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

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My Turn: Watch the Democratic National Convention this week

By Joan Kimball and Barbara Slayter

It’s the week of the Democratic National Convention, and we Dems are very excited. On Monday night, we heard from Democratic leaders such as Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar, as well as Republican leaders including John Kasich.

On Tuesday night, voters, delegates, activists and leaders in the Democratic Party will officially cast votes to nominate Joe Biden. Wednesday night will feature the historic nomination of Kamala Harris as Vice President of the United States. Speakers will include Nancy Pilosi, Elizabeth Warren, and Gabrielle Giffords.

On Thursday, Joe Biden will accept the Democratic nomination and will speak about his vision for uniting America. Other speakers will include Senators Corey Booker, Tammy Baldwin, and Tammy Duckworth. The Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks) will perform. 

For the complete schedule and news about the Lincoln Democratic Party, see our website at www.Lincolnmadems.org. The convention will be broadcast TV on several channels on computers, streaming video and on the website at demconvention/watch. 

Joan Kimball and Barbara Slayter
Co-chairs, Lincoln Democratic Town Committee

”My Turn” is a forum for Lincoln residents to offer their 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 Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.

News acorns

Water use restrictions in effect; drought possible

Lincoln’s normal summer water use restrictions are now in effect, and restrictions may tighten if the state enters a drought, as now seems possible.

The usual May 1 to September 30 restrictions are required by the state Department of Environmental Protection because Lincoln annually exceeds the withdrawal permit and the daily per-person water use guideline of 65 gallons. Water Department Superintendent MaryBeth Wiser told the Water Commission this week that Massachusetts Drought Task Force is meeting this week to assess possible drought conditions and may vote to impose more stringent restrictions than those required by Lincoln’s official drought plan, which was developed after the 2017 drought. Wiser will report back to the commission on the results of that meeting on July 8.

Virtual bingo hosted by LLCT

Join the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust on Tuesday, June 30 at 7:30 p.m. for an evening of virtual bingo. We’ll be highlighting some of Lincoln’s bees and butterflies, but no naturalist knowledge is required to win.This is a free event, but registration is required; click here to register. Once you’re registered, you’ll receive the Zoom meeting link and a bingo card. There will also be prizes from local businesses and LLCT swag.

Grief groups for children and teens

Children and teens (rising first-graders to recent high school graduates) who have experienced the death of a significant person in their life are invited to join a virtual group hosted by Care Dimensions to connect with grieving peers and learn some coping tools to navigate this difficult time. Group will be held via Zoom starting on Tuesday, June 30 the following times:

  • 10 a.m. – Elementary school students
  • 11 a.m. – Middle school students
  • 12 p.m. – High school students

Advanced registration is required; rolling enrollment. For more information or to register, contact Kelia Bergin, children’s program coordinator, at KBergin@CareDimensions.org or 781-373-6570.

Planning Board candidates reflect on election result

The candidates in the hard-fought Planning Board race had gracious words for each other and said the election was a good experience for the town, even though it became contentious at times.

“I’d like to congratulate Lynn [DeLisi] and Rick [Rundell] for a good campaign that stuck to the issues,” said Bob Domnitz, who will serve his second stint on the board after winning more votes than Rundell in the three-way race for two seats. “I know some of our supporters were overly enthusiastic, but the candidates took the high road and that’s the way it should be. I’m proud of the entire town for coming out and voting in the numbers they did in this pandemic.”

“I’m impressed that over 800 people felt the issues were important enough to take the trouble to vote under complicated circumstances,” Rundell echoed in a letter posted in LincolnTalk. “I do think an enthusiastically contested election benefits the town by surfacing issues we should be talking about.”

DeLisi, who got the most votes of the three, said she was surprised to finish in first place. “Actually, I thought I would lose,” she said, since much of the campaign discussion focused on Domnitz vs. Rundell rather than DeLisi alone.

DeLisi was co-chair of the South Lincoln Planning and Implementation Committee, a large group with several subcommittees, one of which was the Village Planning and Zoning team. That team’s proposal for rezoning part of South Lincoln and changing the project approval process to give the board more latitude provoked much criticism. But the full SLPIC group rarely met, and DeLisi said she was not even aware of what the zoning team was suggesting until the process was well along.

