Amherst Center: Zoning changes could ease tax burden

Published on October 26, 2007

Fall Town Meeting is coming, and on the warrant are four common-sense, smart-growth zoning articles designed to help stimulate our local economy. Our town manager, Larry Shaffer, has been working with the Planning Department, Planning Board and scores of citizens all summer long to bring these articles forward.

We have long been challenging our town leaders to find ways to increase town revenues through economic development, to ease Amherst's fiscal crisis without increasing the burden on residential taxpayers. These zoning changes, designed with professional staff expertise and redesigned with citizen input, will do just that - increase revenues - while maintaining the green open spaces that we all enjoy.

Yet despite months of professional staff time and public input, the "usual suspects" are now coming out of the woodwork with 11th-hour, competing proposals. At best these are examples of "know-it-all-ness," in which a few self-appointed experts decide they're smarter than everyone else, dismissing the goals of the town manager and the work of professional staff and citizen committees who spend hours on the topic at hand. Less charitably, they may be seen as intentional distractions, trying to confuse the issues, divide Town Meeting, and deny these common-sense zoning changes the two-thirds vote they need to pass.

Here's what the four proposed zoning articles would do:

UMass R&D spin-offs on University Drive

We have always felt that University Drive is under-used. This article proposes a new research and development designation for this already developed area, to stimulate knowledge-economy business location at the gateway to UMass, and away from family neighborhoods. Imagine if we could have new tax revenues from UMass-incubated projects and companies that can actually locate in Amherst, instead of going to Hadley.

Clean up the busy corner of Route 9 and South East Street

Perfectly situated to take advantage of the 23,000 vehicle trips that go by there every day, this haphazardly developed area needs a zoning tune-up. Some of the Florence Savings Bank is in a "residential" area, while the few remaining single-family homes have become bad examples of student rental housing. A zoning upgrade will allow property owners to invest in mixed-use business and residential development, and when a property is invested in and upgraded, it increases in value - BINGO: more tax revenue.

Include the Lord Jeff in our downtown business district

Have you tried to have a guest stay at a hotel in town recently? You'll know that most visitors to Amherst must stay in Hadley. This zoning proposal extends the downtown business district so that our downtown hotel is actually in it. Radical, huh? Right now, the Lord Jeffrey Inn sits in a "residence" zone. If the hotel wants to upgrade and expand (and thus increase in value and BINGO: more tax revenue), this change would help.

Allow "low visitation" businesses in our professional research park zones

Town Meeting has wrestled with this one in the past a few times and has twice come within a couple of votes of passing it, but a couple of Amherst Woods neighbors have been able to create enough confusion to torpedo the votes. Citing traffic issues, these folks argued against allowing professional offices that might have an occasional client by appointment. Meanwhile, many of their neighbors (at least 20, probably more) have started home offices right in the neighborhood itself (so that's where all those FedEx trucks are going). Wouldn't it be helpful for these home offices to have somewhere nearby to expand?

The planning work group has carefully crafted article language to address these concerns, and thus "low visitation," "predominantly by appointment" and other specific conditions were written in. This will allow neighbors peace and quiet while down the road an office building (that looks a lot like one of their houses) can be constructed, thus increasing the PRP property value, and (all together now) BINGO: more tax revenue.

Don't be fooled into thinking any of this will be easy, though. Vince O'Connor has organized a group calling itself "Coalition for Sustainable Neighborhoods," which is introducing competing zoning articles at Town Meeting, despite all the collaborative work by staff and citizens on the articles above. Rob Kusner is busily analyzing flood patterns near the Route 9 Cumberland Farms, despite the fact that this has already been done by the appropriate staff and committees. The relentless effort by the "smarter-than-thou" to bypass the recommendations of our town manager, ignore the expertise of town staff, and discount the work of citizen committees continues, while the budget gap looms before us.

We have a real chance at Town Meeting to encourage economic growth and investment in Amherst. We shouldn't waste that chance.

Amherst Center is written by Town Meeting members Clare Bertrand and Baer Tierkel and School Committee member Andy Churchill. You can contact Andy, Baer and Clare at www.sustainableamherst.org.