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

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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 counsel slaps down voter roll complaint made by Lincoln resident

The November 8 election in Lincoln went as smoothly as it usually does, though there was one complication beforehand — town officials had to deal with a formal complaint of suspected voter fraud lodged by Todd Pond Road resident Thomas Risser.

In his October 31 complaint, Risser alleged that there were 357 people who were “illegally or incorrectly registered to vote in Lincoln” and provided a list of names and addresses compiled by Stephen J. Stuart based on discrepancies between Lincoln’s voter list and the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address (NCOA) database. (Stuart is president of Stuart Research LLC, a Deland, Fla., company that lists as subsidiaries Stuart Research LLC, a direct mail and marketing company with no apparent website, and NCOA-easy.com, which updates lists of mailing addresses for a fee for organizations that send out bulk mail.) 

Just days before the Election Day, Town Clerk Valerie Fox scrambled to quickly respond as required by law, consulting with town counsel Lauren Goldberg and convening a meeting of Lincoln’s Board of Registrars of Voters. The three-person board voted unanimously on November 3 to deny, on Goldberg’s advice, Risser’s request to act on his complaint, saying it failed to meet the standard required under state law.

Reached by phone on November 10, Goldberg said that similar complaints were filed by residents in every city and town in the Massachusetts 5th Congressional district — an effort spearheaded by the campaign of Republican Caroline Colarusso, who was challenging incumbent Democrat Rep. Katherine Clark for the seat. Clark won by a margin of 75% to 25%.

A mailing address “may or may not relate to residency — it is not in itself evidence of residency. It doesn’t support the allegation… that’s really not the way election law works,” Goldberg said.

“It does not demonstrate that anybody has moved to another town or state, let alone [that they have] registered to vote somewhere else. All [Risser’s] got is mail is being sent somewhere else,” said Registrar Laura Glynn.

“It’s hard enough to get people to vote. For somebody who wanted to vote twice, it would certainly be a pretty intentional criminal act,” said Registrar Marget Flint.

As Fox explained at the board meeting and Goldberg later confirmed, there is a system in place to make sure people don’t vote twice, vote from a location where they don’t reside, or are mistakenly denied the opportunity to vote. The town sends a census form to every voter by mail once a year to ensure they still live at their Lincoln address. If they don’t return the form or a follow-up postcard two years in a row, or if they don’t vote in two consecutive federal elections, they are designated as inactive on the town’s voter rolls.

If someone moves and does not re-register to vote in another town, they are eligible to vote at their former address’s location for six months. If they do re-register, the new city or town immediately alerts the former town to remove them from their records.

Slightly more than half the names on the list in Risser’s complaint were associated with addresses on Hanscom Air Force Base, where the population shifts frequently as military postings change. 

Providing just a long list of names of people who may or may not be incorrectly registered is also not legally appropriate, Goldberg said. “The data from the NCOA is really evidence of nothing and is not personal to the individual. You can’t complain about 10 people [collectively] or even five. To require someone to come in [for a hearing], there has to be information about an individual, not several hundred or thousand. They have to provide information that a reasonable person would say ‘Hey, there’s enough here that merits looking into something.’”

As a last resort, someone who believes an individual is voting illegally may challenge that person at the polls (or by correspondence if the person voted early or by mail). In that case, both the voter and challenger would have to sign sworn statements and the vote would still be counted, albeit provisionally.

“No one showed up at the polls and challenged any of those voters in any of those towns, and that speaks volumes,” Goldberg said.

“The allegation [Risser] is making is very serious under the election laws… it’s a big deal,” she continued. If a registrar decides that someone may in fact be illegally registered to vote in their town, they are required to have that person served a subpoena served by a sheriff or process server, and both the recipient and the complainant must appear at a hearing before the board with legal counsel, documentation and possibly witnesses, according to state law. “We are relying on the voter under the penalty of perjury. If they illegally vote, that is a crime.”

Fraud opportunities are rampant, Risser says

In a conversation with the Lincoln Squirrel on November 9, Risser said he was not aware that the Board of Registrars had rejected his complaint. The affidavit text “was written by an attorney, and I assumed they were competent in the law and would have met legal standards.”

Risser and his wife Edie (who he said was heavily involved in the regional effort to file voter roll complaints) organized the infamous “voter integrity” event in Bemis Hall last May. The main speaker was Seth Keshel, one of several ex-military men and election deniers who toured the country pushing baseless conspiracy claims.

What was Risser’s motivation in filing the complaint? “Nobody really looks at [voting procedures], and if they did, they would be aghast at the opportunities for fraud,” he said. “No one is doing their duty in terms of the registrars… the law of the land is being systematically violated.”

