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

schools

GearTicks teach robotics at Girl Scout event

The GearTicks at WPI for the “Geek is Glam” event: Howie Tsang, Ben Morris, Prerna Karmacharya, Andreas Muzila, Erin Crisafi, Amelia Pillar, and Kevin Ji (click to enlarge).

By Prerna Karmacharya

The GearTicks, a local robotics team based in Lincoln, demonstrated their vacuum pump and helped the Girl Scouts build prosthetic hands and drive LEGO Segways at the Girl Scout “Geek is Glam” event on October 13 at WPI in Worcester.

At the event, the Lincoln GearTicks interacted with girls in grades 4–8, teaching them about how robotics is fun and getting them interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).

Prerna Karmacharya shows a 3D-printed prosthetic hand to a Girl Scout.

The GearTicks also take part in a competition called FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) for middle and high school students, where they design, build, and program robots to compete in a challenge once a year. Teams all over the globe compete in this competition. FTC also encourages community outreach.

Last year for FTC, the GearTicks designed a vacuum pump as part of their design for their robot and built the pump from parts they made on their 3D printer. The team also spent lots of time perfecting the custom vacuum pump and enjoy sharing knowledge about it with others.

The GearTicks also 3D-printed prosthetic hands as part of the e-NABLE prosthetic hand project. Through building the hands, they are able to give back to the community using their knowledge, and share their skills with others.

The Girl Scouts came in four groups of about 100 kids in each group. Overall there were about 440 Girl Scouts there. Other exhibitors were iRobot and Bose, along with other groups including a few FRC teams.

Lincoln GearTicks team members Amelia Pillar, Erin Crisafi, Howie Tsang, and Andreas Muzila get ready for the Girl Scouts event. 

One of the Girl Scouts worked with GearTick members Prerna and Amelia to build the prosthetic hands. It turned out that this Girl Scout’s foster sister had a prosthetic hand that was also from e-NABLE.

“It overjoyed me to learn about someone who had benefited from these hands,” Prerna said.

The GearTicks hope that they can keep helping the community. They really enjoyed teaching the Girl Scouts about science and engineering, as well as getting them more interested in STEM. The team strives to use their STEM skills to help their local community.

News acorns

L-S officials to hold coffee, listening sessions

The Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee will be hosting three office hours/listening sessions this week, including one in Lincoln:

  • Thursday, Oct. 25 from 7–8 p.m. — Goodnow Library (second-floor conference room), Sudbury
  • Friday, Oct. 26 from 9–10 a.m. — deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum Cafe, Lincoln
  • Friday, Oct. 26 from 11 a.m.–noon — Karma Coffee, Sudbury

Click here for the full 2018-19 list of dates and times for listening sessions.

L-S Superintendent/Principal Bella Wong will also host a Parent Coffee for parents of current L-S students on Monday, Oct. 29 from 8–9 a.m. in Conference Room A (sign in and get directions at the main office).

St. Anne’s to hold service of remembrance

St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church will mark All Saints Sunday on November 4, remembering those who have died with a special service of remembrance at 5 p.m. The choir will sing Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, accompanied by guest organist David Carrier.  All are welcome.

L-S students commended for PSAT scores

Lincoln residents Irene Terpstra and Colton Volpe are among the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School commended students recognized for their exceptional academic promise by the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program. Nationwide, commended students placed among the top 50,000 scorers of more than 1.6 million students who entered the 2019 competition by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT).  

Donate used Lincoln Youth Soccer gear

The First Parish in Lincoln’s Youth Group is collecting used Lincoln Youth Soccer uniforms and gear to send to Ethiopia with Jen Gill and Sylvia Perry when they go to serve as part of a medical team. Collection bins are located on the steps of the Parish House at 14 Bedford Rd. and at the Parks and Recreation office in Hartwell pod A on Ballfield Road. Any used LYS uniforms and gear collected after Sylvia and Jen’s November travel will be sent to an equally deserving soccer program.

 

School project budget, financing aired at SOTT

A summary of “value engineering” items trimmed to bring the school project back to the approved $93.9 budget (click to enlarge).

Town officials provided updates on the two pending school campus construction projects at the State of the Town meeting on October 20, outlining a series of cuts made to bring the school project under budget and a timeline for the community center.

