| I think eventually Lincoln will have to comply but I agree that we shouldn’t rush into it. Weston is not hot to trot to comply. There’s absolutely no reason why Lincoln shouldn’t do the same.
Nicole
Sent from my iPhone On Oct 25, 2023, at 2:15 PM, maureen <maur...@mochuck.com> wrote:
I agree with including "Not Comply" as an option to vote on. What do we gain by rushing to comply with the state's guidelines? Has anyone done a real cost-benefit analysis for Lincoln residents if we increase census to these numbers--including increased costs for services such as fire, police, ambulance, and roads? What do we lose from the state regarding funding if we do not comply or delay compliance at this time?
What will be the costs of increased taxes to an already burdened town? What do we lose in property values if we destroy what makes Lincoln special--the conservation land, hiking trails, wildlife, farmlands, less traffic, and lower housing density? We still will not gain from affordable housing.
My husband and I would vote "No Comply"!!
Maureen Malin and Chuck Kaman
On 10/25/2023 9:08 AM EDT Robert Ahlert <robahl...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Carl, as always your intentions are noble.
And I think this is fundamentally what people need to decide for themselves and not have the HCAWG making decisions for the people. I have been and am still advocating for 5-7 options at the Dec 'Sense of the Town'.
Here is how I personally would lay out the options (feel free to disagree, anyone, please) ...
1. Full S. Lincoln - current Option C
2. 80/20 S. Lincoln + other current Multi-family area
3. 50/50 S. Lincoln + other current Multi-family area
4. 20/80 S. Lincoln + other current Multi-family areas (what i have been proposing, not yet included in any Options by HCAWG including the "Ds")
5. Full other current Multi-family areas
6. No Comply
I ask everyone to write to the Selects and discuss with their neighbors and friends to open this process back up and to let some other voices into the HCAWG!
Also please start paying attention to the Max Units calculations as show in our town's submission to the State using Option C. Once developer's get control 'by right', I'm not sure own town is prepared to defend itself. More to come ...
Rob
Rob, I'm glad we're in alignment about focusing on areas of existing density and infrastructure. Several of the options you and the group proposed seem promising. One remaining point of disagreement is how much to value walkability and proximity to transit when comparing options. I don't think we need to become Switzerland or turn back the clock 100 years or for anyone to live an environmentally-friendly car-free life for that to be worth prioritizing.
> the Route 2 corridor by far makes the most sense
Route 2 can certainly support much higher volumes of car traffic than Lincoln road but it's not an infinite traffic sink. Regional traffic including on Route 2 is increasing and Boston apparently now number four in the world for congestion ref https://inrix.com/scorecard/. Especially if neighboring towns similarly zone for car-dependent developments then driving commutes will continue to get worse -- not just on Lincoln Road but on Route 2 and elsewhere. I'm definitely not opposed to analyzing the impact on specific hotspots like five corners, just pointing out that if your goal is to minimize the inevitable increase in rush-hour car traffic that accompanies new housing then it seems paradoxical to support housing where people have no choice but to drive for every trip.
In the short term, putting housing units in places that allow residents to walk to stores and take a bus or train to work reduces traffic even if it only starts off displacing 10% of car trips compared to a similar quantity of housing along Route 2. And in the longer term, even if you believe that the displacement will be negligible today, this provides a safety release valve that allows additional trips to shift to alternate modes as regional traffic gets worse (likely) or walkability/transit gets better (maybe).
That's why resigning ourselves to car-dependent development in an attempt to minimize traffic in a specific neighborhood or intersection seems penny wise and pound foolish to me. Even if it makes the local impact less acute it makes the broader problem more entrenched and when we repeatedly apply this logic across towns and generations we end up in a tragedy of the commons with traffic backing up at five corners anyway. Avoiding that fate requires a coordinated long-term response which is why I'm in favor of prioritizing housing where people have more options.
> Remember from the Village Center survey, people don't want that density near L. Station
This makes it sound as if a majority of respondents opposed density in Lincoln Station, but as per your screenshot two-thirds of respondents felt that greater density there was an important or neutral priority which I interpret to mean they either actively want it or don't care, so it seems like at most one third were opposed. Further, some of those opposed respondents might be equally opposed to the other HCA options so I'm not sure this survey data provides enough information to support or reject any specific option.
I really do appreciate your hard work in coordinating alternative options for the town to discuss though, and hopefully we have the chance to get more feedback at upcoming meetings.
Carl
I agree. I think the "Option C" as presented is problematic in many ways - potential negative impacts on: environment, wildlife, affordable housing, traffic, pollution, town infrastructure, taxes, etc.
There needs to be more discussion and input, and frankly with the HCA guidelines changing multiple times, the limited community input received 6, 9, or 12 months ago is irrelevant at this point.
