Strategic Direction Needed for CPA Guidance

By Roger Colton

Some Town Meeting members have expressed concern regarding the overall approach taken to CPA planning in Belmont. Vincent Stanton (Town Meeting member, Precinct 3), for example, believes that CPA decision-making should be more “strategic” in nature.

Stanton observes that Town Meeting is never presented with “the big picture” for how CPA funds are being used. He cites funding for various projects around Clay Pit Pond as one example. Town Meeting has been presented with three separate projects, he notes, involving the intergenerational path, the veterans’ memorial, and, this year, the removal of invasive plants. “They all deal with maintaining and appreciating the beauty of the pond,” he says. But, “if someone would have had the bigger picture in mind from the beginning,” he asks, “would there have been a more efficient way to approach enhancement of the pond?”

Belmont Town Hall (Tim Todreas illustration)

Gloria Leipzig, member of the Community Preservation Committee (CPC), agrees with the need for a more “unified vision” for CPA funding. She says, however, that strategic direction should come from the Board of Selectmen or a broader-based community process, such as that which led to the Comprehensive Plan. The role of the CPC is only to determine whether proposed projects meet the criteria for CPA funding. “It is,” she says,.“up to Town Meeting to determine whether particular projects are sufficiently important to fund or whether they advance the needs of the community.” Ideally, Leipzig suggested, the CPC would give Town Meeting more projects than there is money to fund, so Town Meeting would need to exercise its judgment on where CPA money would best go.

Stanton and Leipzig both agree that it is not clear who should set the strategic direction they recommend. Different boards have different pieces of the puzzle with no one overseeing the whole. For example, even if each committee with jurisdiction over the statutory allocations established its own long-term CPA plan (Housing Trust for housing; Conservation Commission/Recreation Commission for open space/recreation; Historic District Commission for historic preservation), those allocations do not account for all of the CPA funding available. Town policymakers, they both agree, should give the CPC (and Town Meeting) some clear strategic direction, without naming which “policymakers” should take on that task.

Roger Colton (Town Meeting member, Precinct 6) authors the biweekly “Community Conversations” column for the Belmont Citizen-Herald and hosts the biweekly podcast of the same name for the Belmont Media Center. He is the co-host of the Belmont Journal, the Belmont Media Center’s weekly show for hyper-local news.