Comprehensive Plan Kickoff Event - Apr 3rd, 2025
Meeting held in the Arlington High School Cafeteria. Presentation slides are available from https://engagestantec.com/download_file/14/493. The project's web site is https://engagestantec.com/arlington-comp-plan.
(Claire Ricker, Planning Director) Ms. Ricker welcomes attendees to the event. It's the first of many public events for updating Arlington's comprehensive plan. The objective is to determine high-level goals for the next ten to fifteen years.
(Steve Kearney, Stantec) Mr. Kearney works for Stantec, who are the consultants working with Arlington on the comprehensive plan update. He and his colleagues are here tonight to hear from the community.
Comprehensive plans are a high-level blueprint for a community, to provide a basis for decision-making over the next five to ten years. Although the plan is made up of several elements, they are all interrelated. Comprehensive plans will help inform budging and decision-making. Arlington's last comprehensive plan was done in 2015, and a lot has changed since then. The goal is to develop strategies for the next phase in Arlington's evolution.
The effort will take place in phases: visioning, then plan development and workshops, then a draft plan. Over the coming months, Stantec and the Comprehensive Plan Committee will have meetings and do interviews with different stakeholders and groups. We'll identify shared priorities, evaluate alternatives, and define strategies. We'll also develop an implementation plan. The final plan should be usable for town staff and leaders. The plan should be realistic, ambitious, and achievable.
Not everyone can come to an in-person event, so there will be on-line versions of everything that's done in person. We want as many individual inputs as possible. We'll do local events, and put together meeting in a box materials.
Mr. Kearney acknowledges that Arlington has done a lot of plans in the last ten years. We'll take these into consideration and build on that work.
Mr. Kearney continues by presenting some current conditions and trends.
Arlington's population is growing. It grew by 8% in the last ten years, though growth is expected to slow in the future.
Arlington's population is getting older, and more residents are in the 65+ age bracket.
Household size has increased recently, from an average of 2.22 to 2.33 people per household. The number of family households is increasing.
Nearly 1/3 of Arlington households are single adults living alone. 30% of households have someone aged 65 or older.
Arlington is highly educated. 73% of adults have a bachelors degree or higher.
Arlington is becoming more diverse. It's currently 76% white, which is an 8.5% decrease since 2000.
The size of the housing stock has increased by 500 units in the last ten years. That's an average of 50 new units/year.
Incomes have been increasing, and are projected to increase further. The cost of housing has also been increasing. 21% of home owners are cost-burdened, along with 37% of renters. "Cost burdened" means spending more than 30% of your income on housing.
48% of Arlington workers commute to work by driving, 24% work at home, 14% commute by transit, and 6% commute by bike.
Most of Arlington's workers work elsewhere. Most of the employees in town commute from somewhere else. There's a big changeover that happens during the day.
Arlington has 1280 local businesses. We've gained 250 new businesses and 1300 employees since 2013. Most new businesses are being started in people's homes.
Arlington's primary source of revenue is residential property tax, and we are likely to need an override vote in the coming years.
(Allison Leflore, Stantec) Ms. Leflore says we'll start talking about our vision for the future. She asks people to think about what they'd like to see Arlington be in 2035.
At this point, we move to table exercises. There are sheets of paper where attendees are asked to provide written answers to questions. For example: what's a headline or social media post you'd like to see written about Arlington in 2035?
Each table has a large map of the town. Groups are asked to identify five places they like, five places that could use improvement, and come up with five shared priorities.
After the table exercises, Mr. Kearney and Ms. Leflore read some of the comments from the tables. These included:
- The need for more nightlife
- Protecting green space and the environment
- Safe streets
- Improving the business districts
- Making Arlington safe for eagles
- Better access to the MBTA
- Increasing the amount of industrial space in town
- Increasing the commercial tax base
- Increasing the amount of housing, all types
- Having a skate park
- Making businesses more accessible from the Minuteman Bikeway