By Carol Britton Meyer

The Hull Redevelopment Authority’s attorney this week answered legal questions that were provided ahead of time by HRA members, ranging from the specifications for approving an Urban Renewal Plan to one related to the proposed two-way road plan and another concerning required steps if the HRA were to be dissolved.

rendering of the proposed two-way road plan. click here for more information.

No public input was accepted during the authority’s meeting, although the meeting agenda indicated that citizens with an HRA-related legal question could communicate it “to the HRA membership, and if an HRA member wishes to have it answered, it will be presented by that member to our legal counsel.”

Chair Dennis Zaia reiterated that agenda note at the beginning of Monday’s Zoom meeting: “We want to be clear to our listeners that any citizen who looked at the agenda for this meeting knew that our legal counsel would be here to answer questions from our membership. Whenever [a citizen] sends a message, all five of us receive it and have the option to bring it to the table. So there will be no questions from citizens during this meeting, since theoretically we would have already received them.”

The meeting attracted 27 participants, including HRA members, at the outset and 19 by the end of the nearly four-hour discussion about the many agenda items. (See related story.)

Attorney Paula Devereaux responded to each question, with HRA members commenting or asking for further clarification for each one. The questions and answers discussed by the attorney and authority members related to:

⦁ The steps involved in approving an Urban Renewal Plan. The HRA drafts the plan and then presents it to the planning board to ensure it conforms to the “plan of the town” and current zoning regulations, and then to the select board for approval, with town manager input – all during public meetings. A town meeting vote is not required.

Once a URP is approved, it goes to the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities for approval. If commercial or industrial uses are included in the URP, the state Executive Office of Economic Development also has a role.

⦁ Whether the HRA can request that individuals, entities, and others with an interest in the property to speak at a meeting about potential uses for the site. “The HRA has already done this in the past,” Devereaux said. “This is permissible and gives the board some ideas about what might and might not be possible.”

⦁ Whether the HRA is permitted to accept grants for projects approved by the authority. Federal and state grants can be accepted. The only caveat, Devereaux said, is that the HRA “needs to be cognizant of any grant requirements, restrictions, or strings attached and whether the HRA can comply with those.”

HRA member Adrienne Paquin noted that some grants “must be applied by the town, and we’re not the town,” and that there is often an attached requirement that the town receiving the grant has a master plan in place, which Hull does not. “We need to be sure we have the appropriate details before applying for grants,” she said.

Devereaux provided clarification that the HRA “is not the town of Hull. It’s a separate entity within the town, but not of the town. Any monies the HRA has are controlled by the HRA – none flow into the town’s general fund.”

Within that separation come certain responsibilities. “Urban renewal authorities are established to help communities revitalize areas that are considered to be blighted or substandard,” she said, noting that these terms “don’t always sound good these days.”

Member Bartley Kelly noted that the HRA has partnered with the town on a number of projects in the past, including roads, which Devereaux said was acceptable.

⦁ What the town would be able to “force the HRA to do” if it wished. “Not much,” she said, unless the town were to take the property by eminent domain.

⦁ If the HRA no longer wished to participate in the proposed two-way road plan, could the select board force the sale of land or take it by eminent domain for that purpose. “They couldn’t force the sale of the property, but they could take [a portion of] the property, which sometimes happens with roadway improvement projects,” Devereaux explained. “The town could also force abutters across the board, including the HRA, to pay betterment assessments.”

Kelly noted that when the HRA participated in road projects in the area before, no betterment assessments were charged, which is the town’s decision to make.

Taking land by eminent domain requires a reason. “There has to be a rationale behind it and would require a town meeting vote,” according to Devereaux.

Zaia and Paquin met with Town Manager Jennifer Constable recently, asking her to provide “an official statement on the status of the two-way road plan, including the HRA’s role in this potential infrastructure project and what we might be held accountable for,” according to Zaia. “She said she would get that definitive statement to us … so everyone will know the answers that will clarify where the project is now and what the HRA would be, and has been in the past, responsible for.”

Kelly noted that the HRA voted a few years ago to provide $68,000 as its share of a MassWorks grant for the two-way road plan, which hasn’t yet been paid but that the town is still responsible for, he said.

⦁ Whether the HRA property could be improved “little by little” for beautification purposes. That is not likely, Devereaux said, because that would not fulfill the purposes of an urban renewal authority.

⦁ Steps involved were the HRA to dissolve, a question that came up a couple of times in the questions provided to Devereaux. “The town just can’t vote you out of existence,” Devereaux said. “The process would start with the select board deciding the HRA has done everything it was supposed to do and that there is no further need for the HRA’s existence, and that all the HRA’s outstanding obligations have been satisfied.”

The steps involved include an HRA vote to dissolve followed by an affirmative annual town meeting vote. Were the HRA to dissolve, it would have three years “to clean up business, and any remaining HRA assets would revert to the town,” she said.

HRA member Dan Kernan also asked whether the HRA could come up with an URP that doesn’t take into consideration the HRA’s long-term parking lease with the hotel, which expires in 2029 with two possible 10-year extensions.

While there is nothing from preventing the HRA from including the parcel used for hotel parking in the URP, it remains subject to that lease. The decision as to whether to extend the lease is at the discretion of the hotel as long as it is not in default, according to Devereaux.

Kernan also asked whether as the HRA “starts working on a new option of the URP, do we need to go through prior steps and go through the community input process again?”

Devereaux explained that the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities requires a synopsis of public input “received so far,” with further opportunities provided for community input “to ensure the HRA has buy-in from the community to go forward.”

At the end of this portion of the meeting, Zaia noted, “We’ve been dancing around these questions [for some time], so now we know.”

In response, Devereaux quipped, “I feel as though I just went through a bar exam!”

A replay of the full HRA meeting will be available on Hull Community Television’s broadcast channels and on demand at www.hulltv.net.

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