MA: EDITORIAL: MBTA holdouts can judiciously create multifamily zoning

Time's run out for nine of the 12 communities that haven't signed on to the MBTA Communities Act.

Under that statute — a 2021 law requiring municipalities served by or adjacent to MBTA transit to create zoning for multifamily housing — the majority of the resisting communities were required to comply by July 2025.

Three area towns — Dracut, Tewksbury, and Wilmington — are among the nine that must now pay the price for their intransigence.

All three were already living on borrowed time.

Considered "adjacent" communities, Dracut and Tewksbury initially had until Dec. 21, 2024, to submit a district compliance application.

Wilmington, a "commuter rail" community, had the same deadline.

The other six holdouts are East Bridgewater, Halifax, Holden, Marblehead, Middleton and Winthrop.

Carver and Rehoboth, which had until Dec. 31 to join the fold, and Freetown, with an upcoming zoning board meeting that might bring it into compliance, have so far been spared any legal consequences.

Those other nine have been slapped with enforcement lawsuits by the state's attorney general.

Dracut voters rejected three MBTA Communities zoning articles at two separate Town Meetings in 2024 and 2025.

Wilmington voters shot down the zoning at the spring Town Meeting May 3, reaffirming a vote taken at a special Town Meeting in December 2024.

Tewksbury voters had already vetoed that town's version of the zoning in the 2024 spring Town Meeting. An article to reconsider had been set to appear on the 2025 Town Meeting warrant, but it was pulled after the Planning Board voted not to recommend the article.

In July, Attorney General Andrea Campbell warned that her office could pursue enforcement against noncompliant towns beginning in January 2026.

Campbell recently reiterated her previous enforcement warning.

And now she's made good on that promise.

We've already seen some samples of what form that action might take.

Tewksbury Public Schools found out in December that it won't receive certain state funding in fiscal 2026 as a result of the town's noncompliance.

That funding includes an Early College planning grant for $50,000, an Early College designation funding grant for $250,000 over five years, and a time-out practices implementation grant for $50,000.

In Middleton, the town lost a $2 million MassWorks grant that had already been awarded, along with funding for a Council on Aging passenger van.

Contacted by the newspaper, public officials in our three area communities offered varied reactions to the lawsuit.

Tewksbury Town Manager John Curran said he had seen the lawsuit and would pass it along to the Select Board and the town's legal counsel to decide what the town should do next.

"I have my own personal opinions, but the town has made a decision for where they are, and I can only tell them the pros and cons of the choices they have," said Curran.

Dracut Town Manager Kate Hodges said the town had not been formally served with the suit.

However, she stands by the will of Town Meeting voters who rejected efforts to amend zoning to include a multifamily district.

"The Attorney General's decision to initiate litigation, seeking to compel a particular outcome at Town Meeting, is deeply troubling. I find this concerning both in my capacity as Dracut's Town Manager and as someone with more than two decades of experience in local government," Hodges stated in part.

Wilmington Town Manager Eric Slagle said the town had been communicating with Campbell's office since the second half of 2025 after the zoning failed to pass at Town Meeting last year.

"They asked if we planned to put it on another Town Meeting agenda, but there was no appetite on the Select Board for that," said Slagle.

For now, he said Wilmington is in a "wait-and-see mode" as the complaint filed by Campbell's office did not specify how a judge would force compliance.

So, what's the end game for these nine municipal outliers?

More than 90% of the affected communities, 165 out of 177, have created a multi-family zoning district per that MBTA law.

A few holdouts can't change that fact, or the inevitability of this legislation.

Rather than stubbornly continuing to resist, those communities could adhere to the letter — if not the spirit — of the law.

While the MBTA Communities Act compels designated municipalities to create zoning districts that allow multifamily housing by right, it does not require them to actually build housing or guarantee affordable housing production.

A Boston Globe review in May of several preliminary and already-passed zoning strategies found that some towns have deliberately designed plans that cleverly circumvent the state mandate.

In some cases, towns have created zoning to allow apartment buildings in places where such structures already exist, making it economically impractical to create a new one of similar size.

Others have written zoning rules that cap building heights and densities in ways that effectively discourage new development.

These creative methods have apparently satisfied the law's mandate.

It's the blueprint those sued communities should take, instead of enduring the substantial legal and financial penalties further resistance will exact.

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