MILTON’S PLANNING BOARD is starting to develop contingency rezoning plans in case the Supreme Judicial Court orders the municipality to come into compliance with the MBTA Communities Act.
The board posted a slide deck on the town website showing several possible rezoning scenarios and at a recent meeting asked its consultant to run the numbers on several other options. Most of the scenarios revolve around lessening or eliminating the impact of the rezoning effort on the eastern part of Milton, which voted overwhelmingly to reject an earlier rezoning plan that had been approved at town meeting.
The February vote, 56 to 46 percent, meant Milton was not in compliance with the MBTA Communities Law and prompted Attorney General Andrea Campbell to sue the town. The SJC is slated to hold a hearing on the matter on Monday, with Campbell asking the court to order the town to comply.
Milton in its court filing says the only penalty for noncompliance with the law is the loss of state grant funds. The town also argues that the ancient MBTA trolley line that serves the community is not a subway and therefore the municipality should not be designated a “rapid transit community.” Rapid transit communities are required by the MBTA Communities Act to rezone for the most multifamily housing units – in Milton’s case, 2,461 units. Milton argues it should only be required to come up with a rezoning plan with the potential to generate 984 housing units.
The Planning Board has been talking since earlier this year about developing alternative rezoning options, but the slides posted on the town’s website appear to be the first concrete steps the panel has taken.
According to scenarios outlined in the slides, the primary goal of the new rezoning effort is to reduce the impact on East Milton and an adjacent area bordering Granite Avenue and increase the number of housing units that could be built in the area of Eliot Street, which borders the trolley line.
The proposal calls for reducing the minimum lot size in the Eliot Street area from 7,500 square feet to 6,250 square feet and capping the number of units per lot at four instead of three. That proposal would increase the number of units that could potentially be built in the Eliot Street area by 412 units. Meanwhile, changes in the East Milton plan would reduce the number of potential units that could be built there by 430 units.
The slide deck also examined other ways to reduce the impact on the eastern part of town, including eliminating any rezoning of the stretch along Granite Avenue and finding another part of town where more multifamily housing could be built.
At a meeting of the Planning Board on September 16, the board looked at properties on Randolph Avenue, Brush Hill Road, and Truman Parkway as alternatives to Granite Avenue. Board member Margaret Oldfield urged her colleagues to spare the Granite Avenue area.
“The Granite Avenue neighborhood really came out and said no, we don’t want the plan [during the February referendum],” Oldfield said. “One of our goals is we do have to reduce the number on Granite Avenue significantly.”
Cheryl Tougias said the board should evaluate all the available options before declaring any one area off limits. She said residents of whatever section of town is rezoned for more multifamily housing are likely to raise objections.
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