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

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Community center group selects architect

The Community Center Preliminary Planning and Design Committee (CCPPDC) has selected the firm of Maryann Thompson Architects to help design a proposal for a community center for Lincoln.

Massachusetts work by the Cambridge-based firm includes designs for the Atrium School in Watertown, the Broad Institute in Cambridge, the Walden Pond visitors’ center, and Temple Ahavat Achim in Gloucester. The firm is already working closely with SMMA Architects, which was hired to design the Lincoln School project.

The CCPPDC and the School Building Committee will present updates at the State of the Town meeting on November 4. By that time, “we want the two architectural firms to have spoken quite a bit and start aligning their processes and procedures, and maybe put a couple of community forums on the calendar,” said CCPPDC Vice Chair Margit Griffith.

Maryann Thompson Architects should have a proposed basic design for a community center along with firm cost estimates ready before an anticipated Special Town Meeting in June, when residents will be asked to vote on a school design, Griffith said. If and when residents decide to pursue the community center project, the town will ask for bids from firms to do the detailed design. “They’re not producing a plan for a community center that people vote on [in June] and break ground on,” she said.

The CCPPDC is drafting a timeline in conjunction with the SBC with “key choice points for decisions and deliverables by the architect,” said committee Chair Ellen Meyer Shorb. Designing a school and a community center simultaneously is “a really difficult, complex process that no one has done before, but the bottom line is to include the town early and often.”

 

 

 

Interactive website brings residents into South Lincoln planning

A screen shot of the South Lincoln revitalization website at courb.co/lincoln.

Using a new interactive website, residents can look at a map of South Lincoln, see some of the improvements being discussed, and add their own comments and suggestions.

The project page at courb.co/lincoln was created for the Lincoln Planning Board and the South Lincoln Planning Implementation Committee (SLPIC), which are working to make the area around Lincoln Station a vibrant, walkable and sustainable village center. Officials can post updates and respond to comments by residents as part of the public process, which also includes in-person workshops and events.

The project team behind the website can drop a “pin” on certain areas of the map to invite discussion. For example, when users click on one of pins, it opens a text box saying “If this underutilized green space next to Donelan’s and Lincoln Woods was revitalized, what events would you like to see held here?” Residents can then post and read each other’s responses, much like the comments section at the bottom of a blog post, or add their own pins to start discussion on another specific area of South Lincoln. Participants receive a notification when the project team replies.

The town was recently awarded a $400,000 Complete Streets grant for 10 projects in town, some of which include including signs, roadway markings, crosswalks, bike racks, and informational kiosks in South Lincoln. One of the website pins asks residents where they wold like to see these kiosks located.

The web platform was created by coUrbanize, a startup founded by urban planners from MIT with the goal of supplementing the traditional community process that planners use by connecting people online. “Traditional planning workshops are important, but they can be a challenge for many people to attend,” said coUrbanize co-founder Karin Brandt. “By using technology to reach people and lowering the bar to participation, we can ensure that more voices are heard.”

Council on Aging welcomes new co-assistant director

Abigail Butt. (Photo by Alice Waugh)

The Lincoln Council on Aging has hired a new co-assistant director with the tools to help meet the needs of the town’s growing senior population.

Abby Butt started at the COA in September, sharing her job with Susan Isbell (she succeeds social worker Pam Mizrahi, who still leads a support group at the COA). Isbell helps seniors with applications for programs and services such as fuel assistance, while Butt handles more complicated situations where the client’s need aren’t so cut and dried.

Butt is not a social worker or counselor—she holds a PhD in gerontology from UMass-Boston’s McCormick School of Public Policy, and she’s trained in researching programs and doing needs assessments for entire communities as well as individuals. While a graduate student, she held a fellowship through the city of Somerville’s housing division, and she was outreach coordinator for the Beverly COA from 2011-16. She’s also a board member of the COA in Salem, where she currently lives.

“I discovered I really love working for cities and towns — I love working locally, kind of at the ground level,” said Butt, 34. “I enjoy doing a little of this and a little of that, and getting to know people. I’m excited about getting out into the community.” She has begun holding office hours at Lincoln Woods and making home visits, “so we can give services right where (clients) are,” she said.

