It’s the time of year when folks in Arlington are taking out nomination papers, gathering signatures, and strategizing on how to campaign for the town election on Saturday April 1st. The town election is where we choose members of Arlington’s governing institutions, including the Select Board (Arlington’s executive branch), the School Committee, and — most relevantly for this post — Town Meeting.
Arlington has a Representative Town Meeting form of government; each spring, our 252 elected town meeting members gather to consider a range of issues, including changes to town bylaws and zoning. While there were not any “big ticket” items this year, Town Meeting adopted a number of smaller, incremental changes that could make it easier to do mixed-use development (e.g., housing over retail), along with improving the sustainability of certain types of projects. These include:
Arlington has an opportunity to set up an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to provide more housing stability for its low and moderate income residents. The vote will occur in the Town Meeting starting Nov. 16, 2020.
(Contributed by Ben Rudick and Steve Revilak)