UPDATE: Special Town Meeting to Vote on New Bikeway

Stoneham residents and voters are urged to attend a special town meeting on 

Articles 1 and 2 pertain to zoning changes that would amend a section that pertains to a railroad right of way district as a bikeway or linear park. Also, the amendment would allow the town to license this pathway. The change is presented by the Stoneham Bikeway/Greenway Committee, which is proposing a community bikeway/greenway. 

Read the description of the warrant articles here. 

Stoneham Patch asked the Stoneham Bikeway/Greenway Committee to expand on the articles: 

"The two articles in the special town meeting have to do with allowing the town to license a small section of the Railroad Right-of-Way (RR ROW).  One article simply extends a zoning overlay that allows for businesses uses on a portion of the RR ROW from Maple street to Cottage street.  It does so by changing the date of section 4.18 in the town by-Laws from June 30, 2014 to October 15, 2014. This is a prerequisite for the town to lease the land for business purposes. The underlying Open Space zoning is unchanged and will remain as the only approved use for the RR ROW after October 15, 2014. 

The second article allows the town to negotiate licenses for temporary use of any portion of the RR Row described above through October 15, 2014. There are important protections in this article for the Greenway including a requirement that the ROW remains passable by residents, a requirement to lease no more that 50% of the width, a requirement that leases are at market rate and a requirement to post a bond in case the licensee does not remove all materials at termination. The bond would allow the town to clear the land without incurring expense. 

The Stoneham bikeway/Greenway Committee's charter and primary focus is to assure the highest quality Greenway is built for the town of Stoneham. This was the charter we received in the 2010 town meeting vote and every member firmly believes in it. Licensing of the Greenway is not a goal of the committee and is only being considered to be good partners with our business community in town and after careful research to assure it does not interfere with funding, design or construction of the Greenway. After the Board of Selectman unanimously agreed to the Special Town meeting, two businesses, Montvale Plaza and Cleveland Fence, came before the committee requesting that the Greenway Committee support very short term licenses on the Greenway to help them transition. 

The decision of the committee was very difficult because this is not a goal of the committee to licence land on the RR ROW.  The businesses gave the Committee absolute assurances that they will leave the land after the licenses expire and talked to the alternate plans they are working on to mange their businesses without the land after the licenses expire. Based on the assurances, extra protections of the articles and a desire to be good neighbors the Greenway committee voted to approve the Articles for the special town meeting."