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

school project*

Minuteman High School project marks finish line with ribbon-cutting

Minuteman Superintendent-Director Edward A. Bouquillon holds the ribbon and State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg makes the cut at the new school’s opening ceremony on October 4. With them are Needham Selectman Dan Matthews (far left), State Sen. Cindy Friedman (center), MSBA executive director Jack McCarthy, Minuteman School Building Committee chair Ford Spalding of Dover, and State Rep. Michelle Ciccolo. (Photo by Alice Waugh)

By Alice Waugh

The new Minute Man Regional Vocational Technical High School in Lincoln was officially dedicated last week at a ribbon-cutting attended by hundreds of students, staff, officials, and friends.

The event capped a sometimes rocky road for the project. Several of the original 16 towns in the Minuteman district, including Lincoln, withdrew largely due to the $145 million price tag for the new building ($44 million of which was provided by the Massachusetts School Building Authority). Eight years after submitting its initial statement of interest to the MSBA, the project won approval in a district-wide vote in 2016, and construction got underway in June 2017. Students began using the school this fall after construction was finished a year ahead of schedule and $3 million under budget.

There was debate over the projected enrollment during discussions several years ago; towns and the MSBA settled on 628 students in grades 9-12, several hundred fewer than the former capacity. The new facility has proved to be popular — there’s already a waiting list, “and we have the largest freshman class in over 25 years,” Bouquillon said. Students from Minuteman district towns (Acton, Arlington, Belmont, Bolton, Concord, Dover, Lancaster, Lexington, Needham and Stow) get preference for admission.

Since 2002, Lincoln has sent anywhere from two to 11 students to Minuteman each year, though that figure includes post-graduate and part-time students. As of October 2016, Lincoln accounted for eight of the school’s 618 students.

Minuteman’s property straddles the Lincoln/Lexington town line. The old building was on the Lexington side and the athletic fields were in Lincoln, but they’ve now traded places. Fields and an athletic complex will be built after the old building is demolished starting next month, and they should be ready for use by fall 2021. The school is working on a financial model to develop and rent out athletic facilities when the school is not using them, as well as a public/private partnership for sharing some of the school’s indoor space such as labs.

The entrance to Minuteman High School. (Photo by Alice Waugh)

The new facility reflects a sea change from how vocational education has evolved. In the 1960s when the school opened, the curriculum focused on trades such as carpentry, plumbing, cooking, and auto mechanics. Students can now choose from courses in areas including digital arts and design, biotechnology, environmental science, and robots and automation, as well as academic subjects and the traditional trades.

“We have built a school that lets us dream big and be brave. We have a place that gives us all a chance to answer the two critical questions we want our students to answer: what do I love to do and what do I do well?” said school superintendent/director Edward Bouquillon at the October 4 ceremony, which also featured a video showing the building and happy students and staff. “For those of you who have been with us since the beginning, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” 

Committee trims $2.8 million from school project

After the latest round of updated cost estimates for the $94 million school project showed a $2.8 million shortfall, the the School Building Committee chose from a lengthy list of options provided by SMMA Architects to trim costs.

At several milestone points during the school project, the project team performs a new round of cost estimating; the latest estimates marked the end of the 60% Construction Documents phase. As it did after the first round of cost estimates last October came in about $9 million over budget, the SBC employed “value engineering” to decide where to save money This phase is when the specifications and details of building envelope and mechanical systems are decided, “so this difference in cost estimates is not unusual,” the SBC said earlier this month.

Top image: the original proposed design showing fiber cement rainscreen, and the two brick options now being considered instead (click to enlarge).

The biggest VE item by dollar amount is changing all proposed fiber cement rainscreen to brick, saving almost $507,000. The SBC has not yet decided on which of two brick options to select (see the Sept. 11 presentation starting with slide 18 labeled “Current design”). 

In recent weeks, architect and longtime Lincoln resident Edmund Stevens has raised concerns about the school project on LincolnTalk several times, saying that the proposed removal of the bell tower “is nothing less than barbarous” and that the school building design resembled “a strip mall.” At the SBC’s second value engineering meeting on September 4, he objected  to some of the proposed design elements and the SBC process in general. “I don’t think anybody really knows that this building looks like… it’s total chaos,” he said.