“I thought the zoning subcommittee was working on ways to make it easier for businesses to open in town… and not focusing on regulations to help developers build dense condos as well,” DeLisi said. “I’ve never chaired a committee where I didn’t know what was going on, and I clearly did not know what was going on,” she said.

Her SLIPC co-chair was Gary Taylor, who was the board’s representative on the zoning subcommittee (and ironically, the person who beat out Domnitz in another close election in 2015).

Domnitz and DeLisi want to see any future zoning change proposals come from the full Planning Board, not SLPAC (the successor to SLPIC) or a subcommittee.

One thing all three candidates agreed on: the discussion about South Lincoln isn’t over.

“My position was that the town should have the conversation — not just a matter of one group shouting it down before everybody had the chance to engage in it,” Rundell said.

“We’re going to have to talk about South Lincoln and how to sustain what we have there. Maybe we do have to change the zoning, but not in the way it was proposed,” DeLisi said. “I think we need to be speaking to the people who live around there and involve them in the conversation.”

Rundell is out and Domnitz back on Planning Board

In a very close race for Planning Board, incumbent Lynn DeLisi and challenger Bob Domnitz won the two open seats, ousting Rick Rundell, who has been on the board since 2012. Domnitz previously served on the board from 2003–15 but himself was beaten by Gary Taylor in 2015 by a margin of 481-441 (click on ballot image). 

In the June 15 election, residents could vote for two of the three candidates. Domnitz, a Mill Street resident, beat Rundell in Precinct 2 (northern and eastern Lincoln), 459-412, but came in third in Precinct 1. DeLisi garnered the most votes of the three candidates, but Domnitz’s margin in his home precinct was enough to allow him to finish in second place overall, beating Rundell by 47 votes. A total of 806 ballots were cast in the election for a turnout of 17% of registered voters (the Planning Board was the only contested race).

The race was the focus of much townwide debate and campaigning. Over the last year, the board has been at the center of  controversial proposal (since shelved) by one of the South Lincoln Planning and Implementation Committee’s teams to relax some of the zoning rules for the Lincoln Station area and give the board more power to approve projects that might otherwise have had to go to Town Meeting. 

Unofficial town election results for June 2020 (click to see both pages).

In the June 11 candidate forum, DeLisi and Domnitz roundly criticized the proposal by SLPIC. But Rundell pushed back, noting that the board could not change its decision-making scope without approval at Town Meeting. The SLPIC proposal was originally on the docket when Town Meeting was scheduled for March but were withdrawn before the meeting was rescheduled due to the pandemic. SLPIC then planned to bring a revised proposal to a Special Town Meeting this fall but subsequently shelved the plan entirely. 

During the forum, Rundell characterized himself as a “forward-looking candidate” and said the board’s role should not be “fossilizing the town in a certain state.” 

Ironically, Rundell said in March that he was recruited to the Planning Board shortly after arriving in Lincoln by Domnitz because he felt the board lacked a professional architect. 

The Lincoln Squirrel will interview all three candidates about the results and hopes to publish a story on June 16.

Outdoor Town Meeting zips by in 90 minutes

Voters line up in the Hartwell parking lot driveway to check in for Town Meeting on June 13. See more photos below. (Photo by Alice Waugh)

By Alice Waugh

It was a Town Meeting like no other. Instead of lasting hours with hundreds of people packed in a stuffy auditorium, the June 13 event took place in the fresh air under an enormous tent where chirping birds competed with the amplified voices of the speakers. All three warrant articles were approved, and the whole thing was over in less than 90 minutes.

About 150 residents (all in masks) sat alone or in socially distanced pairs under a gigantic tent that occupied most of the Hartwell parking lot, secured by stakes driven through the asphalt. Another 130 who couldn’t fit in the allotted space in the tent sat outside in lawn chairs or on the pavement in the bright sunshine. Questions were submitted in writing and read aloud by runners to minimize microphone handling.

