government

Residents debate pros and cons of leaf blower restrictions

March 4, 2019

Following suggestions at a February 28 public forum, the Leaf Blower Study Committee has drafted amendments to its proposed bylaw such as expanded fall and spring periods when gas-powered machines can be used.

The group this week presented a revised draft to the Board of Selectmen that would add a couple of weeks in March and December, would also allow electric and battery-powered leaf blowers to be used year-round and would grant a grace period in the fall before the bylaw is enforced. “Additional changes are under consideration as well,” said committee chair Jamie Banks.

Under the original bylaw proposal, leaf blowers of any kind could not be used from December 16 through April 14. All types would be permitted during certain hours of the day in the fall and spring (October 1 through December 15, and April 15 through May 31). From June 1 to September 30, one electric or battery-powered leaf blower per lot could be used at a time.

The committee first proposed rules limiting leaf blower use in 2014 but “got shot down pretty substantially” after a public forum (the measure was ultimately passed over at Town Meeting that year), so “we went back to the drawing board” in terms of education around the issue, committee vice chair John Koenig said.

Over the past five years, the Rural Land Foundation (RLF), which owns the Lincoln Mall property, no longer allows its landscaping contractors to use gas-powered leaf blowers except during fall and spring cleanup, which is more or less in keeping with what the bylaw proposes. The same is true for workers on town-owned properties including cemeteries, roadsides, Bemis Hall, the library, the Lincoln School, and Pierce Park, said Dan Pereira, who handles the town mowing and maintenance contract in his capacity as director of the Parks and Recreation Department.

Some were skeptical when the change was first proposed, “but we really never looked back,” he said.

Under the bylaw, gas-powered machines could be used even at normally prohibited times for special events and circumstances with permission of the building inspector, committee members emphasized. Such situations could include clearing lawn debris after the recent wind storm, before a wedding on a resident’s property, or at the start of the academic year on the Lincoln School campus.

But some residents at the forum bristled at the idea of any limits on using their gas-powered leaf blowers. “A lot of people are trying to do the right thing” by buying hybrid vehicles and installing solar panels, “but instead you feel somehow compelled to take the extra step and ban it,” said Mark Deck. He suggested first instituting voluntary guidelines without penalties.

“I really believe you would make more headway with a carrot than a stick. I fear if you take the stick to Town Meeting, you’ll just get shot down again,” he said.

Committee chair Jamie Banks replied that the group, working with the Board of Health, sent letters with guidelines for responsible gas-powered leaf blower use, especially on paved surfaces in South Lincoln, “but it hasn’t worked” with property owners and managers except the RLF.

Part of the problem town-wide is that property owners often aren’t home when their lawn maintenance crews appear during the day with their machines. “People go to work and their contractors come in, so they’re not victimized by the noise they way their neighbors might be,” Banks said. “It’s very hard to build consensus on a problem that a lot of people aren’t exposed to.”

Lincoln’s rural character makes the bylaw impractical, said resident Cricket Kerrebrock. “The towns that have approved this are high-density towns, not two-acre zoning. It’s a density than virtually doesn’t exist in this town except around the mall.”

Resident Len Darling noted that he and others use their gas-powered leaf blowers in the summer to blow grass clippings off his patio, which would not be allowed under the proposed bylaw.

“What you’re saying is ‘go buy an electric one’,” Deck said.

Improved technology

However, electric and battery-powered leaf blowers have improved dramatically in recent years in terms of power, battery life and price, and are quite adequate for that sort of light-duty work, said George Carrette, owner of EcoQuiet Lawn Care in Concord, which uses only electric and manual tools to clear debris. The Conservation Commission also now uses only battery-powered chainsaws for trail maintenance, ConComm chair Peter von Mertens noted.

Electric leaf blowers have other advantages over the gas-powered versions: they last longer, require little or no maintenance, don’t require gasoline and oil, can use the same batteries as other machines such as chainsaws, and are easier to start, noted resident Alex Chatfield.

