HomeMy WebLinkAbout1989-06-28-AHOC-min.pdf AFFORDABLE HOUSING OPTIONS COMMITTEE
Meeting of June 2%, 1989
The third meeting of the Affordable Housing Options Committee was
held on Wednesday June 28 1989 in the Selectmen s Meeting Room at 8.00
PM. Minutes of prior meetings of both the Options Committee and the Pine
Meadows-Meagherville Site Development Committee were distributed, along
with real estate sales price data for Lexington and Middlesex County
provided by Gail Colwell.
Co-Chairman Ellie Klauminzer opened the meeting by outlining the
proposed agenda and asking for a review of the discussion of obstacles to the
acceptance of affordable housing as identified by the two working groups in
the previous meeting. Eric Michelson summarized the concerns that his
working group had identified and Diana Garcia did the same for her group,
based on notes recorded by Sara Schoman.
Planning Director Robert Bowyer then explained what the Town is
doing to identify tax title lots and other government owned land that might
he used for housing. The Town staff will sort the available land into two
categories consisting of parcels of 10 acres or more and of 125 000 sq. ft.
which will constitute size thresholds for both public and private land. In
addition, underdeveloped land and the land of not-for-profit organizations
will be considered. With respect to town owned land, it will be necessary to
investigate the public purpose for which the Town acquired the land it owns.
The inventorying process is expected to run through the end of summer
Bob Bowyer next introduced a matrix for classifying both goals and
techniques of affordable housing, with columns for the costs of construction,
land and financing, and horizontal categories of possible technique listed by
their degree of feasibility and availability It was recommended that the
'Goals Task Force and the Techniques Task Force use this matrix to classify
the goals and techniques that they will be considering.
Co-Chairman Jack Eddison raised the question of how to enable the
members of the Committee to play more active roles in advancing the
Committee s work. It was recognized that, for Committee members to
contribute effectively to future discussions, they would need to be familiar
with at least some of the current literature reports, etc. on affordable
housing at the town and state levels. Bob Bowyer offered to prepare an
annotated reading list by July 7 and to make the reading materials available
at the Cary Library These readings should help to provide a base of
common knowledge for Committee members. It was suggested that, building
on this base active participatory discussions could take place in the task
forces, following which, attempts at achieving consensus could be worked for
in the meetings of the full Committee
There followed a discussion of where the Committee should expect to
be coming out in November Town Meeting will be expecting us to come up
with our interim findings, which could be limited to a listing of possible
options or could express a consensus on what priorities, targets and
objectives best fit the Town s goals and policies. A fully worked out plan
covering all possible town sites would cost in excess of $100,000 would take
far longer than the time available to us and would be out of date before
much of it could be executed. What we may want to consider is something
between a site plan for 2-3 sites and a more general plan which identifies
the more promising sites.
The next meeting of the full Committee will be on Thursday, July 27,
at 8:00 PM in the Selectmen s Meeting Room.
The next meeting of the Goals Task Force will be on Tuesday June 11
at 8.00 PM, at 25 Walnut St.
The next meeting of the Techniques Task Force will be on Thursday
July 13 at 8:00 PM in Room 1 l 1 of the Town Office Building.
The meeting was adjourned at 10.00 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Jack Eddison
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