We haven’t seen this level of hubris in an elected board since the Wakefield School Committee got rid of the Warrior logo even as a solid majority of residents voted in favor of keeping it.

Now, the Wakefield Planning Board is doing its best to ignore the huge public outcry against its plus sized MBTA Communities Multifamily Zoning compliance plan.

The Planning Board has rightfully been taking the bulk of the heat for creating their outsized multifamily housing district, but there’s plenty of blame to go around for this impending calamity.

The Planning Board went way beyond the state mandate when designing a compliance plan for Wakefield. But their expanded plan wouldn’t exist at all without the Massachusetts Legislature, which decreed that all MBTA communities must create a zoning district near public transit where multifamily housing can be built as of right (meaning no Special Permits or other relief needed from the Zoning Board of Appeals).

The Wakefield Planning Board just decided to supersize it, despite the vocal public opposition that has dominated all four public meetings held to discuss the plan.

But it didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s part of an ongoing pattern.

Whether it’s the Warrior logo or the multifamily zoning district, unresponsive government is a consequence when voters keep electing the same people, no matter what they do. Where’s their incentive to listen when they know you’ll never kick them out?

Most of the vocal opponents of this zoning measure undoubtedly voted for the very same state and local officials responsible for creating it. Perhaps you’ve heard the expression, “Elections have consequences.”

But once again this year, there is no contest for Planning Board (so far at least). It’s just an incumbent running unopposed for re-election. But it isn’t just municipal elections. How many times have our State Senator and State Reps cruised to easy re-election, with or without opposition?

This plus sized MBTA Multifamily Zoning District is one result of automatically re-electing the same people again and again. Elections have consequences.

After the School Committee voted to get rid of the Warrior logo in 2021, voters roused from their slumber long enough to flock to the polls and defeat an anti-logo School Committee member and replaced him with a pro-Warrior member.

But by the following year, the voters had moved on to the next shiny object and the pro-Warrior School Committee member lost her re-election bid.

The majority of voters may yet succeed in limiting the local Multifamily Zoning District to the bare minimum. Voting this down at Town Meeting in April will force local officials to come up with a different plan.

But the long-term remedy will require voters to have more of a long-term memory at the ballot box.

Elected officials need to know that defying the public has consequences.
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[This column originally appeared in the February 22, 2024 Wakefield Daily Item.]