Reportedly, there were fireworks in East Milton last night. For real. A spontaneous celebration of NO!

Milton voters rejected a zoning plan that would have added multi-family housing options in Milton and brought us into compliance with state law. Fifty-four percent of voters yesterday chose to break the law and break with two-thirds of town meeting members because they feared the consequences of growth and new housing would be worse, much worse.

It is a sobering setback for those of us in Milton who believe in a more inclusive town and region. We didn’t know if we would win and we certainly knew that the opposition had the easier sell. Think traffic is bad now? Voting yes will make it worse, they said. Greedy developers. An influx of outsiders. Fear of change. Fear of the other. Powerful messaging.

So, we put together a powerful coalition of long-time residents and newcomers to town that voted yes for a wide variety of reasons. 4,346 residents said yes at the polls for playing our part in the regional housing crisis and for continuing to partner with the state on funding and planning. Over 4,000 yes votes wins virtually every municipal election in Milton history. But not yesterday.

Turnout in last year’s hotly contested spring elections in Milton was 28%. Yesterday’s turnout exceeded 45%. In the large turnout presidential election years of 2016 and again in 2020, over 4,000 Milton residents voted for Donald Trump. But three times that number voted for Biden in 2020 making the Trump total seem insignificant. Analysis will need to be done, but it does seem as if those Trump voters came out yesterday. In force. They joined with others wanting to send a signal to state officials who they believe are inappropriately forcing Milton to change.

The no voters were led by former Canton resident Denny Swenson. Swenson “moved” to Milton in 2013 seven years after buying a home literally on the Canton/Milton line with half of the home in each town. She lived her first years there as a Canton resident sending her daughter to Canton schools and voting in Canton elections. In 2013, a developer proposed a mixed-income apartment building in Milton near her neighborhood. Swenson registered to vote in Milton, fought the development and won, ran for town meeting and then planning board. After five unremarkable years on the Planning Board, including a stint as chair while the state was drafting guidelines for the MBTA Communities Act, Swenson orchestrated a successful campaign to convince East Milton voters that they were the town’s “dumping ground”.

She lied to voters repeatedly saying, among other fibs, that the only money at risk was a $35,000 state grant. In the immediate hours after the vote, the town has already lost a $140,800 grant designed to protect a seawall at Milton Landing. More bad funding news is sure to come if Milton continues its noncompliance.

Swenson was brilliant politically. Our side played early on with the theme of “no has no plan” highlighting that only one side of the debate had done the work to put forward a zoning plan meeting the state’s guidelines. Swenson flipped that on its head and sent a mailer to town residents saying it was the yes side, who had spent 18 months crafting an imperfect but carefully crafted compliant zoning article, that had no plan. No plan for traffic, school funding, reigning in greedy developers, and quite shockingly and incorrectly, no plan for increasing the amount of affordable housing.

What will Swenson and her motley coalition do now? Time will tell but my guess is that they will double down on the argument that Milton is not a rapid transit community. They will seek to litigate that issue and try to get Milton’s zoning requirement downgraded from approximately 2,400 units to under 1,000. It is unlikely to be successful but it allows her angry followers, disproportionately older white males among her visible volunteers, to continue to shake their collective fists at the state bogeyman, or rather the bogeywomen, of Governor Maura Healey and Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll.

What should Swenson do? She and her allies on the Planning Board (four of five PB members voted against this zoning) should come up with a Plan B that is state compliant. And see if they can win approval from Town Meeting and/or town voters for a detailed specific plan that puts more housing in someone’s neighborhood. In every other town that has voted on MBTA Community zoning thus far, voters have had a choice of at least two different plans from YIMBY and NIMBY advocates. Milton’s no side refused to develop a plan and won yesterday with that strategy. You can’t criticize a plan that doesn’t exist. It is easy to coalesce around a request for “more time to get it right”. But it is not a governing strategy. At some point, a new plan will have to emerge or the state will choose one for us.

Milton tripled in population from approximately 9,000 residents in 1920 to 27,000 fifty years later in 1970. In the 54 years since, Milton has largely shut its doors to new growth. Our population has grown by just 1,100 people since 1970. In that time, Milton’s neighboring communities of Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park and Quincy have gotten more diverse. Milton’s diversity has increased as well, with three of ten residents being persons of color, a dramatic difference from 1970. Does growing diversity mean we can stop growing as a town? Do we have any responsibility to address the growing unaffordability of a town where the median single family home is $1.1 million?

Local control works for those on just one side of the door. White homeowners vote over and over to exclude others. Existing homeowners perceive threats to their economic interests with every proposed change no matter how large or small, how borne out by fact or not. Civil rights groups will take note. Our Attorney General has been clear in her statements. Milton must follow the law. 5,119 voters put the target on our back yesterday. Let’s see if the no side is deft enough to avoid what is coming next.