Restricting use of gas-powered leaf blowers to certain times of year for the sake of public health is comparable to restrictions on outdoor fires, he added. “Libertarian arguments have been around for decades to object to environmental laws. It would be great to live in a world where everyone is sensitive to the environment and impacts on their neighbors and don’t do stuff that’s harmful.”

“There are a lot of people who would like to see no leaf blowers ever, and at the other extreme, no regulation at all,” said committee member Robin Wilkerson. “Over five years we’ve tried to hammer something together that accommodates as many people as possible. We feel like this is a very liberal interpretation of what people can do.”

Town gets good news on school borrowing costs

February 26, 2019

The stack of bonds awaiting selectmen’s signatures at their meeting on Monday.

The impact on property taxes from the school project won’t be quite as bad as many had feared. The interest rate for the lion’s share of the bonds that the town will issue to fund the project is 3.379%, compared to the 4% and 5% projections outlined by the Finance Committee in November.

The town received eight competitive bids and a glowing bond-rating report, Town Administrator Tim Huggins reported to the Board of Selectmen on Monday night. The town will also retain its AAA bond rating, which he added is unusual for a town taking on this level of debt.

“The property tax impact will be significantly lower than the most conservative of our forecasts were showing,” Higgins said. Officials had been predicting a tax hike of 18–20%, but it now looks like it will be more in the 14–16% range, depending on the interest rate for a second, relatively small “cleanup” bond that will be issued towards the end of construction once the exact final costs are known.

Voters in December approved borrowing a total of $88.5 million for the school project, which will cost a total of $93.9 million. The initial bond is for $80 million; the rest of the funding includes $4.4 million from the town’s debt stabilization fund and $1 million from free cash.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation by Selectman Jonathan Dwyer indicated that the 3.379% interest rate could save the town half a million dollars a year compared to the higher rates that were projected earlier.

The favorable interest rate is largely due to the prudent financial management and planning efforts of current and former town officials, selectmen agreed. “We know [the debt is] going to be burden that all of us have to take on, but it could have been a whole lot more painful. Kudos to all those before us who paved the way,” Selectman James Craig said.

The Finance Committee will present revised tax-impact figures at the School Building Committee meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. in the Hartwell multipurpose room.

Letter to the editor: response to leaf-blower proposal critique

February 21, 2019

To the editor:

As a member of the Leaf Blower Study Committee, I thank Mr. Deck for his thoughtful critique of our initiative (Lincoln Squirrel, February 20, 2019). In truth, I find more common ground than I might have expected, and have only two points of disagreement.

(1) Mr. Deck says his own leaf blower use has no impact on his neighbors. I wonder if that is truly the case — I know from my own neighborhood experience that the sound of gas-powered leaf blowers several properties down from my home carries way farther, and is significantly more intrusive, than the users perhaps know.

(2) The civil disobedience Mr. Deck proposes to practice should the leaf blower by-law pass is a seriously slippery slope. By this same logic, perhaps we could dispense with those annoying stop signs by the library, for example. Reasonable courteous Lincolnites would simply defer to each other voluntarily at that corner. Maybe — but not likely. As a community, we recognize the need to balance individual rights against larger common interests. We believe the proposed leaf blower by-law does that, and we invite Mr. Deck to throw in with us.

Sincerely,

Robin Wilkerson
31 Old Winter St., Lincoln

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Letter to the editor: proposed leaf blower bylaw is an “overreach”

February 20, 2019

To the editor:

In a recent posting to the Lincoln Squirrel (“Leaf blower issue comes before voters again,” February 18), proponents of a Town Meeting proposal to limit the use of leaf blowers describe their proposal as noncontroversial. I disagree, and I strongly urge Lincoln residents to oppose it in its current form.

The proposal limits my rights to use my leaf blower responsibly and with no harm to my nearest neighbors. Instead of a ban that can’t hope to anticipate all reasonable exceptions, the committee should seek for the town to adopt leaf blower use guidelines and focus on education instead of rules that limit their reasonable use.

