Framingham Mayor Threatens Sisters of St Joseph with Eminent Domain

On March 15th, 2022, the Framingham City Council authorized the Mayor to pursue acquisition of the 30-acre property on Bethany St owned by the Sisters of St Joseph of Boston. See City Council minutes at:

http://framinghamma.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=15&ID=13084&Inline=True

From those minutes:

“The Council voted unanimously to authorize the Mayor to acquire by purchase, gift, grant, eminent domain, or otherwise, the 30-plus acre Bethany Hill property from the Sisters of St. Joseph for a new elementary school and early childhood education center and the remainder for open space preservation upon such terms and conditions as the Mayor shall determine to be appropriate and to take any and all related actions necessary or appropriate to acquire said property.”

More than a year later, on April 25th, 2023, at a City Council meeting, the Framingham Mayor, Charlie Sisitsky, submitted his FY24 budget for the city, and ahead of that was pressed by Councilor Stefanini for faster progress on the Bethany property acquisition.

The Mayor made it clear in his response that eminent domain had moved to front and center in city strategy. Standard negotiations seemed to have failed.

Seventeen months into the Mayor’s term and the Bethany property has still not been acquired for the new southside school, threatening the next submission to the Massachusetts State Building Authority (MSBA) for state funding for that project.

The Bethany property is owned by the Sisters of St Joseph, who for centuries have dedicated themselves to service in education. I highly recommend the Wikipedia entry on them at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisters_of_St._Joseph

When I served on the Newton School Committee, the city was negotiating with the same Sisters, for the Aquinas College property which used to serve young women. We always knew that the Sisters of St Joseph wanted their property to endure as an educational resource. A deal was struck and that is now a key elementary school property in Newton. For Bethany, the Sisters are surely similarly inclined and simply want a reasonable price for their property to support their further work.

The Bethany site is a sizable piece of land overlooking Waushakum Pond, just minutes by car from the Framingham Commuter Rail stop, Market Basket in Ashland, Cushing Park, Farm Pond and Routes 135 and 126. It is a prime piece of property which could fetch a handsome price if sold to a residential developer. That should be kept in mind as the Mayor negotiates. The Sisters of St Joseph are committed to ensuring that Bethany endures as an educational asset for Framingham, and the city is benefitting from a price discount because of that.

Since their formation in 1650, the Sisters of St Joseph have endured and overcome great difficulties. They were disbanded during the French revolution. Their convents and chapels were confiscated in 1793. A number of them were guillotined. Others were imprisoned. Yet they reestablished their congregation in 1807. In 1873, they established a congregation in Boston, known as the Sisters of St Joseph of Boston, and opened and staffed 125 educational institutions. They have served education in the Boston area in a remarkable way for a very long time. We should remember that.

It is incredibly uncomfortable that the Mayor is now trying to force eminent domain action on the Sisters of St Joseph.

However, the Mayor is between a rock and a hard place because Framingham is running out of palatable options in the financial domain. Taxing well below the levy limit, especially at the accelerated rate of the last 5 years, has severely reduced property tax revenue, depleted cash reserves, increased borrowing and raised debt service, apart from growing a $400 million mountain of deferred infrastructure maintenance.

So, the Bethany property acquisition is a challenge for the Mayor.

The Sisters asking price will break something in Framingham finances. There is insufficient cash on hand to buy the property outright, so the money must be borrowed. But the city administration is terrified of breaching its self-imposed debt service limit of 5% of the city annual budget. It just squeaked by in FY20, when debt service went to 4.96%. The city froze borrowing that year, and the CFO must have been sweating bullets.

Two things seem inevitable.

First, the 5% debt service limit will have to be relaxed, which is not so bad since, according to the state Municipal Databank, 123 cities and towns out of 351 across the Commonwealth have debt service above 5%.

Second, the property tax revenue stream has to be strengthened in order to achieve simple objectives such as purchasing the Bethany property, by fixing what Moody’s Investors Service has described as a ‘structural operating imbalance’. That means that the current hacking away at the city property tax revenue stream by the City Council Finance Subcommittee has to stop. At minimum, the Mayor’s property tax revenue annual increase of 1.9% to support the FY24 budget should be respected.

It would, however, really impress Moody’s, and possibly prevent a city bond rating downgrade, if the city set the increase at 2.5% of the current maximum tax levy of $248 million, which would compute to a 3% increase on the actual tax levy of $208 million, as we have fallen so far below the levy limit.

Strengthening Framingham’s property tax stream is arguably the most important goal the city needs to achieve. But the King/Cannon faction on the City Council will work strenuously to block any effort in that direction.

In conclusion, it is ironic that the new Legal Department, whose creation made good fiscal and operational sense, is now going to be employed to bludgeon the Sisters. Further, such a combative approach means court actions and delay and may mean that the MSBA submission will go forward, yet again, with no lot to build on, and will fail because of that.

It is a sorry situation and everyone in the Framingham community should appeal to the Mayor to pay a fair price for the Bethany property, and demand that the City Council raise property taxes to a level where the city can truly sustain all of its vital operations and make progress on its goals, including completing the Bethany purchase.

Negotiate with the Sisters of St Joseph. Don’t threaten them. Framingham is better than this.