The detailed construction cost estimate presented to the School Building Committee in September was about $9 million more than the $93.9 million budget approved by voters in June, so the SBC had just weeks to decide what to trim as it prepares for bonding votes at a Special Town Meeting on December 1 and at the ballot box on December 3. The areas where cost estimates rose the most compared to the figures presented in June were site work, which went up by $5.22 million, and temporary modular classrooms, which rose by $2.94 million.

After three weeks of painstakingly combing through a list of more than 100 construction items, the SBC got the project under budget. Members actually trimmed more than $9 million because they also added two items: $870,000 for an upgraded HVAC system and $150,000 for a slightly redesigned center of the building.

The biggest savings will come from site work. The SBC lopped $3.9 million from that category by cutting back on granite curbs and repaving and foregoing new plantings, sod for the ballfield, and new playground equipment. Officials expect to save $1.68 million by negotiating less expensive temporary classrooms.

To save another $2.5 million, the town will hire a third-party firm to install the solar equipment rather than paying for and owning it as part of the project. Lincoln would then enter into a power purchase agreement where it would buy electricity, thus shifting much of the financial burden from the construction budget to the operating budget. On the bright side, this also means that enough solar equipment can be installed to make the school “net zero” in terms of energy use.

The final borrowing amount that the town will vote on in December hasn’t been determined yet, because other sources of funding have to be nailed down. Those sources include the following (with current balances in parentheses):

  • The debt stabilization fund ($5.5 million). This fund has been accumulating for years in anticipation of the school project, though the Finance Committee may recommend retaining some of it for the Community Center project
  • Free cash (about $1 million). This is a relatively large amount because the town recently received a large building permit fee.
  • Community Preservation Act funds (about $600,000 not otherwise designated). These funds can be used to outdoor recreational things like athletic fields and playgrounds.
  • The cable revolving fund ($226,000) from the annual license fee to support local cable access. This fund balance increases by about $80,000 a year and Town Administrator Tim Higgins will recommend that the Board of Selectmen “commit the lion’s share of that money” to applicable parts of the school project such as audiovisual work in the Brooks auditorium, he said at an October 18 multiboard meeting.

The town considered using Chapter 90 state funds for roadway improvements to Ballfield Road as part of the school project but decided it would be unwise to divert that money from regular road maintenance around town.

  • Click here for the State of the Town presentations by the School Building Committee and Finance Committee

Estimated property tax increases as a result of the school borrowing (click to enlarge).

The precise tax impacts of the borrowing won’t be known until the final borrowing amount and bond interest rate are known. “It’ll be less than the 20 percent people had in their minds due to the tranching, but it won’t be a lot less,” Finance Committee chair Jim Hutchinson said. “Tranching” means splitting up the borrowing into two or more loans over a period of time rather than borrowing the full amount in a single loan. Earlier FinCom figures indicated tax increases of 19 to 21 percent. The median tax bill in fiscal 2018 was $13,566.

The town also expects to borrow roughly another $20 million in 2024 to build the community center, which will bring the town’s debt service levels back up to 2019 levels. The most recent estimates for that project range from $15.3 million to $16.2 million depending on which design is selected.

”The school project is the biggest need for the town,” Selectman James Dwyer said at the State of the Town meeting, adding that work on the community center will not begin until the school is “substantially complete.” However, a community center building committee could be formed as soon as 2021, he said. There has been talk of forming a “Friends of…” group to solicit private donations for one or both campus projects, but this hasn’t yet moved beyond the discussion phase.

There will be two community workshops on the project on Thursday, November 1 at 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. in the Reed Gym. Officials have until November 17 to nail down a final bonding amount for the December 1 and December 3 votes. If approved, architects will require about 12 months to complete detailed drawings before the start of construction, which is expected to take up to three years in two phases.

Birches School celebrates new home

A view of the Birches School from the east. See more photos below.

The Birches School is hosting a community open house for the general public on Saturday, Nov. 3 from 1–3 p.m. to see its new home—the renovated Bedford Road property of the late computer executive An Wang and his wife Lorraine.

The school bought the Wang property in 2016 in concert with the Rural Land Foundation, which then sold four of the 16 acres to the town for use as an athletic field and conservation land. Over the summer, faculty and staff moved into the new building from their original quarters in the First Parish’s stone church.

