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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2004-10-25-HPB.min Lexington Housing Partnership Meeting Minutes for October 25, 2004 Attendees: Florence Baturin Bob Bicknell Ken Kreutziger Harriet Cohen Inky MacDougall Donald Graham Betsy Weiss Maryann McCall-Taylor Bob Bicknell chaired the meeting; Harriet Cohen took the minutes. The meeting was called to order at 7:11 pm. 1. Hear Reports from Sub-committees. Zoning By-Law Changes (Mary Haskell) Ms. Haskell submitted her report via e-mail (see Appendix I). Mr. Bicknell noted that the Planning Board will consider the warrant articles they will support. They are likely to support the accessory apartment by-law and the adaptive re-use by-law. They are unlikely to support the inclusionary zoning by-law at this time because it is a complex issue regarding more study and more public review. However, they do plan to describe all the zoning initiatives in the information sessions that will be held. HOME Consortium (Bob Bicknell) The Lexington HOME Plan has been submitted to the MetroWest consortium. MetroWest will include the plan in the MetroWest plan. There will be at least one and probably two public hearings on the Lexington HOME Plan and another public hearing on the MetroWest plan. Housing Trust (Florence Baturin) Work is in progress to obtain IRS approval for the 501(3)(c) status. Land Use (Winifred McGowan) No updates to report at this time. 2. Report from the chair ACTION David Burns will represent the Lexington Housing Partnership on the ACTION committee. New LIP by Homes Development Corp Mr. Bicknell was briefed by The Homes Corp about their LIP (Local Initiative Program). The LHP is a required approver of the LIP program as is the Board of Selectmen. The Homes Corp has bought some land at state auction. The zoning regulations would allow the Homes Corp to build, at most, two single-family houses. Instead, they are proposing through the LIP to build 8 town homes, with 2 affordable. We will continue to monitor the progress on the LIP and determine what our next steps will be. Lexington Housing Partnership Selectman’s Breakfast on Oct. 13: On March 16, 2005, Lexington will have a “Lexington Unplugged” day. There will be no meetings that day, no homework for students, no sports activities. Families will be encouraged to spend time together. Mr. Bicknell briefed the Selectmen and other attendees on the activities of the LHP to date. He noted that the greatest challenge for Lexington was to provide a means for young families to buy starter homes in town. We need to coordinate with the Lexington Center Committee, the Historic Commission, and the 20/20 Vision Committee. Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting The Transportation Advisory Committee asked Mr. Bicknell to provide advice to the committee about performing a “mobility partnership” to move transportation issues forward. Block Grant Alert Mr. Bicknell received notice of the availability of block grant funding. We may choose to pursue the block grant funding next year. 4. New Business It was suggested that the LHP develop an information center for people seeking affordable housing information: Mr. Bicknell asked for volunteers for this project. Please contact Mr. Bicknell if you are interested in participating in this effort. This work will be discussed further at the next meeting. If anyone is aware of other towns that have done similar work, please either let Mr. Bicknell know or bring that information to the next meeting. 5. Next Meeting Plans and Adjourn The next meeting will be held on November 23, 2004 at 7:00 pm in room G-15 at Town Hall. The following meetings will be in the Library meeting room: Thursday, Dec. 16, 2005 Thursday, May 19, 2005 Thursday, June 16, 2005 Lexington Housing Partnership Appendix I: Report Submitted by Ms. Haskell This past Thursday we had a well attended zoning bylaw committee meeting. Please note that Bob Bicknell and Maryanne McCall -Taylor, interim Town Planner, come to all of our meetings. Officially this was Phil Herr's last meeting. By the end of the meeting, however, it was acknowledged that the present draft of the inclusionary zoning proposal is so complex that we need additional help from Phil in order to go forward in this area. Bob will work to obtain more funding to hire Phil to continue his consulting for us. We have not yet scheduled our next meeting (they have been monthly) because of the extent to which we feel stymied by inclusionary zoning. A good part of the meeting was spent discussing long term affordability. On the one hand is the view that long term affordability should be accomplished by monitoring re-sales of the inclusionary units. This would mean monitoring the income and assets of the purchaser and/or limiting the equity at the time of resale. The expense of monitoring scattered site housing can be very high. So then comes the question of whether the initial sales price, with a requirement that there can be no enlargement of an inclusionary unit, will contain inherent affordability over time. Tom Harden reported that the Planning Board would like to see us go forward with accessory apartment proposals. In theory the Planning Board wants to work on inclusionary zoning but as a practical matter it probably does not have time to bring it to the March 2005 Town Meeting. He suggested an informal public meeting in November or early December to do some educating of the public and the Planning Board on our three issues: inclusionary, accessory apartments and adaptive re-use. David Williams thinks the Planning Board hearings, informal and formal, will serve the necessary educational purpose; that is, we should just follow the usual route because the same interested parties will show up. Phil Herr recently moderated a forum of planners from a dozen Massachusetts towns that have been successful in obtaining "smart growth affordability". The consensus view of how they achieved success was by means of 1) establishing a culture and vocabulary of people within the town generally with regard to this subject and 2) have an organization similar to our Lexington Housing Partnership.