The Lincoln Squirrel – News, features and photos from Lincoln, Mass.

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Residents and officials wrestle with options to control costs for a community center

After hearing concerns from dozens of residents about the price tag for the proposed community center, town officials promised to look at lower-cost alternatives if voters approve an initial spending measure later this month.

More than 100 people attended a November 16 Zoom meeting of the Community Center Building Committee (see video here) to ask questions and air their worries about spending an estimated $25 million so soon after completing a $93 million school project. A November 30 Special Town Meeting will decide whether to approve $325,000 for design costs including fees for architects and an owner’s project manager.

Several people suggested crafting the meeting motion to require the architect to come up with less expensive options for voters to consider in addition to fleshing out the two 2018 concepts, and/or specifying a limit on how much the town is willing to spend.

The November 30 vote requires a two-thirds majority to pass. Select Board member and CCBC co-chair Jonathan Dwyer warned that “a ‘no’ vote would halt the process… we really need a ‘yes’ vote to proceed and answer some of these questions.” However, while no one disputed the need for a facility — primarily but not only to house the Parks and Recreation Department and the Council on Aging and Human Services — some argued for a delay. 

“We’ll try to find as economical a design as we can put forth for each of the designs and explore where we can cut as much as we can within reason,” CCBC Chair Sarah Chester said at the start of the meeting. “We all share the surprise and dismay at the projected costs of our two designs and we want to reduce that as much as possible.”

Among residents’ comments:

  • “I’m having a real hard time with the scope of this project and its cost…how can we address the great concept at a much lesser scope?” (Peter Braun, former member of the Select Board Finance Committee and other groups)
  • “I’m incredibly concerned about the cost, which is not to say I don’t think there should be a better space for the community… It seems like we’re trying to build something that’s much bigger than a town of our size really needs.” (Rachel Shulman)
  • Assuming a tax hike of about 4% if the town borrows $20 million, “we are looking at a very significant increase in our taxes.” (Surendra Shah)

At the same time, officials vigorously reiterated the need for new facilities for the PRD and COA&HS, noting that the Hartwell pods and Bemis Hall are old, inadequate, and even unsafe, especially for seniors. Bemis Hall’s plumbing, layout, and lack of sufficient parking and air conditioning are also major problems that can’t be cured by renovations, and COA&HS services and programs therefore must take in several different locations in Lincoln as well. The Pierce House is not suitable for the COA&HS for many reasons (an elevator and other extensive safety improvements required by building code would be needed, among other issues). 

Several studies including the most recent one from 2018 have evaluated the space and programming needs of the two departments and studied other locations in town for a community center, as well as community centers in several neighboring towns for comparison. 

“One of the problems that Lincoln has in benchmarking anything is that we lack scale” due to the town’s small population, Town Administrator Tim Higgins said. “We’re always going to be high” when it comes to per-capita costs for town facilities such as a school or community center.

Another consideration: “The amount of money [you spend] for a building doesn’t mean much unless it’s tied to a specific scope and program,” CCBC member Tim Christenfeld said. In other words, cutting a building’s cost necessarily reduces what services it can offer and what needs it can meet.

Although the two design concepts developed in 2018 are “a good jumping-off point,” Higgins said, “those two options could frame one end of the price point spectrum.” Echoing what the School Building Committee did, the CCBC could direct architects to produce several choices: “one that would satisfy the existing needs and programs, one that would reflect current programs with some enhancements, and the 2018 designs to anchor the far end of the spectrum with comprehensive programming.”

The warrant article for the November 30 town meeting is intentionally vague; the actual motion to be put forward by the Select Board “will reflect the dialogue that’s happened in the meantime,” Higgins added. However, he noted that $325,000 will not cover more extensive  work duplicating what’s been done in the past, such as identifying the needs for a community center or looking at other sites.

