How Framingham's MBTA Communities Act Response Ran Off the Rails

The Mayor delayed the planning effort, then disrupted it, then usurped the City Council's authority by submitting his own plan to the state.

On Tuesday, February 4, 2025, the City Council will resume its consideration of Framingham’s planning response to the MBTA Communities Act which requires new zoning to enable future possible addition of 4,355 residential units to the city’s housing stock.

The state requires that the new zoning satisfy the following conditions:

a. Includes 50 acres of which 25 acres must be contiguous

b. 40% of the total area must be within a half-mile radius of the commuter rail station and all sub-zones must be at least 5 contiguous acres.

c. Provides a density of at least 15 units per acre

d. Provides units suitable for families (no restrictions are allowed on unit maximum square footage or number of bedrooms)

Note that the MBTA Communities Act (MBTA CA) was passed in January 2021 under the Baker administration, with unanimous support in the Senate and overwhelming support (143-4) in the House. The Healey administration is charged with implementing the law.

The best way to get an understanding of what has happened in Framingham, with the Mayor overseeing the city’s response, is to look at the timeline of events:

• Governor Baker signs the MBTA CA into law on January 14, 2021.

• Under state law Framingham must submit its final MBTA CA compliance package to the state by December 31, 2024.

• Charlie Sisitsky takes office as the 2^nd Mayor of Framingham on January 1, 2022, but does nothing in relation to the MBTA CA compliance effort for almost 2 years.

• In the Fall of 2023, prior to any Framingham MBTA CA planning effort formally starting, the city administration quietly and out of the public view seeks advice from the state on the feasibility of including in such planning the Edmands/Edgell parcel in Nobscot, which has drawn so much attention in the last 5 months. The state replies with an opinion that the parcel is suitable for inclusion. See the state’s letter, dated November 6, 2023, here.

• No one in the community ever sees this letter until it surfaces in a City Council meeting agenda on November 4, 2024, almost a year after it was received by the city.

Meanwhile the Mayor decides to have the Planning Board oversee the MBTA CA planning process and thereby excludes the City Council from the process, even though the City Council is the body which has final decision making authority on the city’s compliance submission to the state. Further, the City Council arguably has more accumulated Framingham planning experience than the Planning Board, so its exclusion makes no sense.

In addition, even though the intent of the MBTA CA is to boost housing suitable for families and thus will increase the flow of students into town and city school systems, the Mayor does not include in his charge to the Planning Board any instructions to pay attention to the impact of Framingham’s MBTA CA response on the school district, in terms of required increased teaching staff and classroom capacity.

Most importantly, little did the Nobscot community know that the Mayor’s intent was to keep the Nobscot parcel out of the planning process until the last possible minute, then insert it into the package, and hope it would sail through Planning Board and City Council approval before the Nobscot community could stop it.

Resuming the timeline.

• The Planning Board effort begins on March 13, 2024 in a joint meeting with the Zoning Board of Appeals: minutes.

• The Planning Board process continues for 6 months with neighborhood groups reasonably notified and consulted, and 4 areas identified in the planning solution draft arrived at by August 22, 2024: Downtown; Speen St.; Shopper’s World; the Staples parcel at Rt 9/I-90.

• The Planning Board meets on September 19, 2024, and for the first time, with no notice to the Nobscot community, the controversial Edmands/Parcel is inserted into the plan by the city administration and accepted by the Planning Board. The proposed Nobscot addition has 1,104 units @30 units/acre.

• A Public Hearing on this draft plan is held by the Planning Board on October 17, 2024, and sees huge pushback from the Nobscot community which had been blind-sided by the sudden insertion of the Edmands/Edgell parcel. In response, the Planning Board drops the Nobscot proposal to 552 units @15 units/acres, then votes to submit the package to the City Council for its approval.

• A roiling set of City Council meetings followed in which a north-south alliance emerged between Districts 1, 2, 3 and Districts 7, 8, 9. In a December 17, 2024, City Council meeting, when it became clear that this alliance would eliminate the Edmands/Edgell parcel from the submission to the state, City Councilor George King derailed the planned public hearing by initiating discussion of the plan ahead of the expected public input. Subsequently, the Chair lost control of the meeting, and finally the City Council tabled all further discussion of the MBTA CA package till February 4, 2024.