The move has allowed the school to add a seventh and eighth grade and the space for enrollment of up to about 95 (it has a permit for another addition in front). The Birches opened in 2012 with just five students in grades K-2. The school began looking for a new home when it reached maximum capacity of 49 students more than two years ago and was pleased to find one just up the road.

“We couldn’t realize our nature-based mission almost anywhere else in greater Boston, then-head of school Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis said in 2016.

“It goes without saying that this physical building and also the grounds have been intentionally designed to maximize our mission as a nature-based school,” said Bonnie Ricci, who became head of school in March 2018. The original picture windows stayed and provide natural light for the nature lab and science/tech/art room.

“It feels fresh and airy and spacious and welcoming,” Ricci said. “But we also made a commitment to keep as much of the existing historical house as possible.” This can be seen in one of the entryways, which is clearly the home’s former foyer, with a chandelier and carved banister at the bottom of a staircase.

The building had its beginnings as a mid-century Cape house, and “every time Dr. Wang had a success, he would add a bit on,” Ricci said. A building with nine different elevations had to be made compliant with disability and fire codes, and a 1970s addition had to be torn down because it was no longer structurally sound.

Outside, a swimming pool was filled in and is now occupied with outdoor classroom seating in the form of a circle of stumps from unhealthy trees that were cut down. The geology of the area dictated another feature: huge boulders that were uncovered during excavation were moved into another circle in the woods, a bit like Stonehenge writ small.

Ricci declined to say what the project cost but said the project “benefited from the incredible generosity of friends and supporters of the school … we’re grateful to be in this space and also to Lincoln and the partnerships with Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, Parks and Recreation, neighbors and town officials. They’ve been absolutely lovely every step of the way.”

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”104″ gal_title=”Birches”]

School group to tackle final project cost cuts this week

The School Building Committee plans to finish trimming the school project to get it under budget this week as it also awaits final information about potential savings on things like temporary classrooms and site work.

The current estimate for construction is $84.98 million, but the construction portion of the budget approved by residents in June is $76.01 million, meaning a total of almost $10 million needs to be cut or found from some other source. In its first two “value engineering” meetings, the SBC approved net reductions of just over $900,000.

The SBC meets on Wednesday, Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. in the Hartwell multipurpose room in a week full of meetings on the school project, including a multi-board meeting on Thursday, Oct. 18. On Tuesday, the Finance Committee will meet to discuss cash flow estimates and bond strategies, solar arrays for the school using capital expenditures vs. a power purchase agreement for the school’s solar array, and the use of debt stabilization funds.

At the October 10 SBC meeting, John Snell, chair of the Green Energy Committee, outlined a combination of construction incentives and energy credits for using green energy sources that could save $400,000–$1 million in the first year, with credits of $208,000–$444,000 annually over 20 years ($4.1 million to $8.9 million total).

The SBC last week also approved several more cost reductions from a list of “value engineering” items provided by architects. The cuts approved in two meetings thus far total $1.05 million:

  • Reseeding rather than sodding playing fields — $141,836
  • Not replacing some existing bookshelves, cabinets, interior doors and markerboards (5 items total) — $511,440
  • Changing floor materials in the learning/dining commons and toilet rooms from porcelain and ceramic to linoleum and epoxy, respectively — $239,514
  • Eliminating a sun shade/canopy and PV array for the new Reed gym link — $68,245
  • Electrical and plumbing items — $90,000

However, the SBC also approved an additional expenditure of $150,000 for a slightly redesigned learning commons/media center/third grade wing, so the net savings thus far are $901,035.

Still undetermined as far as exact dollar amounts are potential savings on temporary classrooms that were budgeted at $3.68 million, photovoltaic direct costs budgeted at $3 million, auditorium work (some of which might be paid for with other funds since that space is also used for Town Meetings), and some portion of the site work (roads and paths, curbs, drainage, landscaping, etc.). A total of $4.98 million could be cut if the only site work done is code-mandated work and repairs after construction.

Finding affordable temporary classrooms (which come with big expenses in addition to their leasing and moving costs) is difficult. “Locally there’s high demand. We have a lot of schools in the area whose enrollment is bursting,” Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall said. School officials even looked at the possibility of busing Lincoln School children to the existing modular classrooms at Hanscom to save on the cost of moving and installing modular classrooms on Ballfield Road, but then every Lincoln School parent would need a pass to get onto the Air Force base, and Hanscom probably has plans for the modular classroom site anyway.

