The usual crush of Town business is back, with plans brewing for Town elections and Spring Town Meeting in May. We need your help to push our agenda forward! Consider running for Town Meeting, serving on a Board or Commission, or becoming part of a precinct team. We need your help, and will be holding information sessions (via Zoom) in the coming weeks:
- Tuesday Jan. 28, 6-7pm
- Monday Feb. 10, 3-4pm
- Tuesday Feb. 11, 7-8pm
No commitment required, but we’d love to have you come and learn ways you can get involved and help move our pro-housing agenda forward. You can sign up HERE, and we look forward to seeing you.
Meetings this week
There are two important meetings this week, though unfortunately they are at the same time:
The Comprehensive Plan Study Committee is holding a hybrid meeting on Monday, January 13, at 7:00 PM, in person at 11 Pierce St. (Denny Room in the Health Building) – & via Zoom. We are concerned that a proposed list of the plan’s priority issues does NOT include housing. There will be an opportunity for public comment before the presentation from the consultants. Agenda is here; Zoom registration is here.
The Chestnut Hill Commercial Area Study Community Advisory Group will also meet on Monday, also in hybrid format, at 6:30 PM, at room 103 in Town Hall and via Zoom. This is a rare opportunity for the kind of large-scale development that can build our tax base while providing needed housing, but opposition may whittle it down to something that is not feasible. It needs to be a large-scale mixed-use development that can build our tax base while providing needed housing. There will be an opportunity for public comment, and we encourage folks to make this point. Agenda is here; Zoom link is here.
Note that public comment is scheduled for 7 pm for the Comp Plan meeting and at 8:15 for Chestnut Hill, so it is possible for you to contribute to both, either online or by walking from one building to the next.
Are we keeping up with the times? NO!
As a historian, I like to explore the sometimes strange world of the past. But I don’t usually want to live there. Yet many of our planning and zoning policies were established in and for a bygone era, as this article from the Boston chapter of the Urban Land Institute reminds us.
And for further evidence that our rules are not working for us: Select Board member John Van Scoyoc’s informative weekly newsletter presents a few numbers showing how much Brookline’s housing production has been lagging behind that of most of our neighboring municipalities, eighth best out of ten, even though they aren’t doing such a great job themselves.
Thanks, and have a great week,
Brian Ladd, on behalf of Brookline for Everyone