TOWN MEETING RESULTS AND COMMENTS

The two Planning Board zoning articles failed to gain the required two-thirds majority at Town Meeting. The article to allow  accessory apartments for rent-paying nonrelatives was favored by an 86-70 vote. The 55% majority was 19 votes short of 66.6%. The vote in favor of creating an adaptive use special permit for properties on North Main Street across from the Business General district was 85-57, or 60%. It fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds super-majority required.

Neither of these articles were critical to the future of Sherborn. They both would have resulted in small changes. However, in the view of the Planning Board and the Advisory Committee, they would have facilitated incremental but positive improvements in the quality of life of Sherborn residents. As happens throughout Massachusetts, a minority is able to block progress because of the requirement for a two-thirds vote to change zoning.

This raises the question of whether the two-thirds requirement is appropriate. Apparently, in Connecticut, Planning Boards have the authority to change zoning on their own. While nobody is suggesting such a change in Massachusetts, there has been a debate about changing the two-thirds vote requirement. One suggestion is to allow each town to decide on its own whether zoning changes should be by simple majority or two-thirds with the proviso that reducing the requirement to a simple majority would require a two-thirds vote. I doubt that the minority with power to block changes would be willing to cede that authority in very many towns (if any).

I am not entirely opposed to the two-thirds requirement but I have considered variations that could be beneficial. One thought I have is to allow towns to set the requirement at anywhere between a simple majority and a two-thirds vote. In other words, a town could set the requirement at 55%, 60% or 53.7% if they so choose. Of course, how that would be set remains an issue. Requiring a two-thirds vote for the change would likely render it moot since few, if any towns would be able to make the change.

Another thought I have had would provide more authority to the Planning Board, but stop well short of the authority in Connecticut. That is, a zoning change endorsed by the Planning Board would require a simple majority while one that is opposed by the Planning Board would still require a super-majority. A variation with  checks and balances might be that in addition to the Planning Board, the article would need to be supported by the Advisory Committee, Warrant Committee, Finance Committee (or whatever a town calls its body that makes recommendations on warrant articles) in order to qualify for the simple majority vote.

My final comment reverts back to the specific Planning Board articles defeated at this year's Town Meeting. As stated above, the two articles that failed were not the foundation for a successful future for Sherborn nor the seeds of destruction for the Town. They were both minor in scope.Well-meaning residents can have honest disagreements about their value to the Town and there are good and legitimate arguments on both sides. However, it is disheartening to hear residents knowingly make arguments opposed to the articles that have no basis in fact. It is a well-known tactic to defeat an article by inventing unintended consequences, phantom conflicts with existing rules or other such measures in order to raise doubt and the prospect of scary problems in the future if the article were to pass.