Everyone was given a small orange card to hold up while voting to avoid the need for calling out loudly and perhaps spreading aerosolized virus — but there was a small hitch. Town Moderator Sarah Cannon Holden noted that the town’s bylaws require a voice vote, “so I’m asking you to speak softly and raise your bright orange cards.” A soft chorus of “ayes” signaled each vote.

The agenda was pared down from the 40 warrant articles planned for March to 21 crucial financial articles. Eighteen of those articles focusing on the town budget, including Capital Planning Committee (CapCom) and Community Preservation Act (CPA) items, were unanimously approved with no discussion in a single consent-calendar vote.

As expected, most of the discussion focused on a request by the School Building Committee to move $829,000 from free cash to the school building project to pay for some of the items that were cut when bids came in $3.5 million over budget. Before Covid-19 turned things upside down, the SBC had planned to ask for $2.02 million to restore 19 items at Town Meeting in March. The eight items funded by Saturday’s vote amount were outlined in a June 4 public forum on Zoom.

Several residents were not happy about the SBC request. “The School Building Committee was given a very large amount of money. How many more times will you come to Town Meeting asking for yet more money?” said Jeanine Carlson. “We taxpayers have to live within our budget. Why don’t you?”

“We do not take lightly how much things have changed in the last few months,” SBC chair Chris Fasciano responded, noting that it had significantly scaled down its request since early March based partly on discussions with the Finance Committee. “We have made no decisions about coming back to the town or not coming back to the town. We are in a very uncertain time and we need to see how things unfold before we make that decision.”

Some of the other cuts, such as bike paths and walkways, playground equipment, and new trees, could be restored in the future with funding from sources such as the CPA, CapCom, or a potential Complete Streets Grant. But Fasciano acknowledged that funds that were cut from the budget for furniture, fittings, and equipment will have to be restored, either within the School Committee or SBC budgets, or by direct resident vote. Private donations are also a possibility, although town officials are not permitted to engage in fundraising.

“At some point, some or all of that [$750,000] will need to come back to the town,” he said. Much of that amount will go to replace old and worn furniture, as little or none has been replaced in the past 10 years as the town was trying to finalize a school project.

After the vote, the town still has $1.5 million in free cash, which — along with $2.2 million in the debt stabilization fund — makes up the town’s $3.7 million emergency reserves, FinCom chair Andy Payne said.

Former FinCom member Peyton Marshall also questioned the wisdom of allocating more money for the school.”Many of us in town have had to reconsider or are looking at our plans to remain in Lincoln,” he said. “I think we’ve gone far enough in spending money on town buildings and schools. Should we be prioritizing buildings or people?”

But others spoke in favor of the measure. When she first heard of the request to go before voters, one resident said she thought the SBC must be “very brave or very foolish, but then I read the list and though, ‘My goddess, this is going to impact actual learning in the classroom.” The allocation won’t raise taxes any further, “so it’s not going to show up in our mailboxes, but it will show up in the learning.”

There were about a dozen “nay” votes on the measure seeking $829,000 and three or four against a related measure to transfer $325,000 from the town’s cable TV fund to the cable TV infrastructure in the Donaldson Auditorium, which is normally used for Town Meetings.

Marshall was the only one to vote against the $270,000 Water Department borrowing request. Water Commission chair Ruth Anne Hendrickson explained that $125,000 of that was needed due to “the same sad story” — a previously funded item where bids came in over budget. She outlined the needs in detail before a June 9 public forum on Zoom.

In July, consultants will begin studying long-term options for Lincoln’s water supply, including switching to water from the MWRA. And starting next year, Water Department capital requests will go before the FinCom and the CPC before coming up for Town Meeting votes. This hasn’t been the case before, because the department operates as an enterprise fund independent of the town budget, whereby revenues from user fees are supposed to cover most of its costs.

Click images below for expanded versions and captions:

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”145″ gal_title=”Town Meeting 2020-2″]

My Turn: 48 residents endorse Domnitz and DeLisi for Planning Board

Dear friends and neighbors,

Monday’s vote for Planning Board is significant, and we the undersigned, 48 of your Lincoln neighbors, offer the following perspective.

