By Dilla Tingley
I hope everyone was able to review the community center options recently published in the Lincoln Squirrel and the Special Town Meeting mailing that went to all households in Lincoln.
The Special Town Meeting on December 2 is an opportunity for us to greatly improve the inadequate facilities occupied by our very special and hard-working COA&HS and PRD [Council on Aging & Human Services, and the Parks and Recreation Department] and the excellent LEAP after school program. All three are extremely valuable resources in our special community. They deserve proper accommodation.
The 100% option provides a space that would comfortably house existing programs for COA&HS, PRD, LEAP and also accommodate activities of a number of other town organizations, with some room for modest growth. It would demolish all existing ancient pods and provide green, new construction with some architectural amenity that would be a lasting legacy for our special town.
The 75% option is a pared-down version with reduced space, just adequate for current programming and little opportunity for use by other organizations. It tears down pods B and C but just renovates pod A for the LEAP program.
The 50% option, which we will present as required by the Town Meeting in November 2022, does not even provide for current programming. It basically gives COA&HS and PRD the space equivalent to two of our current pods and leaves LEAP in an unrenovated pod C which will require further appropriation at a later, less convenient time.
Our wonderful town deserves and will benefit greatly from a handsome new and spacious facility for community gathering. Please come on December 2 and support a needed and meaningful new building for generations to come.
Dilla Tingley represents the COA&HS on the Community Center Building Committee.
“My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their letters to the editor or views on any subject of interest to other Lincolnites. Submissions must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Items will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.
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