WAKEFIELD — Town councilors will meet Monday night and, according to the agenda, will hear a presentation from their 40A Subcommittee on its proposal for an MBTA multi-family housing overlay district mandated by the state.
The agenda posted online also states that a vote is expected to submit the proposal to the Planning Board.
At a recent public hearing, the 40A Subcommittee decided to forward a new plan whose fate will eventually be decided by Town Meeting in November.
Passed by the legislature in 2021, Section 3A of Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40A requires all MBTA communities to have at least one zoning district of reasonable size near a transit station in which multifamily housing is permitted by right.
Last spring, Annual Town Meeting rejected three different compliance models. One of those was created by a Working Group of the Planning Board and went well beyond the state mandate in terms of geographic area and potential new housing units. Two minimum compliance plans were also rejected by voters.
The Town Council subsequently decided that it would take a crack at developing a compliance model that might be acceptable to voters at the November Town Meeting. The town has until Dec. 31, 2024 to comply with the mandate. The state has threatened non-compliant communities with loss of grant monies and the Attorney General has threatened lawsuits against towns that don’t comply.
The latest town plan overlays the compliance district over some of those already developed areas, like North Avenue and Foundry Street. Under the law, there is potential for many more units to be built in those districts. However, town officials believe those units are unlikely to be built since the areas are already developed. The net result is that the town gets credit for the potential units, but the actual effect on the character of the neighborhoods is minimal.
Senior Town Planner Samantha Elliott discussed the areas identified by the subcommittee for inclusion in a compliance map. They include North Avenue, Foundry Street, Albion Street, Audubon Road and areas of Greenwood near the train station.
Elliott explained that Wakefield’s plan needs to have a minimum of 36 acres and 1,696 potential units. Seventy-five percent of the district must be near a train station. Up to 25 percent can be away from transit, which is why an already developed area of Audubon Road was included.
The intention of the proposed plan is that the character of each of the areas identified would remain effectively unchanged.
The Town Council meeting begins Monday at 7 p.m. It will be in-person at the WCAT studio at Wakefield Memorial High with remote access via Zoom.