Another part of Butt’s portfolio is modernizing the COA’s record-keeping. Before her arrival, all case notes were kept on paper; having them in digital form will make it easier for COA staff to follow up with clients with resorting to phone calls or lengthy emails with each other, “so the seniors are going to get much better service,” she said. The COA plans to move from hand-written to electronic sign-in for activities at Bemis Hall, “so the receptionist can focus on being welcoming and helping people instead of trying to get them to write legibly on a piece of paper about the activities they’re participating in,” Butt said.

The ability to gather growing amounts of information from individuals and government — then “distilling it down into something that’s manageable into a policy brief and recommendations and action steps,” as Butt describes it — is becoming more important every day. “We’re  about to have more seniors than we ever have, and we need to be proactive.”

Research by Butt’s colleagues, among others, bears this out. The Baby Boomers have begun to retire, and improved medical technology means people are living longer — and requiring more services — as they move into their 80s, 90s and beyond.

In Massachusetts, the share of the population age 60 and older is expected to increase from 19 percent in 2010 to 28 percent  in 2030, with 65+ population growing by 61% and the 85+ population by 34 percent, according to UMass-Boston’s Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging. As a result, most cities and towns in the Commonwealth will have at least 50% more seniors in 2030 than they do today—so Lincoln is hardly alone in confronting the need for better facilities and programs for its older residents.

“Abby has already made a wonderful difference here at the COA by bringing not only her enthusiasm and skills, but also lots of ideas from the other COAs she’s worked with,” said COA director Carolyn Bottum. “She’s helped us take a fresh look at how we do things and some of our procedures, and she’s also suggested a number of important and entertaining programs that we’ll be offering here in the next few months.”

The town of Salem, where Butt sits on the COA board of directors, has just broken ground for a new community center. That experience should also prove very useful “to help us ensure that we are bringing the best possible proposal to the town for a community center at the appropriate time,” Bottum said.

Tuesday workshops to focus on school’s educational priorities

The School Building Committee (SBC) and school project design team will hold a series of meetings this week with residents and students as they continue to answer the question: How will the building support our vision of education?

Lincoln School administrators and faculty discussed the town’s educational priorities during a day-long session facilitated by the design team from SMMA and EwingCole:

  • Provide high quality education
  • Create an engaging and inspiring approach to learning
  • Encourage interactive, multi-disciplinary, project-based learning modes; foster curiosity
  • Value diversity; display creativity
  • Provide a variety of learning spaces
  • Value reflection
  • Optimize connection to the natural environment
  • Host community events and promote partnerships with the community

These priorities reflect those laid out in the Lincoln Public Schools strategic plan approved by the School Committee in August 2017.

On Tuesday, Oct. 17, residents are invited to community workshops focused on how physical space impacts teachers and students. The workshops will take place from 8–10 a.m. and 7–9 p.m. in the Brooks gym. Questions to be discussed will include:

  • How does our current building impede our educators?
  • If a new building is built, or significant renovations made, how will it affect what is taught and how it is taught?
  • How do we know our new/renovated building will meet the needs of the next generations of Lincoln students?

Also on Tuesday, members of the design team will meet with student groups from grades 3, 5, and 8 to talk about what they like about the Lincoln School building, see examples of other schools, and discuss what they’d like to see in a new/renovated school.

In discussions about the school, phrases such as “21st century learning,” “project-based learning,” and “maker spaces” are used a lot. The SBC offers some short videos to help make these concepts clearer, and invite residents to bring questions about them to one of the Tuesday workshops:

The SBC always welcomes feedback and questions about the process. You can make a public comment by clicking on the “comment” button at the bottom of any of the posts on the SBC website, or you can send a message directly to the SBC by clicking on “Contact the SBC” on the site’s home page menu.

Five campus possibilities offered at SBC workshop

School Building Committee architects proposed some master planning objectives for the Ballfield Road campus as well as five general options for locating the various aspects of the Lincoln School around that campus at a public workshop on October 3.

Before they even began presenting their thoughts, resident Steve Perlmutter summed up his feelings about the campus that are shared by many of those who rejected the 2012 school design that would have encroached on the central ball field and significantly reconfigured the north side of campus.

“I’m concerned that if we’re not very careful, we could lose much of this special place and with it, a large part of Lincoln’s soul, character, and heritage,” said Perlmutter, noting that he was speaking as a private citizen and not in his capacity as a member of the SBC. The school campus is “stunning and bucolic” and “quintessentially Lincoln,” he said. “We need to keep on asking ourselves if what you propose to do belongs to the land instead of the other way around.”