Over the past year, we became aware of a sweeping and profound zoning change taking shape in the Planning Board’s advisory committee (SLPIC). The proposal was designed to smooth the way for developers to move large-scale development projects directly through the Planning Board. We are but a few of the over 200 families who live within what would have been the new “South Lincoln Village Zone,” joined here by impacted neighbors and other allied residents. Our neighborhood is currently a mix of single-family and multi-family homes, condos, and apartments that are both owned and rented, and it’s about five times as dense as the rest of town.

We challenged the proposed zoning bylaw because it permitted four-story buildings with 20 units per acre, built right to their lot lines. The new zone would have covered roughly 30 acres and paved the way for hundreds of new condos and/or apartments to our small, congested neighborhood without requiring project approval by Town Meeting. For example, they modeled a net potential gain of 271 units over only four of the 27 properties within the new zone.

Through organizing, collaborating, raising our voices, and attending many Planning Board and SLPIC meetings, we gained some insight into the three candidates for Planning Board. We invite you to join us in voting for Bob Domnitz and Lynn DeLisi. Lynn is the only current member of the Planning Board who voiced her opposition to this ill-conceived and harmful proposal. Being the lone voice over many months was no doubt tiring and isolating, but Lynn has persisted in elevating our concerns over the impact on our diverse neighborhood.

Bob Domnitz seeks to keep ultimate approval authority for these kinds of major development projects — i.e. a housing development twice as dense as Oriole Landing — with the town, not the Planning Board. He has seen many consequential development projects succeed by working with town boards and then earning town support. He has served on the Planning Board before, and we hope you will join us in bringing his experience and his fresh perspective to the important decisions facing the Planning Board in the coming years.

The Planning Board is reframing SLPIC and revising the zoning proposal. We hope that they will continue to respect the concerns of those members of our community most impacted by major zoning changes in South Lincoln. We all hope for thriving local businesses, community space, optimized commuter rail use, and decreased carbon emissions. Let’s task our Planning Board with also preserving the affordable housing options we currently have and maintaining the appropriately scaled development we treasure.

Signed, your South Lincoln Neighbors who live within the “South Lincoln Village Zone”:

John Dorr
Bayhas Kana and Sara Postlethwait
Yaman Kana
Kim Leigh-Manuell
Mark Levinson
Jason and Jessica Packineau
Veena Ramani and Adam Stark
Mary Rosenfeld
Sarah Schuller
Michael Welch

Signed, families living in close proximity to the proposed “South Lincoln Village Zone”:

Mark Ahern
Diana Bercel
Liz Burton
Vanessa Cartwright
James and Bonnie Echmalian
Denise and Eric Gieseke
Iris Hoxha
Katrin Kriz
Ada Lee and John Po
Isabel Lee
June Matthews
Thomas Moran
Catherine Moritz
Constance and Richard Ohlsten
Lisa Parker
William Schiano
Melissa Shea
Lisa Slater

Signed, Lincoln residents who join with our South Lincoln neighbors on this issue:

Jamie Banks
Pauline Curtiss
Christopher Dale
Erica Gonella and Shakil Aslam
Jane Herlacher
Maria O’Brien Hylton
Liz Lieblich
Julie Lynch
Caroline and Mark Nordstrom
Barbara Peskin
Jeannine Taylor

”My Turn” is a forum for Lincoln residents to offer their 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.

Planning Board candidates square off at well-attended forum

More than 60 residents packed a room (on Zoom) on Thursday night to hear from the three candidates running for two Planning Board seats in the June 15 election. In the forum organized by resident Sharon Antia, the trio answered questions about issues facing the Planning Board and the town more generally: South Lincoln rezoning, how to support businesses during the pandemic, affordable housing, and more.

Challenger Bob Domnitz, a former Planning Board member who was ousted by Gary Taylor in 2015, said he was running to regain his seat when “I realized the Planning Board was serious about bringing a zoning amendment before Town Meeting to make the Planning Board the decision-maker on major projects” by majority vote, he said. “That didn’t fit in with the nature of Lincoln as I knew it, and it’s antithetical to how we operate as a community.”

