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Date: 9/20/2022
AMHERST – The Amherst Town Council discussed accepting two private roads as public roads during its Sept. 12 meeting.
The first item was in itself a first for the council: a proposed acceptance of two private roads to become public. Kestrel Lane and Hop Brook Road comprise the Meadows subdivision in Amherst Fields, a small neighborhood off of Old Farms Road. Planning Director Christine Brestrup said that she would consider this East Amherst.
The subdivision and its accompanying roads were approved by the Planning Board in 1995, after which they were purchased by Doug Cole of Tofino Associates & Cole Construction in the late 1990s. Construction began on these roads in the early 2000s and was substantially completed by 2004. However, several punch list items remained to be completed. The 2008 financial crisis coupled with Doug Cole’s passing in 2010 sent the project into disarray, and the punch list items were never completed. As such, the roads have since greatly deteriorated, but because they are private ways, the town has not been responsible for fixing them. The Meadows Homeowners Association (HOA) reports pleading with Tofino for almost twenty years to fix these roads to no avail, leading to the HOA’s appearance at this council meeting asking for the town’s help instead.
Representing the HOA on Sept. 12 was its president, Douglas Donnell, and former Amherst Select Board member Connie Kruger, who is also a resident of the Meadows. They explained that the roads were initially planned to eventually be accepted as public ways in the 1995 subdivision report; everyone who bought homes in the community did so under the expectation that they would be living on public roads. In 2001 the planning board voted to collect a $130,000 surety from the developer for the purpose of repairs, but only $20,000 was collected, which has sat in an escrow account since then, with no clear indication from Tofino as to when the rest of the money would be provided or plans to fix the roads. Though they have sought legal counsel, the HOA would still like to avoid litigation with the developer and to resolve the issue amicably with support from the town.
Town Engineer Jason Skeels said that a 2021 pavement analysis found the roads to be in “poor/fair” conditions, meaning they need treatment to be considered safely drivable; if left without repair for too much longer, they will need “full-scale reconstruction.” He added that accepting the roads as public ways would benefit the town not only for the roads to be passable for municipal vehicles, but also financially: the road mileage would count toward the town’s Chapter 90 allotment from the state, granting the town increased funding for transportation and infrastructure projects.
The council was in favor of helping the Meadows community by accepting the roads as public ways. A motion was passed expressing the town’s intent to accept them as such, and a second motion was passed to refer the proposed acceptance to the Planning Board and Finance Committee for review. These committees will recommend what they believe is the correct course of action to the Town Council by Oct. 27, at which time the town council will then vote to formally accept the roadways as public.
Council Vice President Ana Devlin Gauthier presented the next action item with help from Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke, a proposed special act on residential property transfers.
Gauthier expressed that this was something she had been working on for some time after noticing two prevalent trends in community. The first was rapidly rising capital costs and the stress this has placed on town’s operating and capital budgets. The second was a growing need for what Gauthier referred to as “both lowercase- and uppercase-‘A’ affordable housing,” meaning a combination of government-subsidized housing developments, as well as a greater stock of general middle- and lower-income housing not run by a specific program. Seeing these issues led Gauthier to brainstorming new ways to collect revenue to support these causes, which led to her idea of residential property transfer fees in the Amherst housing market.
The idea is not entirely a new one – Gauthier did list Somerville, Cambridge and Nantucket as inspiration of other Massachusetts municipalities with some sort of transfer fees – but she has adapted the principle with specific details intended for the Amherst market. The fee would apply to two categories of homes.
The first are homes which sell for over 200 percent of the average assessed price of a single-family home. The 2 percent transfer fee would apply to the remainder of the selling price over that 200 percent mark; for instance if the average assessment was $300,000 and a home sold for $650,000, there would be a 2 percent fee on $50,000 of the selling price, amounting to $1,000 in fees to the town.
The other category is homes that did not qualify for a homestead certification. This means homes that are either non-owner occupied, or not the primary residence of the owner. The 2 percent would be levied towards these homes total selling price.
Gauthier stated in her current plan, the first $250,000 in fees would be allocated to the Affordable Housing Trust, after which the Town Council could decide what share would continue to go towards this trust, and how much should be allotted to other causes. However, these figures are flexible, and the details can be changed in the bylaw process.
In order to be enacted, the special act must be voted by the council for presentation to the state Legislature. The state Legislature then has its own approval process, after which it would be submitted to the governor. Should the governor sign the act into law, this merely grants towns the option to impose such transfer fees. The Town Council would then draft a bylaw which mandates the fees.
The council was in support of the proposition. It voted to refer the proposed special act to the Finance Committee and the Governance, Organization and Legislation Committee for review and recommendation to the town council for a final vote by Oct. 27.
The last significant item of the meeting was a decision on the format of future council meetings. After some deliberation regarding to safety risks related to COVID-19 spreading and violent intruders, the council decided on a hybrid approach. Meetings will be hosted in-person with the option of remote participation via Zoom for whoever chooses to do so. In-person public attendance will be permitted, also with a virtual attendance option. In the event of inclement weather, or at the council president’s discretion, the president may choose to announce a solely virtual meeting. However, all Town Council committee meetings will continue to be hosted virtually with public access, unless this practice becomes inconsistent with state law. These decisions become effective immediately and will last until and including the next council’s first meeting.
The council next met on Sept. 19 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the Sept. 29 edition of The Reminder.