[Town Meeting] Warrant Article 15

[John Belskis]

My apologies for not being prepared to offer an amendment or resolution for Article 15. Unfortunately I thought the Special Meeting would put these Articles over to Monday and I had time to formulate a meaningful response.

This Article despite the Board's no action position did in fact have a bearing on our 40B status. Because the cemeteries are zoned R1 they remain as available land for development and are not excluded from the land area calculation for obtaining 40B exclusion under the 1.5% rule. The town owned cemeteries are excluded because they are public property. We have two cemeteries that if excluded would further reduce the available land for development. While this may be an insignificant offset, every little bit counts. 

For some reason our involved Boards don't seem willing to consider every option and opportunity to attain the 1.5% exclusion that would allow us to pursue our own programs for developing affordable housing rather than having some predatory 40B developer imposing their project on the town. We should be working both sides of the ratio to attain the exclusion, so I rather resent the attitude that it doesn't contribute a significant impact so lets not deal with it.

I will probably seek relief from this anomaly through the Legislature or a DHCD regulation change. There is no way on earth that a cemetery would become buildable land. If nothing else, all the graves should be counted as affordable units as they are well below market price and easily purchased by anyone.  

John Belskis
Precinct 18
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