Stevens kept trying to speak after being asked to desist and said, “You’re not going anywhere!” But SBC member Peter Sugar silenced him with raised voice, saying “Neither are you, sir!”

Stevens afterwards told the Lincoln Squirrel that he had not participated in school project discussions up until now because he had been “out of circulation” with lymphoma, and because he initially thought the design would be “at least up to the level of the town hall renovation, which was excellent.” He said he did not vote at the Special Town Meeting that narrowly rejected a state-approved design in 2012 but could not recall why.

Going into the third and final value engineering (VE) meeting last week, “our VE decisions continued to be guided by our project principles, and no decision was without vigorous discussion and understanding,” said SBC member Kim Bodnar. “There were no easy or hardest items to cut. All VE items were met with rigorous scrutiny and an understanding of how they impacted the project.”

The project now moves into the 90% Construction Documents phase, when the final details are fleshed out in preparation for putting the project out to bid for areas that are subcontracted such as plumbing and HVAC, etc. This phase will be complete by the end of December and one more round of cost estimates will take place before the bid documents are finalized.

Second round of value engineering items approved by the SBC
ItemCost
Change all proposed fiber cement rainscreen to brick – structural steel support required to support brick$506,739
Eliminate lightning protection system$267,523
Replace all VRF heat recovery systems to heat pump systems. This would involve changing the heat recovery condensers ACCUs to heat pump condensers ACCUs and removal of all the branch controller units for the VRF zoned systems$246,466
Change concrete walkways to bituminous except 5' pads at exterior door locations – hybrid option$222,578
In Dining Commons and Media Center: Change wood ceiling to 2x2 ACT. Suspended/surface construction type linear lights be replaced to recessed linear type simulateously. Eliminate upright sprinkler heads$187,468
Change proposed brick veneer at north elevations rear of building to ground faced CMU – hybrid option$144,039
Eliminate all corridor phenolic lockers; provide metal lockers $134,550
Simplify acid waste neutralization system to point-of-use chip-type system- delete pit acid neutralization room including equipment, pit, foundations for pit, waterproofing and associated MEPs for this space. Revise system at 7/8th grade Science classrooms per sketches provided.$109,953
Eliminate all exterior wood benches$109,540
Eliminate sun shade/PV canopies at Reed corridor (1,610 square feet)$103,882
Reduce LF by 50% for proposed masonry mechanical enclosure walls and sound liner panels at condensing units$96,985
Eliminate 1'x4' ACT in hubs; provide 2'x2' ACT$74,507
Eliminate all roof drain overflow piping on the interior at new construction and install scuppers on roofs$61,852
Use chain-link fence and gate in lieu of steel picket at Pre-K playground$57,285
Reduce concrete walkways in front of building$56,051
Eliminate one remaining doghouse light-gauge metal framing, roof insulation and membrane roofing and replace with insulated ductwork above the roof$25,000
Eliminate proposed Data Acquisition System$50,299
Change all proposed PT-base to rubber except at locations with PT wainscot$49,611
Add Dx coil at ERVs and reduce capacity of FCUs and reduction of ductwork per sketches and descriptions provided.$42,922
Use ProPress fittings in lieu of soldering for copper fittings for domestic water$37,439
Reduce quantity of clocks to what is indicated in drawings$31,115
Maintain existing interior floor hatches$30,738
Reduce area of heavy-duty pavement to standard-duty$29,314
Eliminate gas piping and turrets in grade 6 science (as a result, gas piping can be rerouted to eliminate 440 linear feet of gas pipe and three expansion/seismic loops)$27,593
Reduce scope of snow guards at sloped roofs to 775 linear feet$23,752
Substitute Category 6 cable in lieu of Category 6A except for the wireless access points$22,462
Reduce allowance for replacement of existing roof decking by 50%$16,766
Eliminate locker room phenolic lockers; provide HDPE lockers, and salvage and reuse existing HDPE lockers$16,733
Reduce the thickness of the new construction slabs on grade to 4” in the classrooms and office areas. 5” would remain in the Learning Commons area and loading dock areas.$14,757
TOTAL$2,797,918

Temporary classrooms coming to kick off school project

An illustration of where the modular classrooms and temporary parking will be located.

