Two citizen’s petitions will be presented for a vote at the March 23 Town Meeting, one on town requirements for placing legal notices and the other asking the town to provide individual notices to affected residents in advance about discussions on proposed zoning changes.
Towns and other entities are required by state law to put paid legal notices in newspapers about things like public hearings, requests for proposals for construction projects, etc. However, as currently written, the law says those notices must go in a actual newspaper; publishing them in a digital-only news site is allowed as well, but does not by itself satisfy the legal requirement. Many local papers in Massachusetts discontinued their print editions in 2022 and merged some remaining publications, so towns are now forced to do business with the few print newspapers that are left, and those papers have very few readers in the towns they purport to cover.
Article 27, proposed by Lincoln Squirrel editor Alice Waugh, asks the Select Board to petition the state legislature for special legislation to allow Lincoln to satisfy requirements for legal notices by allowing the publication of those notices in local digital newspapers, print media, or both. Since print newspapers generally charge more than digital news sites for advertising, this would save the town money while also providing another revenue stream for the Squirrel.
Several other towns have approved similar citizen’s petitions: Arlington (YourArlington), Bedford (Bedford Citizen), and Franklin (Franklin Observer). State Rep. and Assistant Majority Leader Alice Peisch, who represents part of Lincoln, has also filed a bill (H.2098) that would accomplish the same thing on a statewide level by changing the statute. The Select Board endorsed the measure at its March 4 meeting.
Rezoning discussions
If approved, Article 28 would require town boards, sanctioned groups and committees proposing rezoning of an existing district to notify by mail each property owner, resident, and abutter in the area of rezoning 14 days prior to their first public meeting at which the zoning change would be discussed. Notices of subsequent meetings where a rezoning decision may be voted on would also be required.
The notice would outline the parameters of the existing district’s zoning along with the proposed changes. “It would be different from and in addition to any general information mailing because of the detail it would include,” says the warrant article proposed by Barbara Peskin.
Currently, the town disseminates townwide notices of pending zoning changes via meeting agendas, mailings. and usually neighborhood meetings. When an individual parcel is being considered for a special permit from the Planning Board or a variance by the Zoning Board of Appeals, abutting property owners must also be notified by mail.
The Select Board declined to take a position on the measure this week, saying it needed input from the Planning Board first. When asked why the current notification measures were not sufficient, Peskin said that “many of them [residents whose property would be directly affected by proposed HCA rezoning] found out after the State of the Town that it was going to be considered.”