“People are talking about the overall cost of the project when what they’re really concerned about is the tax rate impact,” said Dilla Tingley, a CCDC member and chair of the COAHS board of directors. Private fundraising already underway, along with tapping some of the town’s debt stabilization fund and perhaps other sources, means that the actual amount to be borrowed will be less than the full cost of the building.

If the $325,000 is approved, there will be another Special Town Meeting a year from now to select a preferred design option and budget and create detailed building designs. Votes to borrow money to fund construction (with approval requiring a two-thirds Town Meeting majority plus a simple majority at the ballot box) would occur in March 2024.

My Turn: Let’s give the Community Center Building Committee a chance

By Rhonda Swain

In the last few weeks, Lincolnites have engaged in a lively discussion on LincolnTalk about the pros and cons of building a new community center. Some voices urge a “no” vote at the November 30 Special Town Meeting to stop the town from spending $325,000 to hire an owner’s representative and an architect to flesh out the existing community center schematic designs.

To me, the idea of halting the project at this point fails to honor many aspects of the kind of democracy on which Lincoln prides itself. 

  • First, it would simply discard the decade of hard work that resulted in the designs we have in hand today, effectively saying “Everything has changed, so the work of the past is invalid.” This seems short-sighted.  The benefits of a community center have been well-documented and long promised to the residents of Lincoln.  It seems unlikely that things have changed so much that we need a hard stop at this point.
  • Second, it doesn’t give the current Community Center Building Committee a chance to work with professionals to come up with complete proposals on which the town can vote. Approving the expenditure to hire professionals to develop more complete designs doesn’t commit the Town to any design. Property taxes will NOT increase because of this vote. There will be another chance to vote on the final project, with much better information on costs, trade-offs against other town priorities, and property tax impacts. 
  • Finally, shutting the project down now does not give private fundraising a chance to tap into the generosity of Lincoln’s residents who may well be willing to make a significant contribution to the cost of the community center project in order to reduce the town’s portion of the cost and the consequent burden on property taxpayers.

I strongly urge everyone to come out to the Special Town Meeting on November 30 and vote in favor of moving the community center project to the next phase. In this way, we can give residents a chance to get a fair look at what a community center will provide and what it will cost.

Call the Lincoln COA&HS at 781-259-8811 if you need a ride to the Town Meeting.

“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.

Community center discussion dominates SOTT #1

The size and cost of a proposed community center was the focus of the lion’s share of discussion and questions at the first of two State of the Town meetings on November 14.

More than 200 people at one point were on Zoom to hear about that proposal as well as updates on the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Anti-Racism (IDEA) Committee and the public schools. Community Center Building Committee Chair Sarah Chester began by recapping the need for the facility based on several past studies that highlighted the increasing inadequacies of the current Hartwell pods for the Parks and Recreation Department (PRD) and Bemis Hall, headquarters of the Council on Aging and Human Services.

“Doing nothing to provide adequate facilities for the COA, PRD, and community organizations is not an option. The physical plants of both Bemis Hall and the pods continue to age, and it makes no sense for the town to continue to expend scarce tax dollars to fix up, patch up and make do with facilities that do not suit their purpose,” the Community Center Preliminary Planning and Development Committee said in its 2018 report.

By including an indoor/outdoor cafe, a community center on the Hartwell campus could be a hub for intergenerational socializing as well as a meeting place for many other community organizations, Chester said. The building would also have ample parking, modern bathrooms (an upgrade over the seriously outdated facilities in Bemis and the pods). The goal is to have the building be net-zero in terms of energy usage as well. She also said that there’s no intention of having the cafe take away business from Twisted Treem noting that the eatery already has a satellite location at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

At a Special Town Meeting on November 30, residents will be asked to approve spending $325,000 from the town’s debt stabilization fund to develop preliminary schematic design options. Those options will be based on two schemes on which residents were about evenly divided in 2018: a new building northeast of the Hartwell building with a larger green (estimated at $24.6 million in 2022 dollars), or an infill structure north of Hartwell that would encompass renovated pods A and C plus the space in between them ($26 million). Pod B would be used for LEAP in both scenarios. The schemes were created by Maryann Thompson Architects, which also designed the Walden Pond visitor center.

