5 reasons to vote no on MBTA 3a

1: We need to Address water and infrastructure first before development.

How much will 3a development cost your town in infrastructure upgrades? Who will foot the bill? 


Beacon Hill has done no clear impact studies for 3a and wants you to commit to this before you have an idea of what this will cost. What will be the impact on our infrastructure — roads, utilities load, emergency services, education — if we pass 3a and higher-density development begins? 


Like 40b projects, 3a takes power out of the hands of towns, yet puts the full burden of these infrastructure upgrades on the towns.
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2: mbta 3a is an unfunded mandate.

The state should fund towns that vote Yes on 3a. However, our Beacon Hill representatives have made this clear: voting No excludes you from access to grants; voting Yes does NOT entitle you to those grants.
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3: Once you hand over control, Beacon Hill can change the rules at any time.

This statute was voted in by Beacon Hill in 2020 as a one-pager; it has since grown to 30 pages of guidelines. 


If our towns hand over control, the State can keep changing their guidelines at any time and we as a town won’t have control over what’s developed in our towns.
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4: Don't fear the Threat of losing grants.

Beacon Hill uses the threat of losing grants as the means of coercing towns into giving up their sovereign rights. The initial guidelines started with the loss of 4 grants, which has expanded to 14, with the threat of more grants being added to the exclusion list. 


And here’s the issue: Most of these grants towns do not receive anyway. 


Towns should provide clear numbers of how much money from these grants the towns have been receiving and what would be the cost of implementing MBTA 3a.
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5: Don’t cave to Beacon Hill’s pressure.

Several towns have signed onto the Milton town lawsuit against the state and all towns should wait to implement MBTA 3a until after the Milton lawsuit is complete. 


There should be no rush in making a change that a town cannot roll back and which will have permanent impact on the towns.
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