Third SOTT looks at electricity aggregation, road safety, South Lincoln

Residents heard updates on electricity aggregation, road safety measures, and planning for South Lincoln’s future at the third State of the Town meeting on November 19.

Electricity from renewable sources

Almost three years after voters authorized the Board of Selectmen to start developing the program, the Green Energy Committee is nearing the finish line for Lincoln Green Energy Choice, a program that will give residents the option of buying electricity from renewable sources. Eversource will continue to provide transmissions lines and billing, but the town will seek bids for renewable energy from the local grid. Committee chair C.J. Volpone explained that residents can opt in or out of the program at any time, though they will be automatically enrolled initially in a plan that will cost about the same as Eversource’s winter rates.

Eversource is currently required to draw 18% of its electricity from renewable sources. The new program will offer three options:

• Budget, with 20% of the electricity from renewable sources
• Basic Green, with 35-50% renewable (the default option that residents will be enrolled in unless they opt out)
• Total Green, with 100% of the electricity from renewable sources. Volpone said this option would probably cost $20–$30 a month more than the current average bill, though the exact price won’t be known until buds are received and a contact is signed.

LGEC has posted a table showing preliminary estimates of additional costs depending on type and amount of electricity usage.

Benefits of the program include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, having a choice of electricity sources, and having long-term predictable rates for electricity, since LGEC contracts will be longer than the six-month contacts required of Eversource, Volpone said. Using electricity from renewable sources will become more important in the years to come as more and more people buy electric cars and use electric-power heat pumps for home heating, he added.

Homeowners will get a postcard in the mail informing them of the options and asking if they want to opt out before the program launches, which is expected to happen in March 2021, Volpone said. Resident Sara Mattes (one of 118 people who attended the online meeting) worried that there could be “blowback” because people will be automatically enrolled in the program, but Volpone said the impact on electric bills for the Basic Green option would be “minimal.”

Advisory shoulders

Bob Wolf and Ginger Reiner of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPEC) outlined a method that could be used to make Lincoln’s roads safer for bikes and walkers. Advisory shoulders are lanes marked with white dashed lines on either side of a road to indicate where bikes and pedestrians have the right of way. Vehicles can cross the lines to avoid traffic coming from the opposite direction but must yield to oncoming traffic if there are “vulnerable users” (bicyclists, pedestrians, or any other non-vehicle) ahead or alongside.

The committee and its predecessor, the Cycling Safety Advisory Committee, came into being after two bicyclists were killed and a third was injured in three separate accidents on Lincoln roads in 2016. More than half of the residents who responded to a subsequent town-wide survey said they were not comfortable biking or walking on some of Lincoln’s roads.

As a road safety measure, advisory shoulders have the advantage that they are inexpensive and easy to create. “It doesn’t change how the road should be used, but it shows the clearance that vehicles should give vulnerable users,” Wolf said. In other towns such as Hanover, N.H., that have tried this approach, “drivers get used to this pretty quickly.”

The BPAC studied Baker Bridge Road as a possible first case where advisory shoulders could be installed. As one of several designated “minor connectors” in town, the road offers connections to schools and access to conservation trails. In a neighborhood Zoom meeting with the BPAC in October, there was “universal agreement” among Baker Bridge Road residents that the road is not safe for pedestrians and family cycling.

Wolf acknowledged that “it’s not one size fits all for all Lincoln roads” and invited residents of other neighborhoods to set up a Zoom meeting with the committee to discuss safety issues by emailing lincoln-bpac@googlegroups.com.

South Lincoln

The South Lincoln Planning and Advisory Committee (SLPAC) has “restarted the process to evolve our village center” to make it more vibrant for residents and businesses, Planning Board chair Margaret Olson said. Businesses in the area have been struggling for some time, and a “confusing and costly” permitting process on top of a “hodgepodge” of five different zoning districts has made it very difficult for any sort of new development to win approval.

Revamping the zoning rules in South Lincoln would offer more flexibility in building uses, a more diversified housing stock, and a clearer permitting process while still imposing design guidelines to ensure new development is in keeping with Lincoln’s “look” and character, Olson said. SLPAC and the Planning Board will “build consensus… around an open and transparent process” with broad public participation and input. As part of that goal, the committee is inviting public comment any time and posting letters from residents on its website.

As part of the larger goal to limit climate change, the town hopes to encourage use of the commuter rail stop as well as energy-efficient buildings and more usage by bikes and pedestrians. The state also wants to encourage more use of mass transit. For example, Massachusetts House Bill 3931 would require multifamily zoning within one mile of train subway and bus stops.

While that particular bill may not pass, “there is pressure mounting in the system for something along these lines,” Olson said. “When regional problems get too big, the dam breaks, and 40B [the affordable housing mandate] is an example of that. We need to indicate how we want the town to change and adapt to the political and environmental changes headed our way in the next few decades.”

SLPAC’s predecessor tried to bring zoning changes to a town-wide vote last year but met with stiff opposition from residents who, among other things, were worried that residents in midrange housing such as the Ridge Road condominiums would be displaced. “SLPAC has heard that loud and clear,” Olson said, adding that near-term rezoning efforts will focus only on the south side of Lincoln Road.

The need for action is not hypothetical. The privately owned sewage treatment system used by Lincoln Woods and the mall is past its useful life, and the town plans to commission a study of options for upgrading and expanding it or else finding some other solution to allow more development.

Another reason for rethinking the South Lincoln commercial area: the mall itself will not be economically viable for much longer. Michelle Barnes, chair of the Rural Land Foundation (which owns the mall) reiterated her statement from last spring that changes in shopping habits are making it increasingly difficult for stores to succeed.

“I’m trying not to say anything about our current collection of enterprises, but I think it’s fair to say that over time, year after year, we have seen a decline in business at the mall,” Barnes said at the SOTT meeting. “Thinking about what’s going on economically elsewhere with local malls, they just have not been surviving, and certainly not thriving. The longer-term trends don’t look that great and we feel we have to be proactive in making sure it stays a vibrant place.”

The RLF operates the mall as a nonprofit, Barnes noted. “As economic forces on the mall continue to go in one direction, the fact that we don’t have much margin makes that endpoint collide eventually. That’s not tomorrow, but the long-term sustainability of the mall in its current state is not tenable.”