Two narratives that I can't leave alone coming out of Town Meeting this week.
They're both related to the character of the town. Bear with me.
The fact that we had to work it out on the remix is a condemnation in and of itself, but that's not the interesting bit.
First, some background: the MBTA Communities Act is an effort by the state to increase the available housing stock in Massachusetts, and uses the T to create its thresholds. It was mostly done while we were focused on the pandemic, which is why so many people were caught off-guard by the law's passage, but it was ultimately signed by Charlie Baker and enforcement activities started up in 2023.
Millbury, as a town next to multiple municipalities with a train station, is considered an "adjacent community," requiring a certain gross density within a certain acreage as "multi-family housing by-right." Basically, that sweet spot between 40B and SOP where local governments can't say no to a multi-family unit, but still regain some local control over other aspects.
(There have been multiple lawsuits about the act, one that mostly affirmed the act except for some procedural issues, and one that is still pending that calls the act an unfunded mandate. I don't see the unfunded mandate case going anywhere. None of that really matters at this point.)
I'm not convinced that the MBTA Communities Act was the best way to attack this issue, but it is a way to attack the issue. Unfortunately for Millbury, in particular, this bubbled up right around the same time a bitter, contentious fight over a parcel of land on Rice Road was top of mind. A 40-odd townhouse complex became an almost-200-unit 40B proposal that could not be stopped because Millbury lacks affordable housing stock; roughly 4% when the state requires 10%.
(For previous pieces on this: February 2022, October 2022, April 2023)
At least in November, when we first said no to the MBTA zoning, a lot of the conversation centered around the charm of the town, the size of the town, the buildings we see in the center, and about the state's cavalier attitude toward local impacts - I can say that Sen. Michael Moore, who was at the November Special Town Meeting, seemed truly surprised at the level of opposition, which still blows my mind. One thing was sure, though: the town overwhelmingly nuked the proposal. It wasn't even close.
Thanks to a delay in enforcement (due to technicalities surrounding administrative procedure rather than legality), Millbury got another bite at the proverbial apple. While the November 2024 proposed map tried to just overlay the district over buildings in use, there was some valid concern (alongside some ridiculous conspiracy theorizing) that developers would simply buy up the land and build massive structures in the center of town. The May 2025 maps, in contrast, are an exercise in taking feedback to heart. While one speaker called it a kind of "malicious compliance," the reality is that this is probably the plan they should have gone with to start - a lot of difficult-to-develop land off 146, and some industrial areas either on Howe Ave across from Cobblestone or up near the Mass Pike exit in between Grafton and Worcester. If character and charm are your main motivations, these proposals addressed it. If infrastructure concerns are paramount, most of the available land is off a state highway.
That just leaves the degrowth arguments. That we don't want more people. That it will tax our resources, change the character, ruin the town. It's all nonsense, of course, but nonsense plays well in a town meeting session where adjacency to the truth is less necessary than the MBTA Communities law requires for towns near train stations. To wit:
- One speaker said we don't actually have a housing crisis, but we're short between 4 and 7 million homes
- Another said Massachusetts population is leveled off, but the study cited says otherwise
- Yet another speaker argued that building more housing won't decrease costs, but simple supply and demand rules do, in fact, apply
Thank goodness Nick Lazzaro spoke so eloquently about the topic, because I literally think he saved the town from a pile of lawsuits and lost grants. He made the case a lot of people didn't or couldn't. I tried, and stumbled, but I was trying to make a point I made in my column a few years back - housing is expensive, our homes are overvalued, and growth is good, actually.
Either way, it's all over but the shouting. Thank goodness.
Town Meeting can also be a humbling experience. For me, it's getting one sole vote to help save the cistern in the center of town while a proposal that would functionally ban landscaping got multiple.
First, some confessions, because at best, I'm a hypocrite, and at worst, delinquent. I literally came up with my particular idea about 36 hours before Town Meeting, which means I didn't attend any of the pre-meeting FinComm meetings and went in with a harebrained scheme: the Millbury Police Department wants $83,000 for tasers, the cistern rehab would cost no more than $20,000, so let's buy fewer tasers and instead make sure a rock doesn't crush a child as it falls off the structure.
