created in 1917 has been impeded.
With the deadline for submitting a disposition report eight years away, Devens’ governing body, MassDevelopment, has stopped attending meetings of the disposition planning committees. It has also declined to immediately finance a comprehensive planning study so Harvard can get on with jurisdictional planning.
The board appeared concerned about the delay in planning. “MassDevelopment is not interested in any way, shape, or form in moving the ball forward,” Minar said, adding that she was worried by recent developments that indicate the Legislature—rather than the Super Town Meeting of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley—would change zoning in Harvard’s historical boundaries.
Paul Green, a member of the Harvard-Devens Jurisdiction Committee, spoke to the problem at the board’s request. “MassDevelopment is taking the legalistic approach to this,” he said, noting its position is to wait until 2030 to engage with the towns. He recommended that each stakeholder town—Harvard, Ayer, and Shirley—put up money, “and we will hire the consultant that MassDevelopment, for eight or nine years, has been refusing to fund.”
Green encouraged the board to keep trying to “engage with MassDevelopment and the Devens Enterprise Commission at every level” to get the job done. Redinger eventually proposed a goal of “Making progress in resuming jurisdiction over Harvard’s historic lands.”
Looking back on its goals for fiscal 2025, the board found that it had met four of its seven goals: It hired a new town administrator and assistant administrator using a transparent process, identified land and funding for a new athletic field, started to look for land for a new fire station, and created a subcommittee to generate ideas for earning municipal revenue. Unmet goals were improving communication among boards, developing a plan to recognize volunteers, and coordinating with the Permanent Building Committee.
