I am glad you asked! This is a good question and worth diving into.

We absolutely need development. I would love for things to stay how they are, but that is not in the cards. Residential development is generally a drain on a town's finances, not a benefit. In general, residents use more resources than they contribute as taxes. This is less true for retired residents and more true for families.

Like most any town, we need to attract business. Not only do our residents need places to eat, shop, and work, but businesses are generally a net positive for a town's bottom line. In the long run, my town needs to evaluate its commercial and industrial zoning, see if it should be increased in some places (I think it should), and see if we need to improve infrastructure in some places to foster better growth (again, I think we should).

I am also not opposed to increased residential development. I am not even against density that is higher than typical in my town in specific circumstances. But again, this development should be thoughtful. We are a rural town where agriculture is a significant industry - we have several farms that sell their produce and animal products in the more metropolitan parts of the state in addition to feeding our own residents. We are also fortunate to still have forests and wild land that should be protected. Creating more one-acre rural-suburban parcels is not really going to help us, though owners can generally choose to do that by right.

One example of residential development I am in favor of involves building smaller micro communities that are fairly dense and also require the developer to put aside adjacent land to be preserved as conservation land or leased for agricultural use. There are names for this type of development, but they escape me. This style still allows land owners to create as much development as they could before, but with less environmental impact. It is cheaper for the builders to build less blacktop, rain gardens, etc., so they are incentivized to build this way as well. The micro communities that have been built like this in other places also show greater camaraderie between neighbors that we typically see in standard suburban sprawl, which is another benefit. But allowing agricultural leasing of the land, we can also support our tax base and lose less arable land - a resource we will never get back once spent. We do not need to build additional sewer or water lines to support this development, which my town government cannot simply choose to do. Finally, building this way can help the town keep its character. We could debate whether character is important or not, but my constituents have an opinion that it is.

What the state requires, at I believe 15 units per acre, does not exist in my town if memory serves. We have one development that approaches that, but it is in one of the few locations that could reasonably support such development. We do not control our own water and sewer systems - they are independent municipal entities with their own elected officials. Both are at capacity. Our available locations for new large scale wells in town are limited, and the town we effectively lease sewer processing capacity from is selling us all that they are willing to sell us.

The housing crisis in this state is real, but the biggest origin for these problems lies squarely in Boston's lap. They are raking in the business taxes while sticking us with the residential bills. I am not a fan of unfunded mandates from the state, and that goes doubly true when the mandates do not account for the wide varieties of communities that they are laid upon. One-size-fits-all is simply not true.

I could get into the importance of food security and hope the pandemic gave us great examples of why we need local agriculture, but I have probably written enough. Thank you for your time!