By Ethan Forman | Staff Writer Jan 17, 2025

In two weeks, Gloucester City Council plans to vote on an April 24 date for a special election for its now citizen-petition-suspended Multi-family Overlay District zoning rules meant bring the seaport into compliance with the controversial MBTA Communities Act.

On Tuesday in a meeting at City Hall, councilors voted 7-0, with two absent, to refer questions about setting the date of the election and related matters to their Jan. 28 meeting.

A Jan. 8 ruling by the state Supreme Judicial Court in a legal challenge from Milton served to give Gloucester more time to come into compliance with the law, known as Section 3A.

The city now has until Feb. 13 to submit an action plan and July 14 to submit an application to the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, the agency said Thursday.

The city’s path to come into compliance with the law has been a tortuous one.

On Oct. 1, after months of meetings, hearings and forums, the City Council voted 7-0 with two councilors recusing themselves, for compliant zoning rules under the 2021 law. Section 3A requires 177 MBTA communities create at least one district of reasonable size where family-friendly multi-family housing is permitted by right within a half-mile from a transit stop.

The law was seen as a way to create more transit-oriented housing, and EOHLC says 116 communities have complied. But others have fought the law as overreach.

Under the law, out-of-compliance communities become ineligible for certain grants.

And that has concerned city officials, including Mayor Greg Verga, as Gloucester last year won a $400,000 state grant for infrastructure repairs on Gloucester Avenue and a $500,000 grant toward a massive, $206 million project to upgrade the city’s wastewater facility on Essex Avenue.

After the council approved the zoning Oct. 1, within 21 days, a successful petition drive led by former Ward 2 Councilor Tracy O’Neil and others gathered signatures of more than 10% of voters to suspend the zoning measure, under a provision of the City Charter.

In early December, per the charter, the City Council voted against rescinding the zoning, and voted to send it a referendum, either at the next city election or at a special election.

It’s this April 24 date for a special election that is up for discussion Jan. 28.

Compliance or no compliance, that is the question

So where does Gloucester stand when it comes to being in compliance, given it had until Dec. 31, 2024, to come into compliance as a commuter rail community, and the city must wait for a vote on its 3A zoning ordinance to even be in compliance?

On Jan. 8, the SJC confirmed the MBTA law as constitutional, valid and enforceable by the state attorney general, but it required the state re-promulgate the law’s guidelines — which communities relied on to craft zoning — as enforceable regulations. This upended the deadlines for cities and towns like Gloucester to come into compliance.

On Jan. 14, EOHLC filed emergency regulations with the Secretary of the Commonwealth, providing more time for MBTA communities like Gloucester that failed to meet prior deadlines to come into compliance.

The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said in an email to the Times: “Due to the SJC case and the emergency regulations filed by EOHLC this week, there are currently no non-compliant communities.”

“Communities that had not submitted zoning to EOHLC, including Gloucester, have until 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 13 to submit an action plan to HLC and achieve interim compliance, and then they have until July 14 to submit a district compliance application (aka zoning) to the state.”

“I have been in regular contact with the lieutenant governor and attorney general as we navigate Gloucester’s next steps to comply with the state law, especially given the referendum petition and emergency regulations,” Verga said in an email to the Times.

“With the upcoming referendum election, I am committed to ensuring voters have all the facts they need to make informed decisions.”

Yes For Gloucester committee launches

On Wednesday evening at Minglewood Harborside on Rogers Street, a group of nearly 40 residents gathered as part of a newly formed ballot committee to urge a “yes” vote on the zoning ordinance.

At the gathering were Verga, At-Large Councilors Jason Grow, Val Gilman and Jeff Worthley, and several Planning Board members.

Yes For Gloucester Chairman Jack Clarke said Gloucester is starting out with a modest plan to comply with the MBTA communities law, in contrast to Needham, which had a more aggressive plan that residents voted down on Tuesday.

“That’s because the (Gloucester) Planning Board and the City Council listened judiciously to the people that were participating in the public comments,” Clarke said. “And they were saying, ‘We don’t want to be aggressive, we want to comply with the law, but we also want to provide for some housing, but we want to do it in a way that accommodates change gently and modestly in Gloucester.’”

People are saying they need to vote against 3A and this is overreach by the state, Clarke said.

However, he said he has read all of the opinions supplied by the state attorney general and others to the SJC. What stood out to him was one remedy the AG proposed and the court accepted: if a community does not participate in the 3A zoning, “the state will come in and do the zoning for them.”

“We do not want that in Gloucester,” Clarke said. “We need to remain in the driver’s seat and do our own zoning.”

Much of the city’s Multi-family Overlay District involves the addition of a single unit to a two-family house without a need for a variance, Clarke said, allowing three-family by right in certain districts.

Verga told those gathered they were up against those afraid of change plus the need to supply real information.

“So, that’s the important part, is getting the word out there that this is not going to be a free-for-all and a gift to the developers. As a matter of fact, when the council passed this … there was no mad rush of developers to the building department to pull a permit. This is not happening.”

The $900,000 in state grants the city has been awarded appear to be on hold, Verga said.

“But it’s going to get to a certain point, because the fiscal year ends July 1, the state is going to reprogram that money to another community if we don’t get our stuff together and get back into compliance with 3A.”

Ethan Forman may be contacted at 978-675-2714, or at [email protected].

ARTICLE PUBLISHED HERE