In an editorial, the Boston Globe criticizes the decisions of many Newton City Council candidates to stay silent about housing and development issues. This is a must read about an important issue.
Here’s an excerpt:
“What happened to transparency in campaigning? It’s hard not to see these answers as just avoiding an important question, one that serves to shape voters’ view of candidacies, with a flimsy legal pretext. And the notion that a candidate can’t express a view on a question they’ll vote on defeats the purpose of having elections.”
YES !!!
This is what this election is all about and too many candidates are dancing around the issue. Density is the Problem, and here we are facing Washington Street ( 1500 units ), Northland (800 units ), Riverside ( 600 units ), and innumerable smaller developments and our political leaders refuse to express resistance to these problems. It’s all very depressing and if the voters of this city don’t recognize where we are being led, it’s a downhill slide we will be on with no correction possible. Our commercial tax base will have been compromised, traffic will be more of a nightmare, the costs of city services, and schools, will not be covered with the taxes paid from all this new development and the + $1 Billion debt we currently own will be even further from resolution.
Not for the first time, the Globe Editorial Board has its collective head up its rear end.
The problem here is not that members of a special permit granting authority (SPGA) may not comment on a special permit application until the public hearing has been closed. That is a long-established precedent, albeit sometimes observed in the breach.
No, as I explained to John Hilliard of the Boston Globe, the problem is that a SPGA that is comprised of elected officials has an inherent conflict between their role as representatives of their constituents and their quasi-judicial role as an impartial, unbiased arbiter of whether a special permit meets the criteria set forth in the zoning ordinance.
But there is an easy fix. The City Council can, without a charter amendment, delegate the SPGA to another, appointed public body such as the Planning Board or Zoning Board of Appeals. This would have at least two salutary effects. First, it would eliminate the conflict which arises because every councilor knows that her/his vote could affect the outcome of the next election, particular for ward councilors who want to approve an unpopular project in their ward. Second, it would rest the SPGA with a public body comprised of members drawn from diverse, relevant areas of professional experience and expertise who could fairly and impartially decide without bias or favor whether a special permit should be granted.
There would also be another incidental impact that would permanently rid us of this troublesome twenty-four member City Council. Without the SPGA, the workload of the City Council would be substantially reduced, and more easily accommodated by a much smaller legislative body in our city.
Naturally, neither members of the City Council nor their constituents who would prefer that the SPGA be a representative function rather than a quasi-judicial one would ever permit this. Well, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. It is long past time for the City Council to delegate its special permit granting authority to an appointed public body comprised of professional who can fairly and impartially decide whether special permits meet the requisite criteria to be granted.
@Ted well, maybe this is true. Right now, housing is a big issue. And there is a “planning department ” , although they seem to be more reactive than planning. They certainly were sleeping as a developer bought up Washington street, so as To cause them to say “Hello” to Washington street, as if they’d never seen it before.
But then, why not do that for everything? The city council collectively are hardly experts in anything. Neither is the school Board, another elected body. Perhaps all elected officials should do is appoint experts to solve everything. Might work better.
By the way, I’m still waiting for you to begin – you said you couldn’t begin – to tell me how wrong my linear programming model for optimizing profits was wrong.
@Ted, Excellent thoughts. As you suggest, we could surmise that voters would not like the Council to assign its SPGA authority to another body, no matter how thoughtfully populated that body would be. A hint of this reluctance was the defeat of the charter reform proposal, which mainly occurred to preserve local ward influence in city matters. But it has always struck me as cumbersome to have all 24 councilors involved in such permitting decisions. As you suggest, there are arguments pro and con on this issue.
Why not do a market test: Instead of focusing in the election on particular projects, why not have candidates discuss their position on the general delegation issue? There would be no legal prohibition to that discussion. Maybe it’s too late for this election, but the LWVN or other debate sponsors could add the question to future debates.
BTW, even if this responsibility were delegated, there’s still plenty of work left for the Council. I would not suggest making the Council smaller as part of that discussion. For example, the Council could engage in proper oversight of misplaced executive branch proposals. There’s enough work to be done on that front. Just look at how NewCAL was going along for months, essentially unsupervised by the Council until several thousand constituents raised objection to use of parkland for the project. This was a car crash occurring in slow motion, with no-bid contracts and the like. Real involvement by councilors could have helped the Mayor adopt an approach more likely to succeed, one that would unify the community, rather than divide it.
And I get accused of getting off topic .
@ Rick Frank.
The Planning Department is reactive ??!!
From my perspective ( Needham Street Visioning Committee ), they helped Northland design the project.
When I called for commercial development there, they supported Northlands housing objectives.
They are a “Design Department “, lead by the political establishment, including primarily the Mayors office. I’m sure the LIFA, Right Size , NVA and Washington Street opponents would whole heartedly agree ?
Councilors running for re-election have also been dead silent on reducing the Council size.
For many decades the city council worked in collaboration with
the planning department to guide new development.
All the experienced people have now left. Newton’s executive
branch have hired new people who will do the mayor’s bidding
on development. This is not a positive situation for the city’s
future. The mayor’s decisions must reflect the majority will of the residents.
If Ted H.M. had his way, the mayor would appoint a Planning Board to decide on city wide developments. This would render
complete power to Newton’s executive branch of government.
How is that democratic? Sounds to me like a dictatorship.
I can not believe someone like RuthAnne, Setti and David Cohen
capable of such complete power.
I’ve run into this roadblock with incumbents over a number of election cycles, including this one. My usual response is that there are ways to talk about the issue without getting into the details of specific projects. Voters want to know how candidates think about development in general, what guidelines they use, how they would approach decision making, how they would communicate with constituents on the topic…there is plenty to discuss without getting into details on any one project.
Perhaps a question to ask on Saturday night (War Memorial, 5 pm, ‘Saturday Night at the Races’ event) is whether or not a candidate supports creating or delegating this responsibility to a separate public body.
@ Peter Karg
Did someone say 8-8…
@Tarik- If elected what would you do to move your Council colleagues forward with such a plan? Can you get Mayor Fuller’s support which would be crucial?
2 years ago, the City Council passed the 8-8 after the election in the lame duck session. It passed 17-6. Mayor Warren then refused to sign the home rule legislation. I know Councilor Fuller voted against the 8-8. I have no idea how she feels about it now.
If voters really want to know where candidates stand on high-interest developments like Northland and Riverside, there is a much simpler, straightforward way to get relevant information from the candidates.
Using Riverside as an example, along with filing its application for a special permit, Mark Development also filed proposed zoning amendments that would change the dimensional and density criteria for development at Riverside Station. Another thread discusses Mark Development’s recent announcement, that, after negotiations with the Lower Falls Improvement Association, it is reducing the height and density criteria while increasing the setback along Grove Street.
Unlike a special permit, which is a quasi-judicial function, zoning is a legislative function. IMHO, there is nothing that prevents a councilor who will be voting on both the special permit and the underlying zoning from talking about the merits of the zoning, which will give voters some insight into how much density that councilor would accept for that particular site. That could tell you a lot of what you might want to know.
And, because candidates who are not currently councilors cannot vote on the special permit application (which dies at the end of the term), there is really nothing that prevents them from answering questions about either the special permit or the underlying zoning.
Important point from Ted Hess-Mahan:
So great to have the benefit of @Ted’s institutional memory and perspectives on these topics!
Emphasis on ‘ institutional’. (Anybody ever see the movie “Brazil”?!)