Under a proposal unveiled last year by a subcommittee of the former South Lincoln Planning and Implementation Committee (SLPIC), mixed-use projects would be allowed in areas around the mall and the MBTA station with s site plan review and a special permit from the Planning Board. With that permit, housing projects could be up to 20 units per acre, and a greater maximum lot coverage (60% for residential and 100% for business) would be allowed. However, Town Meeting approval would not be required unless a proposed project exceeded the special-permit density.

Incumbent Rick Rundell pushed back, saying it was “an absurd position” to imply that the Planning Board could take away power from Town Meeting without residents’ consent. (The SLPIC proposal was initially slated for a Special Town Meeting vote in the fall, but the Planning Board withdrew its proposal after encountering opposition.)

“How did they misread the character of this town so much that they worked on a proposal to take away Town Meeting authority for major projects?” Domnitz asked later in the forum.

“I had no idea what was going on [with the SLPIC subcommittee proposal] or I would have fought it,” incumbent Lynn DeLisi responded.

Rundell, who said he was recruited to the board in 2013 by Domnitz, argued that its duties should not focus on “fossilizing the town in a certain state” and that it has become more transparent since he was the chairman in 2014-15. The board has also “sunsetted” the requirement for site plan reviews after five years. “Today’s Planning Board has made light-years of progress since 2015,” he said.

Some of the questions focuses on what the Planning Board could do to help the town in this time of Covid-19. Incumbent candidate Lynn DeLisi suggested a public health center somewhere in town to promote vaccination once a vaccine becomes available.

The pandemic is a major challenge for both developers and prospective occupants of affordable housing. However, changing zoning regulations now to encourage more affordable housing and demographic diversity is not a good idea, the candidates agreed.

“I think we need to take a breath, wait a few months, and see how things settle out,” Domnitz said. “We may be heading towards a totally new world or at least a new equilibrium, and we need to go cautiously at this point.”

“I’m not sure the Planning Board can necessarily take the lead and make decisions about any of this. These are dialogues we need to have with people in the town,” DeLisi said.

The bigger question, Rundell said, “is whether we want to put a wall around our community and preserve the status quo… or be a part of a larger society, and I don’t think the town is at all aligned on that choice.”

Social diversity in Lincoln is certainly desirable, “but we can’t legislate that. All we can do is set up economic possibilities to create the kind of diversity we’re talking about,” Domnitz said. However, “getting some geographic diversity on our major boards would be constructive,” he added. Few if any current town board and committee members are residents of North Lincoln — although Domnitz is — “and the view from here is a little different than the view from elsewhere in town.”

As to where and how more affordable housing should be built, “does it have to be developing more dense housing in South Lincoln? I think it can be in other ways,” DeLisi said.

The candidates agreed that the SLPIC subcommittee’s efforts to reimagine South Lincoln were flawed but not about how to fix the process. The “sprawling” nature of SLPIC and its subcommittees meant that the effort was “not as transparent or receptive to input as it could have been,” Rundell acknowledged.

The board voted on June 9 to reconstitute SLPIC as a five-member South Lincoln Planning and Advisory Committee (SLPAC) but disagreed on the size of the new panel and who should be represented on it. Four of the five board members approved a group comprising only elected officials, “but I advocated very strongly for a member to be a resident from the affected area, and I was shot down by the other board members and I don’t understand why,” DeLisi said.

The parent board rather than a subcommittee should be responsible for coming up with future rezoning proposals, even though it will create more work and long meetings, Domnitz said. “This is very important and should take place within the Planning Board itself… the board needs to realize they own what that subcommittee is doing.”

Asked about the 2009 Comprehensive Long-Range Plan that was never acted on, Domnitz said, “The plan is vague, let’s put it that way…  It’s much easier for people to deal with a tangible proposal than an abstract concept.”

“I mark it as a failure of leadership that there was not real follow-up to that plan,” Rundell said. “Absent planning, Lincoln is going to be like a ship in a storm without rudders or sails and will soon find itself on the rocks.”

