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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-09-05-HATS-minHANSCOM AREA TOWNS COMMITTEE (HATS) September 5, 2024 at 7:00 pm Meeting MINUTES Pursuant to a notice duly filed with the Town Clerks of HATS member towns, the HATS meeting convened virtually by Zoom video conference. Present: Select Board Members: Mark Sandeen, Lexington Select Board and HATS Chair; Emily Mitchell, Bedford Select Board; Jim Hutchinson, Lincoln Select Board, Terri Ackerman, Sudbury Select Board. Other HATS Members: Charles Hornig, Lexington Planning Board Member; Guests: Jessica Casserly, HAFB Public Affairs; Amber Goodspeed, Massport Government and Community Relations; Anne Sobol, Lincoln; Christopher Eliot, HFAC Chair; Tom Gramaglia; Mike Vatalaro; Barbara Katzenberg; Margaret Leeson; Corinne Doud; Alex Chatfield, Lincoln MCAC representative. AGENDA Welcome and Introductions: Mark Sandeen, HATS Chair welcomed the meeting attendees and briefly outlined the meeting agenda. Minutes: Jim Hutchinson moved to approve the minutes of July 10, 2024 as presented, seconded by Emily Mitchell, unanimously approved by roll call vote. Municipal Updates: Bedford, Emily Mitchell: vacancy on their Planning Board, interviewing four candidates. Select Board had a meeting this summer to set goals for the year, and one of top goals is to look at different road intersections, focusing on safety after fatal accident. One problem they are facing is that the Town doesn't own all right-of-ways. In other news, a 139 -unit development close to town center is being discussed, and is somewhat controversial. On a fun note, their Bedford Day is coming up on Sept 21. Finally, not Select Board's jurisdiction, but their School Committee is working with the Teachers Union on new contract. Sudbury, Terri Ackerman: Their transportation Committee is also talking about the Bedford intersection. In other news, they have received provisional approval from the Attorney General for their MBTA Community plan, although a few technical issues raised by EOHLC need to be addressed. The town is down to 9.9% on their SHI, but they recently approved a friendly 40B development near Baker Ave Ext, where lots of medical offices are, which is several hundred units. They also have approved CPC funding for a pedestrian walkway into West Concord so you won't have to drive around the river. They also have another 40B development in progress, which all together will get them up to 15% SHI. Finally, they are requesting a no-fly zone during 250th Celebrations, and will bring this formal request before HATS before long to hopefully get our endorsement. Lincoln, Jim Hutchinson: We continue to work on our Community Center project on our Ballfield Road campus next to our newly renovated school, and funding for that project was approved in March. We did get Attorney General approval of our MBTA Community Zoning plan approved at Town Meeting in March. We have one new initiative, a Town Meeting Study Committee forum in September, driven by resident desire to discuss possible changes to Town Meeting process, including using electronic clickers, remote voting, and other possibilities. We will try to learn from what other Town study committees have done. Finally, we also have some efforts to study intersections, driven by our Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety group. Lexington, Mark Sandeen: LexHab is an entity formed by the town 40 years ago for purpose of supporting affordable housing, but Town Counsel advised they ought to treat them as municipal entity for procurement and other purposes, and so Lexhab determined they would be more effective if they split from town and turned into 501c3, and thus have done so and can take contributions directly from residents. In other news, the Selects recently issued an RFP for 140 units of affordable housing on 3 acres of town owned land, and they have received 7 proposals and expect to select a developer in October. On their big high school building project, they have seen high engagement in planning process, and are deciding whether or not to include structures such as a field house that are not covered by MSBA funding. On intersection work, the Select Board approved a public participatory process for their ARPA funds, and the number one project requested by residents was to put flashing lights at 7 street crossings. Charles Horning added an update on MBTA Community Zoning progress, saying they have received a lot of interest and now have 6 projects in permitting process, 1 of which is thru site plan review. Some construction might start next year. Projects of interest to HATS: 312 unit proposal on Hartwell Avenue, and another large proposal on Concord Ave. Overall across the six projects roughly 1,100 units are being proposed, which is on the order of 10% of current housing units in town. HFAB update, Jessica Casserly: 1. Draft Environment Assessment for Fire Station project was just made available to download on their website today. Public comments will be accepted on this project thru October 5, 2024. The project will build a new 26,OOOsf fire station and a new 5,150sf passenger terminal — which is solely used by HFAB personnel — and then demolish the old building that served both functions previously. 