The first visible sign of the start of the $93.9 million school project will appear in the center ballfield shortly after the Fourth of July, when the six-month task of installing temporary classrooms will begin.

The modulars will be home for the K–4 students during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years. The total cost for the classrooms and associated work is about $4.53 million, according to School Building Committee Vice Chair Kim Bodnar. This includes units themselves and also delivery and setup of the modular classrooms and their removal at the end of the project, as well as utility connections and a temporary parking lot for 45 cars.

The center playing fields will be closed on July 5 and the site work for the modulars will be contained inside a temporary construction fence. Installation is due to be completed by the end of 2019. The Smith playing fields and the Codman field will remain open, as will the smaller playing field to the south of the modulars.

A view inside one of the modular classrooms at Hanscom Primary School.

The Brooks auditorium and Reed Gym will be closed for renovations in 2020-21, and the Smith fields will go out of commission in 2021-22. Codman Pool and the adjacent field will remain open for the entire school project which is expected to finish  in time for the start of the 2022-23 school year.

The projected cost for the modulars was initially much higher than budgeted — $1.68 million in June 2018 vs. $4.62 million in the fall. The total estimate for the project had also increased to about $9 million over the budget approved by voters last June. As part of its cost-cutting value-engineering process, the SBC trimmed several items and expected to make up the shortfall on the modulars by negotiating less expensive units.

Last week, the SBC approved a contract for the modulars after at least one of the three bids came in under budget. Construction manager Consigli Construction will oversee the installation of the modular classrooms by vendor/subcontractor J&J Construction.

This chart shows where grade will be located at various stages of the school project (click to enlarge).

As part of the permitting process for the project, the Conservation Commission will hold a second hearing and vote on the plans for the temporary classrooms on Wednesday, May 22. That same night, the SBC will see the latest updates to the exterior elevations, floor plans, and site plans. Both groups will meet in the Town Office Building due to the student art show at Hartwell.

FinCom releases tax hike figures for school project

A table showing the tax increase for the median taxpayer with a tax bill of $14,008 in fiscal 2019, compared to earlier projections (click any image to enlarge).

The tax impact until fiscal 2024 under three borrowing scenarios.

The tax impact of all the borrowing for six different property values.

Once all the borrowing for the school project is done, Lincoln property owners will see a tax increase of 14.5% compared to fiscal 2019—significantly less than the 20% that some had feared.

As announced on February 26, winning bidder Citibank offered an interest rate of 3.379% on the $80 million bond. The Finance Committee had been using sample interest rates of 4% and 5% in projecting the tax increases from the $93.9 million school project. But as the town solicited bids on the bond, “we definitely benefited from the equity market volatility that happened in December,” FinCom chair Chair Jim Hutchinson said at Wednesday’s School Building Committee meeting.

From this $80 million bond alone, the median property tax bill would have increased by 14.5% next year. But the fiscal 2020 budget coming up for a vote at Town Meeting is “lean and mean” and, if there were no borrowing, would actually result in a 1.7% tax decrease, Hutchinson said. Taken together, the bond and the budget decrease will mean a $1,780 tax increase (12.7%) tax on the median tax bill.

In about two years, the town will do a “cleanup” bond of up to $8.5 million for the remaining expenses. That will mean another tax increase of about 1.8%, for a grand total increase of about $2,000 or 14.5% compared to the bill for fiscal 2019, Hutchinson said. 

School project bonding approved in ballot vote

In unofficial results for the December 3 ballot vote, a comfortable majority of Lincoln residents gave the go-ahead for the $92.9 million Lincoln School project—though the margin was not as large as the one at the December 1 Special Town Meeting.

Sixty-five percent of Lincoln voters who cast a ballot voted yes, clearing the way for the town to borrow $88.5 million to renovate and partially rebuild the Lincoln School. The 68%–32% margin easily cleared the required hurdle for a simple majority—though it was notably lower than the 89%–11% margin at Saturday’s vote, which required a two-thirds majority to pass.

The election saw a 35 percent turnout of Lincoln’s 4,797 registered voters.