Asked if he thought any current or former Lincoln residents were being intentionally deceptive about their voting status, he acknowledged, “In our little town, it’s very unlikely because people know each other so well. I’m not worried about throwing off elections in Lincoln; I’m worried about larger cities where people don’t know each other.”

Risser — a U.S. Navy veteran and a cardiologist with the Cambridge Health Alliance — said his operating principle in this case was “think globally, act locally. If it can happen here where we’re supposed to be educated people with a citizenry concerned about government, it can happen anywhere. This is one tiny little step to get every town” to make sure its voting records are correct, he said. 

Asked if he thought the 2020 Presidential election results were valid, Risser said, “I don’t know and I don’t think anyone else knows.” The bigger problem is the vulnerability of voting machines, he claimed. Lincoln uses paper ballots that are electronically scanned. “I’m sure the scanner reads correctly — what it does with the data is another issue. It depends who programmed the bloody thing,: he said. “These machines are incredibly dangerous. You can reprogram so the results read 51 to 49 [percent] or whatever you want them to read. The Chinese know my childhood girlfriend’s first name. Everyone’s getting hacked everywhere. We’re vastly too trusting of a system that’s rather easy for cyber-smart people to overwhelm.”

Risser went on to condemn the supposed ability to vote without being a U.S. citizen (“I’d say we are the laughingstock of the world in that regard,” he said), being able to vote in some cases without being asked to show a legal ID, or people receiving a ballot in the mail without having requesting one. 

What about the dozens of lawsuits alleging voter fraud that were filed and dismissed after the 2020 election? “Most of those were thrown out based on the formality of standing” to sue, Risser said. However, “it’s true that nothing has been proven conclusively, and that’s gratifying.”

As for former President Donald Trump — the source of much of the current suspicion about voting — “I don’t trust Trump. I think he’s proven himself to be such a narcissist that I’d have to question his motives. He’s a terrible example for our children… the issue is providing a country that our children deserve. We’re not Republicans or Democrats, we’re Americans.

“Whether [Risser and others] intended to make election day difficult or make people worried about going to the polls, it did that. Just the fact that you’re writing about it is evidence of that,” Goldberg said. “He should have given that personal evidence way ahead of time. It’s not possible to serve and have hundreds of hearings. It was very hard for the [town] clerks and completely unnecessary.”

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

Lincoln changes Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day

Columbus Day will hereafter be known as Indigenous People’s Day in Lincoln after the Select Board voted unanimously to change the name of the holiday on town documents, two years after the Lincoln Public Schools did the same thing.

The vote came after discussion and public comment continued from the board’s September 19 meeting. All Lincoln residents who spoke were in favor of the change, though two others at the virtual meeting representing Italian-American organizations argued against it. One of them was John Toto, a Wayland resident and board member of the Italian American Alliance (IAA), who supported a day to celebrate indigenous people but said that such a day already exists: Native American Heritage Day, which falls on the day after Thanksgiving but is not a federal or state holiday. 

Toto argued that Columbus was not guilty of enslaving or murdering the indigenous people he encountered and that those atrocities were committed by Spanish sailors and settler who came after him. “To go after Columbus… we believe is petty and hateful,” Toto said. “Trying to rewrite history the way this proposes is not American and to me it’s scary and smacks of McCarthyism. It truly makes me sad as an Italian-American.”

Brian Patacchiola, a member of Sons and Daughters of Italy and the IAA, said Columbus Day is of “incredible cultural and symbolic significance to the Italian-American community” and urged the board not to support “removing one ethnic group’s holiday at the expense of another.” The charges against Columbus are “flagrant and salacious lies” stemming largely from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which he called “a work of total fiction,” and he cited the work of other scholars including Carol Delaney and Mary Grabar.

But Jessica Packineau and her daughter Evie read from diaries by Columbus’s crew detailing atrocities they committed. 

“It would behoove the Italian-American Society to reconsider their heroes,” Jessica Packineau said. “It’s pretty extraordinary that the entirety of [Italian-American] heritage would hinge on one person… This is an opportunity to shift the focus from the violence and brutality onto the survival, the resilience, the extraordinary myriad of cultures and customs and language and traditions and wealth of diversity that the word Indigenous encompasses — it would be an enormous gift for our community.”

“I’m frankly baffled by [Italian-Americans] hanging their hat” on Columbus,” Kim Jalet said. The holiday was established at a time when Italians were “new immigrants and were being treated poorly. Now they’re assimilated, and there are many ways to acknowledge their culture.” Even if Columbus himself never set foot in what is now the United States, “he played a role in getting the ball rolling” for what was done to Indigenous people in his wake, she added.

