Towns will get updates on former base's future

Now that funding and communication mechanisms are in place, residents of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley will be privy to a lot more information in the coming months concerning the future of Devens, officials say.

The Devens Disposition Executive Board is spearheading discussions on whether Devens should be proposed as the state's 352d municipality. A regular flow of information will enable area residents to feel that they're part of the process to chart Devens's future, asserted board member Lewis Nathan of Shirley.

''I have a sense that many residents of the three towns now think it's a foregone conclusion that Devens will become an incorporated community," Nathan said.

That may be due to the fact, Nathan and others said, that MassDevelopment, the quasi-state agency redeveloping the former Army base, is encouraging a fast-paced planning process. The agency has said it would like to have a Devens disposition plan presented to Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley voters by June 2006.

There's nothing wrong with a streamlined schedule as long as residents know what's being discussed, Nathan said, adding, ''I'd like to see more of them become involved in subcommittee work."

The 15-member executive board, made up mostly of selectmen and residents of the three towns and residents of the former Army base, has held five meetings.

Yet-to-be-named consultants will help board members compile data on whether it would make sense for Devens to be incorporated as a town. A supplemental appropriation of $390,000 from the state Legislature will be used for consulting services and administrative purposes, said William Marshall, chairman of the executive board and chief executive of Ayer-based North Middlesex Savings Bank.

Because residents of the three towns whose land crosses over into the old Army base and the Devens community itself need to be more fully informed about executive board discussions, the board's communications subcommittee will request that $21,000 of the $390,000 be used to set up a website, said subcommittee chairman Rick Maiore of Harvard.

''We'd like to have an outside consultant complete the first phase of this work by Feb. 15, the second phase by March 15," said Maiore, a former Harvard selectman.

Currently, more than three dozen residents are serving on one or more subcommittees, Marshall said.

Besides communications, the other subcommittees are on governance, land use and open space, housing and transportation, and economic development and financial analysis. A coordinating subcommittee oversees all of them.

''There's a growing interest," Marshall said of people who want to work with the subcommittees, ''and we encourage that.

''The board's major goal," he continued, ''is to reach out to as many people as possible."

The last two communities incorporated as towns were East Brookfield, in 1920, and Plainville, in 1905, according to the Massachusetts secretary of state's office.

As officials plan for the future, redevelopment activity is proceeding at Devens, where there are now about 200 residents and more than 75 businesses, organizations, and institutions employing over 3,000 people, according to MassDevelopment.

Revised plans to build 176 single-family houses are expected to be unveiled in late spring or early summer, Devens spokeswoman Meg Delorier said.

In early March, she said, Westford developer Robert A. Walker is slated to open a 120-room Marriott hotel, a 20,000-square-foot professional office building, and a 14,000-square-foot conference center.