I agree that the wanton use of leaf blowers can be both an environmental and health problem, but many Lincoln homeowners such as I live on the edge of a forest where leaves blow in and become lodged in gutters and corners around the house. This happens year round and I sometimes use a leaf blower to help dislodge them. I don’t use lawn services that overuse them. I don’t blow dirt off my driveway into the air. I live hundreds of yards from my nearest neighbor. As a result, when I use a leaf blower, it causes none of the harm that the proposers of this ban refer to. I can’t always limit my use to the hours proposed. None of these restrictions should apply to individual homeowners using leaf blowers themselves on properties over two acres.

It’s great that this group of citizens has been able to get the town to use leaf blowers more carefully in public areas and to get more people to use electric leaf blowers. I believe that the first step as described in this article has achieved a good result for us all. These efforts should continue.

This next step as proposed is an overreach. I understand that it is well intentioned, but it goes too far and limits the ability of homeowners to act reasonably — even if it simultaneously discourages unreasonable use. If the proposal is passed by Town Meeting, my only alternative will be to ignore the ban and use my leaf blower when I need to. No one will know, especially in winter when everyone is indoors over a quarter-mile away with their windows shut. But each time I have to do that, I’ll rue the day that the majority of my neighbors somehow found themselves justified to deny me the right to act responsibly on my own property.

We’re better than this. We can do better than this.

Sincerely,

Mark Deck
11 Boyce Farm Rd., Lincoln

Citizens’ petition calls for reexamining state seal

February 11, 2019

Resolution to change seal Petition The Massachusetts state seal is a visual reminder of racism and genocide against Native Americans and should be updated, say supporters of a Town Meeting resolution asking for a state commission to study the seal’s design.

As a result of a citizens’ petition submitted by Christine Damon, residents will be asked at Lincoln’s Annual Town Meeting on March 23 to support creation of the commission. Two identical measures before the state legislature (HD.2968 and SD.1495) call for creating the commission. Lincoln’s legislators, Sen. Michael Barrett and Rep. Thomas Stanley, are co-sponsors.

Four other Massachusetts towns (Gill, Orange, Wendell and New Salem) considered similar measures in 2018, though the results could not be confirmed.

Critics of the state seal take issue with the depiction of a European arm brandishing a broadsword above the head of a Native American, who is holding a bow and arrow pointed down in a gesture of peace.

The seal’s Latin motto, which is usually translated as “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty,” is also ambiguous and could be taken to mean that Native Americans were a threat to peace. The motto “is most out of place when one knows the later fate reserved for the Algonquins who greeted the Pilgrims,” commented one of the respondents to a 2015 survey by a flag expert. Other respondents disagreed, saying the sword is not being used against the Indian but refers to the leading role that Massachusetts played in the American Revolution.

The survey found that comments on the state seal from all Indians polled as well as non-Indians outside Massachusetts were overwhelmingly negative, though 88 percent of comments from non-Indian Massachusetts residents were favorable.

“It is hard to read it all together as anything but a flag designed by and for the colonial conquerors who made the Bay State, the ones who won the land — with a short timeout for Thanksgiving dinner — by all but eradicating the people who got here first,” Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham wrote in 2015.

An earlier version of the seal used by the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1629–1692 was more peaceful but also more condescending, depicting a Native American speaking the words “Come over and help us.”

The issue “reiterates why symbols are important in terms of making people feel represented or the opposite,” Damon said. “It seems like a no-brainer that the state of Massachusetts shouldn’t be upholding symbolism like this.”

The move to reexamine the state seal comes in a time of movements to remove the Confederate battle flag from state flags in the South, as well as monuments celebrating Confederate generals. Next year is also the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth Rock, an event “which gave rise to the long chain of genocidal wars and deliberate policies of cultural destruction against Native Nations of this continent,” the warrant resolution says.

