This is really the sort of the first step on a long, long path toward determining whether or not to adopt 40R officially, said Zachary Fleury of the Community Development Office. Feury gave a presentation to the Planning Board last month. The state instituted so-called Smart Growth Zoning about 15 years ago to incentivize developers to largely utilize existing structures to create market-rate housing that also provided a percentage of affordable-housing units and space for retail or commerce. The statute provides certain incentives for developers such as access to capital and lower predevelopment risk for permitting while also giving municipalities funding, or density bonus, to acknowledge the impact of increased housing and traffic.
Last week, the School Committee took some time to look at the difficulties the district will face in the next 10 to 20 years. First-year Superintendent Jason McCandless used the opportunity of an often routine report on enrollment to talk about concerning long-term decline in student population that the two-town district can foresee over the next couple of decades. He pointed to projections from the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission that show the district s enrollment falling to 783 students, kindergarten through 12th grade, by 2030. That would be a loss of 296, or 27 percent of the current K-12 population of 1,079. McCandless said the BRPC has a good track record for predicting such population trends, and that the district needs to start thinking about what those impacts will be.