Early next year, the Finance Committee will determine what amounts of the total to borrow and when. The final interest rate won’t be known until just before the first bond purchase. The panel has been using interest rates of 4% and 5% to estimate the range of property tax increases (currently 17.2%–19.4%), though the full impact of the increase will not occur right away.

Precinct 1Precinct 2Totals
Yes7453991,144
No341196537
1,0865951,681

Click here to see a map of Lincoln’s voting precincts.

 

School project passes Town Meeting by 89%–11% margin

A floor plan of the revitalized Lincoln School from early November (click to enlarge).

The $93.9 million school project won the required two-thirds majority vote with ease at a December 1 Special Town Meeting, with the highest-ever attendance for such an event and a civil discussion of the issues.

In the end, the vote wasn’t as close as some had expected—89 percent to 11 percent—and the tone of the meeting remained calm, despite earlier debate that sometimes got heated on LincolnTalk and elsewhere. Town Moderator Sarah Cannon Holden noted at the start that there was “increased tension and anxiety leading up to this morning—we all need to take a deep breath.”

An hour and a half after the floor was opened for questions and comments, there were still a dozen residents lined up at each of two microphones patiently waiting their turn to speak when resident John Mendelson called the question. The standing vote of residents in a packed Brooks auditorium/lecture hall plus hundreds more in the adjoining gym resulted in a vote of 806–100 in favor of the motion to borrow $88.5 million for renovations and new construction at the Lincoln School.

The vote was orderly and counted methodically, unlike the last school project bonding vote in 2012. At that meeting, the usual voice vote was inconclusive and the subsequent standing vote was arguably affected by the fact that the gym overflow space was not available for voters and fire codes prevented a few people from getting back into the auditorium for the final vote.

The tone of comments on Saturday was civil, with no hostility in statements or reactions, though several comments received spontaneous ovations and whoops of approval—notably when resident Ken Mitchell called for “a little more Lincoln walk and little less LincolnTalk.”

One resident asked questions why the town was no longer pursuing state funding to help fund the project. Selectman (and former School Building Committee chair) Jennifer Glass explained (as she did in this letter to the editor in March 2017) that the competition for funds from schools that are in worse shape than Lincoln’s in terms of physical condition or overcrowding had grown so much that it was unlikely the town would get funding before the school deteriorated even further.

“It came to a point where the School Committee felt the risk was starting to become far greater that we would have some kind of incident that would close the school. It was a town decision in 2017 to go on our own,” she said.

But the large tax increase that will be required to pay for the school had many residents worried that some homeowners—even those who support the goals of the school project—would be forced to sell their property, leading to less economic diversity in Lincoln.

“This is not about us vs. them; this is about stewardship of whole town,” said Chris Burns, noting that Lincoln households occupied by seniors are expected to double  while those with young children are expected to drop significantly by 2030.

Resident John Kimball made a motion to change the figures in the main motion so that the total project cost would be no more than $74 million and the borrowing amount would be $68.6 million. “Where are the budget vigilantes in town today? We should honor our history of fiscal responsibility,” he said. “I agree that school is dysfunctional, decrepit and inefficient… but that is not a reason to approve the project which is unreasonable in cost, unfair in its impact and ineffective in improving education.”

“This is what we voted on in June—we were presented with a menu of options and budgets,” responded Kathryn Anagnostakis. “To relitigate this at this point…” But the rest of her comment was drowned out by cheers and applause.

“The amendment doesn’t do enough,” Vincent Cannistraro said, adding that the project “fundamentally scares me… If you have too much shock to your ecosystem at once, the result is disastrous. If this project goes through, we will look a lot less like Lincoln and lot more like Sudbury, where you move as soon as your kid finishes high school. I can give you 100 reasons why this solution won’t work, but you can’t give one example of a town that exposes [itself] to a 15–20 percent tax increase for 30 years for a single project. The children of Lincoln deserve an education second to none. Please vote no for the future of the town.”

Kimball’s amendment was soundly defeated on a voice vote.

Regarding the argument that the project will boost property values, “that’s no reason for finding a school of this magnitude, in my opinion,” said Sharon Antia. “We need a new community center and a DPW. To put all our money in this bucket and then say after the fact we’ll look at how to be a more welcoming community for a diverse population…  I find it hard to believe we’ll work on it afterwards.”

