Heated discussion over Lincoln and Minuteman

By Alice Waugh

Many of the 16 towns in the Minuteman High School district are ready to move forward with a new regional agreement, but Lincoln is standing firm on its demand for compensation as host community to a new high school—a stance that could potentially torpedo a new agreement.

Selectmen from the member towns met on December 2 to try to agree on a deal in principle for amending the agreement that would be acceptable to all 16 towns. The idea, originally proposed by Boxborough Selectman Vince Amoroso, would achieve several things:

• Changing the voting weight and the financial formula by which towns are assessed for their share of the school’s costs.
• Allowing towns who want to secede from the district do so without having to get agreement from all 16 towns (Wayland and Sudbury have gone on record as wanting to leave the district, and Dover, Boxborough and Weston may want to do so as well).
• Requiring out-of-district towns (which pay tuition to send students to Minuteman) to also pay a share of the capital costs, including construction of the new school.
• Compensating Lincoln for being host community to the new school, which is expected to be built entirely on Lincoln land just over the border with Lexington, where the existing school is located.

Lincoln Selectman Peter Braun, the board’s liaison to Minuteman, has argued that the town will incur greater public safety costs with the new school inside its borders, and that Lincoln has foregone significant property tax revenue for the 47 acres in town owned by Minuteman.

In addition, all 16 towns will have to pay more than expected for the new building because the district recently learned that some of the costs of the new building are not eligible for state reimbursement. Lincoln will be liable for an additional $75,000 to $90,000 per year, Braun said.

Braun had proposed that Lincoln should be allowed to send four students per year to Minuteman tuition-free, but that idea “was chewed up pretty quickly” at the December 2 meeting, he told his fellow Lincoln selectmen at their meeting on December 7. He and officials from other towns instead suggested an annual compensation of $138,000, with the figure indexed to rise annually with inflation.

After the December 2 meeting, Arlington Selectman Dan Dunn emailed selectmen in other towns and asked them to gauge the level of support in their towns for the $138,000 proposal. If others were generally favorable, the next step would be to ensure the entire revised agreement was acceptable to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education before it went to Special Town Meetings this winter.

But the answer came swiftly from Lexington and Concord, whose selectmen said they were opposed to the $138,000 compensation for Lincoln. At least one selectmen described Lincoln’s monetary request as “extortion.”

“So I think we’re stuck in the mud, basically,” Braun said.

Sharon Antia, Lincoln’s representative on the MSC, argued after Braun’s report to the board that Lincoln should not throw a roadblock into the process by insisting on compensation—a sentiment that met with a stinging rebuke from Braun.

“If we think the new funding formula is patently unfair, then I think we should fight the funding formula, but not ask that we should be treated specially. To ask for money for Lincoln at the expense of all just because we can is unseemly,” Antia said.

“The issue of forgone tax revenue also a non-starter. We gave that up 45 years ago, and to try to claw back the lost revenue now is unusual and undignified,” she added.

Lincoln will receive about $1.2 million in licenses and fees connected to the new building, Antia said. Also, while the town will be liable for some increased public safety costs, Lexington has said they will still be the first responder to the school, she added.

“There were some total mischaracterizations of facts,” Braun said heatedly after Antia’s remarks. His indignation caused Selectman Noah Eckhouse to pound the table with his water bottle and say, “I don’t want this to devolve into a brawl… the school has never paid much heed to us as the host community, but let’s try to keep it constructive.”

“Advocating for your town is not unseemly and undignified, Sharon,” Braun said. “Our charge here is to make best arrangements for our town. That’s all I’m doing. It’s never been the case that all we’ve been asking for is reimbursement for costs. Never was that the basis for anything and it’s not the basis for this [$138,000] number either. I don’t understand how you could possibly have come to that conclusion.”

The crux of the matter, Braun continued, is that “other towns want to take away most of our vote and give it to themselves. They want to take some of our money and give it to themselves. My response to that—and I believe the consensus of this board has been—that it’s not our job in Lincoln to balance Arlington’s books or any other town’s books.”

The revised regional agreement being proposed will benefit Arlington by about $250,000, while Lincoln’s costs will go up by up to $90,000 a year, “and basically most of it would go to Arlington. That’s a major chunk of what the $138,000 is all about… In effect, Lincoln and other towns would be paying more and they’d be paying less,” Braun said.

“So it is to cover costs?” Antia responded.

“Municipal costs are not the driver here,” Braun said. “Remaking the [regional agreement] means our interests need to be recognized as well.”

Using the word “extortion” is “mind-boggling that they would even come to that characterization in a reasonable discussion among people of a business deal,” Braun added. “It’s unfathomable to me that that kind of word is not being used for Arlington.”

While emphasizing that she was not speaking for the Finance Committee, “I think we would say there’s nothing wrong with advocating for your town,” said FinCom member Laura Sander, who was also at the Lincoln selectmen’s meeting. “The original agreement was written before Proposition 2½. I actually think the $138,000 isn’t enough, but I think it’s a fair compromise… I also think this is nothing compared to what Arlington is asking from a lot of the smaller towns.”

Regardless of what compensation Lincoln gets in the end, “we have a bigger sense of responsibility and I think Lincoln would step up to that,” Sander said.

If Lincoln weren’t the host community, the town would most likely withdraw from the district, but “we would feel uncomfortable having a huge school [in town] with no representation,” Eckhouse said. What Lincoln wants is “normalization” with “no punitive effects… we don’t want to suffer any pain, but we will pay our share.”

“I like very much what Laura said that Lincoln would step up and we will do what we need to do,” Selectman Renel Fredriksen said. “I would like to get away from talking about the lost tax revenue from the land because that’s an issue that was settled many years ago. It’s not going to turn into tax revenue, and by making that comparison, it sounds very negative.”

At the end of the day, “it seems very unlikely we’re going to get a 16-town agreement on any set of regional agreement changes, leading us again back to the issue of voting on the project on its merits,” Town Administrator Tim Higgins said.

“I think our messaging here is important. For what it’s worth. I agree with Tim and I don’t think [a new regional agreement] is going to get worked out,” Eckhouse said. “The 11th hour isn’t here yet, and there’s no need to duke it out with each other because it’s going to end up becoming a non-issue. There’s lots of passion at the table right now, and I think we need to change our tone a bit.

“Sharon, we need you to step up and represent the good intents of the town of Lincoln,” Eckhouse said to Antia. “Let’s not triangulate this thing.”

Lincoln’s Capital Planning Committee is scheduled to meet with Minuteman officials to discuss the matter  on Tuesday, Dec. 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Town Office Building.