We need more housing in the city core, not out at the edge of town.
In response to a question at the May 9, 2023 meeting of the Economic Development Committee, Mayor Wedegartner mentioned that "there's some work being done on Main St. to do some upper-story Main St. redevelopment for housing… for market-rate housing," specifically saying that it was not just the Wilson's building:
I have not been following this topic all that closely, but it's the first I've heard of additional housing redevelopment downtown. I'd be pretty interested to hear more.
The question came up in the context of the EDC's discussion of the latest proposal for rezoning a portion of the much-discussed French King Highway land on the northeast end of town up past Stop & Shop. A different version of this proposal failed to pass when it came before the City Council a month or two ago.
The current proposal is to change the zoning of five parcels of land between the French King Highway Route 2 from General Commercial to Planned Industrial. The original motion to do the same to eleven parcels failed in December at City Council due to several councilors' concerns about the dearth of affordable housing in the city. Per the discussion at this EDC meeting—which was held jointly with the Planning Board—the amount of land under consideration here is relatively small.
These parcels are currently zoned as General Commercial, which means two- and three-family dwellings are allowed by right, while single-family and multi-family (i.e., more than three) dwellings are allowed by special permit. Changing the zoning of the parcels in question to Planned Industry would mean that no housing would be allowed even by special permit—thus the objections from the City Council.
The obvious question here is that if the current zoning allows for a variety of housing construction but none has happened over the many years these parcels have sat empty, then why do we care about whether this proposal to change the zoning would no longer allow for housing? One would assume that if anyone was interested in building housing there, it would have already happened.
But of course, it's not that simple. A chunk of the 11 parcels included in the original proposal that failed last year is the land for which Stop & Shop currently holds the lease. They will hold onto that lease and do nothing with it as long as it is zoned General Commercial out of fear that if they let it go, a competitor will pick up the lease and build retail. So even if someone did want to build housing there, they would not have been able to acquire the lease to do it.
However, the number of parcels discussed in this EDC meeting is only five. While the topic of Stop & Shop was mentioned, I don't actually know whether that property is still in scope for this latest version of the proposed zoning changes.
Either way, I think I agree that the housing question, while quite important for Greenfield overall, is not super-relevant here. If we are going to expand affordable housing for people in the city, I don't think the edge of town is where we should be focusing. Yes, there is the Stop & Shop right there, but not much else. There are also no sidewalks or any other kind of infrastructure to support residential construction and make it a livable part of town.
Which brings us back around to the question at the very start of this thread about more affordable housing—and more housing of any kind, really—in and around the downtown core. This is the area should be our focus. Increasing our core housing density is what will give us a walkable, vibrant community and does not require the buildout of a lot of costly infrastructure on the periphery of town.
As for the rezoning of the French King Highway parcels, it seems like a reasonable proposal to me. While I don't agree with Al Normal about much, his public comment (well over the 3-minute limit as usual) at this session about the need to expand our industrial tax base in Greenfield was correct. As long as we are reliant mostly on residential property taxes, we are going to continue to be strapped for money.
In the meantime, neither the Economic Development Committee nor the Planning Board held a vote on the updated proposal at this meeting. The next meetings are June 1 for the Planning Board and June 13 for the EDC.
An unsurprising but troubling new wrinkle in the FY24 school budget fight.
Details are still a bit scant, but the Mayor has apparently withdrawn the $365k she had pledged to the Greenfield Public Schools FY24 budget, citing the additional $1.1M that the City Council allocated to the schools last week. Of course, the City Council stopped at $1.1M on the assumption that the additional #365k would be there. Now, despite the Council's work last week, a bunch of cuts to the schools will still have to be made.
Adding to the confusion and consternation is the fact that the memo sent to the City Council references the $365k as supplemental funding, which would suggest it is related to the current FY23 budget, rather than the FY24 budget.
While it is not in my nature personally to do so, I do my best to approach everything I talk and write about here regarding our local government in a way that assumes good intentions. Too often, political discussion is framed by assumptions that everyone involved is crooked and out for themselves, that disagreements are always moral battles, and that decisions and answers that don't make sense can only be explained by ulterior motives and conspiracies.
While those framings can help to motivate political participation and to rally the troops, I think they are generally counterproductive when it comes to solving actual problems. I think this is especially true at the local level, where despite our differences and disagreements, we are neighbors in the community. Political outrage has its place, and I don't judge anyone for having that response; I am simply stating my own approach when it comes to talking about this stuff.