However, as reflected in the final vote, the comments in favor of the project outnumbered those against. Some of those remarks:

  • “Rigorous economic research shows that funding school structures raises home values more than the cost of the project—it pays for itself,” said Ben Shiller, echoing an argument he made in a November 7 letter to the editor.
  • Until recently, schools including Lincoln’s were designed with the idea that students were “vessels to be filled with information given by a teacher at the head of the classroom,” DJ Mitchell said. “But the world we’re preparing them for is vastly different. Information is at their fingertips—there’s no need to cram it all in their heads. Children need to be able to collaborate, think critically, be problem solvers, tinker about, make adjustments and even fail. It’s messy work not always suited to a contained classroom.”
  • Long-time kindergarten teacher Becky Estin (who received a spontaneous standing ovation when she said she had taught at the school for 39 years) said teachers have been involved with the planning process from the start and fully support the project. “Some of us were a little confused why it’s taken so long to repair these buildings… given how great the need is,” she said, citing power outages and odors that necessitated classes being moved. “We deeply, deeply care about our jobs… but we can’t help your children in spaces that don’t allow us to be innovative and creative.”
  • “I believe Ms, Estin could make magical things happen in a closet,” Jal Mehta said. “But to make learning dynamic, interconnected, and flexible, need spaces that are dynamic, interconnected, and flexible.” He urged the town to vigorously explore options for tax relief for those who need it so “we can support both our youngest residents and our oldest.”
  • The net-zero energy efficiency of the new building is crucial, said Alex Chatfield, because global climate change “is no longer a crisis to be faced in future—it’s happening in plain site and happening now… it’s our intergenerational responsibility not just to provide a decent education, but a safe planet to live on.”
  • Liz Wilkinson, a veteran teacher at Concord-Carlisle High School, said that the improved air quality and temperature in the new school building made “a dramatic difference in teaching and learning effectiveness,” and that features such as hubs and learning commons are essential to 21st-century education that calls for “collective, flexible, and project-based learning.”
  • Though the tax hike required by the project is significant, Lincoln’s taxes have actually been relatively low in recent years as the town has not invested enough in its schools and infrastructure, Ginger Reiner said. “What we’re experiencing is just recalibrating our taxes to be more in line with what our [neighboring towns] are,” she said. “We’ve essentially been borrowing against our future selves [and have] artificially suppressed out taxes”—remarks that were met with vigorous applause.

Opinions and debate reach a crescendo as school vote nears

Years of study and planning—along with weeks and months of vigorous debate and opinions in the form of LincolnTalk posts, roadside signs, mailings, and websites—will culminate in votes on funding the Lincoln School project this Saturday, Dec. 1 and Monday, Dec. 3.

Roadside campaign signs saying “Vote Yes: Our Town, Our School, Our Kids” have been distributed around town by the Friends of the Lincoln School Project (FLSP), which is not affiliated with the School Building Committee or other town officials. Other signs and car magnets urging a “yes” vote have been distributed by the Lincoln School Foundation.

Hans Bitter and Bryce Wells are the two official members of the FLSP per legal requirements for a Ballot Question Committee, though about two dozen residents have donated time and/or money, they said in an email to the Lincoln Squirrel. While most of the volunteers have children at the Lincoln School, though most of those kids will have moved onto high school by the time the project is completed, they added.

The organization has spent about $3,000 on the yard signs and mailings, and any leftover cash will be donated to the Lincoln PTO, they said.

“Our focus was to make sure people knew that there was an important vote and to rally those who support the project. The yard signs and the mailing were physical embodiments of that focus, but the outreach was person to person—phone calls, emails, conversations in parking lots, Donelan’s, soccer fields, and more,” Bitter and Wells said. “Our group is also very concerned about the potential financial hardship some of our neighbors will face and so we are exploring other creative options to assist those in need.”

Arguments and information fly

Hundreds of emails about the school project and its impact on taxpayers have been exchanged on LincolnTalk, with passionate arguments both in favor of and against the project. Resident Philip Greenspun, who was a frequent poster until he was put on moderation status by moderators from LincolnTalk earlier this year, created a website called the Lincoln School Improvement Committee, which claims about a dozen members and dissects public documents to argue against the need for the project.

