The Conservation Commission and Selectmen held a joint meeting on Thursday to discuss land issues.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Board of Selectmen and members of the Conservation Commission on Thursday night were united in a plea to put off making any final decisions about the future of the Lowry property that's been at the center of a raging five-month debate.

That debate is scheduled to come to a head on Wednesday, April 24, when a pair of back-to-back special town meetings starting at 7:25 p.m. will address three different warrant articles — each prompted by the controversy regarding the so-called Lowry Property off Stratton Road.

One article in particular, generated by a citizen's petition that forced the special town meeting would put 30-acre lot and the larger town-owned Burbank property in conservation "in perpetuity," thus taking both out of consideration for future development to address the town's need for affordable or subsidized housing.

Every member of the Selectmen and several members of the Con Comm used Thursday's meeting to express concern that it is too soon to close the door on the possibility of developing either property.

"We need to have everything on the table and trust that everything will be evaluated properly with best practices," Conservation Commission Chairman Hank Art said during a joint meeting of the two town boards.

Members of both panels siezed on a suggestion by Andrew Hogeland, a member of the Finance Committee who participated in the meeting from the floor.

"All these decisions are being accelerated way too fast," Hogeland said. "Confusion reigns. My view is we need to take a timeout. One way is at these town meetings (both April 24 and the May 21 annual town meeting), don't vote on these questions. ... You can table the motions. You can adjourn meetings without voting.

"You'd have to have trust in the room that when you table one you're going to table the next one 10 minutes later. ... There seems to be unanimity among you all that putting this off would be a goal to be lusted after.

"The goal would be to take a timeout."

Selectman Tom Sheldon was one of several to praise Hogeland for his suggestion, but he stressedd that if the town does call "timeout," it needs to use that time productively.

"I've made a number of public statements on the fact that I think [the special town meeting question] is premature," said Sheldon, who also serves as a trustee of the town's Affordable Housing Trust. "One point that hasn't been raised tonight is we haven't engaged developers. ... We need that voice of reality in this.

"But there is a tradeoff in taking more time. ... Assuming we get the (federal Hazard Mitigation) grant and accept it, that three-year clock starts ticking. If we use six or eight months of that time to do background checking, research and RFPing, it's whittling down them to address the problem of the people who live in the Spruces."

Sheldon referred to the estimated $3 million from a more than $6 million FEMA grant that the town hopes to put toward the development of affordable housing. The FEMA grant is tied to the town's acquistion and closure of the Spruces Mobile Home Park, which was devastated by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.

When Town Manager Peter Fohlin announced the town's application for the grant on Nov. 13, 2012, he specifically identified the Lowry property as a likely location to develop a community comparable to the one that will be lost when the Spruces is closed.

"It is proposed that permanent replacement housing be constructed on the 30-acre town-owned parcel off Stratton Road referred to as the Lowry property," Fohlin said in prepared remarks at the Nov. 13 meeting.

Lowry has been discussed as possible location of affordable housing for decades, and the parcel is specifically mentioned in the town's 2002 Master Plan.

On Thursday, the conservation commmissioner who also serves on the town's Affordable Housing Committee said he wishes the latter group had been allowed to develop more detailed plans before the issue of Lowry had been forced by the citizen's petition that initiated the special town meeting.

"I truly wish that the committee had been allowed ... to truly vet the properties and get the designs set up in a way that we could truly come to the town and say, 'This is a plan, this is what it's going to cost,' " Van Ellet said.

"Given the time frame ... the first most logical thing is to look at the publicly available property. In some respects, that's a narrow view of how to address the affordable housing problem in the town."

Ellet suggested the town might be able to use the $3 million and/or raise funds in other ways to purchase privately held land to achieve the same sort of housing it might want to create on the Lowry property.

Selectman Ronald Turbin joined the calls for finding a way to put off making a final decision on Lowry and Burbank, but he added that the town then needs to do something about the sense of disenfranchisement among those who have fought against development.

"I think what Andy said is a wonderful idea, but if we start working on it again, we have to bring in the people who were involved in the citizen's petition," Turbin said. "One of the things that brought on the divisiveness in town ... is the citizens involved with the petition have not been involved in the process. We have to give them a voice. Otherwise we'll continue the divisiveness.

"I think [tabling the issues] is a good idea, but we have to have a mechanism to have everyone involved."

Although the special town meeting articles dominated much of the evening's discussion, neither was on the actual agenda for the joint meeting. The Selectmen already have voted their advisory positions on the articles; the Conservation Commission plans to take up the questions on April 23, the night before the special town meetings.

The agenda did have two items tangentially related to Lowry.

One was the creation of a new town committee to begin formulating plans for the reuse of the Spruces Mobile Home Park. Although no votes were taken, the committees reached a general agreement to ask the four current members of an ad hoc committee (Dr. Thomas Hyde, Jack Madden, Andrew Groff and Elizabeth Bartels) to continue on the panel along with representatives from the Conservation Commission, the Agriculture Commission and the current residents of the park. Hogeland recommended that the committee include someone with planning experience if one of the current members (Groff or Bartels) declines to remain on the body.

The other agenda item was a discussion of the broader question of management of town-owned land.

Art noted that the town's most recent open space and recreation land plan is dated June 1995, and the state recommends it be updated every five years. And the master plan is more than 10 years old.

"The Conservation Commission would love to have guidance and mutual understanding about how lands are to be managed," Art said.

It would also like some guidance on whether the Lowry property is subject to the much more restrictive conservation provisions of Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution. The town has an opinion from town counsel saying it is not; the abutters to the property have a decision from a Pittsfield attorney saying that it is.

Art is looking for another perspective.

"The wisdom of Solomon not being available, I called Margaret Callahan from Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs," Art said. "She wrote me today and said ... 'I hope to get back to you soon.' "

In the meantime, Callahan has referred Art's question to the office of Attorney General Martha Coakley, he said.

"The state is aware there are two different opinions, and the attorney general's office is wading through them," he said. "Whether [the AG's opinion] will be known by the special town meeting, I can't answer. But it's incumbent on [the electorate] to do the best job it can do."

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