I hope that the HCAWG and its consultants present real, viable alternatives in D1 and D2 tonight, and not half hearted attempts that are really intended to steer back to Option C. As we have seen from the alternatives shared by various residents, there are many potential paths to compliance that should be considered.
Will Broughton
Bravo!
Let us re-visit ALL choices and discuss, as a community, the pros and cons of each.
We used to have town-wide planning exercises all the time and that has lead to the creative and progressive development we have today.
When did we stop trusting the whole?
Let us trust each other-all of us- to engage and problem-solve…and find a consensus “path forward.”
The HCA can be a part of that, but not the whole.
We should not let it hijack of democratic solutions to building a legacy we can be proud of.
Thank you Carl. I think that is where this community resident group (growing by the day) is headed with this. When options drafted back in the spring and summer included places like Oriole Landing, Commons, North Lincoln, etc, that made sense. Why were they removed?
I think if the MBTA were on its game and able to move people efficiently, the commuter rail area would make a lot of sense. But the MBTA has made absolutely NO COMMITMENT to improving rail service and is in fact going in the wrong direction.
So with that, we need to zone+build where there is already multi-family housing in place (no green field development) AND where the infrastructure ACTUALLY exists. Therefore, the Route 2 corridor by far makes the most sense. Is that a car-centric approach? Yes. Is America Europe or will it ever be? No. We cannot wind back the clock 100 years and magically turn ourselves into Switzerland. Should we do nothing? No, we should put 130 units = 20% by the commuter rail via HCA zoning. If that works out, we can add more. But don't give away everything to HCA zoning now, we don't have to.
Wishful thinking that the MBTA will get its act together will ruin the rural character of S. Lincoln (note the massing and volume of structures proposed).
Remember from the Village Center survey, people don't want that density near L. Station and they DO want to preserve rural character...
<image.png>
And again, why rush? This isn't due until December 2024, yes there is a Town Meeting schedule to manage but this is too important to rush it. Let's open it back up to 5 to 7 options for folks to choose from in December to get a real sense of the town.
Pay very careful attention to Options D1 and D2 tonight at the Planning Board and see if they are both lemons like the false choices at SOTT.
Rob
For what it's worth, as one of the lots under consideration on Codman Rd I support all of the HCA options that have been presented so far and I look forward to seeing the additional proposals from the HCWG and from citizen efforts like Rob Ahlert et al.
I would have no objection to swapping out logistically constrained acreage on Codman Rd and elsewhere for more practically buildable acreage near Lincoln Station or other areas of existing density served by public transit.
(As previously mentioned, my primary objection would be to zoning that encourages car-dependent greenfield development due to the unnecessarily higher natural and environmental impact.)
Carl
Codman Rd
Whether a development can accommodate a septic for a given building size or not is a different matter. The issue at hand is that the town has submitted a compliance proposal to the State that uses a 50’ wetland buffer instead of 100’. If we rezoned and the tried to stop a developer from building on that 100’ buffer, we will have no leg to stand on. A lot of these problems are exacerbated by sending a poorly thought out proposal that unnecessarily includes sensitive land. There are better proposals that do not put wetlands at risk.
Yes the state used its definition of developable land to calculate how many acres and how many units we must zone for. This definition ignored many aspects of a property and the regulations that constrain its development, not the least of which is septic. My experience on town boards suggests that septic requirements are going to be far more limiting than the wetlands regulations .
The State is very clear what it considers developable land. Land outside the 50' wetland buffer is developable. Lincoln has historically excluded land between the 50' and 100' buffer. This difference has been a known fact to the Committees and the Administration throughout this process. The State has calculated our developable land using that criteria and our models use those same assumptions. It would be absurd to pretend that we can tell the EOHLC an area is developable and then turn around and try to prevent a developer from building in that same spot. One of the main goals of the HCA is to prevent towns from that kind of obstructionism.
If there was any doubt about what I have just exposed, I do not understand why the Boards failed to consult with legal counsel in due time. It seems irresponsible to submit a proposal to the State and ask residents to vote on it at Town Meeting when basic questions like this have not been addressed. It is for this reason that I and many other residents think that we are unnecessarily rushing this process, failing to properly analyze all the different impacts of this critical decision we are putting in front of residents.
I applaud the decision to bring this to town counsel now. However, I would encourage residents to take whatever advice is provided with some skepticism. Not for nothing this is the same legal counsel who first told residents that HCA was an optional program, and now, without any judicial review intervening, is telling us that compliance is mandatory. This is the same legal counsel whose partner is giving another town the opposite advice we are receiving. We need independent legal advice,not advice from one whose continuing employment depends on individuals with strong views on this matter.