One post on the site argues that “mental gymnastics [are] required to support the Lincoln School Building projects” while another says the project is akin to a religion for which “facts and logic are not persuasive… If we rename the ‘School Building Committee’ the ‘Church of School Building’ and re-title the members as ‘Temple Priests,’ will the whole debate then make sense?”

Dozens of other residents, including Finance Committee member Andy Payne and SBC Vice Chair Kim Bodnar, have written lengthy posts on LincolnTalk and the SBC website blog answering questions and arguing that the project is crucial to the Lincoln School and the town as a whole and cannot be delayed further.

Meanwhile, a working group has been looking at programs employed by other area towns to help soften the impact of major property tax increases on seniors with limited means. If voters approve the school funding, property taxes are expected to rise by 17.2 percent to 19.4 percent, though not all of that in the first year. Determining factors will include the interest rate at the time of actual bonding, and the details of the timing and amounts of bonds as determined by the Finance Committee. The working group consists of Town Administrator Tim Higgins, Selectman Jennifer Glass, FinCom member Gina Halsted, and Carolyn Bottum, director of the Lincoln Council on Aging.

There is but a single question to be voted on at Saturday’s Special Town Meeting and Monday’s ballot vote: whether to appropriate $88.5 million for the project. For the borrowing to go forward, two-thirds of voters must vote “yes” at Town Meeting on Saturday and a simple majority must do the same at the ballot vote on Monday. If either vote fails to meet the threshold, the town can schedule another vote of that type in an attempt to win approval, since the sequence of votes doesn’t matter.

On Monday, polls will be open in the Smith gym from 7:30 a.m.–8 p.m.

Town Meeting details

Officials have posted this web page with links to the documents and slides that will be used at Town Meeting. Direct links are below:

Special Town Meeting slides:

Child care

  • For children under the age of 5, the Lincoln Family Association (LFA) will host a drop-in playgroup event for kids and parents (no drop-offs) in Hartwell Pod A from 10 a.m.–2 p.m. There will be toys and nut-free snacks. The cost per child is $5, payable in cash at the door. Parents will be notified when the vote is about to happens so they can get back to the auditorium or gym in time. Click here to register your child.
  • Registration for child care for children older than 5 at LEAP has closed.

Arrival and seating

  • All Lincoln residents wishing to vote must sign in starting at 8 a.m. outside the Brooks auditorium. You may leave and return after singing in and getting your hand stamped.
  • There will be overflow seating and a video link in the Reed Gym. Residents in the gym may vote when the time comes, but they must go to the auditorium if they wish to speak before the vote.

Order of the meeting

  • The meeting opens at 9 a.m. with presentations by chairs of the School Building, Finance, Capital Planning, and Green Energy Committees. Representatives of the School Committee and the Board of Selectmen will then speak briefly (see links to slides above).
  • Discussion and debate are expected to begin at around 10:30 and could last two hours or more.
  • Anyone in the Reed Gym who wishes to speak must come to one of the microphones in the Brooks Auditorium.
  • Town Moderator Sarah Cannon Holden asks residents to keep comments and questions to no more than two minutes, and to let others have a chance to speak before coming to the microphone a second time.

Voting

  • Before any vote, there will be a 10-minute break to ensure that people are seated and the volunteers who do the counting are in place, after which the doors to the gym and auditorium will close, and no one will be allowed to enter or leave until the counts are completed.
  • At the start of the voting, everyone must be seated, and non-voters will be asked to sit in specific areas of the halls.
  • All voting will be done by a standing count.

Letter to the editor: school design represents Lincoln core values

To the editor:

As engaged community members, we have attended and participated in many of the School Building Committee meetings, town surveys, and open workshops held over the past two years in Lincoln. We invested our time in this process because we understood that a new school is likely the most significant capital project that Lincoln will consider for the next several decades; because we feel the best education for our children is a priority that binds us together as a community; and because we recognized both the potential opportunity and the long-term benefit to the town of a design that would be appropriate, innovative, and sustainable.

We appreciated having a “seat at the table” and that citizen concerns, questions, and differing opinions that came up in meetings over the past two years were acknowledged thoughtfully and diligently considered by the SBC throughout the process. It was a thorough, transparent, and inclusive process. Overall, we feel this was time well spent and has resulted in a design worthy of our children, our teachers, and of Lincoln.