Now that it’s combed through the value-engineering list for items with relatively low dollar values, the SBC will have to discuss cutting some of the bigger-ticket line items. These include:

  • Eliminating all work in the auditorium except code upgrades, sprinklers and HVAC — $1.59 million
  • Eliminating the media center wing and making the learning/dining commons space also accommodate the media center — $1.26 million
  • Eliminating the link to the Reed gym — $1.17 million
  • Keeping preK in the main Hartwell building — $1.01 million
  • Eliminating the third-grade hub space — $210,000

Though not a true savings, officials could also move the $1.06 million cost for furniture and equipment out of the construction budget and into the school’s operating budget.

Sales of dolls, antiques providing big share of MCC budget

Joanna Schmergel (left) and Erica Gonella, MCC treasurer and director of annual giving, in a room full of dolls to be sold by the organization (click images to enlarge).

What began last year as an eBay auction of donated vintage dolls has turned into a multipronged nonprofit effort that has netted thousands of dollars for METCO and provided summer camp scholarships for 34 kids.

Joanne Schmergel’s Cerulean Way home is slowly being taken over by dolls, antiques and other items she’s collecting and selling to benefit the METCO Coordinating Committee. What was once an office become, in her words, “a full-blown doll shop, and our formal dining room is a living estate sale.”

When the MCC first began supporting the summer camp program, they dedicated a majority of funds from its annual mailing campaign—but this drastically reduced the funds available during the school year to pay for late METCO buses, MCC president Pilar Doughty said. When Schmergel approached the group with her doll sales idea, “we thought ‘we don’t have anything to lose.’ Little did we imagine that she’d be able to raise enough money to make doll sales the new cornerstone of our Boston-based student summer camp funding in 2017-18.”

A donated painting for sale, which Schmergel jokingly titles “Why Did We Buy a Farm Share?”

Last year, doll sales netted $7,800, or 45 percent of the MCC’s total annual budget. This allowed the group offer full scholarships to 48 Boston-based, METCO-enrolled Lincoln School children to the four-week Lincoln Parks & Recreation summer camp, allowing them to attend at minimal cost to them (though only 34 kids wound up participating).

Schmergel, who is in charge of MCC’s fundraising and special projects, collected more donated inventory during the summer, including 30 American Girl dolls (now on sale in individual baskets for $59.99 each) and 200 collectible Barbie dolls donated by Lincoln resident Erica Mason that will likely net $3,500–$4,500 on eBay. The MCC also plans to sell antique and vintage dolls at the Boston Toy Show and is marketing more items on LincolnTalk, including four Chinese mud clay figures and various estate-sale items.

Chinese figurines for sale by the MCC.

The next goal is raising money through various methods fund Boston-based middle-schoolers who would like to attend Lincoln Summer Day Camp. Because the middle camp tuition is costlier and the transportation logistics are tricky, the MCC hasn’t been able to advertise the camp scholarship program widely to middle schoolers.

“The MCC had seen steady, gradual decline in both volunteerism and monetary donations over the past five years, and this seriously impacted the number and frequency of programs that we have been able to offer,” Doughty said. “When Joanna came to the team with renewed energy and a ‘can-do and will-do’ attitude, she provided a breath of fresh air. Knowing that we’re on stable financial ground for the year (because of her fundraiser) allows our leadership team to step out of panic mode and plan more effectively for the future.”

Corrections

  • The agenda for the October 20 State of the Town meeting posted in the Squirrel on October 9 was incorrect. Here is the correct agenda for the meting, which will take place in Brooks auditorium from 10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.:
    • Campus building projects (10:30–11 a.m.)
    • South Lincoln planning (11–11:30 a.m.)
    • deCordova bylaws (11:30a.m.–noon)
    • Open forum (12–12:30 p.m.)
    • Post-meeting table session (12:45–1:15 p.m.)
  • A photo caption in the October 10 story headlined “Sales of dolls, antiques providing big share of MCC budget” was initially incorrect; the second person in the photo is Erica Gonella, the MCC’s treasurer and director of annual giving.

Both posts have bene updated to reflect these corrections.

School officials begin cutting items from school project

The School Building Committee on Wednesday started the process of changing and removing elements of the school project to meet a voter-mandated budget, making a handful of adjustments from a list provided by SMMA Architects that totaled just over $1.4 million. But the group has more work to do to reach the target total reduction of $8.97 million.