I would be happy to walk through the details of why the inclusion of DPW and the parcels south and east of it is an unnecessary part of Option C. Removing those parcels would bring us back to the Codman Corner district, presented in June by the HCA WG. All it would be required for us to do then would be to actually model the number of units to our stated number of units per acre, rather than an arbitrarily lower number like we do today. Having done those two things, we would still have 639 units and would continue to meet all the guidelines for approval by the EOHLC. I do not understand why the WG decided to raise the number of units per acre to 18, rather than the previous 15, if they were simultaneously planning to lower the number we use for modeling. It really seems from the outside like they were pushing us to develop the DPW and wetland buffer areas. Perhaps people with more knowledge of what happened can help me understand it.
I do not want people to take away from my email that I support a reformed Option C with the changes I have underlined. While undoubtedly better than what was presented to residents, it is still a very problematic proposal. I am happy to say that I am working on a set of compliant proposals with a group of motivated smart Lincolnites who are equally concerned about the impact of this proposal in our town. We believe that those proposals would do a much better job of preserving what makes Lincoln great and ensuring that we continue to plan Lincoln's future in a democratic, thoughtful way.
We need to be clear on the state vs local wetland buffer and how it is being applied:
- The State model requirement uses a 50' buffer for wetlands. Ms. Vaughn, our Director of Planning and Land Use and member of the HCAWG, confirmed that we can only exclude wetlands and a 50' buffer. That is how the HCA Option C model is being submitted
- Lincoln has a requirement of 100' setback for wetlands
We are submitting a plan to the State saying: "We propose to meet our 635 minimum required units with this plan that uses a 50' setback" - are we suggesting we can then restrict the actual building of such units by enforcing a local 100' setback? Are we submitting a model that then we plan to renege on?
The guidelines state the following: "The multi-family zoning districts required by Section 3A should encourage the development of multi-family housing projects of a scale, density and aesthetic that are compatible with existing surrounding uses, and minimize impacts to sensitive land."
Wetlands are considered "sensitive land". Why are we unnecessarily including so much of it?
While the submission form is available online, the model and other documents are not. Please see below for "error message".
<image.png>
Hi
Title V is different from the wetlsnd protection act.
Title V deals with septic systems which also has setback requirements that we must follow.
We are subject to both our local wetlands bylaw and the state wetlands protection act both of which give the Commission jurisdiction within 100 feet of a wetland and 200 feet from a perrennial stream.
That is inaccurate. The State uses a 50' buffer to model developable land, per Massachusetts Title 5 Wetlands Protection Program Policy (see link below). Lincoln's Director of Planning and Land Use (Paula Vaughn) confirmed that we can only exclude the wetlands and 50' setback in our HCA model, not the 100'. The 100' buffer is a local Lincoln ordinance.
By submitting Option C to the State, according to the model rules, we are submitting with a 50' buffer. Once it is approved by the State with a 50' buffer, it would be difficult for us to think we can apply our local 100' buffer.
The proposed zoning makes no change to our wetlands regulations. I believe the 100' buffer is state law not Lincoln.
The HCA does not require and and our proposed zoning does not include any changes to our wetlands regulations.
The parcels at the end of Codman Road and the DPW are included to make all the (many, complicated) numbers and rules work.
The DPW is town owned - it is municipal property. Selling municipal property requires a vote of town meeting. Municipal property does not count as developable land for the purposes of the HCA.
Margaret
I have three questions for Lincoln residents and board members involved in the HCA rezoning process
Are Lincoln residents comfortable with loosening our wetland restrictions?
Option C includes only a 50' buffer from wetlands, as that is what is allowed by the State. Lincoln has historically required a 100' setback. When a given district is rezoned to make it HCA compliant, Lincoln is de facto aligning with the State's wetlands characterization and 50' buffer. Thus, the rezoning would make it possible to build in areas in which it would not be possible to build today under Lincoln's conservation practices. I have attached pictures of Codman Rd wetlands from the State map compared to Lincoln's, so that everyone can see how different they look. Option C exacerbates this issue because it contains a large wetland area.
The Codman Rd district in option C was made larger than the Codman Corner district presented by the HCAWG in June, by extending into wetlands. Why are we making it possible to build three-story multi-family buildings on wetland buffers?
Why did the HCA WG decide to newly include 10 acres of parcels 171_26_0 through 171_29_0, that the town considers to be mostly wetlands? There was no technical reason to include those parcels . The proposal would still be well within the required lower bounds of units, total acreage, subdistrict acreage if those parcels were removed. Images below.
Why was the DPW site included in the HCA district? Is there a plan to redevelop that parcel and move the DPW to a different location in town?
