LEVERETT — Professional expertise for increasing opportunities to develop affordable housing will soon be offered to Leverett officials.
Affordable Housing Trust Chair Barbara Carulli informed the Selectboard on Tuesday that the town is working with the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) to create a regional affordable housing coordinator position that would assist the town with diversifying its housing stock.
“It’s starting small, but we’re the first town to do it,” Carulli said.
Mariah Kurtz, the new housing coordinator at FRCOG, will be helping the town. Carulli said ideas from this might include building small houses that could be affordable for families to buy or rent, or a complex of homes for residents ages 55 and older.
Carulli said Leverett homes are almost uniformly too expensive to even meet the 100% area median income threshold that would classify them as being affordable.
The position is being created after FRCOG received a $10,000 grant from the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities for a partnership between Leverett, Shutesbury and Shelburne.
In other business, the board:
- learned that the 1.4-mile-long drainage project on Dudleyville Road is winding down, with contractor Ludlow Construction Inc. having three more days of gravel work and some seeding to do along the road. Richard Nathhorst, a resident who has been a liaison for the project, said the “job’s finishing up nicely” and those who live on the road that connects Moore’s Corner to Shutesbury appreciate that they don’t have to drive through mud to get to their homes;
- agreed to a $124,500 contract with Larochelle Construction of South Hadley to complete a covered stage that is part of a new outdoor space at the Leverett Library;
- put off a decision on forming a committee that will examine how to get money to make improvements at the historic Bradford M. Field Memorial Library building at 1 Shutesbury Road, with one possibility for funding being an application to the Community Preservation Committee by October;
- heard an appeal from resident Silas Ball requesting that the town end its involvement in a Land Court lawsuit over access to the Blueberry Patch conservation land off Shutesbury Road. Town Meeting voters approved spending money that will be used to build a drivable path that would provide an alternate way to get to the conservation land and could make the lawsuit involving the Evans-Marlowe family moot.