A week ago, the SBC was presented with two independent cost estimates of $102 million and $109 million for the project. Since then, architects and Daedalus, the owner’s project manager, took a closer look at those figures to try to reconcile them. The lower estimate rose while the higher one fell, and the resulting higher figure (the one that the SBC must use for planning) is $104.28 million.

Over the next two weeks, the SBC will continue the “value engineering” process of voting on items to cut that add up to $8.97 million. That figure represents the difference between the $76.01 million construction portion of the total $93.9 million budget approved at a Special Town Meeting in June and the latest construction cost estimate of $84.98 million.

The full project budget also includes non-construction “soft costs”—fees, contingencies, escalation percentages, furniture, technology, permitting, etc. Since June, the estimate for those soft costs has also risen from $17.9 million to $19.3 million.

The areas where cost estimates rose the most compared to June were site work, which went up by $5.22 million, and temporary modular classrooms, which rose by $2.94 million. Before the June vote, the site work plans were more incomplete than the rest of the project and it turns out the required work is slightly more extensive and costly than expected. The earlier estimates had also assumed that some space on the Hartwell side of campus could be sued as temporary “swing space” during construction, but since the spring, it’s become clear that the pods can’t be used for this because they are fully occupied and would also require costly code upgrades to be used as regular classrooms.

The value engineering list includes line items of possible cuts but also a few additions. The SBC on Wednesday approved one of those additions—$150,000 for a tweak to the layout of the learning commons.media center portion of the building that members already approved in principle at their previous meeting.

Some of the biggest dollar items on the value engineering list are program changes, such as eliminating all work to the auditorium except HVAC, sprinklers and fire alarms ($1.59 million); eliminating the media center wing and putting that function in the learning commons area ($1.26 million); eliminating the link between the Reed gym and the main building ($1.17 million); and keeping preK in the main Hartwell building rather than adding it to the renovated building ($1.01 million).

School officials are understandably resistant to these sorts of reductions. “We hate to see programs cut before other things,” said Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall. As for the idea of not building a link between the school and Reed gym, middle school principal Sharon Hobbs was more emphatic, saying it’s “unacceptable” to keep the two buildings detached from each other for safety reasons.

A covered walkway was actually in the initial plan when the gym was built in 1970, but ironically, “it was value-engineered out,” said Buck Creel, Lincoln Public Schools’ administrator for business and finance.

Other ideas floated

Several other cost-cutting ideas were floated as well, but officials need more information before deciding if they are feasible. For example, if the town is able to buy the modular classrooms now being used at Hanscom on favorable terms, it could save up to $1.7 million. Another possibility is reducing or eliminating the direct cost for the photovoltaic system, which would save up to $3 million. That would require amending the town’s solar bylaw to allow selling excess electricity to the grid and working out a favorable contract with the PV vendor.

Yet another possibility is moving the cost of furniture and equipment from the construction budget into the school’s operating budget. This could save $1.06 million on the project, but that money would still have to be appropriated as part of the annual budget process.

Also at the SBC meeting, Town Manager Tim Higgins reported on preliminary research by officials on possible supplementary funding sources for the school project. These include:

  • The Community Preservation Act, which might be applicable to recreational items in the project such as playgrounds
  • Chapter 90 state roadway funds and the Complete Streets state grant program, which might be tapped for Ballfield Road and/or walkway improvements
  • A town fund that receives annual fees paid by cable TV companies, which may be applicable for work in the Brooks auditorium, where televised Town Meetings are held
  • Grants to help pay for photovoltaic (PV) solar panel installations on or near the school

Officials are gathering more information on all of these ideas, but meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The SBC is due to finalize the cost-cutting process on October 17, which will be followed the next day by a multiboard meeting; the annual State of the Town meeting on October 20; a second multiboard meeting/community forum on November 15; and bonding votes by residents at a Special Town Meeting and the polls on December 1 and 3, respectively.

Magic Garden to add infants’ room, second toddler room

Early next year, the Magic Garden Children’s Center will start accepting infants, add another toddler room, and expand into a second location—the “stone church” parish house rooms vacated by the Birches School.