I state all of that here by way of prefacing the fact that I am finding it increasingly difficult to assume good intentions on the part of the Mayor throughout this budget debate. So far, I have only seen reports of this latest potential turn of events on social media, so I am aware that I may not have the full story.
I have requested both the communication from the Mayor to the City Council regarding the decision to withdraw her financial orders and any communications leading up to that decision.
2023-05-24
At the risk of stating the obvious, zoning is both important and super-complicated.
While we're on the topic of arcane municipal government processes, I feel like zoning seems like a pretty big area of opportunity. Obviously there is a ton of commentary broadly about zoning laws, but it seems like folks here in town only get into around very specific areas and issues.
Greenfield zoning is divided into the following districts:
Rural Residential District - RC
Suburban Residential District - RB
Urban Residential District - RA
Semi-Residential District - SR
Health Service District - H
Central Commercial District - CC
Limited Commercial District - LC
General Commercial District - GC
Office District - O
General Industry District - GI
Planned Industry District - PI
Floodplain District - F
Water Supply Protection District - WP
Corridor Overlay District - CO
That is according to Division 1, Part III, Chapter 200-4 of the Greenfield City Code. A bit further down (Chapter 200-5), it states that the zoning map is on file with the Clerk's Office.
And down in Chapter 200-9 is where the City Code lists all the details of what you can and can't do in each type of district.
I feel like the thing with all of this zoning stuff is that it is super-technical and wonky, but it totally determines what you can build where in town. Pretty much every community in the country has a really sketchy history of using obscure zoning ordinances to keep black people out, or to keep poor people out, or to protect the rights of the most privileged people who already have the most influence.
So on the one hand, it is good that some company can't buy the lot that is for sale down the block from me and build a biomass incinerator, or that some neighbor can't randomly decide to run a nightclub out of their basement.
On the other hand, we end up with stuff like the Accessory Dwelling Unit fight from a few years ago, when thee was a proposal before the City Council to allow the addition of attached and detached apartments on residential property by right rather than by special permit. It would have been a great way to increase housing density in a city like Greenfield which has a lot of older single-family homes and not much space for new multi-family construction.
Unfortunately, that proposal was defeated after a group of homeowner—almost entirely white, affluent, and older homeowners, it is worth noting—lobbied hard against it, arguing that having a neighbor be able to build additional housing on their property would lower the value of their own property. Mind you, no one was yet trying to actually build anything; these folks wanted to preserve their right to object should anyone even try.
So it's complicated on two levels:
- The complexity of the zoning ordinance themselves, i.e., what can be built where and through what sort of approval/permitting process
- The complexity of how to change either the zoning ordinances and the permitting processes themselves
It feels similar to watching people play one of those super-complicated tabletop games where it takes two and a half hours just to explain the rules.
And you've got a map of the whole town divided up into a patchwork of different zoning districts, a zoning ordinance written in abstract legislative language, and even a chart of all the kinds of stuff you can and can't build in each of the color-coded boxes. The whole thing is administrated by a professional class that went to school for urban planning.
And again, while some of these rules may have been created out of ill intent or put to nefarious uses over the years, many of them were likely set up for understandable reasons, like so your neighbor can't run a store out of their house and overrun your street with traffic, or so no one can build a paper mill on Main Street.
But it is also why, in those pictures that regularly get shared on social media, European towns that have existed since 1294 look so much cooler than any town here.
2023-05-24
The Mayor has, in fact, withdrawn the $365k she had pledged toward the FY24 budget for Greenfield Public Schools.
The Recorder has an article up this morning about Mayor Wedegartner’s withdrawal of her pledge of $365k to the schools:
Mayor Roxann Wedegartner submitted her notice of withdrawal on Monday in an email to City Council President Dan Guin and Vice President Christine Forgey.
“This withdrawal notice is the result of the recent City Council votes to add $1,175,594 to the Greenfield public schools FY24 school budget,” Wedegartner wrote. “The $365,000 of supplemental funding is no longer needed by the School Department.”
The quote from the Mayor:
“We don’t use {supplemental budgets} very often because it isn’t a way to run a city,” Wedegartner said in a phone interview Tuesday when explaining her decision to withdraw the pair of financial orders. “You try to budget appropriately when you first put forward a budget.”
