by John Osborn ·
Friday, October 25, 2024
The stakeholder committee convened five years ago to study options for the future governance of Devens has received a $300,000 grant from the state to support its work, thanks to an application filed on behalf of the committee in June by the town of Ayer.
The grant, which was announced Oct. 10 and will become available in January, is made possible through the state’s Community One Stop for Growth initiative. That initiative offers towns and community organizations a streamlined process through which to apply for money available from any of 12 different grant programs offered by the executive offices of Economic Development and Housing and Livable Communities, and by MassDevelopment.
The framework committee’s award is from the Housing Choice Grant Program offered by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. The letter announcing the award makes no mention of housing, but says the money is to support “the Devens Jurisdictional Framework Disposition Study.”
Because the town of Ayer is the recipient of the award, Town Manager Robert Pontbriand has volunteered his staff to oversee its administration. Now it’s up to the framework committee to reach consensus on how to use the money once it becomes available.
That discussion has already begun. Pontbriand will convene a working group that includes representatives of the towns of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley, the Devens residents, and the Devens Enterprise Commission. The group will make its recommendations at the framework committee’s next meeting Nov. 13.
But at their meeting this month, committee members have already agreed that more than $300,000 will be needed to come up with a plan for the future disposition of Devens. Framework committee co-chair Victor Normand noted that the state spent more than $1 million to develop a plan known as “scenario 2B” that proposed Devens become a new town but was ultimately rejected in 2006 by the town meetings of Harvard and Ayer.
Pontbriand said that given the several options for jurisdiction before the committee, it would be best to use the money to study the current state of Devens. The committee has plenty of options. Ayer’s application for the EOHLC grant allows for a range of uses for the money. And the committee has already unanimously agreed to the scope of work for the consultants it plans to hire to prepare the final study, which is due to the Legislature in 2033.
Normand said that fundamental to any future Devens plan is knowing the cost of the municipal services, such as public works, fire, and police, that MassDevelopment provides to the businesses and residents there. The current Devens budget includes the millions being earned from land sales and the millions being spent to staff and redevelop the former U.S. Army base. The costs of redevelopment need to be separated from purely municipal spending, the costs the towns would need to pay if they resume jurisdiction and for which residents and businesses would be taxed.
John Katter, who represents Devens residents on the committee, said that however the money is spent, his constituents want the issues of governance and housing to be kept separate. He noted that once the governor’s economic bill passes, as everyone seems to expect, the housing cap at Devens will be eliminated and a state-convened working group will be given the job of proposing new housing, including the redevelopment of Vicksburg Square. “Housing and governance are two separate and distinct issues,” he wrote the Press in an email. The working group should drive what new housing gets built, Katter said; the framework committee’s job is to decide how best to use the grant award to support the study on governance that the committee and MassDevelopment must deliver to the Legislature in nine years.
The economic development bill, to which Katter referred, remains in a joint conference committee of the Massachusetts House and Senate. State Rep. Dan Sena and state Sen. Jamie Eldridge both expect the bill will be brought to a vote by the end of October or sometime in November. Even if the bill is taken up after the 2024 election, Eldridge told the Press he expects it will pass this session.
In a phone interview Tuesday, Eldridge noted that from its inception the framework committee has sought money to study the cost of running Devens. MassDevelopment was unwilling to provide support, so in the previous session of the Legislature he secured a $300,000 bond bill earmark.
When that money was not released, Eldridge said he helped arrange a meeting of select board members from Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley with economic development secretary Yvonne Hao to make her aware of the towns’ need for money to begin their study of future options for Devens. At that meeting, he said, undersecretary for economic development Ashley Stolba spoke of the availability of the one stop for growth grants, noting they are meant to help communities plan for housing and economic development.
Ayer quickly applied on behalf of the committee, submitting its application just hours before the June deadline for fiscal 2025 grants.