POLITICS INFLUENCES COUNCIL APPOINTMENTS TO PLANNING BOARD

AMHERST – Politics played out at the Amherst Town Council meeting on Monday, May 20 as councilors spent more than two hours discussing recommended appointments to the planning board.

One new name on the list of four nominees did not sit well with a number of the councilors who were aligned with the political action committee (PAC) Amherst Forward in the run-up to the town election last November. Interestingly, however, three of the Amherst Forward-backed councilors ultimately supported the nomination.

The nominee in question was lawyer Janet McGowan; the other three slots were re-appointments of existing planning board members for second terms. McGowan had been vocally opposed to the Wildwood School building project that would have reconfigured elementary education in the town, and had been opposed to the new charter that replaced the 240-member representative town meeting and five-member select board with a thirteen-member council. These two stances, along with her willingness to engage on the details of each issue on social media, made her somewhat of a lightning rod in politically-engaged circles. In the run-up to the charter and council campaigns in 2018, she was blocked from commenting on Amherst For All’s Facebook page, and her comments on the pro-charter blog, “A Better Amherst”, run by former charter commissioners and proponents Nick Grabbe and now-Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke, were frequently withheld.

During the lengthy discussion on May 20, District 1 Councilor Cathy Schoen pointed out that McGowan seemed well qualified for a position on the planning board, having graduated from Harvard Law School, dedicated her career to the public sector, served as a professional mediator, and closely followed the work of the planning board and its zoning subcommittee for years.

McGowan is well versed on the town’s zoning bylaws, and would be a “quick study” on the board, according to Outreach, Communications and Appointments (OCA) chairperson Sarah Swartz. OCA is the five-person committee tasked with evaluating applicants to certain multimember bodies and making the appointment recommendations to the full council. OCA passed the slate of nominees for the planning board in a split 3-2 vote, with Councilors Evan Ross and George Ryan opposing.

Arguments against McGowan’s appointment focused primarily on the loss of the current chair and two-term planning board member Greg Stutsman. Stutsman, who is a Realtor, was one of the original steering committee members of Amherst For All, the group that successfully lobbied for a new form of government that eliminated representative town meeting. As a member of the planning board, he voted to approve the recent spate of mixed-use developments in downtown Amherst, Kendrick Place, One East Pleasant, and Spring Street.

Term Limits

Recent practice around term limits for the planning board and other town committees has been to allow individuals two three-year terms, and then to appoint a replacement if there are interested individuals wishing to serve. One known exception to this rule was the single planning board term allowed for Denise Barberet; the town manager at the time left the position vacant rather than reappointing Barberet, who, although she voted in support of most projects and zoning articles brought before the board, had opposed certain articles favored by Amherst Town Hall.

The zoning board of appeals, meanwhile, has had members serve well beyond their two-term limits. No councilors questioned this during the discussion on appointments.

A criticism leveled at the planning board in recent years has been that it has lacked diverse viewpoints, resulting in actions that give the appearance of unduly benefitting developers, to the detriment of abutters and to the town of Amherst as a whole.

Associate Members

Efforts to derail the McGowan nomination continued for more than an hour. District 5 Councilor Shalini Bahl-Milne was the first to suggest the unusual measure of appointing “associate” members to the planning board as a way to retain Stutsman, while offering McGowan a limited role. Although mentioned as an option in Section 10.02 of the Zoning By-law, the new charter does not include any mention of associate members, and indeed the town has not had such a position on the planning board in the past twenty years.

The reference on page 97 of the Zoning By-law limits the role of “associate” members to “the purposes of hearing and voting upon decisions on Special Permit applications and only in the case of absence, inability to act, or conflict of interest on the part of a regular Board member, or in the event of a vacancy on the Board.” District 4 Councilor and former planning board chair Stephen Schreiber had this line from the Zoning By-law readily at hand, and read it to the rest of the council. Councilors Lynn Griesmer, Andy Steinberg, George Ryan, and Evan Ross all made comments in support of the idea.

The councilors’ lack of surprise to this idea of creating “associate” planning board positions seemed to indicate possible deliberation prior to the May 20 meeting. The Open Meeting law defines deliberation as “an oral or written communication through any medium, including electronic mail, between or among a quorum of a public body on any public business within its jurisdiction.” To be a deliberation, the communication must involve a quorum of the public body, which would be seven members in the case of a thirteen-person council. If six or fewer Councilors discussed the idea of creating associate planning board memberships prior to the meeting, it would not technically be classed as a violation of Open Meeting law. However, it could be perceived as ethically questionable.

It’s Politics

Two of the Amherst Forward-endorsed councilors–at-large councilors Alisa Brewer and Mandi Jo Hanneke–pushed back against the “associates” proposal, noting that this was an unusual suggestion and would need further study, as well as defining the roles and responsibilities of such memberships, before considering implementation. Hanneke called out the various antics of her colleagues as clearly political. “This vote is politics. It really is probably about politics and whose views best represent our views,” she said.

Brewer added that she was “…supporting the things that my colleague Mandi Jo just said. I was flabbergasted to hear that zoning was not ‘political’ because that certainly has not been my experience in life!”

Showing some frustration with the proceedings, District 2 Councilor Pat DeAngelis at one point said, “Stop playing games.”

Motions and Votes

Other suggestions, primarily by Schreiber, to derail McGowan’s appointment included postponing appointments for one year, in effect leaving the current board exactly as is and giving Stutsman another year as chair, or referring the nominees back to the OCA committee, which ostensibly would look for different names to present to the full council. A motion to refer back to OCA failed, with Councilors Griesemer, Steinberg, Ross, Ryan, and Bahl-Milne voting in favor of referral, and Schreiber abstaining. The remaining seven councilors rejected the motion.

Ultimately, a vote to approve the nominations passed 8-2 with three members abstaining (Griesmer, Steinberg, and Schreiber) and Bahl-Milne switching her vote to a Yes.

A subsequent motion to refer the “associates” idea to a council subcommittee for further study garnered no support. Schreiber said, “Maybe we need a cooling-off period, because the urgency of the associates [proposal] had to do with a particular situation which is now dispensed of.”  Ryan agreed, adding, “This [idea] is motivated by a very particular situation. The council has just voted and made its decision, so I think the issue has been decided, and I don’t see any point of pursuing this any further…I think at this point, this should just be dropped.”

At the first council meeting, back in December 2018, there was a long and contentious debate on who should be elected vice president of the council, with the votes falling along clear partisan lines. This time, the party lines were blurred, with PAC-endorsed candidates Hanneke, Brewer, and Bahl-Milne voting with the five councilors who ran as independents. Will this open up the council to issue-based allegiances? Will appointments to town boards and committees become more open, and will diverse viewpoints be welcome? We will have to watch and see.