From the candidates’ opening and closing statements:

“My motto is ‘Responsible planning by collaboration with neighborhoods’ — that says it all.”
— Lynn DeLisi

“The Planning Board is on the wrong track. We need to put it on a better track so something actually happens in South Lincoln.”
— Bob Domnitz

“Respect for the past and planning for the future with integrity, fairness, and transparency…
Look at today’s board and how they operate, and give your vote to a forward-looking candidate.”
— Rick Rundell

A look at procedure and agenda for Town Meeting

A diagram of drop-off and parking areas, rest rooms, etc. for Saturday’s Town Meeting (click to enlarge).

Voter check-in for Lincoln’s first al fresco Town Meeting starts at 8:15 a.m. on Saturday, June 13, and it’s guaranteed to be significantly shorter than the usual multi-hour affairs.

The meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. under a large tent (capacity with social distancing: 150) in the Hartwell parking lot. Voters, who must wear masks, will get a preassembled packet with handouts, a voting card, paper, and a pencil for writing down questions. There will be a first-aid station with hand sanitizer, extra masks, water, etc., and volunteers who hand things out will be wearing gloves and masks.

For those who can’t attend, the town is live-streaming Town Meeting on Facebook. This allows residents to watch and and listen remotely, but not to vote, ask questions or participate in discussions. Click here to view (a Facebook account or password are not required).

The agenda includes 22 articles, but 19 of them are on the consent calendar, meaning they will be voted on as a bloc to save time, though attendees have the option of calling out individual items for separate discussion and voting. The other three articles are appropriations for the Water Department ($270,000 in borrowing), the School Building Committee ($828,945 transfer from free cash), and an annual free-cash article to balance the budget and/or reduce the tax rate.

Normally, a quorum of 100 residents is required to make a Town Meeting official in Lincoln, but the Board of Selectmen has the option to reduce that quorum to as few as 10 residents if necessary. The option came about after Gov. Baker recently signed legislation relaxing the Massachusetts Town Meeting quorum rules.

The board will meet virtually at 8:45 a.m. on June 13 to discuss whether, with Town Moderator Sarah Cannon Holden’s input and approval, it should lower the quorum to ensure that Town Meeting can undertake its responsibilities. The decision will rest partly on the rate at which residents are trickling in for the Town Meeting.

Before the Covid-19 state of emergency was declared, the original warrant signed on February 24 had 40 articles. They included some nonessential financial items and several citizens’ petitions asking voters if they would:

  • hear reports from town boards on the status of the community center project
  • change the name of the Board of Selectmen to the Select Board
  • support the proposal of the eighth-grade Warrant Article Group to support the Parkland School students’ organization, March for Our Lives, to end school shootings and shootings all over the country
  • adopt a resolution in support of various federal, state and local actions to combat climate change
  • adopt a new section in the town’s General Bylaws called the Polystyrene Reduction By-Law
  • require Lincoln retail establishments to charge a fee for non-reusable check-out bags
  • prohibit food establishments in Lincoln from using and distributing disposable plastic straws, stirrers, and splash sticks

There will be a Special Town Meeting in the fall to consider the items omitted on Saturday, as well as anything else that comes up between now and then that needs a town-wide vote.

South Lincoln panel is now a five-member “SLPAC”

The Planning Board voted on June 9 to reorganize and rename the South Lincoln Planning and Implementation Committee (SLPIC), but not until after a lengthy debate about the makeup and responsibilities of panel’s new incarnation.

The board began discussing downsizing SLPIC last week in the wake of opposition to one of its initiatives. With the help of consultants, SLPIC’s Village Planning and Zoning subcommittee drew up proposed regulations that would rezone part of South Lincoln to allow more commercial and housing development and also allow the fate of some projects to be decided by the Planning Board rather than Town Meeting.

Originally the plan was going to be voted on at the Annual Town Meeting in March, but before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it was delayed until the fall . The plan has now been permanently shelved after numerous residents objected at a forum in February.

Last week, the board acknowledged that the 12-member SLPIC was unwieldy, sometimes failing to achieve a quorum even though it met infrequently. Meanwhile, it was difficult for residents to follow the work of the five-person Village Planning and Zoning subcommittee, whose plan was unveiled at a public forum in May 2019.

