[MassHistPres] LHDs a recent narrow unexpected defeat — and some Questions.

[Dennis De Witt]

LHDs a recent narrow unexpected defeat — and some Questions.


Creation of LHDs

Brookline, which has representative town meeting, has eight LHDs — seven are neighborhood LHDs ranging from perhaps 20 properties to perhaps 300, plus one single property LHD.  The first two, created ±40 years ago, passed with little opposition and no prescribed process.  The first is a neighborhood near BU where BU demolished an important building over an August weekend (pre-demo delay laws).  The second was and is a very together neighborhood.

Then came an attempt in a particularly upmarket neighborhood where the neighborhood association hadn’t done enough homework and was blindsided by a core of aggressive libertarian opposition — “No one is going to tell me what to do with my house!".

That lead to a “rule of thumb” (generated by a conservative selectman and effectively institutionalized over time by Town Meeting) that a multi-property LHD should have the support of 80% of the owners (the owners of multiple properties are counted once and re condo buildings each separately owned condo unit is counted once).

All of Brookline's subsequent multi-property LHDs (five total) have meet that requirement — as it happens, all had just a little over 84% support.  In each case the remaining 16% of ownerships was not all opposed.  It would be a mixture of NOs, and those who wanted to be recorded as neutral (e.g. perhaps an institution), and a few properties for which a responsible person genuinely could not be identified or contacted. 


A surprise upset

Last spring a small area of seven properties two of which were condo buildings, with a total of 15 ownerships in the area, came to town meeting as an extension of an existing LHD.  Two of the buildings, owned by a developer, were under demo delay.  To everyone’s astonishment the developer said they had no objection to the LHD.  One other owner, who lives part of the year out of the country, asked to be counted as neutral but specifically not opposed.  In Town Meeting it ran into stiff opposition from pro-housing folks who do not believe in single family houses nor even in single family zoning (in fact the developer clearly was going to convert his two large houses into multi-unit condos — and the neighborhood and Preservation Commission both said that was OK).   In town meeting after lengthy discussion it came one vote short of ⅔.  The next night there was a motion to reconsider and after another lengthy discussion it again fell 1 vote short of the ⅔  with only a very few changed votes (mostly due to absences).  In the past it would have been passed with a nearly unanimous vote.


I would like to know the following

Has anyone experienced any similar defeat ?

Has anyone ever passed an LHD in Town Meeting where less than ⅔ of the owners in the LHD supported it?

Has anyone ever lost an LHD in Town Meeting where the owners overwhelmingly supported it?

How many representative TM towns have multiple LHDs? — and how many LHDs?

How many open TM towns have multiple LHDs? — and how many LHDs?


If Chris had some of this information stashed somewhere it would be great to know that — and not have to reconstruct it.

Dennis De Witt
Brookline
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