The Recorder also quotes At-Large Councilor (and former mayor) Christine Forgey:
“Whatever the council cut came to $1.2 million,” said Forgey, who served as the city’s first mayor. “I have no problem with that figure being funded to the schools. However, I do appreciate, from a mayor’s point of view, the logic that is needed to protect the budget that has already been cut, especially the borrowing pieces and insurance pieces.”
If I may editorialize for a moment, what has possibly bothered me the most throughout this debate has been the consistent condescending and lecturing tone coming from the Mayor and her supporters on the City Council. Rather than lists and acknowledging the community, they continually issue “What you don’t understand…” responses, the equivalent of patting people on the head and sending them along.
Councilor Forgey’s quote here is a good example. Of course this makes sense, she tells us.
This attitude comes across as “How dare you question me?” Having just watched last month’s meeting to the Public Safety Commission, I cannot help but notice the similarities with the indignant responses from the Deputy Police Chief and some commissioners to any questions or challenges from the City Council and the public.
I have seen some comments about how the Recorder did not quote anyone from the schools. I understand the complaint, but I also wonder if anyone from the schools would have been willing to go on the record. They are, after all, city employees. Based on her comments at last week’s City Council meeting, Superintendent Christine DeBarge seems to be fully in the mode of “We’ll take what we can get and do the best we can,” so I’d be surprised if any of the administration would give the paper a quote.
2023-05-24
I finally got around to watching the Public Safety Commission. It was not encouraging.
I am a bit embarrassed to admit that it was not until last week that I watched my first installment of the Greenfield Public Safety Commission (the April 26 installment). What follows are a few stray and somewhat randomly arranged observations…
I couldn't not notice that every member is an older white guy. I suppose I should not be surprised.
One of the agenda items at this meeting was an intro from Cara Klempner of the Northwestern District Attorney's Office of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Unit. Other than a few general questions from the chair, the only other question for her was whether her unit addresses self-harm. The answer was, of course, no. This unit seems like a great public safety resource and it would have been nice to see the commission members express more interest.
There was also an extended back-and-forth about how the police department got criticism for requesting more capital funding from the City Council when they have not yet spend the previous big capital request they made. Deputy Chief Gordon got a bit huffy about this criticism, saying that plenty of work has been done on that project, but that resources have been diverted to the fire station building project.
The previous allocation of $900k sits largely unspent, and now the police department is making a request for an additional $500k. (Somewhere along the line, I missed what this project actually is, but I think it's some sort of construction at the police station).
This whole conversation stemmed from a public comment suggesting that there needs to be better communication between the GPD, the Public Safety Commission, and the City Council. That seems like a pretty reasonable suggestion to me. The Deputy Chief, however, seemed to take it as "Why aren't you doing any work!?" and his response was basically "We're working on it and I don't appreciate the accusations that we aren't."
I'm definitely not the first to say it, but this digression from the Gordon, along with several other discussions over the course of the meeting really give the impression of defensiveness from the department and an annoyance/umbrage at being asked any questions or at the suggestion that they should be need to be more transparent regarding what they're doing and how they are spending money.
Later in the meeting, Deputy Chief Gordon objected to some suggestion from the City Council that a higher ed degree should be a hiring requirement for the GPD. I agree that this idea seems dumb, but I have to wonder if there isn't some misunderstanding or misinterpretation here.
Following both of those discussions, there was a lengthy series of statements from Public Safety Commissioner David Lanoie. His comments seemed to mostly focus on how the City Council ought not to be asking so many questions of the police department or pushing them to justify their funding requests.
I think I have had the idea in my head that the Public Safety Commission was intend to serve as a public oversight body for the police department. After watching these exchanges between the commissioners and the deputy chief, I went and looked up the Public Safety Commission's role in the Greenfield City Charter:
The Commission shall assist the Mayor in the supervision and oversight of the Police and Fire Departments, including the coordination of the administration of both departments with one another, and with other City departments and agencies by making recommendations to the Mayor
…followed by an enumeration of various responsibilities.
So really, the commission as it currently exists is simply an advisory body. That provides some helpful context for the discussions during the Charter Review sessions a few years ago about reconsidering the purpose and makeup of the Public Safety Commission, as well as Councilor Bullock's (P5) efforts over the past year to do the same. As long as this commission operates under its existing mandate as is made up of former law enforcement personnel, it is unlikely to function as anything besides a rubber stamp for the police department.
2023-05-29