Given the importance of this school to our community and the positive message it will send to our students and teachers, we will be voting YES for the new school building on December 1 and 3. We believe the school design reflects the core values as articulated by the town at the beginning of the process and will provide a superior learning environment.

We are particularly excited that the new school will incorporate a net zero energy design. As we learned and hope you consider, the benefits of the net zero school building to everyone in Lincoln are multiple. The net zero design requires less energy, lowers operating costs, and provides increase building resiliency in a changing climate. Powered by renewable solar energy, the new school will have a reduced carbon footprint, helping Lincoln meet our 2030 energy bylaw. Finally, the overall design will positively impact student performance, enhance learning opportunities, and demonstrate Lincoln’s commitment to educational innovation to our teachers and staff.

We encourage you to consider all these benefits and hope you will join us in voting to support the School Building Committee’s design.

Sincerely,

Sheila Dennis and Tom Henry
28 Weston Rd., 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: voting against higher taxes misses the bigger picture

To the editor:

We should all be paying careful attention when we’re being asked to vote for a school that will increase our property tax bills by nearly 20 percent. But paying careful attention means thinking through all the financial consequences, not just the most immediate impacts on our wallets.

I’m certainly concerned about my taxes going up. But I’m also concerned about the longer-term impact that turning down a school project for a second time in six years might have on housing prices in Lincoln. While there’s always room for more thorough financial analysis, some simple observations and arithmetic suggest the financial gains resulting from lower property taxes might quickly be negated by potentially much larger reductions in the value of our homes. Here’s why I worry that a focus only on property taxes could lead us to a bad financial decision:

  • Lincoln’s high home prices mean that small percentage declines in home values compared to what they would otherwise have been—what I’ll refer to as the penalty for not investing in quality schools—could be fairly consequential. For Lincoln’s median home valued at around $1 million, a 2 percent penalty amounts to $20,000, a 5 percent penalty is $50,000 and a 10 percent penalty results in a $100,000 loss of value.
  • It’s the implications of the investment in educational enhancements beyond the “repair only” scenario (i.e., beyond the $49 million option) that we need to focus on when considering the additional property tax costs of the decision about the new school. These enhancements represent only about 50 percent of the increase in the tax bill. Yet, they are what are most likely to be recognized by future home buyers as an indication that Lincoln is serious about investing in its schools—and thus generate the real benefit to property values. For the currently proposed $93.9 million project, the FinCom estimates the median tax bill in the more expensive bonding cost scenario would rise by a little over $2,700 per year; but the educational enhancement component of the cost accounts for only about $1,400 of this amount.
  • In a highly simplified scenario (that is, with no time value of money, no inflation, and no other personal tax considerations), a family living in the median-value home for 10 years would save roughly $14,000 in taxes if Lincoln chose not to fund any educational enhancements (i.e., repair only), and a little over $42,000 in the same scenario if they stayed in their home for 30 years—this is just a straight adding-up of the $1,400 in annual taxes attributed to the educational enhancements.
  • How do the tax savings in this scenario compare with the losses that might occur if the real estate market imposed a penalty of as little as 5 percent on home values for Lincoln’s perceived failure to support its schools? In other words, are you likely to be economically better off if you vote for the more expensive school or not? For the median million-dollar Lincoln home, a penalty of as little as 5 percent (roughly $50,000) would more than offset the expenditures on increased property taxes, even for homeowners who stay in their homes for as long as 30 years. So if you believe a penalty in the 5 percent range is plausible, the answer is yes—homeowners would be economically better off in the long run voting for the more expensive school. If the penalty for not investing in the schools were higher (say, 10 percent) homeowners would be much better off. A homeowner selling his or her house 10 years from now would have paid a little over $14,000 in cumulative taxes for the educational enhancements but would have realized $100,000 less than would otherwise have been the case.
  • The numbers presented above are by design a simplification. They’re actually quite conservative in not taking into account the time value of money when looking at the value of the future tax savings, particularly if the penalty to home values is relatively immediate and long-lasting. My takeaway is that a vote against the current school project could well end up damaging the family finances more in the longer run than it helps. Given Lincoln’s high home values, even relatively small penalties—for example, less than 5 percent—imposed by the real estate market in response to a perception that we have not invested adequately in our schools would quickly negate the value of lower property taxes that Lincoln’s homeowners would enjoy if pursuit of a less expensive option, like “repair only,” leads to the defeat of the school project bonding votes in early December.

