Definitely won't qualify. Stop playing the victim.

I get your skepticism.

Look, I hate development. It bothers me to my core. But you know what? I don't get a choice in the matter! People need places to live. Property owners can do things like build more houses by right. My town has doubled in population in the past 20 or so years. It does not matter if I want the way things were - they are going to change.

My job in town government is to help facilitate that change being a positive one for my community. So in the end I am not anti-development. What I want is development that will improve my town in the process, or at least make it no worse.

A town's character is important. There is a problem that talking about character is often a dog whistle for all sorts of crap. That is not what I mean - I want my town to develop in a way that we can attract a more economically and racially diverse population than we currently have. A town's character is closely tied to things like its collective identity. Towns that lose their collective sense of who they are also lose things like democratic involvement. Also, many people feel it is nice to live somewhere a little unique and special.

I get into more details in other comments I made in this section, but there are strategies municipalities can employ to foster development that is more dense, preserves rural atmosphere, and actually increases the feeling of belonging within the community. It can even be done in ways that are more appealing to developers, rather than less. What the state requires in this legislation does none of that aside from attracting developers.

Changes to things like our water and sewer providers are not easy, politically difficult at best, and possibly an even greater legal challenge. I am not sure it matters, because there are other ways of fostering development than doing what more populous suburbs do.

My town is growing, but the key is that the rate of growth that could be created by this legislation is too much too quickly for my town to absorb. We plan on fairly rapid growth. We cannot effectively plan to add 10% or more to our town population overnight. It is not as simple as needing to raise taxes, because MA places severe limits on how much local taxes can increase. The key here is going to be thoughtful residential development policies balanced with improving commercial and industrial growth.

The way I am frustrated by all of this is that surrounding small towns are being required to take the hit for Boston and nearby cities not developing enough housing to accommodate their business growth. They get the tax boon and leave us with increased demands and costs. They want us to develop the arable land we use to grow the food they eat. To me that is robbing Peter to pay Paul. We need to do our part to meet housing needs, but it feels more than a bit unfair that we are also being asked to pick up the slack for those that have profited from business growth without matching residential growth. If that feeling makes me a NIMBY, then I am no worse than the ones who put us all in this predicament. I know this paragraph is a bit of a diatribe, but unfunded mandates bring that out in many municipal officials.

But yeah, growth is unavoidable. We need to make sure it happens in ways that support communities rather than break them. From what I have seen, this legislation does the latter in many places.

See, this is one of those things that just make me wonder why. I have been reading everyone else's opinions in here and yeah, I get some points, but this is just how I see it. Like, needless traffic just to get to the store across the way, and yeah, I have definitely seen (and done so myself) people getting into cars on one end and driving to the other.

I dunno. I really wish it was all inverted with the cars on the parimeter..... or atleast put a skybridge or two across the lot. I'd love to see how the world would be laid out of cars were never the ideal when these things were built. More rapid transit would be amazing. More catering to your average walker.

Organic HVAC

Why did they not add to the tax revenue? How was the town burdened by the new units? 400 should add substantial tax revenue.

If anybody still needed any more reason to quit FB and IG, this should have been an absolute wake up call.

He presumably still works there and probably will for some time. There are likely others like him.

Also wait until you guys realize how many of the most populated subreddits are moderated by the same mods that also "moderate" dozens if not hundreds of other subs. Reddit is broken as well.

I mean what do you want people to do, spend 6 hours a day stuck in traffic commuting from Manchester or Deerfield? If we at least had good regional rail here then it might be doable but we can't have nice things in Mass.

That's a sustainable skylight.

I'm just trying to understand you lol

You should think northbound too ,because although I never did it I know many who did .The Vermonter(the train) is 40 MPH from Brattleboro to the Canadian border ,it's like a 4-1/2 hour ride

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Still fairly recently then, alright thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.

Hi, it's you. You're the problem, it's you.

Huzzah

Yeah it has almost 20K people and it borders a town (Worcester) that has commuter rail, but it's still ridiculous. The zoning changes should only apply within a mile of transit, which would exclude Holden and most of the other further-off towns.

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Yeah my guess is nothing will really be built there because of this. Not sure why it didn't qualify for the "small community" adjustment. I'm guessing land area is decent. Dover for the small community adjustment and only has to zone for like 100 units. Its ridiculous

Not super recent ,2020 or 2011 I think not

Later than 2013 since I was in bellows falls from 13-15 and never did BF to DC Moved back to Mass in 2016 my sister moved to Seattle in about then so never went to DC since likely 2020 I'd say

Yeah, I dont think that anymore. I did when I wrote it. Upon further elaboration, I realized I misinterpreted what you said.

Kind of strange to ignore that part.

As well as this part that you are literally responding to:

>I now know that's not what you meant. When I wrote that I thought you were arguing in bad faith.

I was wrong- I admit that. Why do you want to argue about what I said that I already admit was wrong?

I’ve heard these called power centers and they’re car-centric and IMO, suck. People will drive and re-park rather than walk. And walking means crossing traffic sometimes multiple times in front of distracted drivers looking for parking.

Was this fairly recently if you don’t mind me asking? I suddenly am involved in rail advocacy in the region and I want to make the Brattleboro to Springfield route much faster than it currently is

This. Look west of 495 and it’s a fucking house bonanza. Just bought a 2,800sqft home for under 500k

No question ,I actually did Brattleboro to DC too ,it sucked

it still might not help in the near term because the article / report does say that while overall revenue almost always positive, towns might still experience negative net revenue without state transfers because of how revenue is divided between states and towns

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