Thursday, May 26, 2016

Economic Development Czar On A Roll

Geoffrey Kravitz addresses Town Meeting
The town's relatively new Economic Development Director Geoffrey Kravitz is two for two with Town Meeting issues, speaking against a Planning Board article on Monday and a Vince O'Connor (who is a one man Planning Board) "citizens petition" article last night, in both cases on grounds it could stifle development.

Planning Board lost another one 

The Planning Board wished to tweak the rules governing a "mixed use" building which allows a little more leeway on the part of developers and Mr. O'Connor wished to close what he views as a loophole allowing developers of mixed use buildings to avoid the town's Inclusionary Zoning bylaw that mandates 10% of residential units be "affordable."

 Vince O'Connor lost another one

Of course Mr. O'Connor's article only failed because it requires a two-thirds vote. Since the article did garner way more than a majority (100 yes to 61 No) Mr. Kravitz had better remain vigilant.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you want affordable housing, let people build housing.

kevin said...

Great. Last week he helped defeat the actual zoning article, by the Planning Board, two years of their hard work, by speaking against the article. Vince O'Connor, who had fought the ED position, was dancing. That fellow is going to have to work very hard to make up the millions that one cost us.

Anonymous said...

I wanna see a video of Vince dancing...that would be entertaining!

Anonymous said...

Though he did speak against it, I don't think Kravitz's position had anything to do with the defeat of the mixed use article. And, it wasn't actually defeated. It was referred back to the PB, mostly due to discomfort with the inclusion of parking as one of the allowable mixed uses on the ground floor. In other words, TM wanted to further constrain this kind of development--the exact opposite of Kravitz's view.

Anonymous said...

I will reiterate another posters comment above that is way to complicated for anyone in government to understand as they are hyper-focused on their own greed.

"If you want affordable housing, let people build housing."

It would also be worth specifically saying that the town legislates against affordable housing with a number of laws and then takes some fleeting time to pretend figure out how to address what they have done with their pens and police.

This is like chopping off your arm, burning it off, then cutting it off in 12 pieces, putting it in a shredder, then dowsing it with acid, then denying you even have an arm and then saying now we should figure out a way that we could have kept that arm.

If you take 50 years to create a problem in countless ways, I do not see how a group of closed minded individuals, ignorant of history and more can solve the problem they created in less time with less effort. There are few sections in the building code or zoning that do not work against affordable housing. We traded affordable and appropriate housing for more taxes and perceived safety for those that can afford it. That is a done deal, not subject to further negotiation by the people.

It may be healthier to admit that affordable housing is not the goal, then we can focus on a real action item, getting the town more tax money.



Tom Simpson said...

The tally was 161 votes; there are 254 Town Meeting memmbers. Apparently, approximately 1/3 of the Town's governing body didn't even bother to show up.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, it always amazes me how some many smart people could be so dumb