Harvard’s town counsel has amended his position on the use of Master Plan money to pay a planner employed by town government.
In a brief conversation with the Press last week, attorney Mark Lanza said that it was his opinion the Planning Board could use the money given to it last year by Town Meeting to pay either a planner hired by the town or an outside consultant to update Harvard’s Master Plan.
Previously, Lanza had opined, in a memo to Lucy Wallace, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen, that such a use would require another vote at Town Meeting.
But last week, Lanza said that he had recently been asked to consider a different scenario. “I was asked initially if the $100,000 given to the Planning Board to update the town’s Master Plan could be used to help pay the first year salary of a town planner.” The answer to that, he said, is “no.”
OK, but with careful accounting
But if the money is used to pay specifically for the hours a planner spends working on the Master Plan update, then yes, that would be proper, he confirmed. But the planner would need to keep careful track of the hours spent on that task, he added.
In speaking with the Press, Lanza, a former town administrator himself, said he would never ask a town’s planner to write a master plan. “I have never seen it done,” he said. “It’s too complex an undertaking and is best left to consultants.”
“But if you ask me, ‘Could it be done?'” he said, “I would have to answer ‘yes.'”
News of Lanza’s more nuanced opinion was greeted with relief by those who want the town to hire a part-time professional planner for the coming year to help several boards get on with their work. These include the Planning Board and the Economic Development Committee (EDC). The chairman of the Conservation Commission, Paul Willard, declared support for a planner at a recent FinCom meeting, but the Commission has yet to vote on the proposal. (See note at the end of this article.)
Planning for a planner
Last year Town Meeting appropriated $100,000 to the Planning Board to revise Harvard’s Master Plan, which was last updated in 2002. The plan lays out a vision and goals for Harvard that inform the decisions of just about every board and committee in town, but especially the Planning Board, the Conservation Commission, the Zoning Board of Appeals, and more recently, the EDC and Devens Economic Analysis Team (DEAT).
In January, with work on the Master Plan at a standstill, the Planning Board voted 3-1 to use $20,000 of its appropriation to help pay the first year salary of a full-time planner. Later, the board reduced its request to one for a part-time planner.
Here’s where matters stand today. The Finance Committee has voted to allocate $40,000 in the town’s budget toward the $60,000 salary of a part-time planner. The Planning Board remains committed to contributing $20,000 to that total and will offer an article at Town Meeting to hire such a planner. The board is drafting a job description for the position that has yet to be approved by Harvard’s Personnel Board. Use of the remaining $80,000 available to the Planning Board has not yet been determined, though the board is at work on RFPs for work on two parts of the Master Plan. The appropriation expires June 30, 2014.
Note: The original version of this article, printed in the Feb. 22 Press, stated incorrectly that the Planning Board, the Conservation Commission, and the Economic Development Committee (EDC) all supported the hiring of a part-time planner. It was only the Planning Board and the EDC that declared support.
