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…
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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…
Temporary classrooms coming to kick off school project
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…
FinCom releases tax hike figures for school project
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…
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…
School project passes Town Meeting by 89%–11% margin
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…