By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

For eighteen years, Somerville citizens and their elected officials have advocated extensive commercial development as a means of curing the city’s fiscal ills. Now City planning staff have found another way to rebuff them. Planning Director George Proakis and Senior Planner Dan Bartman rolled it out at a February 4 public forum on Union Square/Boynton Yards redevelopment.

Somerville citizens, the mayoral-appointed Civic Advisory Committee, and the Board of Aldermen had all stated that committing only 60% of new development in the district to commercial uses would be insufficient to meet the city’s considerable fiscal needs. Mr. Proakis and Mr. Bartman now say that we should build substantially less than 60%.

A tiny commercial tax base is why our city must rely on state welfare to meet a quarter of its budget. It is why we can do so little for our middle- and lower-income residents.

Conversely, a thriving commercial tax base is why Cambridge homeowners pay taxes at only 55% the rate that Somerville homeowners pay. It’s why Cambridge schools can spend 56% more per pupil than our schools spend.

And while we struggle to make fiscal ends meet, we anticipate major new financial obligations. We need a new high school. We need new police and fire stations. We need a new library. And we’re getting by on luck and prayer with a half-century-out-of-date sewer system whose nine-figure replacement costs go up every year.

We need to increase city revenues without further burdening homeowners. Many long-time ‘Villens who by now have low or no mortgage payments are still being forced from their homes by tax increases.

Mr. Proakis acknowledges that commercial property  generates three times the net tax revenue that residential property of the same value does. But he and Mr. Bartman say that we need even less of it than the already inadequate amounts specified by the Draft Neighborhood Plan that their consultants released in November.

Their rationale begins with SomerVision, the 2012 comprehensive plan that was intended to guide development policy across the city. It set goals of creating 6,000 new housing units and 30,000 new jobs by 2030. For the Union Square/Boynton Yards neighborhood it set goals of 900,000 square feet of new residential space that would house 850 new units, and 1.5 million square feet of commercial space that would host 4,300 new jobs.

But at the February 8 meeting, we were told that SomerVision’s steering committee members and planners got it wrong. First, they did not use the correct sizes of developable parcels, roads and public ways. So instead of the redevelopment area having 48 developable acres, it has 38.5.

Then, Inner Belt and Brickbottom—two of the “transform districts” where SomerVision allocated new jobs and housing units—will take longer to develop than the time remaining in the SomerVision plan. So we need to cram more jobs and housing units into Union Square/Boynton Yards if we are going to meet SomerVision’s goals on time.

But, they say, offices require a lot less space per worker now than they once did. And we can reduce the average amount of built space per housing unit from 1,100 square feet to 900, which translates into about 720 square feet of living space. Then, we can build a lot less commercial space and a lot more residential space.

So we can lower the commercial space goal from 60%, which those who are paying attention have long said is too little, down to 44%, while the residential space goal would increase from 40% to 56%. The housing-units goal would go from 850 to 3,350, and jobs, from 4,300 to 8,200.

This rationale begs some compelling questions:

• While we need to correct Somerville’s extreme jobs-to-workers imbalance, we have a more constraining need to pay our bills and to enable people already living here to remain. So if we have less acreage to work with than we thought, and commercial space generates three times as much tax revenue as residential space, why wouldn’t we want more space committed to office and R&D uses, not less?

• A brief visit to the Inner Belt district makes clear that its limitations won’t just prevent it from meeting SomerVision’s timetable. They will prevent it from ever having the employer-attractive infrastructure and amenities that Union Square/Boynton Yards will enjoy. So wouldn’t we want to ensure that an even larger proportion of Union Square/Boynton Yards is preserved for commercial development, while increasing Inner Belt’s proportion of residential development?

• The scenario in which Union Square/Boynton Yards could achieve its highest value development, contributing the most tax revenue to benefit us all, is as a “safety valve” for Kendall Square. But biotech companies’ space allocations are not less than SomerVision’s 350-square-feet-per-worker assumption. They are more. So why should we assume that we’ll be recruiting companies that deliver us less value?

Throughout the planning process, ‘Villens have advocated for more commercial development than the amounts specified in SomerVision. The Board of Aldermen weighed in on their side in March. And residents made their preferences clear in Somerville-by-Design forums conducted by consultants hired to draft a neighborhood plan.

In response, the consultants issued a city-staff-approved draft plan that rejected these expressed preferences, while increasing the housing unit target by 365%. Planning staff solicited comments on the draft. Those comments that spoke to the commercial/residential mix mostly advocated for more commercial development. But on February 4^th, the city administration doubled down by drastically tilting the mix further in the wrong direction.

Despite his repeatedly rejecting residents’ and aldermen’s expressed preferences, Mr. Proakis told outraged attendees that he had “put up numbers…based on what people are telling us to do.” He went on to say, “I cannot afford right now to spend another six months debating assumptions.”

Yes, administration officials are now suggesting that if those advocating wise development policy don’t shut up and accept a self-defeating neighborhood plan, Commonwealth and MBTA officials may kill the Green Line. I would appreciate seeing any solid evidence that might support such a claim.

GLX Interim Manager Jack Wright stated at a February 5 meeting  here that the extension could not be built without the Union Square spur. Congressman Capuano, who facilitated the $1 billion federal commitment to the project, expects it to be built. Indeed, violation of the court order that mandated the GLX could threaten all of Massachusetts’ federal transportation funding.

Somerville citizens have invested many thousands of hours in learning the issues, considering the alternatives, participating in committees, giving testimony, and submitting comments. If they are to be ignored, city officials can save us a lot of time and effort by acknowledging that these activities are just window dressing, mobilized to project an illusion of public participation in policy making.