As a Select Board member, Jonathan Dwyer said he was a “huge fan of adjusting to circumstances and revisions” and listening to Lincoln residents. “For 88 years it was Columbus Day — for the next 88 years I’d like to see something different.”

Board member Jim Hutchinson said he would have preferred to measure to come to the town as a citizens’ petition but pointed out that Lincoln residents who spoke were unanimously in favor of changing the name of the holiday. 

“It’s really not about Christopher Columbus the man, but about the idea that we are celebrating a moment in time that turned out to be a tipping point of destruction for many people in the country,” board member Jennifer Glass said. “This day has historically told one side of the story and not acknowledged the full experience of our history… This is an opportunity to say ‘let’s think about our history’… and that definitely leaves room” for celebrating Italian-American contributions in other ways.

Town debates changing the name of Columbus Day

“Columbus Taking Possession,” an 1893 painting by L. Prang & Co., Boston.

Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day? Several residents at the September 19 Select Board meeting argued in favor of changing the name of the holiday in Lincoln, though the speakers were not unanimous. 

As of October 2021, more than 20 Massachusetts towns including Boston had changed the name of the holiday, and a statewide Indigenous People’s Day bill is being considered by state legislature.

Columbus Day, which commemorates the arrival in the Americas of Columbus (a native of Italy whose voyages were subsidized by the Spanish crown) on October 12, 1492, has been a federal holiday in the U.S. since 1934. The first recognition of the anniversary on a national level was in 1892, when President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration after a mob murdered 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans, according to Wikipedia, which notes that “the proclamation was part of a wider effort after the lynching incident to placate Italian Americans and ease diplomatic tensions with Italy.” Many Italian-Americans now observe Columbus Day more as a celebration of their heritage rather than of Columbus specifically.

Washington Irving’s 1828 book A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus “is the source of much of the glorification and myth-making related to Columbus today and is considered highly fictionalized,” NPR noted in 2013 (“How Columbus Sailed Into U.S. History, Thanks to Italians”). However, public opinion has been turning against Columbus, a change initially fueled by A People’s History of the United States, a leftist view of the country’s past that was published in 1980. It’s now accepted by most that Columbus and his Spanish crewmen enslaved and killed Native Americans, who also died in great numbers from smallpox and other diseases introduced by the Europeans.

“Even at a very basic level, we can understand that we’re memorializing brutality, we’re memorializing abuse, we’re memorializing enslavement,” said Lincoln resident Jason Packineau, who is  an enrolled citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota. “I see this name change as an opportunity for leadership,  an opportunity to understand we can speak the truth, self-evaluate and learn, and pursue justice.”

Columbus Day serves to “celebrate and honor the value of conquest and war. We know now that Columbus was not only part of that tradition, but he was a particularly brutal participant,” Jena Salon, a member of WIDE Lincoln, said in a statement at the board meeting. “There is no excuse to continue to celebrate and uplift this individual or the tradition from which he comes. We are here to ask the Select Board to stop listing a holiday on our town calendar which explicitly glorifies genocide and human rights violations. This seems like an easy change, one that requires little effort. If we aren’t willing to stand on the right side of issues when they require no sacrifice, what does that say about our true commitment to inclusion, equity, justice, and diversity?”

But John Toto, a Wayland resident and board member of the Italian American Alliance (IAA), argued against changing the name of the holiday. Although he said he agreed that Indigenous people should have their own holiday, he slammed Zinn’s book as being “not true academic knowledge.” He added that Native Americans “also practiced human trafficking, rape as a war tactic, cannibalism — you name it. We don’t talk about that and I wonder why.”

The move to rename Columbus Day is “denigrating him and in fact denigrating Italians,” Toto added. There’s a great deal of divisiveness in the country today, “and this is perpetrating more of that.” He also noted that the day after Thanksgiving was designated as Native American Heritage Day by President Obama in 2009, though it is not a holiday. In an email to the Lincoln Squirrel, he cited several other pro-Columbus sources including an article (“Columbus, Historical Hero: Today’s Cancel Culture’s Convenient Scapegoat”) by Tom Damigella, vice president of the IAA.

The Select Board will continue its discussion of the issue at its October 3 meeting.

My Turn: Dozens more express support for Hutchinson

(Editor’s note: the signatories with asterisks below also signed this letter of support that was posted on March 21.)

