By Alice Waugh
One of the Community Preservation Act requests that will come up at Town Meeting on Saturday is $290,000 to reconstruct the Bemis Hall basement to add 1,200 square feet of usable space and install a fully handicapped-accessible bathroom, which the building now lacks.
Bemis Hall is used primarily by the Council on Aging is the primary daytime user of Bemis Hall, which has two bathrooms. One of them is too small for anyone using a walker or wheelchair, and the other does not have a separate interior stall door, so users must lock the one outside door for privacy. This has created problems in the past when someone has needed assistance and COA staff are not able to quickly get into that bathroom.
The COA is hoping voters will eventually approve entirely new quarters in the form of a community center, but any approvals and construction for that project are farther into the future. The Board of Selectmen asked the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) for a faster solution that will add to the building’s long-term value.
At the board’s February 12 meeting. Selectman Noah Eckhouse said he had heard a question of whether “the selectmen launched this as a way to table having to support a bigger, more expensive community center project” and added that such a notion was “absolutely untrue.”
“There’s no political boomerang game here,” Eckhouse said. “It’s just an investment in our town building stock and has nothing to do with a lean one way or the other on a community center or anything else. It’s just the right thing to do… [and] we will benefit form Bemis being a nicer place, whether or not the COA is there anyway If it buys us three years of better use of that space while we figure out what else comes, I think all we agree it’s worth it.”
Article 10 at Town Meeting includes a total of $1.22 million in CPC project funding (see page 11 in the annual report and warrant for more information). The proposals in order of amount are:
- Pay debt service on Town Office Building renovation – $329,075
- Bemis Hall basement renovation – $290,000
- Purchase of 4 acres of land for conservation – $200,000
- Build an all-purpose sports court – $146,000
- Affordable Housing Trust for the rehabilitation of Lincoln Woods – $112,000
- Purchase of 55 acres of land for conservation – $100,000
- Preserve the Joshua Childs collection – $25,000
- Tennis court base reconstruction – $20,000
The CPC has nine members who represent various town boards and the community at large. It is authorized by the Community Preservation Act to recommend expenditures in four areas of community interest: open space, preservation of historic structures, provision of low and moderate income housing, and recreation. CPA funds derive from a 3 percent surcharge on Lincoln property tax bills that are supplemented by matching funds from the state.
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