The ball field is “one for those central gems you would never get back if you developed it, agreed Sandra Farrell, a landscape architect with SMMA Architects, adding that the field and the healthy trees around it are “more or less sacrosanct)

The firm’s planning objectives for a multigenerational, multiprogram campus include developing a healthy network of trees and pathways around school buildings and between community spaces including the tennis courts and the pool. The final plan should also foster educational goals while also creating cohesion between new and old elements and demonstrating stewardship of the land, she said.

Before thinking about what structures should be renovated or replaced, SMMA principal architect Alex Pitkin encouraged residents to think about five configurations—taking into account locations, “adjacencies,” building heights, and even overlap—for four main elements (see below):

  • PreK–4
  • Grades 5–8
  • Common areas that the public could also use outside school hours such as the auditorium, gyms, and cafeteria(s)
  • Community center elements including the Council on Aging, the Parks and Recreation Department, and the Lincoln Extended-day Activities Program.

“Sometimes it’s very effective to move functions around a building, whether it’s renovated or rebuilt,” Pitkin said.

The next public workshop will focus on educational vision and will take place in two identical sessions on one day: Tuesday, Oct. 14 from 2–4 p.m. and 7–9 p.m. in the Brooks gym. For more information on the history of the project, news and upcoming events, go to lincolnsbc.org.

Click on an image to see larger version:
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”57″ gal_title=”Oct 2017 campus options”]

Mother of driver in bike accident protests ‘ghost bike’

The mother of a teenage driver involved in one of two fatal bike accidents in 2016 vehemently protested plans last week to install a “ghost bike” at the Public Safety building.

Julie Lynch spoke a the Board of Selectmen meeting on September 25 about the pain that both families have gone through since the accident at the intersection of Bedford and Virginia Roads claimed the life of Westford resident Mark Himelfarb in August 2016. Details of the accident were not released while it was being investigated by local and state police and the district attorney’s office—a process that took 13 months before the DA’s office announced on September 12 that no charges would be filed.

The cyclist, while riding north on Virginia Road, “crossed over the yellow centerline deviating from the marked lanes of northbound travel and encroached upon the motorist’s path of travel,” according to the release, adding that the collision occurred in the southbound side of the road.

Shortly after the accident, Concord resident and cyclist Erik Limpaecher installed a “ghost bike” on his own initiative near the accident with a placard saying “M. Himelfarb, father of 2, 8-17-2016, Come to Full Stop,” according to an August 23, 2016 Globe article. Lincoln officials immediately removed the object because it was a safety hazard but also out of respect for the feelings of the driver, who was not at fault.

In June 2017, the family of the victim in the other 2016 accident, Eugene Thornberg, said they would create and donate a ghost bike to remind both motorists and bicyclists about the need to safely share the road. The monument will include a plaque with wording that is not specific to either accident.

But Lynch, the mother of the Virginia Road accident driver, tearfully protested to selectmen that ghost bikes serve to memorialize the bicyclists who are killed and neglect the feelings of the driver and his or her family, especially since the driver is often not at fault. (The Squirrel has also published this letter to the editor she originally submitted on September 23.)

“A middle-aged bicyclist broke the law” by crossing over the center line and striking the side of her daughter’s car, Lynch said. “It was traumatic, it was awful. My child performed CPR.”

Her daughter’s license was suspended while the investigation was ongoing, “and she spent her entire senior year making up excuses to her friends about why she couldn’t drive” because the family was told not to discuss the accident, Lynch added. “They treated her like a criminal for 13 months.

“From the information I’ve seen, most of the serious bike accidents are caused by the bicyclists, not the operators,” Lynch added. “We’re memorializing cyclist error.”

Lincoln “has really gone out of our way as a town and a police department” to be sensitive to all parties involved, Town Administrator Tim Higgins said. The ghost bike “is not meant as an editorial comment, it’s not meant as a memorial to any individual—it’s helping to educate the motoring public and the cycling public about the importance of safety.”

Lynch also objected to locating the ghost bike at the Lincoln Public Safety Building. When Higgins said that he had made sure the first ghost bike was quickly removed from the accident site, she cried, “She won’t drive that street any more—it doesn’t matter! But she does drive by the police station… Nobody talked to me about how she would feel about seeing a ghost bike  but I think she deserved to be asked.”

“Your summary of the facts [of the accident] is spot on,” Higgins told Lynch. “We struggled with this issue to get the information out to the community. While the investigation was going on, we were not at liberty to reveal some of the details.”