• In a complete surprise, on December 23, 2024, the Mayor notified the City Council that he had submitted his own compliance package to the state, without consulting the City Council nor seeking its approval, thus usurping the City Council’s approval authority on MBTA CA matters. The Mayor simply asked the state to agree that the Central Business District multi-family zoning, which was approved by Town Meeting in 2015, be deemed compliant with the MBTA Community Act.

• On January 22, 2025, the state responded with conditional approval of the Mayor’s submission, even though the submission bypassed the City Council approval process.

Now the City Council has to figure out what to do in its upcoming meeting on February 4, 2025.

The Mayor’s actions in this whole process have been egregious.

He delayed the planning process for 2 years, secretly planned to insert the Nobscot Edmands/Edgell parcel into the planning process at the last possible minute, with the hope that it would get Planning Board and City Council approval before Nobscot community opposition could get organized, and then in the huge uproar which resulted from his action, did an end run around the City Council’s process and approval authority by submitting his own plan to the state.

That plan placed all the burden of new housing compliance on the downtown area, rather than spreading it out like the Planning Board/City Council solution, which apart from the Nobscot problem, seemed to have much more balance, and specifically included areas unlikely to be developed, reducing the impact on the schools.

This was a Mayoral masterpiece of trampling over a local neighborhood community, the City Council’s authority and indeed the whole planning process. The Mayor’s submission had zero Planning Board, City Council or community review.

How starkly this stands in contrast to the Mayor’s words in his state of the city speech in on Monday, January 27, 2025:

• “Residents have expressed appreciation for the opportunity to voice their opinions and contribute to the decision-making process that shapes our community.”

• “The challenges we face are not insurmountable if we work together.”

• “I serve as your Mayor with the unwavering belief that when we come together, our collective efforts are far greater with strength.

• “… I believe in the power of community, the strength of unity, and the potential of our city.”

• “Let’s continue to move forward in a spirit of cooperation and respect so we can grow stronger together.

What Next?

Now a City Council, somewhat exhausted at the entire process, must deal with the fallout.

It may throw up its hands and simply go along with the Mayor’s Central Business District maneuver, or it could plow ahead with the plan it almost finalized on December 17, 2024, or it could come up with some creative hybrid plan.

Whichever way the City Council goes, likely the most important job it must do is to get as good an estimate as possible of the impact of its MBTA CA solution on the school system.

No matter what is done, more housing will be built which supports families.

It is worth looking at what happened since the town approved the Central Business District (CBD) zoning in 2015. Since then, most of the new multi-unit developments in the CBD and elsewhere in Framingham have been dominated by 1-2BR units, which on average produce about 1 student for every six units.

In 2015, the student population was 8,153. In 2025, it is 9,124. That is 1,000 added students in 10 years. With MBTA CA compliance overlaid on the CBD and possibly elsewhere, if a hybrid compliance plan evolves, 3BR family friendly units will become more likely, as the city loses control over the bedroom count on new units in zones where the MBTA CA applies. 3BR units on average produce about 4 students for every 6 units. That is 4 times more than a 1-2BR mix.

Before the MBTA CA, about 500 students would have been expected to be added to the school district in the next 5 years. Now that could easily double, triple or quadruple.

Remember that Framingham already brought the King Elementary School back online in the period 2015 – 2019.

We love to welcome new students to the school district, but we must have the staffing and classroom capacity to handle them. That is where the City Council planning process matters a great deal.

If the City Council cannot provide an answer to the question of how many new students will flow into the school system from residential development enabled by its final MBTA CA package, we could be in for big trouble down the road.

If the school system founders, so will the city.

The City Council’s decision here will affect Framingham for the next decade.

This is not the time to give up on the problem.

The City Council must work hard to get this right and minimize the flow of student into the schools. The state gave Framingham 180 days to come up with a complete solution, which gives the City Council time to work on the problem to arrive at a good solution.

No matter what, it seems almost certain that Framingham will need to add another elementary school in the next 5 years. The optimal way to do that is to add the planned southside school and then renovate the current Hemenway school, so it can be kept fully operational in the future. The southside school could be used as swing space during the renovation.

There would be two debt exclusions: one for the new southside school and one for renovation of the current Hemenway school. That would add needed added capacity, have a coupled debt exclusion process which would build north-south cohesion, and would result in Nobscot retaining its local school, while the southside expands its school capacity.

Let’s see where the City Council goes with all this.

It has the knowhow and the smarts to get its MBTA CA planning right.

Most important of all, it should NOT leave control over the remaining process in the Mayor’s hands.