Tonight is yet another meeting of the Milton Planning Board (four of five members are opposed to MBTA Communities Act compliance). Before they discuss whether or not to submit an action plan that states that the town intends to comply with the emergency regulations, they discuss an ADU zoning article. The state, of course, has forced Milton’s (and every other town’s) hand and legalized ADUs in single family zoning districts statewide. The debate about drafting an ADU zoning article hit a bump in the road when the PB discovered that the state had a definition of subway in the regulations. Uh oh. That definition of subway included our mighty trolley.

The loyal opposition was loathe to concede an inch. Planning Board member Sean Fahy took to google to come up with his preferred subway definition. Google does not mention the Mattapan trolley. Neither does the Bible, Torah and any religious text.

What a web they weave! “We don’t have a subway station, arguably,” said Maggie Oldfield. Hmm. Almost sounds like a concession. “It’s a trolley stop not a trolley station.” “I’ve lived in this town for 56 years…” Let’s vote on this. A 3-2 vote. Members Fahy, Davis and Oldfield vote for using “stop”, not “station” as the state suggests. Jim Davis admits that the Attorney General will reject what they just voted on.

And then finally another vote. Nearly three years after the forces of “no” killed an ADU article at town meeting, and subsequently promised to bring another one back in a few months, the Milton Planning Board tonight voted unanimously to submit an ADU article to the February special town meeting…after being forced by the state. State mandates do work!

“In May 1275, Nichiren Daishonin composed this letter, now famously titled “Winter Always Turns to Spring,” to the lay nun Myoichi.” The quote is a core principle for many Buddhists over the centuries.

It came to my attention last night because Jaylen Brown used it in an interview after the Boston Celtics returned to Dallas after last year’s NBA Finals and beat the Mavericks…again.

We are in winter still.

Milton is preparing for town elections this spring where once again, two of five seats on our Select Board are up for election. With a 3-2 split board in favor of continued resistance to the MBTA Communities Act, each election means a possibility of a shift in priorities come May.

How have voters reacted to the town spending $300,000 challenging Governor Healey and Attorney General Campbell at the Supreme Judicial Court? No one knows. Both sides claimed victory in the SJC decision handed down on January 8th but most observers saw it as a clear victory for compliance with the law, once the “guidelines” are turned into “regulations”. Healey’s team issued emergency regulations a few days later to clarify for the 117 towns already in compliance that the same rules continue to apply. The old guidelines came as a result of a lengthy public process that spanned from when they were issued on August 10, 2022, revised on October 21, 2022 and revised again on August 17, 2023 after substantial public comment. The state now must promulgate regulations consistent with the Administrative Procedures Act.

Leaders of “no” efforts in a number of communities clearly see an opportunity to influence the state to substantially change the regulations but it is hard to see the state winning in court only to concede to the town that is trying to challenge the state’s authority to implement the law.

What do Milton opponents want? MBTA Communities Act guidelines call for the town to zone for 2,461 units. Leaders of the Milton Vote No campaign want that number reduced to what they call a “middle ground” of 550, all presumably in the southwest portion of town near the Hyde Park commuter rail stations. It is hard to imagine the state agreeing to that amidst a housing supply crisis that is not abating.

But Denny Swenson‘s “foot soldiers” believe they have the momentum. Towns, at least the towns they talk to regularly, are rising up against the state believing that their they should be given special consideration.

The SJC clearly said the law is constitutional and the AG can enforce it. 117 towns have already complied. More are poised to join them this year. States around the country like California, Connecticut, Oregon, Washington, Utah, and Maine have passed laws encouraging greater housing supply with many targeting “upzoning” as a key piece of the puzzle. How many more taxpayer dollars are the no leaders willing to spend on a legal fight with the Commonwealth? How long can they try to delay the inevitable? Milton, like 176 other communities, will have to fully comply with the law. Spring is coming.

Not good morning. But morning.

This is the first of what I hope will be a regular way to chronicle our tumultuous times. Not just with the chaos caused by Trump but with our own conservative-led NIMBY movement in our diverse town of 28,374 on Boston’s southern border.

I thought 1-25-25 was a good day to start these regular blog posts. Five days after the beginning of Trump part two and five days before the first meeting of the Milton Town Farm review committee which is charged with making a recommendation for the last four acres of one of New England’s few surviving poor farms.

We will be writing a lot about both, I suspect, as well as our town’s ongoing efforts to break the law, notably the MBTA Communities Act. Writing helps me process and make sense of what often is hard to understand.

My writing career began in college when I penned op-ed articles for our campus paper, the Fairfield Mirror. Since then, I’ve written countless grant proposals and was even second or third author on a couple of academic papers. Heck, I even wrote a chapter in a book called Organizing Access To Capital: Advocacy And The Democratization. This won’t be Heather Cox Richardson writing every day. I’m not that smart nor prolific. But there is too much going on. I need to capture this in real time as outrage turns to action and action yields progress. Onward.