‘A positive member of the board:’ Rogers reflects on selectmen term

Rogers recently announced that he did not plan to run for re-election this spring.

“Scott Rogers has been a positive member of the board,” said Town Administrator John Coderre.

He said he appreciated Rogers’ thoughtfulness on the impact of decisions on town staff.

“Everything that he says and does is to make the organization successful,” Coderre said.

His decision

Born in northern Idaho, Rogers attended grade school in the Los Angeles area before moving to the Seattle area for high school and college.

Rogers had had his eye on attending University of Washington in Seattle, and after receiving a brochure, he joined the Air Force ROTC.

“I said, ‘This is a great way to pay for school, to have a lock on what that job is going to be coming out,’” Rogers said.

His first and only assignment was to Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. Serving for about five years in the Air Force, part of his work involved overseeing the development of the communications hub at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado.

Though his degree is in electrical engineer, Rogers said that translated to computer science, and he went on to have a career in information technology. He currently works at UMass Chan

Medical School.

Most of Rogers’ community service began with youth sports, stemming from his children. He started as a coach and then became a member of the youth soccer board.

When his kids moved to high school, Rogers began searching for town and community groups to get involved with.

He began attending different board and committee meetings. With his involvement on the operations committee for the Community Harvest Project, Financial Planning Committee clicked.

He joined the Financial Planning Committee around 2019. After a year, longtime Selectman Dawn Rand announced her retirement, and Rogers won election to the board in 2020.

While Rogers isn’t not ready to retire from his job, part of his decision is due to the phase of his life. He believes he will live in Northborough for the next three years, but he said there is a “little risk” regarding fulfilling the entire term. Rogers and his wife, Mary, have a longterm plan to move to the cape.

However, in regards to his decision, Rogers also discussed a focus on individual issues versus a perspective across the town.

“At the moment, I’m finding that we’re not able to put our whole and sufficient attention on the general business of town,” he said.

Part of that was due to stressors from the COVID-19 pandemic and an increased workload among all departments, Rogers said.

“Irrespective of that ... I expect that individual issues — and as important as they are — I think those will continue to consume resources,” Rogers said. “It’s not inappropriate that working issues consume resources, but I think those will divert attention to some of the core business that we need to do.”

That’s something he said he’s seen already.

“My prediction is that I’ll be put into a position of offering opinions or making decisions at odds to those policies and procedures and process. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to, with respect a particular issue, make the wrong decision in terms of the overall town,” Rogers said.

Next steps

Rogers doesn’t plan to stop participating in town government and hopes to re-join the Financial Planning Committee.

“Ironically, I think it’s my seat that was left for the last three years,” Rogers said.

His advice for a future board member is to do their homework. It’s advice he shared while he was a member of the board’s interview subcommittee.

“Get involve with whatever your target committee, board, topic and get a level of understanding of how they operate,” Rogers said.

Emerald Run | from page 1 development on Chauncy Lake in Westborough.

The project is being planned as a 40B development, with 75 units priced as “affordable housing” under the state formula. The state’s 40B law allows developers to sidestep many local zoning regulations, as long as 25% of the units meet the criteria as “affordable.”

Communities with at least 10% existing affordable housing stock are immune from 40B, which Shrewsbury doesn’t meet.

But Essek Petrie, manager of Land Planning and Entitlement, said the company wants to work cooperatively with the town to build a project that will meet the needs of the community and have a positive impact.

“It’s our intention to file an application for a LIP [Local Initiative Program] to do a ‘friendly 40B’ with the Town of Shrewsbury for this project,” said Petrie.

LIP is a program through the state Department of Housing and Community Development that encourages the development of affordable housing. As part of other proposed 40B projects in town, officials have said the program would give the town more say into the development and its impact on the surrounding neighborhood and the community as a whole.

According to Petrie, the company is under agreement to purchase 33–69 Green St., though details of the agreement were not revealed.

The property is presently owned by The Dippell Realty

Trust and trustee Harold Allen, and it was assessed by the town this year at $634,000. Sections of the property fall under three different zoning categories — Industrial, Rural A and Rural B.

“As a result of this mix of zones across this one parcel, there really are no viable options to develop the parcel under the existing zoning,” said Petrie. “We have this 40B proposal as a result.”

What is proposed

Much of the property is wetland, which developers said significantly limits the sections suitable for development.

The project is divided into two development areas — one section would contain one building, and five buildings would be located in the other area. Each building would be four stories with 50 units. There would be 30 three-bedroom units, and roughly 135 two-bedroom and 135 onebedroom units.

Access to the buildings would be from Green Street.

Between underground and ground-level parking, Petrie said the project would have 540 parking spaces, or 1.8 spaces per unit. MDM Transportation Consultants has been contracted by Pulte Homes to conduct a traffic impact study.

“They have already started doing some preliminary traffic analysis. To date, they do not estimate that this project would be an extreme traffic generator on Green Street,” said Petrie.

Petrie said the early estimates also don’t take into con- sideration the planned Department of Transportation Route 20 corridor improvements nor the fact that a signaled intersection at Green Street and Route 20 is deemed as “under capacity” by MDM.

However, Select Board Chair Moe DePalo shared one specific item he would like to see included as part of the project, to help facilitate traffic flow.

“One of the things we’ve been talking about and that I keep dreaming about is making that connection between South [Street] and Green [Street], so that we can get to a signalized light because there’s a lot of houses back there,” said DePalo. “Is there a possibility that we could work with you, so that we could get a street from South to Green? [I’m] not necessarily asking you to pay for that because I know it’s expensive, but if there is a way for us to work together to get that road in there somehow so we can help people on South Street get to the light.”

DePalo added that such a road would also give residents of the proposed development faster access to the Westborough MBTA station.

“It’s definitely something that we will absolutely look at,” said Petrie.

Age restriction

Select Board member Theresa Flynn asked why Pulte Homes was not proposing a 55-over development, as it has in several other communities. Mark Mastroianni, director of land planning and entitlement, said a 55-over development on this location would be in competition with another 55-over project being built by the company just 10 minutes away.

“It made more sense with this project to do a non-age restricted project,” he said.

Mastroianni said that given the length of the permitting process, construction would not begin until early 2025.

As a result, he said it was difficult to estimate what the price range would be for the condominiums. However, he said that condo units in similar projects and markets range from $300,000 to $600,000.

The Select Board voted unanimously to have Town Manager Kevin Mizikar enter into discussions and/or negotiations with the developer.