The investigation into the Thornberg accident revealed that motorist was also not at fault. The bicyclist had pulled up alongside a row of traffic at a stoplight; just as the light turned green, he fell off his bike under the wheel of an stopped truck next to him and was killed when the truck moved forward.

Letter to the editor: driver and families are also victims in bike accidents

letter

(Editor’s note: this letter was submitted to the Squirrel on September 23, two days before the writer spoke about the issue at a Board of Selectmen meeting.)

To the editor:

Last week as I was returning from driving my child to soccer, two middle-aged men drove their bicycles through the stop sign on Sandy Pond road into the five-way intersection. Before these bicyclists arrived at the intersection, I had stopped at the sign and began to proceed straight on Lincoln Road. Fortunately, I had been driving quite slowly and was able to stop again quickly so there was no collision. My child, who was in the car with me, yelled out the window, “There was a stop sign there.” Our family is intimately and painfully aware of the chaos, loss, and trauma bicycle collisions cause.

Last year, a bicyclist drove through a stop sign at a 90-degree intersection. He veered into the opposite side of the road, crossed the yellow line, lost control of his bicycle, and collided with the side of the car. Despite efforts to save him, he died immediately.

There were two families who were victims of this tragic accident: the bicyclist’s wife and children, and my family. I did not know this bicyclist, but over the past year, I have had many conversations with him in my mind. I wanted to be angry at him and tell him that what he did was unfair and irresponsible. I wanted to tell him that whatever joy he obtained from bicycling was not worth the enormous pain and loss he caused our families. When I have these thoughts, sadness and grief quickly overcome anger. From what I have read about the bicyclist, he was a very good human being, a responsible, loving, supportive father and husband. He simply made a mistake.

For several weeks after the accident, I walked to that turn and videotaped numerous bicyclists per hour drive through that stop sign, taking a wide turn and crossing the yellow line in the same manner that the bicyclist who died did.

I commend the Thornberg family for creating the ghost bicycle memorial. However, these memorials never recognize the pain and trauma that car drivers experience with such collisions.

Involvement in a fatal accident is traumatizing. Performing chest compressions on a person who has experienced blunt force trauma to his head is terrifying. You want so much for the person to live. When he doesn’t and when you learn that he left behind children who were the exact same ages as children in your family, it is extremely painful. These images are repeated in your head. You wake up in the middle of the night crying and screaming. You repeatedly ask yourself whether there was anything you could have done to save him.

The psychological trauma is made worse by the evening news, which had a headline, “Bicyclist Struck, Killed by SUV in Massachusetts.” Initial statements from the media and district attorney’s office lacked any knowledge of the facts and immediately sought to assign blame to the driver of the car.

In addition to the psychological trauma, there is the chaos that such accidents impose on the driver’s life and her family members. In accidents that involve a fatality, the driver’s car is automatically impounded and the driver’s license is suspended until the state police can complete the accident reconstruction report, which usually takes at least 10 months. In our family’s case, it took 13 months for the district attorney’s office to notify us that the state police accident reconstruction report clearly found that the car driver was not at fault and no charges would be pursued.

I have spoken to bicyclists about this tragedy and our family’s trauma. They have explained that quite often, the state of mind of the cyclist is to minimize events that cause them to lose speed or momentum—which clearly, obeying stop signs does. Evidence from the speedometer that the bicyclist was wearing indicated that his average speed was 14 miles per hour and maximum speed was 31 miles per hour, which was the same approximate speed that cars drive on the road where the accident occurred. Yet bicycle drivers are not required to be licensed or insured.

If bicyclists who died were here today, I wonder what they would say or do to change the number of families who are traumatized by fatal bicycle collisions. The eyes of the bicyclist who died last year will forever be in the mind of the person who tried to save his life.

I ask the families of deceased bicyclists, the Lincoln community, and current bicyclists to expand their concept of ghost bicycle memorials to include two children, to represent the family who lose their parent to fatal bicycle collisions, and another figure to represent the person who tries to save the bicyclist’s life. Often, this will be the driver of the car. Such recognition may make the ghost bicycle memorial less traumatizing for the driver of the car.

Sincerely,

Julie Lynch
5B South Commons

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: everyone’s input needed at school project workshop

letter

To the editor:

What if you decided to redo your kitchen, hired a respected designer, and then asked a trusted neighbor to oversee the design and construction process? With a good professional and a tasteful neighbor, it might be fine, but would it really turn out the way you wanted?