If approved by the legislature, the state commission would investigate features of the seal and motto “which potentially have been unwittingly harmful to or misunderstood by the citizens of the Commonwealth” and “to ensure that they faithfully reflect and embody the historic and contemporary commitments of the Commonwealth to peace, justice, liberty and equality and to spreading the opportunities and advantages of education.”

Letter to the editor: ban e-cigarette sales at Town Meeting

February 10, 2019

To the editor:

The 2019 8th-grade Warrant Article Group. Left to right): Andrew Craig, Aleco Buendia, Isaiah Jones, Emily Appleby, and David Christenfeld (click to enlarge).

This year the 8th-grade Warrant Article Group (WAG), which consists of Emily Appleby, Aleco Buendia, David Christenfeld, Andrew Craig and Isaiah Jones, would like to ask Lincoln voters to support our proposition to ban the sale of e-cigarettes in town.

We had hoped to ban all cigarettes, but after we took a survey and talked with Donelan’s, we concluded that the town would not support such a total ban. We compromised, and now want to ban any future sales of e-cigarettes because there is a growing use among teenagers. Currently no one sells e-cigarettes in town.

To get our petition onto the warrant, we each collected ten signatures and will now take our idea to Town Meeting. We have learned a lot about town government while working on our citizens’ petition. We hope you will attend Town Meeting which is where we will discuss this more and ask for your vote.

Sincerely,

David Christenfeld
50 Old Winter St., Lincoln

Letter to the editor: Picker running for library trustee

February 7, 2019

To the editor:

I am running for the open seat of Lincoln Library Trustee with a three-year term and I respectfully ask for your vote at the March 2019 town elections.

The Lincoln Library is an esteemed, well patronized, core institution in our town that provides valuable services across all age groups. It is served by a highly professional, competent, and experienced staff. It is one of the centerpieces of our community. If elected, as a trustee I would focus on working with the other trustees and staff to help establish priorities for library spending, collections, programs, facilities, staffing, and new initiatives. This needs to be done within constraints such as budget, space, and staffing.

I believe that it is very important for the library to maintain a good and current understanding of what services the people of Lincoln would like it to provide in this rapidly changing world. I would also work with the team to look at collaborations with other town boards and non-government organizations in town to look for new opportunities and to strengthen existing collaborations.

I look forward to your support on election day.

Sincerely,

Dennis Picker
58 Page Rd., Lincoln

Who’s running for town office in March

February 5, 2019

Here is a list of those who have filed appears with the Town Clerk to run for office in the March 25 election. Click here for links to the web pages for these boards and committees, which list current members. Candidates have until February 20 to withdraw in time to have their name not appear on the ballot.

Board or Committee	Openings/terms	Candidates
Board of Assessors	One (3 years)	Laura Sander*
Board of Health	One (3 years)	Steven Kanner*
Board of Selectmen	One (3 years)	James Craig*
Cemetery Commission	One (3 years)	Conrad Todd*
Commissioners of Trust Funds	One (3 years)	Douglas B. Harding*
DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park Trustees	One (4 years)	Linda Hammett Ory*
Housing Commission	One (3 years)	Keith Gilbert*
Lincoln-Sudbury Regional District School Committee	Two (3 years)	Kevin J. Matthews,* Cara Endyke-Doran
	One (1 year)	Candace Miller*
Parks and Recreation Committee	One (3 years)	Anita Spieth
Planning Board	Two (3 years)	Margaret Olson,* Stephen Gladstone*
School Committee (PreK-8)	One (3 years)	Trintje Gnazzo**
	One (2 years)	Susan Taylor
	One (1 year)	Adam Hogue**
Town Clerk	One (3 years)	Valerie Fox**
Trustees of Bemis	One (3 years)	Sara Mattes*
Trustees of Lincoln Library	One (3 years)	Dennis Picker
Water Commission	One (3 years)	Heather Ring

* incumbent running for reelection

** previously appointed to fill vacancies in 2018 (Trintje Gnazzo replaced Jena Salon and Adam Hogue replaced Alvin Schmertzler; Valerie Fox replaced Susan Brooks)

Town Meeting article list approved

February 3, 2019

The Board of Selectmen has approved the following articles for the Annual Town Meeting on Saturday, March 23. They’re scheduled to vote to sign the warrant with descriptions of each article on February 11. Keep reading the Lincoln Squirrel for more in-depth coverage of these items in the coming days and weeks.

