No on Articles 14 & 15
Vote no on Article 14 & 15. You are going to the Middleboro Annual Town Meeting …… right?
Where: Middleboro High School
When: May 13, 2008
Time: 7:30 PM
These articles are for adopion of Chapter 43D – expedited permitting on two parcels of land. One in the Middleboro Park at 495 and one parcel across the street from Stop and Shop that is borderd by Rt. 28, Rt. 44, Anderson Ave. and Old Center Street.
Chapter 43D is a law that would force the town to permit commercial development within strict periods of time – 180 days. If the town does not get it done, the permit is automatically granted.
My main problems are that 43D is very complicated, involves changes to a half dozen other Mass General Laws, may require changes to local bylaws, and so far has only been adopted by 21 of the 351 towns in Massachusetts. I feel that we need to do a lot more investigation before we mess around with it.
The Middleboro Board of Selectmen voted 4-1 in favor of supporting these articles. The lone dissenter was Adam Bond. I have spoken to Adam on this and I would venture to say that he has done more investigation on 43D than anyone else on the board. When Adam and I are not at each throats and slamming each other on the internet, we sometimes find time to agree on some things. So why did the other 4 vote in favor? I don’t know. During the BOS meeting of May 5, very few questions were asked by anyone other than Adam. I would guess they are largely in favor based on their trust in our town planner. But honestly – I don’t know.
At this point I don’t know if 43D is good or bad. And neither does the town. We as a town need to do a lot more study on the effects of this law before we adopt it. At this point the town may be willing to drop 43D for the Stop & Shop land – but “experiment” with it on the industrial park. I say we hold off on any experimentation until we have a much, much better idea of the ramifications. At this time, with my limited knowledge of 43D, I don’t believe that there are gradations 43D-ness. A town either adopts it, or it doesn’t. I say we don’t.
Here are some excerpts from a Middleboro Gazette article:
Themocracy
You bet your bippy I’ll be out and voting, “No! No! No!”
This needs to be tabled until we know exactly what we’re dealing with. The recent history of being rushed into something w/o complete info should still be fresh in our minds. Let’s vote ‘no’ and wait on this.
Bumpkin and Adam Bond are right on 43D (articles 14 and 15). If recently published comments by Ruth Geoffroy in the Middleboro Gazette are correct, then the main incentive for adoptiong 43D is no incentive to us, since our permitting/denial process takes 120 days on average and is typically well within tolerance. We are not tardy rendering decisions to developers. The main benefit of 43D is to shorten the time it takes to render a decision. The potential risk (approval by default) outweighs the benefit (expediting a process that doesn’t appear to be tardy). It needs more study relative to Middleboro’s situation and historical development issues, before we can know if it makes sense for Middleboro. I also haven’t seen anything to suggest that you can experiment with 43D on a trial basis and then terminate the experiment if it turns out that 43D doesn’t offer an improvement over the current process.