By AUBREY HAWKE
Waltham Times Contributing Writer
The City Council is set to finalize new zoning to stay in compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, on Jan. 13.
The City Council will take such action at its regularly scheduled meeting, to be held at City Hall at 7 p.m., when it will have the second and third readings of the new zoning.
The second and third readings will move the zoning amendment over the finish line.
This comes nearly four years to the day after former Governor Charlie Baker signed the act in 2021.
The council held the first reading of the zoning change, and voted to affirm the action, at its Dec. 23 meeting. This came after months of deliberation within the city and communication between the city and the state to come up with a compliant zoning plan.
With its Dec. 23 vote, the council decided to move ahead with a zoning plan allowing for four-unit buildings on 55 acres near the Brandeis/Roberts MBTA Commuter Rail Station and 25 acres near the Waverly station in Belmont.
This puts the city in compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, a state law mandating that communities served by mass transit have zoning in which multifamily housing is permitted by right, rather than by special approval.
The new zoning supported by the City Council creates the possibility for up to 4,002 new multifamily housing units to be built in Waltham.
As the city advances with this zoning plan, it leaves a second option behind; the second option would have allowed developers to construct eight-unit buildings.
The council’s Dec. 23 vote came just a week before a state deadline to take such action.
Months in the making
The new zoning has been months in the making, with city and state officials as well as the City Council and the City Council’s Ordinance and Rules Committee working on the proposals throughout the fall.
Waltham met the state’s end-of-year deadline for a first reading of a compliant zoning proposal and now waits while the state does a final review process.
The state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) is now in its 30-day window to review Waltham’s actions.
Comments from councilors
At the Dec. 23 vote, all councilors voted in favor of moving forward with the proposal for four-unit buildings, except for Councilor-at-Large Colleen Bradley-MacArthur who voted “present.”
Only two councilors spoke on the matter.
Although the City Council voted to advance zoning for four-unit buildings, others had pushed for the second proposal that would have allowed for a higher density of housing.
At a Dec. 16 hearing on the two proposed zoning plans, 25 Waltham residents spoke in favor of a zoning proposal that would allow buildings to be built with as many as eight units in them.
Only one person at that meeting spoke in favor of the four-unit plan.
Bradley-MacArthur addressed her constituents during the Dec. 23 meeting with remorse about the outcome of the council’s vote. She also made statements regarding the decision to move forward with the four-unit plan instead of the second option.
“I’m sorry to all of those who showed up last week to support the eight-unit plan,” Bradley-MacArthur said, later noting that “I am a single-family homeowner. Everyone on this council owns their own home. There’s no renters on the council. Do you know what we do have on the council? Realtors and landlords.”
Ward 8 Councilor Cathyann Harris responded to Bradley-MacArthur’s statement defending the City Councilor’s vote in favor of the zoning plan for four-unit buildings as well as the Ordinances and Rules Committee’s work on the proposals.
“While I appreciate the comments and I appreciate the debate, the committee didn’t rush to any decision, nor did this council. We spent months working on something that would be acceptable to the state, to get state approval for housing. That’s called compromise. That has to happen in order for this to pass,” Harris said.
The full recording of the Dec. 23 meeting can be viewed here.
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