by John Osborn ·
Friday, August 14, 2026
State Sen. Jamie Eldridge got an earful from Devens residents this month.
Eldridge spent nearly an hour fielding questions from the Devens Committee and Devens residents at the committee’s Aug. 4 meeting, held in a packed conference room where MassDevelopment staff, including Devens executive vice president Michael Sweeney, were waiting to present a separate building assessment later that night.
Committee member Aaron Farber Chen had prepared questions beforehand on future jurisdiction, housing, and the loss of the region’s hospital, but the initial back-and-forth dealt mostly with a proposal Eldridge had helped kill last month.
The proposal, included in the governor’s 2026 economic development bill, would have let MassDevelopment convene a single meeting of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley residents at Devens to approve any major changes to zoning to the area. Chapter 498, the 1993 law that created Devens, however, calls for each of the three towns to hold a separate town meeting to consider such a proposal, and all three must agree before a zoning change can take effect. The process has come to be known as a super town meeting.
“if we .. are truly honest about wanting more housing, relying upon the super town meeting process ... does not seem to be wise because it hasn’t worked in the past,” said Devens Committee Chair Laura Scott. She told Eldridge she was “deeply disappointed” he’d sided with the towns over Devens residents on keeping that process rather than moving to a single combined meeting. “There is no one whose futures... are more impacted by future housing at Devens than the people who live here,” she said. “Right now, we have no say in the super town meeting process.”
Eldridge didn’t dispute her concerns, but said the next super town meeting has to go differently. His focus, he said, was “a successful negotiation” between the three towns, the Devens Committee, and Devens residents, to make sure it’s successful. “I don’t have to tell anyone here what happens if it’s not successful. Not only does that set back progress here, but I would argue it creates some clouds for the disposition of Devens.” Success, he said, depends on MassDevelopment engaging directly with the towns and Devens residents now, well before the vote, to build a proposal all three towns’ majorities can actually support.
Eldridge said his objection to combining the three meetings was never about who gets to vote. Devens residents already vote today, folded into whichever town their address falls within. His worry was that a single, combined meeting would be dominated by the larger towns’ populations. “I would fear it would even further guarantee there wouldn’t be progress,” he said.
Tracy Clark, a former Devens Committee chair, made the same point from the other direction. The vote count doesn’t change either way, he said, but “hearing what a community that lives on Devens is saying—as a community—may be important to some of the voters in other towns and in how they might vote.”
Devens becoming its own town came up too, and Eldridge was skeptical. He said he’d support incorporation if that’s what residents and the towns ultimately decided, but called it politically difficult—the state is already “struggling to deliver local aid” to its 351 existing communities, and a new town would have to fund its own services, including schools.
Chen, the committee member who had prepared Eldridge’s questions, invoked the country’s 250th anniversary to press him: “It’s ironic that this is the 250th anniversary of the U.S., and we’re talking here about this, like, taxation without representation.” Eldridge argued Devens residents would likely pay more, not less, in taxes as an independent town. The current arrangement is unusually generous, he said. MassDevelopment funds a contract under which Harvard educates Devens’ children. Clark pushed back. MassDevelopment isn’t paying out of generosity, he said. “They do it from our taxes.”
That dispute over who actually pays for what led straight into the evening’s clearest point of agreement. Eldridge said three separate times that he wants MassDevelopment to “open the books” on what it actually costs to run Devens, information he said the towns, the Devens Committee and MassDevelopment itself all need before making decisions about the district’s future.
Clark went further: MassDevelopment used to be far more active in the district’s own jurisdiction-planning committees before pulling back, he said. “I would implore you through the Legislature and MassDevelopment to make that happen again.”
The demand isn’t just rhetorical. Under Chapter 498, the 1993 law governing Devens, MassDevelopment, the three towns and the Devens Enterprise Commission must jointly begin a study of Devens’ permanent government structure by July 1, 2030, with a report due to the Legislature by 2033. That’s five years off, but the meeting made clear residents don’t want to wait to start pressing for answers.
By the meeting’s end, the tone had grown less adversarial. Scott thanked Eldridge for taking “all our questions” in person, and for his willingness to do that. “It’s important to have honest dialogue,” Eldridge replied. The Devens Committee has invited him back for a follow-up session to address questions that ran out of time, including one concern about the lack of a hospital serving Devens.