NOTE: Articles 27–33 are proposed zoning bylaw changes and thus require a two-thirds majority to pass.

#	Article
	STANDARD TOWN MEETING ARTICLES
1	Election ballot:
2	Vote for committees, and other elected officers
3	Accept reports of town committees and officers
4	Set salaries of elected officials
5	Hear a report on property tax relief
6	Senior tax work-off program: vote to renew
7	Veterans tax work-off program: vote to renew
	OPERATING BUDGET
8	Town operating budget
	CAPITAL ARTICLES
9	Cash capital expenditures (detailed project list will appear in motions)
	COMMUNITY PRESERVATION
10	Community Preservation Fund (CPA) (detailed list will appear in motions)
11	Community Preservation Fund (CPA) (athletic fields)
	ROUTINE BUILDING MAINTENANCE
12	Annual classroom maintenance: $45,000
13	Town buildings maintenance: $111,363
14	Library maintenance: $50,000
	OTHER APPROPRIATIONS
15	Debt stabilization fund: appropriation to increase fund balance
16	OPEB trust fund (Town of Lincoln): appropriation to increase fund balance
17	OPEB trust fund (LSRHS): appropriation to increase fund balance
18	State roadway funds (chapter 90): annual vote to accept state highway grant
19	Lincoln school budget supplement: SpEd Medicaid reimbursement
20	Annual Bright Light Award
21	Revolving funds: annual vote to reauthorize existing revolving accounts
22	Cable television revolving fund: required annual appropriation
23	Transfer from cemetery perpetual care and/or sale of lots
24	Water Department: authorize bond for capital improvements to the water treatment plant (detailed list in motions)
25	Water Department: vote to appropriate and transfer to support the FY19 budget
26	Free cash article: annual article to balance budget/reduce tax rate
	GENERAL AND ZONING BY-LAWS
27	Section 13.6.3(a) solar energy systems general standards bylaw amendment
28	Section 4.1(c) non-conforming lots amendment: regarding land takings
29	Section 4.1(e) non-conforming use or structure amendment
30	Create parking benefit district
31	DeCordova: amend bylaw governance
32	Historic district bylaw amendment: Modernist homes
33	Demo delay bylaw amendment
34	Proposed general bylaw: use of leaf blowers
	CITIZENS' PETITIONS
35	Proposed general bylaw: ban on e-cigarette sales
36	Resolution in support of changing the state flag and seal of Massachusetts

Group to study property taxes in Lincoln

January 28, 2019

The $93 million school building project has many residents worried about whether they’ll be able to afford the inevitable higher property taxes in Lincoln, so the town is forming a Property Tax Study Committee to see what financial tools the town has available to shape tax policy and promote economic diversity.

The committee will be appointed by the Board of Selectmen in February and get to work right away, presenting an update at the March 2019 Annual Town Meeting. They will make recommendations to the board by the end of September and will report at the 2019 State of the Town Meeting and/or at a concurrent Special Town Meeting to vote on any proposals.

Members will study tax relief programs such as the extended Circuit Breaker Program currently under consideration at the state level, and the residential exemption that cities and towns can use in setting their local property tax rates. They’ll also seek community input to gauge the appetite for such programs in the context of other town priorities, and work with town agencies and residents to decide how private fundraising efforts could be best utilized to soften the economic impact of successive building projects (the school, and a community center to follow after that project is complete).

Residents interested in serving as one of the four at-large members should send a letter of interest to the Selectmen’s Office (elderp@lincolntown.org) by Thursday, Jan. 31 or call 781-259-2601. The committee’s complete charge can be found here. A description of tax relief programs already in place in Lincoln can be found here.