By Jonathan Soo
All Lincoln residents should feel threatened by how Option E supporters changed the rules so that they could force a plan developed in secret by an unaccountable private group onto the December 2 Town Meeting ballot and making what should have been an unofficial survey into a binding vote* for the plan that will be presented at the March 2024 Town Meeting.
In 2022, after the MBTA Communities Act was signed into law, the town created a detailed plan describing how it would develop a zoning bylaw. The town committed to having a town working group create a new zoning bylaw, followed by public hearings leading up to the March 2024 Town Meeting.
The town’s Housing Choice Act Working Group (HCAWG) collectively spent hundreds of hours evaluating and developing a number of options, gathering feedback from affected residents in a series of information sessions, and carefully ensuring that the proposed options meet not only the state’s requirements but also federal Fair Housing Act requirements, Lincoln’s Comprehensive Long Range Plan, and other obligations.
This fall, a small group of people opposed to additional housing in the town center decided that rather than making their case in March, they would hijack the process by developing their own plan using every loophole available to make sure no new housing could be built there. This plan was developed in secret by a small group of self-selected insiders, with no minutes or records of who participated or even when meetings were held.
On November 14, the Select Board voted to change the rules of the game. It asked HCAWG to rubber-stamp Option E so that it could be added to the ballot without review, and announced that the informal survey at the December 2 Town Meeting would be changed into a binding vote to select the option to be placed on the March ballot, effectively adding a primary vote to the process with two weeks’ notice — with one of those two weeks being the Thanksgiving holiday.
Even if Option E was developed in a legitimate way, changing the December 2 vote from a survey to a binding vote is an incredibly unfair change to the process. It is simply not possible for town residents to digest and evaluate all of the options in just a few days, especially since one of the options has only been publicly known for a single week. Too many residents will be entering the meeting with no real understanding of the implications of voting for each choice, to be swayed by a few minutes of rhetoric before the vote.
On top of this, many residents will be unable to rearrange their schedules at short notice to attend the meeting, assuming they hear about the changes at all. Most residents interested in the process still have a postcard on their refrigerators describing the December 2 meeting as “‘Sense of the Town’ from residents via an informal paper ballot on preferred option – C or D.”
Of course, Option E was not developed in a legitimate way — not in any way that should be acceptable for the town to place on a binding ballot. By placing it on the ballot and stating that it is a viable choice for the March 3 vote, the Selects are saying that the town stands behind it morally, ethically, and legally. No zoning law developed in secret should be allowed on any town ballot.
Every Lincoln resident, no matter which of the town’s options they support (C, D1, D2, or D3), should go to Town Meeting and vote against Option E as long as it has not been rejected.
* Editor’s note: Although the vote is binding, changes may still be made to bring the measure into compliance with state law if necessary — see the HCAWG website (Q&A #4 under “2023 11 22 FAQs).”
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Mr. Soo, I believe you have misunderstood the intention of and recent change to the voting process for the Housing Choice Act options.
The voting was *always* going to be binding. That was clearly stated in all the Select Board’s publications, and that has not changed with the addition of Option E.
The only changes are that we now have the ability to *discuss* the options at the upcoming Town Meeting AND there is an additional option to choose from. Prior to adding Option E, all the choices included the Lincoln Mall, which didn’t feel like much of a choice.
This is a complex issue. For anyone who wants to learn more about Option E in advance of Town Meeting, there is a Zoom meeting tonight open to whomever wants to join. You can find details here: https://sites.google.com/view/lincoln-hca-info/home
It is by no means a “small group of people”. Option E was presented in a public meeting on 11/21. You can look at the video of the meeting
The citizens group came together organically, not unlike the citizens group that sprung up in Newton (and displaced five incumbents in the recent elections). The Brookline Select Board also worked with citizen groups, going as far as visiting each building on Harvard St to make decisions on which ones to include as a group. This form of citizen involvement is happening in other towns.
**100** residents emailed the Selects asking for an additional option to Options C and Ds.
*Why does every single HCAWG option include the mall? *There would have been no need for a citizen-generated option if the HCAWG had 1) put forth an option without the mall and/or 2) addressed the numerous concerns (and mistakes) with options C and D. These concerns were brought up publicly.
Let’s remember Utile created the options in private meetings. There were no open discussions where the HCAWG went parcel by parcel as to what was included or not. Utile came up with the options privately (based on some loose guidance but no parcel-by-parcel open discussion whatsoever) and then were presented to the public. Perhaps if there had been open discussions with Utile, we would have been quicker to catch the multiple mistakes in the submission before it was sent to the State. (18 extra acres of parcels, LW zoning at 20 units/acre, etc). Must be noted that it was the citizens’ group who caught the mistakes.