AFTER TWO NIGHTS and nearly six hours of impassioned and sometimes pointed debate, Milton Town Meeting members voted to pass new zoning that would open the door to more multi-family housing and make it compliant with the MBTA Communities housing law. 

By 69 percent to 31 percent, the 239 representative voters passed zoning language through a citizen’s petition that would lay the groundwork for potentially 2,461 new units – 25 percent of the town’s current total – though similar zoning around the country and the broader housing market suggest the final number will be far less over a significant period of time. 

The vote will bring the town into compliance with the law requiring municipalities served by the MBTA system to zone for a district of reasonable size that allows a certain number of multi-family housing units, depending on the town’s size and proximity to different modes of transit. But it hardly puts a button on a zoning fight that Town Meeting members note has “pitted neighbor against neighbor” and spawned several expensive legal disputes. 

Some members attempted to toss, without a full vote, a less dense zoning plan – supported by the planning board and warrant committee – that treats the town as “adjacent” to public transit and zones for 10 percent of total units, despite the state housing office’s assertion that the affluent Boston suburb is a “rapid transit” community served by the quaint and occasionally shambolic Mattapan High-Speed Trolley that extends from the end of the Red Line subway.  

Planning board, select board, and warrant committee members ultimately agreed, to enthusiastic applause, to support a motion to send the 10 percent option back to the planning board for study. Some 93 percent of Town Meeting members voted to do so. 

Town Meeting – a form of local governance used for over 300 years in New England – in Milton involves a group of elected members that vote on behalf of the town’s residents on a wide array of matters including zoning. A gathering of Town Meeting in 2023 approved an MBTA Communities compliant plan for Milton, only for it to be tossed 54 to 46 percent in a referendum in 2024.  

Both Monday and Tuesday nights included familiar airing of grievances against the compliance process, with meeting members decrying the housing office’s rezoning rules as “backward,” “unfair,” “unreasonable,” an edict to just “jam it in” on the potential new units, and a “fast-track for developers” to reshape several areas of the town. 

Proponents of the higher density plan also offered familiar notes of support. Some said it was a responsible move and that increasing housing is “essential” to public health and safety, while others warned “if we don’t do it, the state will do it for us, so let’s do it.” 

“All I’m asking us to do tonight is to support [the 25 percent plan] so that we can comply with the law,” urged Board of Appeals chair Kathleen O’Donnell. “And if in some random fashion we get reclassified in some way or some manner, we can come back to Town Meeting, and do our job, and do a different zoning plan. But let’s comply with the law; let’s do our best to support the common good of the people in our Commonwealth.” 

The Supreme Judicial Court in February determined, after considering a suit brought to force Milton into compliance, that the multi-family housing law is constitutional and enforceable by the broad powers of the attorney general. But the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities had promulgated its regulations incorrectly and must re-do them, the court concluded. Under new emergency regulations, the housing office gave communities that had delayed compliance until mid-July to submit compliant plans. 

Several Milton residents warned that the 25 percent rezoning, which sets out specific rules for requiring up to 10 percent of the rezoned units be affordable, would result in more 40B projects. These are developments that receive a streamlined approval process if at least 20 to 25 percent of the units have affordable housing restrictions. 

Opponents of the higher density plan consistently urged other Town Meeting members to approve the lower density option, await a ruling from a Superior Court judge considering whether the town is truly rapid transit, and reserve the option to rezone with higher density later. 

“Residents of Milton came to Milton, and bought homes in Milton, because they like Milton as it exists, not because they hoped Milton would evolve to become something different,” said planning board member Sean Fahy. “It’s our responsibility to preserve Milton as it exists, to the greatest extent possible. By doing so, we’re honoring the commitment of the many residents that have invested in Milton and that are annually relied upon to support Milton financially by paying their taxes.” 

And that old-timey trolley – the only line of 1930s-era Presidents’ Conference Committee streetcars still in service across the country apart from the system in Philadelphia – remains a point of contention.  

The trolley is fundamentally different from the subway lines across the MBTA and is therefore not rapid transit, argued Town Meeting member Mark Christo. Only a few hundred board the single-car trolleys at a handful of small stops each day and the entire length is above ground, he said. 

“It has not the ability to support [the housing office’s] most ambitious 25 percent zoning demand,” he said. 

To 25 percent plan proponents, this objection is missing the point.  

“Just as the sun rises in the east and one plus one equals two, the Mattapan line is rapid transit,” said Matthew Morong, who works in transit systems and supports the 25 percent plan. The line’s service “should be better than it is,” he agreed, and “the people of Mattapan, Milton, and Dorchester all deserve better.” But that should not be an impediment to doing what the state asks in terms of rezoning, he said, while also fiercely advocating for the state to support the area by making long-promised improvements to the line. 

Town Meeting member Karen Friedman-Hanna, who championed the citizen’s petition, said that the 25 percent zoning plan she and her fellow residents put forward was the very same one that the planning board agreed in May to send to Town Meeting and later revoked in favor of only submitting the 10 percent plan. Planning board members remain divided. 

The 25 percent plan that the citizens used is information that “the planning board studied, without a doubt,” said planning board chair Meredith Hall. But when the board looked at the impact to Milton Village and along the Eliot Street corridor, she said, “those impacts were what caused us to say ‘You know what, we find this to be too much density,’ and why we reverted and went back to the 10 percent plan.” 

The housing office reiterated this week that the 10 percent plan was not compliant, Friedman-Hanna noted, and elected officials including Town Meeting and the town’s boards are obligated to “comply with the law.” All attempts to modify the classification have failed, she said, and it only has until July 14 to become compliant. 

“This has already cost the town hundreds of thousands of dollars – money which we do not have,” Friedman-Hanna said. “Ongoing frivolous costs because of our noncompliance will wipe out a portion of the benefit that we just received from a huge override that was needed just for basic level funded services. That’s not okay.” 

Town Administrator Nicholas Milano said that the town applied for just over $800,000 in grants and was told it would have received the money if not for its noncompliance. The town’s legal arrangement with Goodwin Procter, for the case that went before the Supreme Judicial Court and ended with a ruling that the law is constitutional if the regulations are put out correctly, cost $275,000. The town attorney has incurred about another $45,000 in MBTA Communities related expenses since then, Milano said.  

On Monday, the Select Board accepted a $250,000 grant from the Municipal Fiber Grant Program that is contingent on being compliant with MBTA Communities law, Milano said. Other recently applied-for state grants targeting infrastructure improvement in East Milton and housing production would also presumably depend on compliance, he said. Milton public school officials also listed an array of grants, from computer science to reading programs, that they are not able to apply for because of noncompliance. 

Even as 10 percent proponents – including most of the planning board and the warrant committee tasked with approving articles for the Town Meetings – argued that the best move is to wait and see if the courts weigh in on classification, the majority of Town Meeting cast a vote to move forward with compliance as the state defines it. 

Town Meeting member Douglas Hyne, as the body debated on Tuesday whether to consider the 10 percent plan at all, expressed befuddlement. Since 25 is more than 10, he said, by definition they would be in compliance even if the classification were changed. The voting body could always come back to reconsider a lower density option if a court or the Legislature reclassified Milton, he noted. But this vote would temporarily ensure their compliance, he said. 

“We’re not deciding whether we like this law, we’re not deciding whether or not we’re scared of the ramifications of this law, we’re not deciding whether or not it’s fair. That’s not how this can be decided,” Hyne said during remarks on Monday night. “Because when I decide whether or not to follow the law, I generally ask, ‘Is it the law?’ ‘Yes.’ That’s the end of my inquiry.”