By Lis Herbert
I am hoping that you already have plans to attend Town Meeting this Wednesday night at 7 p.m. to vote YES to advance a decade of work to build a Community Center for Lincoln. If you don’t, I hope I can convince you to come.
Four years ago, many of us poured a lot of energy into ensuring that a new school would finally be built in Lincoln. If you attended those forums and meetings, and read the discussions online, you will likely remember that a significant number of older Lincolnites agreed to support the school building project in exchange — in some cases quite explicitly — for future support for the community center when it became clear that both would not be approved and built at the same time.
They said, basically, we will invest in the future of education in Lincoln, in a building that we may never step foot in, apart from Town Meeting, if you promise to make a smaller investment in an intergenerational community center that you will surely, at some point in your lifetime, and hopefully with some frequency, enjoy.
Communities that invest in public infrastructure, especially people-focused infrastructure, are stronger, more resilient, happier places to live. And there is no better example of the power of collective investment, energy and ideas than what has taken shape on the school campus. If you haven’t been to see it, I would encourage you to at least walk the perimeter during a school day, and see how transformative it is, how happy the kids and their teachers are, and how proud we should all be that this is where the children of Lincoln get to learn, and that we have invested in this, together.
There are, to be sure, organizations in town that bring people together at different times of the year for specific events — and yet these are, if we are being honest, few and far between. They’re not casual, easy things to pull off, they aren’t spontaneous, you can’t always simply stop by, on a whim.
This is an important vote, for a comparatively small amount of money, that will allow the work of the committee to move forward. This is not a vote to borrow $25 million, or a vote to approve a tax increase. This is a vote to advance the process, for $325,000.
Years of inaction on the school taught us that if we vote to kick the can down the road, even for a couple of years, we should take that $325,000, and probably a lot more, and just light it on fire. I don’t think there is anything we can be more sure of, with respect to the numbers. Voting no also means waiting a long time before we have something concrete to vote on again, and a decade of work and community outreach will evaporate. The Council on Aging will be stuck at Bemis Hall, the Hartwell pods will continue to deteriorate, and we will be back at square one.
I have faith in the committee: they are taxpayers who have paid for and invested in the school themselves, and who want the best for the town. They know, as well as you and I do, that if their proposal is unpalatable it will be voted down. Please let’s give them a chance.
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I am planning on attending, but I do not plan to vote yes. I was quite willing to vote for the considerable increase in taxes for the school project. It did not directly benefit me but I understand that good schools are important.
A community center is an entirely different proposal. I see no need for one, no widespread interest and therefore no need to spend even the relatively modest 325,000.