We have a great design team, and we hope you consider the members of the School Building Committee to be “trusted neighbors.” At the same time, you are the “homeowners,” and we need your input and guidance in order to get this right. So please join us this Tuesday, Oct. 3 for one of the Community Workshop sessions. These workshops will focus on the layout of the Ballfield campus, and will generate critical information for both the school and community center study committees.

You might be thinking, “What do I know about campus layout?” We are all users of the campus, and we all have ideas and opinions about where the metaphorical appliances should go. Here’s how to get ready for the workshop:

If you’re a parent: What do you think works/doesn’t work in the school building and on the campus? What do you think about the layout of the school? Is the parking in the right places? How well do pickup and drop-off patterns work? What is it like to walk/bike/drive around campus? Are there enough playing fields? Where should the after school program and community facilities be?

If you’re a community member: What works/doesn’t work when you come to vote? Or for Town Meeting? Is there enough parking? Is it easy to access the roads and pathways? Which parts of the school, fields, and recreation spaces do you use?
New to town? Think you don’t know enough about this project to contribute? Bring your experiences from other towns and schools and help us consider different solutions!

For all: Get ready to ponder provocative questions: What is the best location for the building(s)? How many stories should the buildings be? What happens to the big trees? How do those decisions impact design, energy efficiency, and recreational options?
Bring an open mind and your questions to one of the community workshops:

Tuesday, Oct. 3
8–10 a.m. and 7–9 p.m. (same content, two sessions)
Brooks/Reed Gym

If you haven’t already subscribed to the Lincoln School Project website, please do so by going to www.lincolnsbc.org. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Kim Bodnar (School Building Committee member)
11 Fox Run Road

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.

Construction begins on new learning center at Drumlin Farm

An architect’s rendering of the planned Environmental Learning Center at Drumlin Farm.

Construction on Drumlin Farm’s new Environmental Learning Center has begun. Replacing the 50-year-old Education Building, the ELC and the accompanying outdoor educational pavilion will serve as the hub for environmental education programming, including Drumlin’s summer camp. At 3,700 square feet, the project (funded as part of Drumlin’s capital campaign) will be almost three times the size of the existing structure.

Work is underway to establish the perimeter fence and do initial tree clearing. The trees and plants being removed along Route 117 are mostly non-native, invasive species that were either dead or dying, and Drumlin Farm is ensuring that large, healthy, native trees are preserved where possible. Site work on the new parking lot and foundation will then take place, followed by construction of the building itself. An extensive replanting plan in place with native trees and shrubs for the final landscaping phase of the project next spring.

The installation of a major rooftop solar array to fully power the building will make the ELC a net-zero energy use facility and also offset power consumption of other Drumlin Farm buildings. Completion of the building is expected by June 2018.

Minuteman school construction work on track thus far

The Minuteman building site looking from Lincoln toward the school.

Site preparation work for the new Minuteman High School building in Lincoln is progressing smoothly, according to construction officials, though residents are hearing more noise than they would like.

Construction crews haven’t run into anything unexpected or unusual while clearing and excavating the site, said Walter Kincaid, a project executive for Gilbane Building Co. He and a representative from Skanska Building USA, Minuteman’s project manager, met with neighboring residents and the head of the Minute Man National Historical Park at a meeting in late August. They updated residents on site clearing, ledge blasting, rock crushing and dirt removal as well as efforts to minimize dust and the relocation of a massive 130-ton boulder to the west end of the property.

Builders have thus far kept their promise about keeping the trucks off Mill Street, which is frequently used by cyclists and walkers. “There are many blind turns on Mill Street, and it would be disastrous, given the narrowness of the street and the high number of recreational users, to have heavy trucks also using the street,” said Keith Hylton, who lives at 5 Oakdale Lane.

In addition to noise from truck backup horns starting at 7 a.m. during the week, “the blasting has also been louder and more intense than we thought. Our whole house shakes and it can be quite scary sometimes,” said Joe Genovese of 27 Mill St.

“We’re hoping that the concussions from blasting have not caused any hard-to-see damage in the foundations for homes or in water wells in the area,” Hylton said.  Workers have been giving advance notice of blasting to residents via email, he and Genovese added.

Kincaid said blasting of ledge would continue up to three times a week through the month of September. Crews are scheduled to start putting in the building’s foundation around September 18.

The $145 million project broke ground in June and is thus far on schedule to be completed within two years. “We’re going to put kids in the new school in the fall of 2019,” Kincaid said.