by John Osborn ·
Friday, June 26, 2026
A provision in Gov. Maura Healey’s economic development bill would remove Harvard, Ayer, and Shirley from any formal governing role over zoning changes at Devens, replacing their three-town approval process with a single meeting run by MassDevelopment. All three boards have responded. Two want it stopped. One wants answers.
The three boards each voted unanimously on the evening of June 16 (Harvard 5-0, Ayer and Shirley 3-0), to send letters to their respective state delegations. Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who represents Harvard and Ayer, says he will oppose the measure. Sen. John Cronin, who represents Shirley, has reached out to the state with questions about how the new process would work but has not taken a position.
Under current law, a majority of voters at simultaneous town meetings of each of the three towns must approve any change to the Devens Reuse Plan or zoning bylaws. Under the proposed process, a combined quorum of 50 voters from any of the three towns would suffice, with no minimum from any individual community. Section 171 of H.5386, the Mass Wins Act, would replace the three-town process with a single meeting convened by MassDevelopment. The Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies reported favorably on the bill June 22 and sent it to the joint committee on capital expenditures where it awaits a hearing.
The Harvard and Ayer letters, both dated June 16, make the same core argument: Removing the town meeting process removes each town as a governing body over land within its own boundaries. Both boards note that Devens residents are already registered voters of Harvard, Ayer, or Shirley and can vote in their respective town meetings. What the proposal eliminates, the letters argue, is each town’s authority, as a municipality, to approve changes to land within its jurisdiction.
Both letters cite Chapter 498 of the Acts of 1993, the enabling legislation that created Devens. Section 1 of that legislation finds that the towns of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley “have a vital interest in the successful reuse of Fort Devens.” Removing the towns from the amendment process, the letters argue, contradicts that purpose.
Ayer’s letter raises an additional legal argument: Town meetings are, under Massachusetts law, a form of election, and elections cannot be conducted outside a town’s jurisdiction. The letter also points out that MassDevelopment already holds exclusive authority to propose changes to the Devens Reuse Plan and bylaws, and those proposals cannot be amended on the town meeting floor.
“Chapter 498 already provides MassDevelopment with a veto,” the Ayer board writes. “Further constricting the democratic process by reducing approval to a single meeting with a very small quorum risks weakening local democratic participation and diminishing the authority of the three towns.” Ayer calls the proposal “a dangerous precedent for the legislature to establish that could potentially jeopardize the rights of towns across the Commonwealth.”
The Shirley Select Board’s letter, sent June 17 to Cronin, takes a different approach. The board acknowledges the proposed changes “could improve the efficiency of expediting major changes to the Devens Reuse Plan or bylaws,” language that appears in neither the Harvard nor the Ayer letter. Shirley’s concern is not the principle, but the details. The letter asks who would moderate the single meeting, how it would be posted, and what rules of order would govern it. The board requests more public outreach from state officials and MassDevelopment before any decision is made.
Cronin’s response mirrors Shirley’s letter in tone. He has “reached out to the Executive Office of Economic Development with questions about how the proposed changes to Town Meeting would be moderated and conducted,” his office said. He has not taken a position on the proposed law. He is a voting member of the Joint Committee.
Rep. Danillo Sena, who represents all three towns, said the proposal would undermine local participation by replacing three concurrent town meetings with a single MassDevelopment-convened meeting requiring only 50 voters. “I echo the towns’ concerns and I support local zoning decision input,” he said.
According to Alec Fischbein, legislative director to Sen. Barry Finegold, the Senate co-chair of the Joint Committee, the committee received three written statements on Section 171, all in support of the measure, all from Devens residents. “No spoken or written testimony was provided to the Committee by MassDevelopment or any executive office of the Governor,” Fischbein told the Press
The three Devens residents make two arguments. The first is about housing. The residents say the super town meeting failed four times—in 2006, 2009, 2012, and 2015—to enact proposals that would have allowed new uses at the Vicksburg Square area and other sites. A MassDevelopment spokesperson cited the same occasions, while noting the 2015 proposal was later refined and passed in 2016. “That process has been tried four times,” Devens Committee Chair Laura Scott wrote in her testimony. “Four times it has failed.”
The second argument is about representation. Under Section 25 of Chapter 498, Devens residents vote in local elections in the town where their residence is located: Harvard, Ayer, or Shirley. That distributes 409 Devens voters across three separate town meetings, where they vote alongside, but cannot outvote, the broader electorates of each town. The three Devens residents argue that a single combined meeting would give their community a proportional voice it currently lacks.
The towns read the same numbers differently. Devens has 308 registered voters in Harvard, 53 in Ayer, and 48 in Shirley. Under the proposed combined quorum of 50, those 409 Devens voters could fill the quorum eight times over. A zoning change could pass at a meeting attended only by Devens residents, with no voter from the non-Devens portions of any town present and no town government involved at all.
MassDevelopment says the goal is to make the amendment process more democratic, more efficient, and more in line with how zoning works elsewhere in Massachusetts. The agency said it is currently reviewing zoning changes “including residential use in the Innovation and Technology Center district,” consistent with the 2025 recommendations of the Devens Housing Working Group. In a written response to the Harvard Press, Kelsey Schiller, a MassDevelopment spokesperson, said it is “harder to amend the zoning in Devens than it is anywhere else in the Commonwealth, given that any one of the three towns has veto power over needed zoning changes.”
MassDevelopment argues the change is more democratic because it replaces a three-town institutional process with a direct majority vote. The towns argue the opposite: that town meeting is the institution through which they exercise self-government, and replacing it with a meeting called and controlled by a quasi-state agency removes accountability rather than obstacles.
The agency did not address whether it sought alternatives before proposing full replacement of the super town meeting process, or what controlling the meeting itself adds to the authority it already holds as the only body that can propose changes.
Sen. Eldridge said the Executive Office of Economic Development gave the three towns “very last minute outreach” before the bill was filed April 16. Harvard Select Board member Kara Minar, who was board chair when she received one of those early calls from MassDevelopment CEO Navjeet Bal, described the experience. “It definitely had a … fire drill feel because there were very few details and it seemed like very basic elements had not been considered like moderators and quorums,” she said.
“I will be opposing Section 171 of the proposed Economic Development bill, which is pending before the Legislature,” Eldridge said.
The bill is now before the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures, and State Assets where it awaits a 1 to 5 p.m. hearing on July 2 at the state house.