by John Osborn
The town board responsible for enforcing Harvard's protective bylaw once again postponed a vote on whether to grant the special permit and two zoning variances the town needs to begin renovating and expanding Town Hall.
The decision by the three-member Zoning Board of Appeals to continue the hearing until March 21, followed nearly two hours of public testimony Wednesday evening in Town Hall Meeting Room, which was filled with current and former town officials as well as abutters.
The late night session continued a hearing that began on Feb. 13 with a presentation by Cal Goldsmith of GPR Engineering of Ayer, the town's professional consultant, whose focus then on the history and physical characteristics of the Town Hall site seemed to provoke the ZBA into second-guessing design decisions made over the past three years.
By contrast, this week's presentation was lawyerly, led by Town Counsel Mark Lanza. In a supplementary memorandum delivered to the ZBA late last Tuesday, Lanza tackled directly the town's criteria for granting special permits and variances. The variances are necessary because the proposed Town Hall addition is both taller than 35 feet and closer to the centerline of Ayer Road than the 75 feet specified by Harvard's protective bylaw. A special permit is necessary because Town Hall is a so-called nonconforming building.
Lanza acknowledged that state law made clear that "variances are not allowed as a matter of right and should be 'sparingly granted.'" But special permits are more willingly granted, and Lanza urged the board to "exercise its discretion" and approve one for Town Hall.
Lanza said denial of the variances would be a "substantial hardship" for the town and that the town, through its elected boards and Town Meeting, had decided "loud and clear" that the project is a "public good."
Given the constraints of the Town Hall site, Lanza said there were only two ways to construct a building that complies with Harvard's bylaw: tear down the existing building and construct a new one "near the center of the Common," or build "an addition" on the west side of the 1870-era structure. The cost of the former would add an estimated $560,000 to the $3.9 million cost of the current plan; the second would require an additional $440,000, he said.
The question of "public good," he said, is highly subjective, but the power to determine what is in the best interests of the town "is vested in [Harvard's] elected boards and officials," and in Town Meeting. The 2012 Town Meeting, he reminded ZBA members, had voted by two-thirds majority to fund the project, and at town election, voters "cast their ballots in favor of exempting project debt from the limit set by Proposition 2 1/2."
Lanza's discourse was followed by comments for and against by several attendees. ZBA Chair Chris Tracey also reported that the ZBA had received letters from residents, some of whom were present but declined to speak.
In a discussion that, at times, grew highly technical, ZBA members seemed unwilling to accept the Town's argument that additional costs were a "substantial hardship" or that the votes of town boards and Town Meeting trumped the town bylaw.
"The bylaw is also the will of the people," said Tracey.