I get what I deserve.
I am sure my reputation is anti-police at this point, which is not entirely fair and not really true. For me, though, the cover letter on the warrant talked about how difficult it was to balance the budget followed by the Millbury Police Department getting a double-digit percentage increase while other line items lost funds. Not only did this double-digit percentage increase exist in the budget article, but the MPD was taking an additional ~$350,000 in free cash on top of that! You don't need to be a member of the woke mob yelling "defund the police!" to be bothered by that.
I'm willing to take Chief Lewos at his word that the MPD has been understaffed for some time. I'm willing to accept that police cruisers are stupid expensive, and the current chaos on the federal level is going to make it worse. What I struggle with is the fact that, after getting new full-time officers and getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for new cruisers, that we were being asked again to get more tasers for the department. $83,000 worth of tasers, in fact, justified in the warrant as a situation where the department "no longer has a surplus."
The previous Town Manager promised COVID recovery funds toward the then-$12,000 rehab project; turns out it was just to shut us up about the issue as he never followed through and didn't even document it anywhere. The current Town Manager said there was no money in the budget for it, and as lean as our budget was, she was mostly right. The idea, however, that we don't have enough money to rehab a unique property and legitimate safety hazard on town property, but have enough money to buy new tasers for the police? That's where you lose me.
So I filed my amendment to take $20,000 out of the taser fund and put it toward the cistern. When I thought of this, I found some quotes online that ranged anywhere from $500 to $5,000 per device. I assumed we'd be looking at a few dozen tasers plus training.
Turns out $83,000, if I heard the chief right, gets us ten additional tasers on our contract with Axon.
Ten.
Not only that, we barely use them. Through 2022, the tasers got used fewer than five times a year, and probably only get pulled out of their holsters once a month on average. So it's not only $83,000 for tasers, but it's $83,000 for something the police are barely using.
(Not to mention they aren't as reliable as advertised, but we're not ready for that conversation.)
Understanding how these tasers cost more than $8,000 a piece for something we use once a quarter is a story for another day, but, again, let's take it at its base value: instead of ten tasers, how about just getting seven? After all, the department "no longer has a surplus" of tasers, rather than officers on patrol lacking them while on duty, so this still solves the problem, right? Well, out come the typical responses:
- One resident: "I will never vote to take things away from our police."
- One member of the Finance Committee saying they trust that the asks are legitimate.
- One resident chastising me for even considering it, saying we should fundraise instead (even though it's town property)
Listen, I get it. We strongly support our police in this town, and questioning their line items isn't going to get far. I can accept that, agree or disagree. What I have a little more trouble swallowing is the idea that we cannot, or should not, question the requests at all. That if the Millbury Police Department asks for something, we should simply give it to them. That it's somehow not the job of the Finance Committee to question these things, to recognize what we go without while making sure the MPD gets what they ask for. That the Town Manager, who I genuinely think is doing a great job all things considered, was unable or didn't consider the optics of giving the police what they want while the historic landmark visible out of the front door of Town Hall falls apart. That Chief Lewos, who grew up in this town just as I did, might be willing to say "actually, you know what, we can compromise on this."
The "Defund the Police" advocates had some of the worst political and social messaging I've seen in my adult life, but they did have a valid point. A lot of the money that goes to policing could be better spent elsewhere. It doesn't have to be historic preservation, but those two FTEs the MPD added to their headcount could pay for three-to-four teachers. It could pave a quarter mile of roads. It could absolutely revolutionize our ability to provide services for the seniors.
Or, you know, it could go to the very preservation efforts that maintain and retain the character of the town that countless people argued for in November, and argued for this week. This particular effort would have cost us $20,000 and a couple tasers, and we said no.
I don't know what the answer is. Some skepticism from the Finance Committee and town administration would go a long way, but there are 15,000 people in this town, and I can't be the only one who feels this way.
Jeff Raymond is a 40-plus year resident of Millbury and loves the town even if it doesn't always love him back. He also writes at MassTransparency.org and can be reached at jeff.raymond@bramanvilletribune.com or Twitter/X (@jeffinmillbury) or BlueSky (@jeff.masstransparency.org)
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