What Natick might spend some of its millions in Community Preservation Act dollars on

The Natick Community Preservation Committee (CPC) at its Aug. 19 meeting approved sending all eight pitches for portions of some $2.7 million of available funds to a public hearing process that begins on Sept. 2 (see schedule).

Applications approved at the hearing stage would make their way to Fall Annual Town Meeting, with Natick’s legislative body having the final say on how any of this pot of money from a property tax surcharge and state matching funds will get spent. The requests this time around total about $1.7 million. About $1.5 million in CPC funds was collected by the town in FY25, with $220,000 from a state match.

“We are not the deciders as to whether [a project] is funded or not. That is the Town Meeting,” CPC Chair Bill Ramage clarified. “We are the recommenders.”

The applications to secure Community Preservation Act (CPA) funding range from $10,000 to preserve Natick’s 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill muster roll to $750,000 from Metro West Development Collaborative related to its planned 32-unit affordable housing project at 5 Auburn St. (their request skyrocketed from $500,000 to $750,000 in between the letter of interest submittal and formal application submittal).

The CPC members during their Aug. 19 meeting went one by one through the applications, raising questions along the way that will be shared with applicants in preparation for public hearings, which will be accessible in person and online. A handful of citizen speakers kicked off the session, with most sharing concerns about funding the 5 Auburn St. project.

CPC funding is expected to be the subject of two articles at Fall Annual Town Meeting. One will simply involve allocating the funds into three designated buckets: open space protection/outdoor recreation, community (affordable) housing, and historical preservation. The second article would cover the actual projects to be funded; Town Meeting could choose to vote on them all in one fell swoop, or a motion could be made to break out individual projects for voting.

The CPC spent about an hour reviewing the applications during its Aug. 19 meeting, and members looked favorably upon several applicants that would supplement any CPA funds with money of their own (for example, Bacon Free Library seeks about $237,000 to restore its fence and it’s putting $50,000 toward the project itself.

The timing of the funding was raised by CPC members on at least a couple of the projects. A Housing for All proposal seeks $300,000 to get a rental assistance and eviction prevention program going, with the idea of sustaining the program through other means after that. The 5 Auburn St. proponent in its application for both a community housing and historic restoration project seeks the funding to be used a couple of years down the road as it gets closer to building a $23m affordable housing development just downstream from the current South Natick Dam (Disclaimer: We live in this area).

Another topic of discussion during the meeting was whether projects not just fit into one of the broad funding buckets, but whether the requests were for an allowed use under those buckets. Morse Institute Library seeks $115k in CPA funds to conduct a study on what kind of restoration might be needed for the historic portion of the building. Director of Community & Economic Development Amanda Loomis said the applicant revised its proposal to ensure it is focusing on actual restoration and not general maintenance, which wouldn’t be allowed under CPC rules.

On 5 Auburn St., there are questions about whether the proponent’s request for funds to address remediation on the property falls into historic preservation (allowed) or general maintenance (not allowed). Member David Krentzman also noted that once funding approval is given, the recipient has two years to spend it, raising the question of whether it makes sense to fund this project now given construction’s not expected until sometime in 2027. For the developer, getting funds sooner than later could help it secure money from other sources sooner.

As the CPC feels its way through its initial set of recommended projects, some basic questions about what should or should not qualify for funds were raised. On the Battle of Bunker Hill muster roll, a member recommended that when such historic preservation requests come through (not that he was doubting the authenticity of this document) that a legitimate town or other body vouches for its historical significance.

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