Starting in June 2022, the CCBC visited community centers in other towns, reexamined programming and space needs in the era of Covid, and prepared requests for proposals for an architect and owner’s project manager. Given the recent rise in inflation and interest rates, “we recognize that current economic conditions have changed substantially,” Chester said, and the CCBC will work with the chosen architect to research lower-cost options and reduce the overall price tag as much as possible.

Finance Committee Chair Andy Payne reported that right now, the town has the fiscal capacity to borrow another $30 million. This figure will grow over time as town income and spending increases while debt payments stay flat, so the capacity for additional debt will be about $40 million by 2025, he said. Assuming a bond interest rate of 4.5%, every $10 million of borrowing would add $309 to the median property tax bill for a hike of 1.8%, he said.

The amount to be borrowed will in all likelihood be lower than the construction cost because some of the debt stabilization fund can be applied, Payne said. There is also a “Friends” group in town that is raising private funds to offset some of the expense, Town Administrator Tim Higgins said.

In answer to a resident’s question about operating costs for the community center, Chester said it can’t be known until the design is fleshed out. The building will need a custodian and a receptionist (“a friendly face who knows what’s going on to greet people”), but “putting two staffs together from two energy-inefficient buildings” will realize some savings, she said.

As to the building’s size, Chester said the square footage per person as recommended by the state for Councils on Aging “is about equivalent to our current [proposed] designs” and would amount to about two and a half pods. As noted in Appendices C and D of the CCPPDC’s 2018 report, “every space will be used extensively — there are no blank areas,” she added.

The CCBC invites residents to learn more about the project, ask questions, and provide feedback at its next meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. Click here to join via Zoom (passcode: 570005). 

Anyone who missed the November 14 meeting can watch a recording here.

IDEA Committee

After sorting through 17 proposals from all over the country, the IDEA Committee has settled on two firms, Elite Research and Racial Equity Group, to move Lincoln forward on the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)  front. Over the course of the next 18 months, the firms will look at current town practices and policies and do a gap analysis, formulate short and midrange action plans, and identify evaluation metrics to measure progress. 

Consultants hired by many other towns focus exclusively on hiring and management practices, but  “no other town really scoped out what we wanted to do — to include not only town employees but all elected and volunteer board and committee members, and to do so in partnership with all of the other organizations in town that make Lincoln such a vibrant and wonderful community,” Stringer said. “We didn’t want just a 101 course on diversity.”

  • See slides from the State of the Town presentation by the IDEA Committee
Schools

Lincoln Public Schools officials discussed their strategic plan for 2022-23 which includes “establishing a culture that is built upon the intersectionality of social and emotional learning,

Antiracism, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (AIDE), student and adult learning, and fostering strong connections,” Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall said. The idea informs the schools’ culture and “portrait of a learner” — a student who is a collaborative leader, a critical thinker, equity-oriented, and growth-minded. 

School Committee Chair John MacLachlan offered an update on the search for a new superintendent of schools to replace McFall, who is retiring next year. The panel expects to make a hiring decision by the second week in February, he said. The Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee is likewise in the process of seeking a new superintendent to replace Bella Wong. As with the LPS search, there will be opportunities for the community to participate in this process via forums, surveys, and a search advisory committee, LSSC Chair Heather Cowap said.

State of the Town, community center discussions on tap

The two community center options chosen in 2018 (click to enlarge).

The proposed community center, which is headed for a town meeting vote later this month, will be one of the topics discussed at the first of two State of the Town (SOTT) meetings on Monday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. Click here to register for the first night and get the Zoom link.