How likely is the real estate market to impose a significant “school” penalty if Lincoln doesn’t approve the proposed school building project? Without a doubt we could argue about this for the next 30 years. But looking at real estate appreciation in neighboring towns may provide some perspective. In Lexington, widely recognized for the quality of its educational system, the median home price rose by more than 50 percent between 2008 and 2017, compared with a rise over the same period of less than 10 percent in Lincoln. While this 40 percentage point difference certainly should not be attributed solely to schools, it’s also likely that perceptions about the quality of education in Lexington have had something to do with it. Avoiding a housing price penalty in the range of something like 3–5 percent certainly seems plausible and maybe even likely, in light of the large relative changes in home sale prices we’ve seen between Lexington and Lincoln over the past decade.

Given the risks of even larger potential penalties, I’m more worried about the property value impact of turning down the school than I am about the extra taxes I’ll have to pay. And for those who may need to rely on the town’s tax relief programs or a home equity line of credit to help with their property taxes, I think the same argument holds true—when you finally do sell your home, a vote for the school project reduces the risk that you’ll suffer a significant reduction in its value because young families are less interested in moving to Lincoln.

And last but certainly not least, all this ignores the perhaps more important, and less self-interested, reasons to vote for the school project. Many residents have spoken eloquently to these already.

Sincerely,

Tom Walker
12 Trapelo 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.

Letter to the editor: new school will have many excellent attributes

To the editor:

Our small town has long worked to find agreement on how to best support and configure our K-8 school. Last spring, we selected the L3 option, which sustained the central campus and set a budget of $93.9 million. Since then, wonderful, balanced work has brought to reality a model school and a new community campus about two fields in a central common for Lincoln. Now we can all see its promise. Like all good design, here are the outline of attributes which invite description.

First, the L-shaped scheme of the school unifies the school facility, and the campus plan will be fulfilled when the community center is completed along with new pedestrian links to the east connected to the Reed Gym. At last, a new unity is promised.
Importantly, what was a linkage between two separate buildings Smith and Brooks is now connected—unified, not just linked.

A new central entry allows for security control and a principal portal reached across an east courtyard. Anchoring these necessities just inside the entry is a new communal learning space, library learning center, and school administration. One is drawn together. One is centered, secured, and welcomed. All in a facility which also allows for varying configurations of team and individual learning.

This attribute of individual and group learning characterizes a new method of teaching. The new plan’s order is interwoven into the frame of the renovated building as third- through eighth-grade classrooms have flexible hub spaces which allow for large group spaces, or work spaces for smaller-scale learning groups to pursue learning independently or with supervision. This is all possible due to new fire separation technology, which allows traditional hallways to be reconnected with smoke-activated door security into useful learning hubs as gateways to classrooms. The end of a hallway may now be encircled by classrooms and that circulation space can be enclosed as part of the hub.

So now we have a design which promises not just a new facility, but one specifically formed to support new educational learning configurations, allowing flexible options for instruction while sustaining and renovating the distinctive spaces of the historic Smith and Brooks schools.

Note that the Donaldson auditorium serving our critical town governance and the beautiful multifunction Smith gym enlarge our school over a conventional K-8 facility. We benefit. Here again there is distinction. The design team and the SBC have worked diligently to create a new fabric for our school. It is a model for building renovation, designing a perimeter envelope which will be the first Massachusetts school where the renovation will achieve net-zero energy conservation, with the best of modern glazing, sun shading, interior illumination, sound and air quality control, and acoustic dampening. Now we benefit from a better building.

As we face a world vitalized by the challenge of lifelong learning, all generations of our small community have a great potential at hand, which is to graciously support the new school’s design’s distinctive design attributes. This is a new space and place that supports ideals we’re investing in for the future.

Sincerely,

F. Douglas Adams, AIA
Historic Commission liaison to the School Building Committee

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.