The Wellesley Planning Board at its March 3 meeting (see Wellesley Media recording just before the 1-hour mark) voted to form a task force to review the town’s residential incentive overlay (RIO) zoning bylaw and recommend changes to it.

People in town have increasingly become familiar with the acronym RIO as a result of a handful of proposed projects where such zoning would apply. A couple of them got shot down at Special Town Meeting in the fall, with some neighbors of those proposals saying they hadn’t heard anything about them until very late in the process. The Swellesley Report had documented the Washington Court proposal as far back as April 2024, including over the summer, and reported extensively on these proposals as they were presented before the Select Board, Planning Board, and Advisory Committee.

What’s a RIO? Here’s Wellesley’s Zoning Bylaw

One RIO zoning change that did get Annual Town Meeting’s approval last spring by a vote of 168/20/3 is paving the way for a 34-unit condo development at 192 & 194 Worcester St. and 150 Cedar St. that will include a handful of affordable units (The Swellesley Report first wrote about that project in September, 2023). The developers since have been making the rounds through the town approval process, recently securing the Planning Board’s OK for a special permit.

Rendering of 192-194 Worcester St. project

In an effort to better get the word out about this project, the Planning Board has posted a legal notice not only in a traditional print newspaper (per state law) that few will likely see, but also on Swellesley (See “Wellesley Planning Board Notice of Public Hearing regarding 192 & 194 Worcester Street and 150 Cedar Street: Wednesday, March 19, 2025, 6:30pm”).

Planning Board Chair Tom Taylor kicked off discussion of a possible RIO task force at the March 3 meeting by noting that there’s been a lot of public discussion of RIOs of late. “The point is to sort of establish that the Planning Board is interested and willing and anxious to look at RIO and how it meets the needs of the town… and where it doesn’t, suggest changes,” he said.

The topic of RIOs has taken on new life during the lead up to Annual Town Meeting in April thanks to a citizen petition that seeks to return the RIO bylaw to its original state. As the proponent has explained during presentations with the Planning Board and other town bodies, the focus of RIOs would again be on allowing multi-unit residential development in commercial areas but not in single residence and general residence districts (the bylaw was expanded a number of years back as the town negotiated with developers regarding multifamily projects on Weston Road and Linden Street now known as The Bristol and Terrazza).

The Planning Board has not thrown its support behind the citizen petition, though members have said they think the bylaw needs work. The Advisory Committee, which vets articles ahead of Town Meeting, voted at its March 5 meeting for unfavorable action by a 9-5 count (see Wellesley Media recording beginning at the 3-hour, 43-minute mark). The Committee spent about an hour—more than on any other article that night— on thoughtful discussion of the issue. Among those against Article 42 was Advisory member Doug Wilkins, who acknowledged the RIO bylaw could be improved but said this article’s approach is like going to the doctor with a swollen finger and “the doctor says I can cure that with antibiotics but I think we should amputate.” Member Christina Dougherty was among those voicing support for the article; she pointed to zoning tools available in Wellesley beyond RIOs, such as townhouse and multiunit districts, that can support development to help address the town’s housing needs.

Town Meeting’s decision in April will determine in part what the Planning Board RIO task force might handle. As will the results of a Strategic Housing Plan in the works in Wellesley—some against the citizen petition have argued that such a change is premature given the Strategic Housing Plan has yet to emerge.

Planning Board Marc Charney at a recent meeting raised the idea of creating a task force and said this week that he’d be happy to take the lead. “I think there are areas inside of the RIO bylaw that need our attention particularly because there are things that are making citizens in the town very anxious about possibilities that could happen that when we know as folks who are a little more in the mix of this may not really ever come to pass,” he said, adding that there might be some relatively easy changes to make that would address such concerns.

All Planning Board members in attendance endorsed the notion of forming a task force, the make-up of which would need to be determined, but likely involve Planning Board members, members of the public, and perhaps others. Member Patty Mallet said “The town has let us know with no uncertainty that they are unhappy with [the bylaw] as it is,” she said.

RIOs may just not be sexy enough to get people’s attention: In case the RIO task force needs a theme song…