At a Special Town Meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 30 at 7:30 p.m., residents will decide whether to spend up to $325,000 to develop preliminary schematic design options for a new community center, which would be built on the Lincoln School’s Hartwell campus. The Community Center Building Committee has compiled a list of FAQs and is posting them in segments on its new website at lincolncommunitycenter.com. You can also use the site to ask a question and get on the mailing list using that page, which will be updated with more background soon. The town’s official CCBC page with the March 2022 Town Meeting presentation, list of members, agendas, etc. can be found here. You can see also Lincoln Squirrel stories about the history of the project here.

Both SOTT meetings will feature presentations, Q&A sessions, and breakout rooms. Also on the SOTT agenda Monday night: 

  • Council on Aging & Human Services
  • Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Anti-Racism (IDEA) Committee
  • Lincoln Public Schools
  • Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School 

The agenda for the second night of SOTT on Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. is below. Click here to register and get the Zoom link. 

  • Green Energy Committee/Climate Action Lincoln 
  • Conservation
  • Bicycle &Pedestrian Advisory Committee
  • Housing Commission
  • Lincoln Land Conservation Trust/Rural Land Foundation
  • Planning Board

Town seeks $325,000 to move ahead with community center

The two community center options chosen in 2018 (click to enlarge).

There will be a Special Town Meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 30 at 7:30pm in the Donaldson Auditorium that will ask voters to approve spending $325,000 for the next phase of work to develop a community center.

The money will pay for hiring an owner’s project manager and an architect for the project, which is expected to $23 million to $25.4 million in 2025 dollars, according to information presented at the 2021 State of the Town meeting (SOTT). The new Community Center Building Committee (CCBC) has been meeting since June to get up to speed on the work of previous community center studies and committees. The group is now assessing and refining the original concepts, mindful of lessons learned during the pandemic about programs and spaces.

In 2018, a previous committee and its architect came up with two possible design directions (included in the 2021 SOTT presentation) that residents supported in about equal measure at the time. The CCBC will refine and update the concept plans, prepare more detailed site plans, prepare schematic design plans, and refine cost estimates and budgets. They will provide an update on its process during SOTT Night 1 on November 14. See the town’s SOTT webpage or this Lincoln Squirrel article for details and registration links.

If the $325,000 appropriation is approved next month, voters will be able to select a preferred design option and budget at a Special Town Meeting in November 2023.

Click here to read previous Lincoln Squirrel stories about the community center, or go to the Squirrel home page and look for “Categories” at the bottom of the left hand column. Then click on “Community Center” in the dropdown menu.

State of the Town meetings look to the future

There will be a two-night State of the Town meeting via Zoom in mid-November with an overarching theme: “What should Lincoln be like in 2050?”

“Lincoln’s boards and committees are focused on work that will have long-term implications for and impacts on our town. There are conversations about housing, education, human services, multi-modal transportation, diversity and equity, land use, and climate change (to name but a few),” the Select Board said in their most recent newsletter. “Many topics are interrelated and require us to think about our values, envision the future, and weigh (sometimes difficult) tradeoffs. We need your ideas, insights, questions, and dreams to guide our work as we draft the plans, policy proposals, and budgets that you will vote on at subsequent Town Meetings.”

Residents are invited to read and respond to a “Letter to Our Grandchildren” by the 1971 Planning Board excerpted in the Select Board newsletter that outlined issues of the day including zoning, housing prices, roadside paths, and even trash (“We wonder whether you will have solved the problem of solid waste? Maybe our best hope is that you will be wise enough to produce less of it…”).

Discussion questions for today include:

  • How would you describe Lincoln in 2022? (housing, transportation, human services, education, diversity & equity, town governance, land use practices, energy consumption, etc.)
  • What is your vision for 2050?
  • What would you include in a new “letter to our grandchildren”? What actions do we need to take to fulfill your vision? What are your top priorities?

Send a few words, a few paragraphs, photos, poetry or whatever conveys your ideas using this form. The deadline is Tuesday, Nov. 1.

The State of the Town schedule and topics of discussion are listed below. The links can also be found on the town’s SOTT web page.