2. About the Sartan Gate project, it is 85% complete, and they hope to be done by Feb 2025. Their will be night paving on Sept 16 + 17, 6pm to 4am on both days. Finally, the base will be conducting exercises next week Sept 9-13 testing their emergency procedures and first responders. No noise should be evident outside of the base, although there will be a few gate closures at times, all during the workday. Massport update, Amber Goodspeed: 1. Their salt storage shed is being relocated from the West Ramp area just east of Jet Aviation hangar. It has been demolished, and that area will be repaved tomorrow. 2. Their Draft Environmental Status and Planning Report has been out for a few months now, and comments are due to the MEPA office by Sept 12. 3. The shorter 5-23 runway at the airport has been repaved and has reopened. It will be painted in October, but the runway is open for use now, with warnings to pilots that the runway markings are not yet standard. There were several calls complaining about trucking related to this runway work from one resident, but there have not been any other complaints. Discussion about a HATS comment letter on the ESPR Report. Mark Sandeen reviewed a draft letter, covering a variety of concerns about the report, including: request to report pollutants generated for the full flight instead of just until up 3,000ft of elevation as is the current standard used by Massport; request for more disclosure about importance of lead; complaint that growth in the operations forecast seems low compared to growth implied by the North Airfield expansion plans recently discussed by Massport; request that location of air pollution measurements should be closer to airfield; request to update ESPR to consider all state climate and environmental legislative mandates; request to take into account the impact of MBTA Community Zoning likely to lead to growth in population in HATS towns rather than the declines currently projected in the ESPR; requested revising overly optimistic projections about electric aircraft; and finally requesting updates to the ESPR to better reflect current science on the health impacts of noise. Emily Mitchell commented that the letter was excellent and, although she noted that Massport was likely to say that the FAA is responsible for emissions above 3000 feet, so really our complaint there is to the FAA. Terri Ackerman reviewed a reorganization of the content that she prepared which reordered the topics and added headers to identify topics more clearly, although she believes she did not change any content materially. Jim Hutchinson also thanked Mark for his excellent work on the draft letter and seconded other members' comments about how the letter covered many important issues of concern to our constituents. He had one technical point that the current drafting would double count emissions if all airports adopted it, so maybe we should only ask Massport to count emissions for half of the distance flown on all departures and arrivals? Christopher Eliot chimed in that perhaps it would be simpler and more accurate for all airports to count only emissions of arrivals, when the actual flight path was known with certainty, since it was then complete. Both agreed that this was a big ask unlikely to be adopted in the near term, however. Emily Mitchell then moved to empower the Chair to amend the letter as discussed tonight, get HATS Selects to a -sign, and then submit it to the MEPA office before the deadline. Motion was seconded by Jim and approved unanimously by roll call vote. Change to Massport Charter to consider environment: Mark Sandeen reported that HATS sent a letter in July to our legislative delegation, encouraging them to support legislation changing Massport's charter to consider environmental resilience, equity, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks in part to efforts by our representatives, such bills were subsequently passed both the House and the Senate, but the reconciliation committee failed to agree on a compromise and no climate bill was passed, and is unlikely to be taken up again until the next legislative session. Chris Eliot offered that some correspondence with Alice Peisch indicted she is hopeful that something will still happen here. Future meeting schedule: Mark Sandeen polled the members for suggestions of topics for the next meeting, but the consensus was that we have covered the current topics for now. Alex Chatfield suggested inviting Rich Davy, the new member of Massport's Board who started work in August, to come and talk to HATS. Amber Goodspeed will pass along the invitation. After discussion, the committee agreed to a next meeting on Thursday, November 14, 2024. Adjournment: Jim Hutchinson moved to adjourn, seconded by Emily Mitchell; the roll call vote was unanimous, and the meeting adjourned at 8:19pm. Minutes respectfully submitted by Jim Hutchinson Lincoln Select Board