LYNN — Principal Planner Aaron Clausen addressed City Council members at a meeting Tuesday night, outlying three separate priorities for the city based on feedback from the Vision Lynn community engagement survey.
The Vision Lynn initiative, born out of the McGee administration last year and continued through the Nicholson administration through widespread community engagement surveys and this summer’s Lynnside Out event, aims to outline and eventually create the community’s vision for Lynn’s future.
Clausen, in his presentation, pointed to affordable housing, job opportunity, and daytime population growth as the three most common bits of feedback the city received. He started off by reading the city’s new “vision statement” to the council members, who were wearing their halloween costumes.
“Lynn will be a city where people feel safe and comfortable to live, work, learn or play. We will be a city where all community members have the housing, transportation access, social connections and educational opportunities to live a fulfilling life. We’ll be a city that can be proud of a strong, diverse and connected youth to take care of shared spaces and resources and each other,” he said.
Clausen said that Lynn residents’ most frequently-mentioned desires were affordable and high quality housing. He said that the city will have to consider using federal, state, and local resources to ensure that during its development, housing and rent prices remain diverse.
“The takeaway from this is that construction of new housing that is affordable, and has a wide range of incomes must play a central role in our strategy. So thinking about what are the policies to help piggyback on the market, there will be housing that was created by the market sector, and we’ll have to supplement that with other projects and programs using state, federal and local financial resources,” he said.
Vision Lynn’s second and third points of feedback, demand for higher paying job opportunities and population growth in the downtown area, serve as a challenge in ensuring that the city can grow and develop alongside its constituents; Clausen added that in order to serve the community’s vision, the city will have to diversify its streams of revenue, which now primarily come through real estate taxes.
“We are severely restricted in our ability to raise revenue. Our primary source has been real estate taxes […] our primary way of growing that revenue stream is thinking about new developments to achieve housing needs by providing more housing and more content for a range of housing. More development for a broader range of economic development also helps us with our fiscal sustainability, such as providing the services that are desired from your constituents,” Clausen said.
When Councilor-at-large Brian Field, who was dressed as Bob Ross, asked Clausen where transportation fits in with the city’s plans, Clausen responded that transit riders are distrustful of the MBTA in the wake of this summer’s shutdowns. He said that the city must ensure that the MBTA follows through on its promise of mitigation efforts, and added that working to reopen a transit ferry from Lynn to Boston can facilitate growth and development amid the closures.
“We don’t have a ton of control over how the MBTA manages their system, but I think it’s important for us to articulate the plan, both for internal stakeholders, but also for state stakeholders, its governor, the leadership at the MBTA and MassDOT. They need to understand how important the transportation system is to our regional economy,” Clausen said. “We’re a small part of that entire region, but we’re an important part in that. We’re certainly a large piece of future growth for the Boston metro region, we’re one of the areas that is growing rapidly, and that is only happening because of access.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected]
