Two months after Milton rejected a plan to follow the MBTA Communities Act and the state took away a grant in response, town officials are asking for that funding to be restored, at least until after the situation is resolved in court.
The Milton Select Board voted 3-2 Wednesday to send letters to Gov. Maura Healey, the Executive Office of Livable Communities and other state officials asking them to restore the $140,800 Seaport Economic Council grant it had previously been awarded to fund accessibility improvements at the town’s waterfront and restoration of its seawall.
The funding was revoked after voters rejected a new zoning plan that would have allowed the construction of more multifamily housing in a Feb.12 referendum vote, a decision which also prompted a lawsuit from Attorney General Andrea Campbell.
Board members who supported sending the letters said because Campbell’s lawsuit asked that the law be enforced three months after a decision is issued, Healey and EOHLC should follow the same timeline for imposing other penalties.
“Putting aside whether such withdrawal of funding is appropriate, consistency and fairness dictate that, at the very least, the withdrawal of such funding be postponed until at least three months after the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court,” they wrote in a draft of the letter shown during the meeting.
“While we recognize that the attorney general is an independently elected officer separate from your administration under the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, and that the Supreme Judicial Court is a separate branch of government under the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, the town of Milton is facing the concerted action of all three as a result of the attorney general’s lawsuit, and we think it fair and reasonable that any potential penalties imposed on the town follow the same schedule,” the letter continued.
The MBTA Communities law, which passed in 2021, requires cities and towns served by the MBTA to have at least one zoning area where multifamily housing is allowed by right. No housing is guaranteed to be built under the law, and developments are still subject to the local planning process.
Municipalities which do not comply with the law are ineligible for a slate of state grants and funding programs.
Milton, which is classified as a rapid transit community under the law because it has four stops on the Mattapan Trolley line, was required to implement a compliant zoning district by the end of 2023. While a proposal was initially approved at Town Meeting in December, residents opposing it gathered enough signatures to force the referendum, and 54% of voters chose to reject the plan.
The two dissenting members of the Select Board, Erin Bradley and Benjamin Zoll, pointed out that the state had warned Milton before the vote that the grant would be revoked if the proposal did not pass. In the grant letter notifying the town of the award on Jan. 26, the Seaport Economic Council wrote that it was “contingent with the town being in compliance with the multifamily zoning requirements” of the MBTA Communities Act.
Zoll compared sending the letter to a child breaking a rule then trying to get out of punishment because they did not believe their parents were serious about the consequences, calling it a “fool’s errand in a litany of fool’s errands.”
“We knew what the consequences were and I feel like the chances of this being considered are zero,” Zoll said. “We’ve already tarnished this town’s reputation by our actions and now the same people that made the case that this was the cost of freedom are now saying, ‘Well, we now don’t want to pay that cost.’”
Chair Michael Zullas said he believed it was worth trying to change the state’s mind, as the funding had been revoked before Campbell filed the lawsuit including the three-month timeline.
After Zoll mentioned the cost to the town of litigating the case on top of the loss of the grant, implying that it was caused in part by misleading information from the campaign against the zoning proposal about its financial impacts, Board Member Roxanne Musto pushed back, saying he should not single out any one group.
“This was a town-wide referendum. These are members of the community. These are every neighbor in the comm unity,” she said. “This was a community referendum vote and I think we need to respect that.”
EOHLC could not comment on Milton’s request as the department had not yet received the letter Thursday.