MBTA MFCC Report Card

Item	Grade	Explanation
Impact on Health	D	Distributed rezoning across the town makes development far less manageable and exposes neighborhoods to a multitude of localized unknowns on water consumption and nitrogen sensitivity.  For example, the Tall Pines neighborhood was an early candidate for rezoning until the residents on Hutchins Rd. expressed their opposition due to a lack of water.  They happened to be organized and vocal and could demonstrate a history of water challenges. Other neighborhoods haven't been so organized or vocal, and the lack of any studies on water and nitrogen sensitivity will expose residents all over town to potential health issues.  Moreover, when those problems happen, and they will happen, who pays?
Impact on Safety	D	The MFCC plan fails to consider the traffic impact within subdivisions or on Carlisle's narrow windy connecting roadways that were not designed for higher traffic volumes.   It also threatens the safety of cyclists and pedestrians, since we do not have an abundance of sidewalks, alternative use pathways, or even paved shoulders.  A prime example is Curve Street across from the cranberry bog where the Select Board had a guard rail installed on both sides rendering the road so narrow that only one vehicle can safely pass at a time.  We know of at least one instance last year when a car carelessly attempted to pass a cyclist in our group on a blind curve on Acton St. causing an oncoming car to swerve off the roading striking a boulder.  Most of our roads cannot handle more traffic volume and adding more will compound community safety problems.  A safer approach would call for planned development(s) with direct egress onto main roads like Westford St. or Lowell Rd.
Impact on neighborhoods and abutters	F	The MFCC plan deserves the worst possible grade for its impact on our neighbors and should be eliminated for consideration on this point alone.   The plan attempts to distribute the pain of state-mandated development throughout the town, but by doing so, it creates far more homeowner distress than would be necessary in a more confined and isolated development plan.  In effect, it seeds chaos and consternation throughout the town which is totally unnecessary and accomplishes exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do. The Planning Board will claim that the impact of a confined development impacts fewer abutters but has a greater impact on those abutters.  That’s plainly wrong.  A confined development would be more carefully planned with buffering acreage for conservation and separation, and it should have egress onto main roads.  MFCC puts dense construction right on your doorstep.
Financial Impact	C	We awarded a gentleman's C on this point and not a worse grade, because any plan under the MBTA law is likely to strain the town budget.  You can see our exhibit on the financial impact here. In effect, the MBTA law amounts to a stealth tax.  That’s not just our opinion.  The Massachusetts state auditor called the law an unfunded mandate, which violates a provision of Proposition 2 ½.  Anytime you impose mandates on a community requiring added compliance and infrastructure costs and other services to be rendered without funding, it’s equivalent to a tax.  Lexington which enthusiastically embraced the MBTA law, is estimating as much as   $12 million in adverse budgetary impact per 1,000 units built in its overlay districts in a recently released town report. The MFCC plan is worse than more conventional alternatives.  Here's why.  The indiscriminate rezoning under the plan would remove many high value properties from the tax base and replace them with a greater number of lower value properties.  Those existing properties are nearly always occupied by older residents who are low consumers of town services.  They would not be leaving if they had kids in the school system.  The newer lower value properties will attract younger families who consume far more in services like education, especially if 2- and 3-bedroom units are constructed.  The reason is simple.  Carlisle has some of the best schools in the state.  In exchange for paying an average of $15,000 in property taxes, young households receive back about $55,000 in town services if they have 2 school age children. Why is MFCC the worst possible plan financially?  Overlay plans like what Lexington implemented have a far greater adverse budgetary impact.  Here’s why.  The plan not only creates adds budgetary burden by creating housing that appeals to young families.  It does so by displacing high value properties and low consumers of town services with low value properties and high service consumers.  According to our conservative calculations the financial impact to the town is about 50% worse than just undertaking a conventional development project.  We expect a report to be released by Carlisle’s Fincom in the Fall to predict a more negative outcome.  Please know that we have not considered the impact on homeowners’ assessments.  If property values fall in the redlined districts, the lost tax revenue will be reallocated to the remaining properties in town.  In effect, the MFCC plan compounds the budgetary burden imposed by the MBTA law. The Planning Board will claim that MFCC slows the rate of the development, and that’s a benefit.  We disagree.  The end result is still a painful and unsustainable burden on our residents, and it won’t feel much better if it takes 5-6 years to realize the full pain instead of 2-3.  Moreover, we can see the rate of home redevelopment already in towns like Bedford which were early adopters of the law.  Within 6 months of compliance, Bedford had 92 housing units either approved for development or in review.
