'Affordable' Project Raises Questions

Questions about the affordable-housing development proposed for the Sowams Nursery site in Barrington were put off from last Tuesday evening until the next Housing Board of Trustees meeting in May.

Questions were put off because of a concern about violating the open meeting law with the meeting not advertised as a public hearing. So the Housing Board plans to advertise its next meeting as a public hearing to take questions.

This situation didn’t stop many Patch readers from asking questions in their comments about the meeting in Town Hall. Read for yourself what some of the almost 100 people in the Council Chamber were thinking.

garymm

2:15 pm on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Has the Planning Board examined the current "busy load" utilization of our water distribution and wastewater treatment infrastructure (not the "average", because that is usually a contrived number in systems engineering). Were these systems even designed with high density housing in mind?  What upgrades will be needed in the area and who pays? The developer?  To the Planning Board: Where is the impact study?

8:47 am on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

If cronyism in Barrington wasn't "discovered" before this, we are certainly discovering it now.

Linda Testa

1:53 pm on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

At the meeting last night, (Town Councilor) Kate (Weymouth) instructed us to read the town's Comprehensive Community Plan to get answers to our questions. I did read it and now have more questions.

1:17 pm on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The plans for Sowams Nursery seems to be in direct violation of the town's open space and natural resource comprehensive community plan.

http://www.ci.barrington.ri.us/Comp%20Plan%202011%20Amendmentts/6-%20open%20space%20&%20recl%20-%20new09%20rev%202011.pdf

http://www.ci.barrington.ri.us/Comp%20Plan%202011%20Amendmentts/5%20-%20natural%20cultural%20-%20new09%20rev%202011.pdf

Bristol County Anonymous

1:45 pm on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

June Speakman and Kate Weymouth are the Town Council "liaisons" to this Board.

http://www.ci.barrington.ri.us/housingcomm.php

Where are they on all this?

12:18 pm on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

RI Housing had to spend taxpayer money to bail out an EBCDC project. See the RI Housing minutes under “Kane’s Way”.

http://sos.ri.gov/documents/publicinfo/omdocs/minutes/1518/2010/18998.pdf

With EBCDC…a lot of taxpayer money is flowing…away from taxpayers. No wonder they avoid questions. EBCDC is a publicly supported non-profit entity with insufficient oversight, just like the Institute for International Sports. In RI, when government & non-profit entities avoid questions, that means they have something to hide.

9:25 am on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

No Questions allowed?

What?

“I got advice from …the attorney for the developer,” said Steve Martin…we’ve never had a solicitor.”

Mr. Martin thinks is ok for the town’s interests to be represented by the opposing lawyer?  What is going on here?????  Who is protecting our interest? There are lot’s of problems with the proposal, and the proceedings thus far. And there are lot’s of questions on our list that need to be addressed.

Scott Clark

1:24 pm on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The only lawyer present represented the party most interested in ensuring a presentation from the architect to the Board clean of dispute. Mr. Martin even quipped that he was happy to receive "free advice from a lawyer". I don't know what violation they were afraid of, nor the penalty for it. I'm new at this, and certainly no lawyer, but these are interesting reads:

http://sos.ri.gov/publicinfo/openmeetings/
http://sos.ri.gov/documents/publicinfo/openmeetings/SOS_2992.pdf

It's possible the Board was just being conservative because there was only the one lawyer present. It was quickly obvious though that they were really prepared yet for the level of public involvement on something that in years past was likely just a procedural discussion for them.  This was most poignant when the room cleared out almost completely after EBCDC's presentation ended. There was actually a subsequent conversation about *another* Affordable Housing development being discussed for George Street. Guess nobody cares about that one though.

But all in all, they realized the public prodding has just begun :) They mentioned the next meeting would be set up for proper taking of public comment, and committed to trying to get that meeting on the books before the next scheduled one in third week of May.

1:29 pm on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Yea, honestly, while the most adjacent residents are the most affected, this really is a whole town issue. The kids in these developments will be going to our schools. The influx of new people will use town services. Traffic (and incidents), safety, fire, EMS, school buses, snow removal (such as it was this year ;) and so on. All of these place additional burden on the town that isn't going to be at all offset by the $500-900 estimated rental fee. At some point (I'm still looking) the foundation for this decision was made by deciding this was a candidate for affordable housing. Subsequently it was decided that housing should be rentals rather than homes. Perhaps a lot of the studies were already done to project town population declines that could be offset by new locations such as this (and Sweetbriar and Walker's).

And with the way people are paying attention now, it's all going to come out :)

8:38 am on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

I've only been in Barrington for two years and only more recently started getting civical, so I can't speak to the history of this project. I do feel the Board did a good job last night of balancing the needs of that particular kind of meeting with the fact that they had an (apparently rare) large audience. As Mr. Martin said at one point (I'm paraphrasing): "We've been meeting for six years, but this is the first time we've had a crowd". On that:

1. Many in attendance people seemed to people who lived around the nursery.
2. It seemed a good percentage of them seemed to be relatively new to this level of involvement and this process of development.

This project is extremely early in development. No permits have been issues, no funding has been granted, financing for projects like this are very tight. The architects referred developments around the state that typically took 1-3 years even to break ground.

However, it seems the root issue isn't this development. Rather, it's that the Nursery was previously deemed as an affordable housing area at all. The point was raised by the Board that all of the affordable housing, open space and conservation plans are on the Barrington website. I'm still trying to find them :)

Regardless, this is going to be an uphill struggle for everyone over the next 12-24 months. This will expose a lot of people to the machinations of town politics and process. However this project turns out, that by itself is a good thing.

garymm

9:23 am on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Mr Clark,

As you point out, many in the audience appeared to be those in the immediate area of this project. They will take the brunt of this poorly conceived project no matter how anyone wants to sugar coat it with pictures of puppies. The very fact that this project is on the drawing boards will have immediate negative impact to home values in the area.

For myself, I'm not living in the immediate area. But as a resident, I believe that placing such a burden on one group must be challenged.

The casualness in this matter by our leadership and the housing board (who don't happen to live in that area) is troubling.

Jack Baillargeron

10:36 am on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Obviously Barrington's problems with all the open meeting violation the past few years appear to have been exposed. They use developer lawyers. Just saying ;-}