“It felt very much to residents that this work was pretty finalized, set in stone, and ready for a vote at March Town Meeting,” said Jessica Packineau, a Lincoln Road resident and an organizer of a coalition protesting the rezoning and approval process proposals.

The board agreed that the next iteration of SLPIC would be more transparent and do a better job of publicizing its meetings and ramping up outreach as the latest School Building Committee did after the failed 2012 Town Meeting vote. 

At this week’s meeting, Planning Board member Lynn DeLisi initially said SLPIC should be disbanded entirely. “I just don’t see the purpose any more — it causes a lot of controversy,” she said. The full Planning Board, not SLPIC or one of its subcommittees, should be in charge of drafting rezoning proposals, she added.

But other board members objected to that idea, saying that it was too much work for the board (which meets every other week) to manage along with its regular duties of deciding on development applications. “We couldn’t have other things on our agenda, and we will all have to be meeting at least once a week and sometimes twice a week to get the work done,” chair Margaret Olson said.

“Devoting 98% of our time devoted to one part of the town doesn’t feel like it’s serving our mandate to address planning across Lincoln generally,” board member Rick Rundell said.

Eventually, members unanimously decided to keep the subcommittee but to rename it the South Lincoln Planning Advisory Committee (SLPAC). Other subcommittees of the former SLPIC can remain as well, depending on the willingness of their members to continue serving. Those teams will probably evolve in name and purview as well.

DeLisi argued that the new SLPAC should have seven or eight members rather than five, and that at least one member should be a resident of the area under rezoning discussion. But this also met with opposition. 

“It’s very dicey trying to pick one person to represent South Lincoln [residents],” said board member Steve Gladstone. For reasons of accountability with voters, all the members should be people who are already elected officials, he added.

“Once you start going down the stakeholder path, you’re on a very slippery slope,” Olson agreed. South Lincoln residents include house and condo owners as well as renters, so “who do you leave out?”

The board last week was moving toward creating a five-person successor to SLPIC consisting of two members from the Planning Board, one from the Housing Commission, one Selectman, and perhaps a fifth member to be decided. 

This week, DeLisi advocated a seven-member SPLAC with representatives from the Board of Health and the Conservation Commission as well as a resident, but the board voted down that idea 4-1. It subsequently voted by the same margin (with DeLisi voting “nay”) to go forward with the five-member plan, with the fifth coming from the Finance Committee.

Before the vote, former Planning Board member Bob Domnitz advocated postponing any decisions until after the June 15 election in which he, DeLisi, and Rundell and vying for two seats. “It would be nice if there was confidence that this [SLPAC reorganization] would still be a workable arrangement next week. I don’t think people necessarily have that confidence at this point,” he said. “Are you really sure you want to do this tonight?”

After the election, the board will write the charge for SLPAC and discuss which specific residents it will comprise.

Water Department still has plant operator vacancy

At a sparsely attended June 9 Water Commission forum on Zoom, officials explained that the Water Department is hoping to hire another water treatment plant operator after the new fiscal year starts on July 1. 

The department has been short-staffed for some time due to several departures last year and a statewide shortage of qualified operators. At one point there were only two on the job, although the state Department of Environmental Protection requires four in Lincoln. There are now three full-time operators; the fourth spot is being filled by part-time workers until the department can advertise for another full-time licensed operator after the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

The staff vacancies have cost the department a substantial amount of money because it’s been forced to hire expensive contractors to fill the gaps. The widespread shortage of operators “feels like it’s going to be a gating factor for some time to come, cost-wise,” resident Rick Rundell commented.

Hiring less qualified people and training them on the job would seem like a sensible plan, “but without certain credentialing, very limited in terms of what they can actually do,” Water Commissioner Michelle Barnes said. However, Minuteman Vocational Technical School has a training program for water treatment plant operators that could be a source of apprentices who can do some limited work while also studying for their licenses.

The 9 a.m. forum, which was marred by technical glitches at times, went over the Water Department’s spending requests for fiscal 2021. The department proposes to raise its operating budget by 38% and borrow $270,000 for capital items. That bonding came after two previous bonds totaling $1.98 million that were authorized in 2019 as well as significant hikes in water rates and the operating budget this year.