The Select Board voted its formal support for the Belmont Center overlay Monday night, urging positive action on special Town Meeting articles 2 and 3.
The special Town Meeting is on March 4.
There are two overlay proposals on the warrant. Article 2 would shift zoning along Leonard Street, and Article 3 would zone for a hotel along Concord Avenue.
Monday night, Anderson Krieger attorney Mina Makarious clarified that Article 2 addressing the Leonard Street component, which includes residential and commercial zoning, would require a simple majority to pass at Town Meeting. Article 3, lacking that residential component, will require a two-thirds majority vote to pass, Makrorious said.
“Normally, zoning requires a two-thirds majority, but a couple of years ago, in the state’s effort to encourage dense development, they allowed certain articles to pass with a simple majority,” he said.
The Leonard Street overlay fits the state law, allowing a simple majority, Makarious said.
The next part of the meeting’s discussion focused on an oversight: One section, called 6.15, was omitted from documents posted online for the public to review. According to Select Board Chair Matt Taylor, that oversight had corrected. Town Moderator Michael Crowley said the single section will be open to amendments for a week.
“I think that’s reasonable,” said Vice Chair Taylor Yates. “[Section] 6.15…is the simplest and most accessible… so I doubt anyone is going to have trouble reviewing it and thinking of amendments.”
Before voting to support the articles, the board met with Robert McGaw, a Precinct 1 Town Meeting member and former Bylaw Review committee member, who filed more than a dozen amendments to various parts of the zoning. If passed at the special Town Meeting, the first of those amendments would delay the vote altogether.
“Basically, it’s to give everyone breathing room,” McGaw said. “Rather than put in more than 100 amendments to fix all the problems, the idea would be ‘let’s pause’. . . . If we are going to pass something, let’s get it right.”
According to McGaw, the draft proposal is rife with errors that were not picked up by Town Counsel or the Planning Board. That, he said, gives him pause, wondering whether there are other errors in the document.
The discussion likely foreshadows Town Meeting, as the board and McGaw debated granular elements of the proposed bylaws.
After the discussion, the board voted to recommend favorable action on the two articles and unfavorable action on McGaw’s amendments.