There is a perennial waiting list for Magic Garden’s Rainbow Room, which offers the only full-day, full-year toddler program in Lincoln for children are ages 15 months to 2 years, nine months. The satellite facility on Bedford Road will add a second room for nine children in that age range as well as a room for seven infants up to 15 months old. The Rainbow Room will eventually shift to a more narrow age range and the new room will have the younger toddlers, with the exact distribution depending on the student census from year to year.

Two longtime teachers from the Hartwell facility—Michele Landurand, a pre-K teacher in the Starburst Room for 27 years, and Karen Puglielli, a teacher in the Moonbeam for 25 years—will move to the new facility, and each will be joined by a newly hired teacher aide. Both teachers are already certified to care for infants and toddlers.

“Magic Garden has a culture and an ambience, and we want to make sure that stays consistent across locations,” said Andrew Pang, president of the board of directors.

Karen Puglielli

Michele Landurand

The space will undergo renovations this fall, including replacing an existing exterior window with a new door to meet the code requirement for three exits (one of which is wide enough to roll out cribs during an emergency). There will also new appliances and cabinetry as well as sinks for hand-washing and snack-making. The renovations will be paid from grants and some of Magic Garden’s accumulated reserve funds. “The school is in strong financial shape,” Pang said.

“The First Parish classrooms are ideal for this purpose, filled with natural light from the large, south-facing windows and offering direct access to a new, age-appropriate outdoor play space,” said Lori Leo, Magic Garden’s director.

Magic Garden was established in 1982 by a group of Lincoln parents to fulfill a need for full-time early education and care in town. It’s licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) and enrolls children from Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Weston, Concord, Waltham, and other area towns.

“The board of directors and faculty are thrilled to extend the range of Magic Garden’s services to fill these longstanding gaps for local families,” Pang said. “This builds on our 36-year mission of providing high quality early education and care to support area parents.”

Latest cost estimates for school project are well over budget

Town officials were chagrined Wednesday night to learn that preliminary cost estimates for the Lincoln School project are substantially higher than the $93.9 million budget approved by residents at a Special Town Meeting in June.

At its meeting Wednesday evening, the School Building Committee (SBC) and others heard the two independent estimates for the project—one at $102 million and one at $109 million—in shocked silence. Those numbers are 8.6 percent and 16 percent higher than the original figure, respectively.

On Friday, architects and representatives from Daedalus, the owner’s project manager representing the town, will have an all-day meeting to go over the cost estimating figures in detail and try to reconcile the two estimates by making sure they used the same set of assumptions as to scope, quantities and costs of materials, etc.

“We need to understand why” both figures are significantly higher than the earlier estimate, said Delwyn Williamson, director of cost estimating at Daedalus.

The gross square footage of the project has changed slightly in design tweaks since June, but square footage “is not really making a difference at this point,” Williamson said. One of the contributing factors for the increase may be in the cost of modular classrooms, because early proposals incorrectly assumed that the Hartwell pods could be used for some of the swing space during the two phases of construction, she said. The cost of reusing the modular classrooms from the recent Hanscom projects is also higher than anticipated, but it’s still unclear exactly how much these issues affected the estimates.

Between this Friday and the next SBC meeting on October 3, SMMA will come up with a list of “value engineering” items for the SBC to look at as they consider what aspects of the project to change or remove in order to meet the mandated budget.

“We have a very high level of sensitivity to the community’s need to have that price as low as possible while still preserving the program,” said SBC member Kim Bodnar.

On a hopeful note, Buck Creel, the Lincoln Public Schools administrator for business and finance, noted that the initial estimate for the 2012 project came in at more than $60 million, but the SBC was able to get that amount down to $49 million (although the project eventually failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority at Town Meeting). Part of that reduction came about when the SBC elected not to relocate preK from the Hartwell building to the main school—a move that is also in the current plan, at least for now.

More meetings coming up

The SBC is scheduled to approve a final cost figure on October 17. The group may add another meeting on October 10. There will be a multiboard meeting on October 18 (two days before the annual State of the Town meeting) to gather questions from other town boards, and a second multiboard meeting/community forum on November 15.

A two-thirds majority is required at a Special Town Meeting on December 1 to approve bonding for the project. There will also be a December 3 town-wide ballot that must win a simple majority for the project to advance.

The $93.9 million Option L3 was the mid-priced choice among the three options presented to voters in June. In the final vote, 74 percent of residents voted to move ahead with Option L3, compared to 17 percent for Option C ($94.3 million) and 9 percent for Option L2 ($83 million).