While we are delighted that there is a contested race for Select, the Lincoln residents listed below are writing to endorse Jim Hutchinson for the Select Board. We think that Jim has the breadth and depth of experience that make him highly qualified for election to the Select Board. He has served as a member of the

  • Water Commission for two years and (currently chair)
  • Finance committee for seven years (chair for two years)
  • Subcommittees for several issues such as the process for placing solar panels on the schools
  • Green Energy Committee for eight years
  • Codman Board for three years as treasurer

Jim has a thoughtful, inclusive and collaborative approach exemplified in his service on the various town committees. His colleagues on the Finance Committee, Water Commission, and Green Energy Committee, who have enthusiastically endorsed him, describe Jim as a problem solver, a person who can balance costs and benefits, and a leader in complex decision making. In our collective view, he is an outstanding candidate for the Lincoln Select Board.

Town elections are Monday, March 28 at the Smith gym or you can vote by mail. We hope you will join us and vote for Jim Hutchinson.

Sincerely,

Michelle Barnes*
Ken Bassett
Cynthia Bencal
Laura Berland
Dan Boynton
Janet Boynton
Irene Briedis
Alex Chatfield
Christine Damon
Robert DeNormandie
Lorraine Fiore
Gina Halsted
Roy Harvey
Ken Hurd
Sonja Johansson
Joan Kimball
John Kimball
Barbara Leggat
Jackie Lenth*
Connie Lewis
Mary Helen Lorenz
Emily Lovering
Rachel Mason
Margaret McLaughlin
Marion Meenan
Travis Roland
Al Rossiter
Ellen Meyer Shorb
Paul Shorb
Barbara Slayter
Bill Stason
Susan Stason
Jeannine Taylor*
Dilla Tingley
Mary Jo Veling
Peter Von Mertens*
 

Group scales back proposal to ban fossil fuels in new construction

(Editor’s note: This story was amended on March 22 to include updated links to the original and revised versions of Article 31.)

A citizens’ petition on the warrant at Town Meeting asks residents to support the first step in a process that would allow Lincoln to restrict the use of fossil fuels in new buildings and major modifications, though the motion was later trimmed after getting pushback from the Select Board.

Lincoln’s motion would not generally require retrofitting existing buildings, although the new bylaw could be applied to “major modifications,” which some other towns have defined to mean gut renovations that redo at least 75% of the building floor area, according to a GEC blog post. The exact wording of the local measure would be discussed later and voted on at a future Town Meeting.

Green Energy Committee chair Paul Shorb outlined the proposal at the March 7 Select Board meeting. Brookline, Acton, Arlington, Lexington, and Concord have filed similar home rule petitions but the legislature has not acted on any of them yet, he said. If approved by Lincoln voters on March 26, the measure would authorize the town to file a home rule petition with the state legislature, which is required for a town to exercise such authority.

The original motion under discussion (Article 31) proposed a vote on both the home-rule petition and specific bylaw language (“Act Authorizing the Town of Lincoln to Adopt and Enforce Local Regulations Restricting New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure in Certain Construction”) that the town could adopt if the legislature approved the petition. Ideally, Shorb said, the legislature would pass a bill requiring these limits on fossil fuel equipment in all new Massachusetts buildings, and such a bill is pending, “but we think it’s appropriate for us to jump in line as well,” either to win home-rule approval or show town support for the bill. “We chose the more aggressive approach, ‘get to the nitty gritty right now’ approach.”

“I fundamentally have a problem with this sort of method,” Select Board member James Craig said. “I’m not arguing against the cause in any way — it’s more the process.” He added that he might have been more receptive “if this were something that had been in the works for a longer period and had outreach done earlier” to show that the measure had been “really discussed and vetted.”

Arlington has taken a more “vanilla” approach by approving only a home rule petition that lets the town draw up its own bylaw at a later date, bard member Jennifer Glass observed.

Shorb responded that the more specific version including the bylaw would “send a strong political signal” for the state to approve certain updates to the 2009 “stretch code” that lays out energy-efficiency requirements in the building code. The Department of Energy Resources is in the process of updating the stretch code and writing a new “Municipal Opt-in Specialized Stretch Energy Code” in the wake of the Climate Act of 2021. Environmentalists are hoping that the “stretchier” code will allow towns to ban fossil fuel hookups (which they currently may not do), though the initial draft does not include that option for towns.

Debating and amending wording of motions such as the proposed bylaw language on the floor of Town Meeting “is really something we ought to avoid trying to do,” Town Administrator Tim Higgins said. “The Arlington approach may [allow us to] be able to thread that needle to create the pressure you’re looking for but give us more time to work up a bylaw.”