Monday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. — Night 1 (Zoom event — register here)

  • Community Center Building Committee
  • Council on Aging & Human Services
  • Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Anti-Racism (IDEA) Committee

Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. — Night 2 (Zoom event — register here)

  • Planning Board
  • Conservation, Rural Land Foundation/Lincoln Land Conservation Trust
  • Green Energy/Climate Action
  • Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee

Community Center Building Committee begins its work

The two community center options chosen in 2018 (click to enlarge).

Now that the school project is nearing completion, the town is turning its attention to another much-needed facility: a community center. A new Community Center Building Committee has been established and is getting right to work with its first meeting on June 1.

It’s not always easy to find volunteers for town government, but in this case, the Select Board had many enthusiastic applicants — 11 people for the four at-large slots. The board interviewed candidates at its May 23 meeting and voted to include Sarah Chester, Timothy Christenfeld, Alison Taunton-Rigby, and Krystal Wood. The other applicants for those slots were Owen Beenhouwer, Doug Crosby, Steve Gladstone, Dave Levington, Andrew Sheff, Andrew Singer, and Peter von Mertens.

Also on the committee are five representatives of town boards: Jonathan Dwyer (Select Board), Margit Griffith (Parks & Recreation Committee), Adam Hogue (School Committee), Ellen Meyer-Shorb (Finance Committee) and Dilla Tingley (Council on Aging and Human Services. Rounding out the roster are five nonvoting ex officio members: COA&HS Director Abigail Butt, Parks and Recreation Director Jessica Downing, Town Administrator, Timothy Higgins, Assistant Town Daniel Pereira, and Facilities Director Brandon Kelly.

Residents voted almost unanimously in March to move ahead with the community center, which is now estimated to cost $23 million to $25.4 million in 2025 dollars. Parks and Rec and the COAHS are in dire need of newer and better designed space. That would result in an annual property tax increase of about $600 on a home assessed at $1.13 million (the median in Lincoln) whose owner now pays $16,866 per year. Construction could start in June 2025 and finish 18 months later.

In 2018, the community center planning committee and its architect came up with two possible design directions (slides 5–10 in the 2021 State of the Town presentation). The new CCBC will review those two design concepts with an eye for “potential cost savings that may be achieved through re-evaluating the project scope or by other means,” according to the committee’s charge. The review will also consider how Covid-19 precautions might affect programs, interior space layout, outdoor amenities, and the role that the new and renovated school spaces might play.

The timeline proposed last fall calls for a Special Town Meeting in November 2022 to appropriate funds for architect and construction managers, and another Special Town Meeting a year later to vote on a preferred design option and budget.

Editor’s note: previous Lincoln Squirrel stories on the community center can be found on the home page of the Squirrel website. Scroll down to the red “Categories” heading in the left-hand column and click on the “community center” dropdown.

Town to move ahead on community center, which could open in 2026

The two community center options chosen in 2018 (click to enlarge).

With the $93 million school project drawing to a close this summer, the next big-ticket item on the horizon is a community center. All but two voters at the March 26 Town Meeting approved a measure to authorize the Select Board to appoint a building committee, with the goal of voting on a community center design and budget at a Special Town Meeting in fall 2023.

The facility is now estimated to cost $23 million to $25.4 million in 2025 dollars, according to information presented at the November 2021 State of the Town meeting and again on Saturday. That would result in an annual property tax increase of about $600 on a home assessed at $1.13 million (the median in Lincoln) whose owner now pays $16,866 per year. Construction could start in June 2025 and finish 18 months later.

“We’re not voting to fund a project today,” Select Board member Jonathan Dwyer said. “There will be three more [town-wide] votes before any shovel moves dirt. We’re voting today for the pursuit of more information, more dialogue, and updates along the way.”

The building committee will review previous studies and discussions on the community center proposal, building on earlier decisions to locate it on the Hartwell school campus and choose from one of two design directions (slides 5–10 in the presentation). 