Risk Assessment	F	We're awarding the worst possible grade to the MFCC plan on this point, because it's the riskiest possible plan where safer, more conventional alternatives are clearly possible and are being adopted by other complying nearby communities.  Seeding dense housing clusters throughout the town is unconventional and untested in small exurban communities like Carlisle.  Conversely, we have any number of precedents for planned denser development within Carlisle like Woodward Village, Malcolm Meadows, Garrison Place, and more.  Common sense says you first look for a plan that has a history of success, and you don’t unnecessarily gamble with the town’s future by proposing a plan that can radically alter the town's pastoral landscape or burden the town’s already fragile budget.  Moreover, any problems arising from an alternative planned neighborhood approach are likely to be localized within the development and would become the responsibility of the developer or the HOA to remedy unlike MFCC where you really cannot pinpoint who owns a problem. We should add that this assessment is not just ours but was voiced to us by a prominent local civil engineer.
Manageability	D	The ability for town boards like Planning, Conservation, Assessment, Zoning, Health and the Building Department to manage a multitude of one-off redevelopment projects under MFCC effectively is questionable.   In effect, we'd be straining town resources by engaging them in a game of municipal whack-a-mole where they'd be contending with a multitude of unique circumstances and issues popping up throughout the town with each one presenting unique challenges.
Conservation and Environment	D	We're assigning a D on this one and not an F, because any form of dense development runs contrary to the principles of conservation and environmental preservation we cherish in Carlisle.   However, given the choice, we prefer controlled and confined dense development over what MFCC proposes.  Yes, MFCC disperses the environmental impact throughout the town, but it still causes far more harm in aggregate. It is axiomatic that clustered housing offers the greatest possibility of conserving open space.  Consistent with this, an MBTA plan sited on one or two dense sites represents the greatest possible degree of clustering and thus will impact the least amount of land. The MFCC plan, by contrast, doubles down on suburban sprawl, which leads to fragmentation and duplicative infrastructure, and will not result in meaningfully large and contiguous parcels of conservation land.  The total impact on wildlife corridors, wetland and wildlife habitat is greater. The MFCC districts being proposed are already developed, rendering it virtually impossible to create additional meaningful conservation land unless structures are torn down and lawns and the like are “re-wilded.”  Yet, the plan will lead to increased burden and building in these areas, as additional structures are built, parking areas are constructed, either in additional structures or as parking lots, and additional larger septic systems are constructed.   In the interest of truth in advertising, the Planning Board should drop one C off the plan’s name and just call it a multi-family cluster, or, if that sounds somewhat redundant, just call it a cluster.
Sustainability	F	Giving the MFCC plan a sustainability stamp of approval is an exercise in hypocrisy and self-deception.  Any attempt to redevelop an existing property will invariably require some demolition to existing building structures, foundations, driveways, and sewage disposal systems.  None of these structures were built with multi-family occupancy in mind.  Do we really expect to turn a single-family home into a multi-family one that shares a common garage, a common driveway, common entrances, and a septic system built for fewer occupants?  All that demolished material will end up in one place and that's a landfill.  So, please, let's stop trying to deceive ourselves into believing this is somehow environmentally friendly or a sustainable way to build.  Hijacking the sustainability stamp of approval insults our collective intelligence.
Preserving property values	F	Your property will be worth less if it's rezoned under MFCC unless you're one of the early few who sell out to a developer.  Here's why.  First, the MFCC’s dispersion approach will create eclectic, heterogeneous neighborhoods out of what had been more homogeneous ones.  A neighborhood has something equivalent to a brand image that conveys expectations to a potential homebuyer.   A good analogy is that a gardener might appreciate wildflowers, but it would never occur to him to scatter their seed in a formal landscape bed or in the vegetable garden.   Nor would a developer allow an 800 sq. ft. bungalow in a neighborhood of 6,000 sq. ft. colonials.  That's a losing proposition for the small homeowner whose property looks insignificant against his large abutters and for the large homeowner whose property looks awkwardly out of place with the small homes that surround his.    Secondly, the plan creates what is commonly referred to as a prisoner’s dilemma with homeowners guessing at what his neighbor will do and eager developers paying off the first seller to instill panic selling in the rest.  We expect to see motivated, panicky homeowners selling under duress, similar to what happened on Loomis St. in Bedford when a 14-unit development was constructed on what had been a single-family street.
Preservation	F	Any dense development introduces concerns about preserving the pastoral and rural character of Carlisle, which is unique and special in a community so close to Boston.  However, MFCC compounds the problem by sowing dense development throughout the community.  While superficially this approach may appear equitable and less conspicuous, it’s better described as insidious, because dense development will overtake the community over time instead of one confined location.  A multitude of homeowners would be potentially impacted by dense development that is completely out of character with why we chose to be here. Instead of confining multi-unit home architecture to its own planned development, MFCC scatters it like weed seed throughout the town which will irrevocably alter the character of each neighborhood it impacts and will transform the town as we currently know it into something more urbanized.  The question we should be asking is this really progress and how are we better for doing it?