The MBTA Communities process needs you!

The town of Milton recently held an election in which the town rejected its MBTA Communities plan. (The Boston Globe has a breakdown of how different parts of the town voted.) There were many Milton-specific aspects to the issue that don’t apply to Belmont. For instance, there was controversy about whether the Mattapan Trolley counted as rapid transit and therefore whether Milton should join communities like Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and Newton, or instead be counted as one of the inner ring suburbs like Belmont or Lexington. Additionally, Milton is a demographically complicated town—very diverse in some areas, very not-diverse in others. We will leave others more Milton-knowledgeable (in this case, the free-market-libertarian-ish blog Market Urbanism—which we commend to our conservative neighbors as a more thoughtful alternative to uninformed naysaying) to comment on the local politics.

Suffice it to say, we think that a town-wide referendum on the MBTA Communities Plan, once it makes its way through the Planning Board and the Town Meeting, would be a bad idea. A “no” vote would expose Belmont not simply to the loss of state grant money—though that would be bad enough in our current fiscal position—but to legal liability of unknown consequences under state and federal fair housing laws. And a “yes” vote, given that it would have to follow a Town Meeting vote to actually implement the plan, would do nothing more than affirm our town’s democratic process while wasting a lot of time, money, and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.

Fortunately, there’s an alternative to a divisive and high-risk/low-reward town referendum—and that’s participation in the MBTA Communities process! There is nothing antidemocratic about a process with months of public meetings, public forums, and multiple opportunities for public comment including on-line options. We urge everyone in Belmont to take part!