As of 2020, the town had another $29 million in borrowing capacity before reaching a debt level that would endanger its AAA bond rating. However, the project will require postponing some other large capital projects such as a seven-figure sum for acquiring more land for the town cemetery and $5 million to $7 million for roadway improvements.

Dwyer noted that even if the community center is not built, the town will have to spend millions of dollars to upgrade the three Hartwell pods, which are in “dire need” of renovation, he said. In a separate Town Meeting action, voters approved spending $60,000 to repair the leaking roofs of two of the pods to maintain their structural integrity and extend their life by about three years. Actually replacing the roofs would cost substantially more, but town officials were reluctant to invest that money in buildings that may be torn down or upgraded as part of a community center.

The pods currently house the Parks and Recreation Department and the Lincoln After-school Activities program, which will remain in one of the renovated pods once the community center is in place. The facility will house the PRD and the Council on Aging and Human Services, which currently operates in Bemis Hall but suffers from a lack of space and sufficient parking.

In answer to any concerns that Bemis Hall will go unused, “there are many organizations and activities in town that are desperate for space,” said Dilla Tingley, chair of the COA&HS and a member of the most recent community center planning design committee. “That beautiful building will always be there and always used.”

As for the specter of more tax increases, Tingley said there would be “aggressive local fundraising” to help defray the cost. “We’re excited about sharing the space with the whole community, providing space for all of us to come together and appreciate what we have.”

SOTT #1: Community center could cost more than $25 million

A community center for Lincoln is now expected to cost up to $25.4 million in 2025 dollars — and to save money for the project, many attendees at the November 1 State of the Town meeting said, “go for it ASAP!”

The updated estimates were revealed during one of several topics at the first of two State of the Town (SOTT) meetings on November 1. Other issues discussed were the public health situation, town finances, and the school building project.

  • Click here to see the community center slides presented at State of the Town

Several years ago, the Community Center Planning and Preliminary Design Committee documented the need for larger and more appropriate facilities for both the Council on Aging and Human Services (then called simply the COA) and the Parks and Recreation Department. After studying space needs and various possible locations in 2018, two slightly different design concepts for the site of the current Hartwell pods came in at $16.2 million for Scheme 1 and $15.3 million for Scheme 2. (A survey of residents who attended a June 2018 Special Town Meeting showed that voters were almost evenly split on which of the two they preferred.)

Those cost estimates were recently reexamined by the firm that worked with the town on the school building project. In 2021 dollars, the concepts would cost up to $22 million and $20.7 million respectively, and in 2025 dollars, those numbers rise to $25.4 million and $24 million.

As of fiscal year 2020, the town’s borrowing capacity is $29 million, and that number goes up by about 2.5% every two years, so the community center could theoretically be paid for by borrowing alone. The Finance Committee estimates that it would cost the average Lincoln homeowner about $245 in taxes for every $10 million borrowed.

Officials presented a revised timeline for the project whereby there would be a “sense of the town” vote in March 2022. If a majority of residents wanted to go ahead with it, a community center building committee would then be appointed. There would be another town-wide vote a year from now to hire architects and other professionals, and a final Special Town Meeting vote in fall 2023 on a preferred design and budget appropriation.

But several of the more than 150 residents who attended the SOTT meeting via Zoom urged officials to speed up the timeline at least by a few months to minimize cost escalation.

“This is getting really expensive. I’m really concerned that the people who will use this facility will not be able to afford a bite this big,” Barbara Low said.

Community center planning was delayed for about a year by the pandemic, but despite that, “prices of commodities and building projects in our region have been going up astronomically,” Select Board member Jonathan Dwyer noted.

“We have a significant number of seniors in this community who have been waiting patiently for their turn” until after the school project is substantially complete, Diana Beaudoin said. “To expect them to wait for another 5 years while costs escalate… I think quite frankly the risk is that we might not do it.” While she fully supported the school project, “there needs to be some companion consideration given to the resources for seniors,” she added.