The DPW site is part of Option C's district, which means it could eventually be redeveloped at 18 units/acre. We get no credit by including the DPW land as part of the HCA district, since the state does not consider it developable land today as it is owned by the town. However, by including it in the HCA district, we are preventing any sort of future mandate that would require more than 10% affordable housing on that parcel. I am curious as to the reason the DPW was included when we get no "credit" for it. One proposal I have heard is that the DPW site could be moved to the Transfer Station, is that the WG's reasoning?
There are other areas in town we could rezone that would prevent these issues. In fact, some of the proposals that were put forward by the WG in the first stages of the process were more in-line with Lincoln's approach to rezoning and development, which put a high value on ecological sustainability, preservation of its rural character and affordability.
Codman Rd district
Local map
Codman Corner district (June proposal)
Codman Rd district see area in green (Option C)
Developable area around Lincoln Station
![image.png]()
Jeff, I’m not an architect either, but am pretty sure the Onigman lot would never host 20, let alone 15 units, unless Lincoln decides to adopt municipal sewage. A development isn’t just a building footprint; it needs to conform to setbacks, building codes, parking access and probably many other standards. (Full disclosure: I wasn’t even able to get a permit for a single-car garage on a 2-acre lot, due to such restrictions). The economics would probably have to be much more favorable than they are at present.
I also enjoy walking to town on a trail that takes me to Todd Pond Road – a much quieter route than Codman Rd.!
Jennie
Bowles Terrace
David,
Looking at the town's GIS, it looks to me like your 2.8 acre plot could definitely have a much larger footprint than the existing house, even with the wetlands on the property. And at 15 units an acre, it could potentially house 20+ units? What was your sourcing for the inability to develop further? I admit, I'm one of the few town residents who is not an architect so I might be missing something.
The HCA working group says that this rezoning would potentially shift 11 units into 180 units, so I'm just trying to pin down where these could potentially be. If most of the Codman owners are not planning on taking advantage of this change (or cannot), then excluding these lots from a HCA plan would seem to cost little to the goals of increased housing stock.
In general I'm really struggling with the general issues of this HCA plan that takes a very residential street now -- Codman -- and rezones it to something entirely different. It seems like not just taking a downtown area and densifying it, but rather expanding the downtown area dramatically in a way that doesn't feel like the Lincoln we all know now and (when time allows) walk through to get to Codman Farm and Donelans or the Tack Room. The feel of houses like yours really makes the walk feel more like being on one of our many trails in town, versus on a busy street sidewalk.
Add my voice to all the others on here that would be very interested in seeing a HCA compliant proposal that doesn't include the Codman subdistrict. If we as a town discover we love the feel of the new downtown housing project awaiting a greenlight, we can always add a Codman district later and double the effect. But we don't have the luxury of clawing it back ever, and this current plan looks like a blind leap that would cost a feel that many in the town cherish.
Twin Pond Lane
I have been hesitant to engage in the housing discussion on LincolnTalk, but after reading a few recent comments about the motives for some of the Codman Road residents and their advocacy in favor of the Housing Choice Act and our road being included in it, I am inspired to weigh in.
I live on Codman Road and was one of the residents that advocated in favor of my area of South Lincoln to be included in the proposals submitted to the Commonwealth to be in compliance with the Housing Choice Act.
I consider myself a housing advocate and generally speaking am in favor of the legislation. There is a housing crisis in this country, and in Massachusetts, and every town can do their part to contribute a small bit to increased inventory to support this issue.
I also consider myself an advocate of public transportation and am a frequent user of the commuter rail. My family is able to currently be a one car family largely in part to my proximity to the train into Boston.
I am in support of all plans that include these subdistricts to be as close to the Commuter Rail as possible, as I believe that to be in the spirit of this legislation, and also what is best for our town planning.
I love Lincoln, I think Lincoln is an amazing place to live and raise children.
Lincoln is over 40% conservation land and nothing is ever going to change that.
I believe that the effects of the HCA to loosen a bit of the zoning laws in certain subdistricts to not be by-right single-family housing is a good thing.
I believe towns like Lincoln that are looking to support a small commercial center and maintain services like a grocery store need to modify a bit of the by-right zoning to ensure that things like having a grocery store are sustainable.
Let me clarify that my beliefs are not driven by any personal financial aspirations linked to my property. For those seeking assurance, my lot, surrounded by wetlands, isn't viable for further development. Our family home, built in 1951, has always stood here, and we have no intentions of leaving.
So I am just here to say - yes, in my backyard, I support the HCA, I support Codman road being included as one of the subdistricts.
Every town can do a small part to support more housing inventory and every town can do a small part to allow more housing near public transportation.
I’m not looking to engage in any LincolnTalk back and forth on my thoughts on this, but if anyone is looking to discuss these topics further offline, please feel free to write me an email and we can grab a cup of coffee.
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