After getting similar feedback from the Planning Board, the GEC subsequently removed the proposed bylaw language from the Article 13 motion (the updated wording is here).

Public forum on town budget set for March 15

As the March 26 Annual Town Meeting draws near, the Finance Committee will host a virtual Town Budget Q&A on Tuesday, March 15 at 7:30 p.m. (see below for Zoom link). The proposed budget for fiscal 2023 is 3.0% higher than last year’s. A summary can be found on page 8 of the Financial Section and Warrant, with a detailed breakdown beginning on page 57.

All residents have the right to speak at Town Meetings, and FinCom members will respond to comments and questions at that time. However, to keep the Town Meeting as short and focused as possible, the committee hopes to address comments and questions in this virtual Q&A session before the in-person meeting.

The FinCom presented the budget at a public hearing on February 15; click here to watch a recording of that meeting. The budget presentation starts around 30:00. Viewers have the option of using YouTube’s accelerated playback feature to review material quickly. 

Since the warrant was printed, the Finance Committee has deliberated and is recommending an amended budget that adds $200,000 to the cash capital items, and lowers the stabilization fund contribution by the same amount (formerly $1,323,438, now $1,123,438). The $200,000 was requested by the School Building Committee for lighting control systems at the renovated school and is recommended by the Capital Committee. The amount is expected to be fully offset by future proceeds from the sale of the modular classrooms. 

The March 15 Zoom Q&A session will not include the full budget presentation. See the video presentation above and/or review the financial report before the Q&A session. However, the Q&A session will be recorded and posted.

Click here to join the March 15 Q&A on Zoom (meeting ID: 849 2072 7318; password: fincom). Town Meeting will take place on Saturday, March 26 at 9:30 a.m. in the newly renovated Brooks Auditorium. All materials, including recorded presentations and slides relating to other warrant articles, are available on the 2022 Annual Town Meeting web page.

Further information on Town Meeting procedures and warrant articles will be published next week in the Lincoln Squirrel.

My Turn: Hogue makes his case as Select Board candidate

By Adam Hogue

(Editor’s note: Hogue is running against Jim Hutchinson for the Select Board seat being vacated by James Craig. He sent the following to LincolnTalk in answer to a question about what local issues he believes are important and how his experience and qualifications would contribute to addressing those challenges. His answer is reprinted here with his permission.)

One of the most important issues (not only in Lincoln but the Commonwealth overall) is housing. I love our community and I know others that want to live here, but are either priced out or simply unable to find a home given the supply. We need more housing options in Lincoln so that people can afford to live in our great community. In addition, I also want to make sure that people are not forced to sell their homes due to inability to pay taxes, so that people are able to age in place if they so desire.

The next issue that I see as critical is sustainability and green energy. As we have seen with gas prices and heating costs (even prior to the current situation), we need to work with our leaders on Beacon Hill and as a region to fulfill our energy needs in a smart way that doesn’t economically burden our residents.

Finally, another important issue, and one of my main goals, is to work with the Finance Committee to build a reasonable budget that serves our needs while also making sure we do not put too much of a burden on the taxpayers of Lincoln.

In terms of my experiences and qualifications, I have been involved in state and regional politics for years though my charity work for veterans, as well as lobbying to teach financial education to children in schools. If elected, I will use the relationships that I have built to work together with elected officials in our neighboring towns and the state level to make sure we solve issues together.

Specific to Lincoln, I have volunteered to run many veterans’ events in town and the Fourth of July run. These experiences have given me a great appreciation of the importance of these community events. I want to work to create more community events in town and to make sure that we bring back the Fourth of July fireworks to our community once the school project is done. So many in our community miss this great event.

I have also served the town as a current School Committee member. I have helped form budget and policy in this role and have worked with numerous people in town for the last four years. This has helped me understand how the town works, as well as what goes into the budget process, and has also helped me to understand the community. While the work has been challenging at times, it has always given me great pride to serve our children and our community. During my time on the School Committee, we have kept the budget within the Finance Committee’s guidance and have not had to ask for an override.

Finally, I love serving my community. I picked this up from my 17 years in the United States Military where I was awarded a Bronze Star for my action in Afghanistan. I also currently serve on the Capital Planning Committee as part of my role on the School Committee, and as I’m sure others on that committee may say, I am not afraid to speak up and suggest new ideas. I don’t passively accept the answer “because that is how we have always done it” because we have to be creative and have debates to solve issues. I like to learn and work with people and I believe that debating the issues to come up with the best solution(s) is an integral part of this work.

Thank you once again and I would appreciate your support on March 28!

“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.