There’s no concern that Bemis Hall will fall into disuse after the community center is built. Library offices as well as organizations that are now squeezed into Bemis will welcome more space in Bemis, several residents noted. “We’re tripping all over ourselves trying to find space” for various activities, Sara Mattes said. “Please step it up, guys.”

Other SOTT topics

Public health — Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, there have been 248 cases of the disease reported in Lincoln, public health nurse Tricia McGean said. Almost 90% of Lincoln residents have been fully vaccinated.

Thirty-six of those were breakthrough cases in people who had been fully vaccinated. Breakthrough cases nationally represent about 1% of the vaccinated population, and those who do contract the virus despite being vaccinated have a less severe illness — usually nasal congestion, headache and fatigue, but not the cough and high fevers seen at the outset of the pandemic, she said. 

  • Click here to see the SOTT slides on the public health situation

There will be a COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the Lincoln School for those aged 5–10 on November 10.The town also hopes to schedule a booster vaccination clinic using the Moderna vaccine by the end of the year.

School project — Phase 1 of the construction was completed on time over the summer and middle school grades are now using the revitalized space, School Building Committee chair Chris Fasciano said. Phase 2 is expected to be complete in July 22, followed by installation of solar panels and landscaping.

  • Click here for the school project presentation slides at SOTT

Fasciano showed photos of completed parts of the building, including the refurbished auditorium and lecture hall, school “neighborhoods” and hubs, and the Reed Gym’s new windows and connector to the school. He also highlighted features that were initially cut from the project for cost reasons but later restored by donations from the Ogden Codman Trust, the estate of Harriet Todd, Robert and Jacquelin Apsler, the Friends of the Lincoln School Project, and donors to a fund seeded by the eighth-grade Class of 2020 for new trees and other landscaping (though that fund is still about $11,000 short of the needed $60,000).

Residents also approved another $828,945 at Town Meeting in 2020. The gifts and additional town spending restored almost $2 million to the $93.9 million project.

Finance Committee — The pandemic “has stabilized from a financial standpoint,” Finance Committee Chair Any Payne reported, and in fact the town is in line for $2.74 million in reimbursements for Covid-related spending from three federal programs. Of that, the largest amount ($2.06 million) is expected from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) that President Biden signed into law in March 2021. The town has established an ARPA working group to comb through the requirements and regulations to find everything that could be eligible for that funding. Some things such as certain infrastructure projects don’t have to be directly pandemic-related.

  • Click here to see the Finance Committee’s SOTT slides

Going into the next budget cycle, the town has more free cash than it anticipated due to a lower-than-expected increase in annual health insurance premiums (less than 1%, though the town had initially budgeted about 6%, Payne said). The town is also getting more revenue and state aid than expected. The town’s stabilization fund, used to reduce the impact of large one-time expenses, now stands at $2.59 million, he added.

As usual, the Finance Committee will ask boards and departments to submit budget inverse requests of no more than 2.5% but will consider one-time “compelling preferred items” for additional spending, Payne said. Last year, in the face of uncertainty and expenses surrounding the pandemic, officials said no to most of the additional budget requests, “but this time we feel like we have a little more room to work with,” he said.

An online poll during the SOTT meeting showed that 79% of attendees were age 50 and up, and 42% served on a town board or commission.

Register for State of the Town online meetings

Lincolnites can now register to attend the Zoom-based Sate of the Town meeting on November 1-2 from 7–9 p.m. on both nights.

SOTT #1 (Monday, Nov. 1 at 7 p.m.)

  • Public Health Update
  • School Building Project Update
  • Finance Committee Update
  • Community Center Discussion
  • Open Forum

Zoom advance registration link (night 1)

SOTT #2 (Tuesday, Nov. 2 at 7 p.m.)

  • Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Anti-Racism (IDEA) Initiative Update
  • South Lincoln Planning Update
  • Climate Action Planning Committee
  • Open Forum

Zoom advance registration link (night 2)

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. For more information on the issues, see the Selectmen’s Fall 2021 Newsletter.