A great blue heron and his reflection make a heart. (Photo by Harold McAleer)
Readers may submit photos for consideration for Lincoln Through the Lens by emailing them to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. If your photo is published, you’ll receive credit in the Squirrel. Photos must be taken in Lincoln and include the date, location, and names of any people who are identifiable in the photo. Previously published photos can be viewed on the Lincoln Through the Lens page of the Lincoln Squirrel.
The Planning Board is looking for residents to participate in the South Lincoln Planning Implementation Committee (SLPIC), one of two new groups intended to promote business development in town.
The SLPIC hopes to create a more vibrant, attractive place at the hub of Lincoln where businesses, the MBTA station and several types of residences are concentrated. The group will be a subcommittee of the Planning Board and will focus on planning projects and establish project-specific working teams that include additional members representing various stakeholders based on the type of project.
Anyone interested in participating in this committee or a project-specific team should contact Jennifer Burney, Director of Planning and Land Use, at burneyj@lincolntown.org or 781-259-2684.
The First Parish in Lincoln (FPL) annual Children’s Christmas Pageant will take place on Sunday, Dec. 18 at 11:30 a.m. in Bemis Hall (there is no snow date). Goodies will be served after the pageant through donations by the families of FPL. Anyone with questions may contact Kathy Cronin, Acting Director of Religious Education, at kathycronin@firstparishinlincoln.org.
Nancy Nelson
After 39 years of service, Nancy Nelson, superintendent of Minute Man National Historical Park, will retire on January 3, 2017. Nelson’s career has includes roles as an environmental protection specialist and later a park planner, landscape architect and special assistant to three regional directors. She played an active part in planning for the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island restoration/rehabilitation projects and for two new national parks (Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, and Lowell National Historic Park.
A primary focus of Nelson’s tenure at MMNHP since 1993 has been the development of the 800-acre Battle Road Unit of the park: design and completion of the award winning Battle Road Trail, rehabilitation of historic structures and historic agrarian landscapes, and construction of new and improved facilities to serve 1 million annual visitors. Recently, under the leadership of the Friends of Minute Man National Park, the park pursued the exploration, rehabilitation and interpretation of the site of “Parker’s Revenge,” a little-known battle on April 19, 1775.
Jack Hutchinson, Dante Muzila and Calvin Terpstra operate their robot during the FTC event.
The last two weekends have been very busy for Lincoln robotics, as the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team and all six of the Lincoln Recreation Department’s FIRST Lego League (FLL) teams competed in their first events this season.
FTC is an annual challenge in which teams of students in grades 7-12 build robots that fit into an 18-inch cube to accomplish certain tasks. The game is played in a 12-by-12-foot playing field. FLL is similar to FTC, posing an annual challenge with new obstacles to be completed by a robot, though in this case the machines are made of Legos and the students are in grades 4-8. The FLL teams also create a project in which they brainstorm a solution to a real-life challenge.
At a qualifier in Canton on December 4, the FTC GearTicks received the Think Award, which is given to the team whose engineering notebook best reflects the team’s engineering design process journey. Jack Hutchinson, one of the team’s drivers, thought it was a great opportunity to test out this year’s robot. “This excellent start to our season really got our team excited for the coming year,” he said. Teammate Anna Sander agreed. “We had a great chance to meet other teams and see all the cool designs they’re using,” she said.
In separate qualifiers, the FLL Orange GearTicks took second place in their robot competition and received the Champion’s Award given to the top team at the competition, and the Green GearTicks had a great project presentation and ended the day with their robot in 11th place. The Purple GearTicks received the Inspiration Core Values Award, and the Yellow GearTicks received a judges’ award as Rising Stars. Meanwhile, the Blue GearTicks received the Robot Design Award for their interesting turret design and the Red GearTicks won the “Programming Award” for their understanding of PID controllers.
The Lincoln robotics program derives much of its strength from the support it receives from the community. Although the GearTicks FLL teams are run through the Recreation Department, they rely entirely on parent and high school volunteers to coach each team.
The FIRST Tech Challenge robotics team. Front row: Evan Lee, Howie Tsang and Irene Terpstra. Back row: Caleb Sander, Dante Muzila, Laura Appleby, Jack Hutchinson, Calvin Terpstra, Catherine Appleby and Anna Sander.
“The judges were impressed by the range of in-town experts we consulted for our research project,” team member Emily Appleby said. For their “Active Deer Warning Signs” project, the students worked with Chris Bibbo at the DPW and Tom Gumbart at the Conservation Commission to investigate the problem of deer and cars on Lincoln’s roads.
FLL students agreed that the team has been a great experience. Emily Feng joined the Lincoln robotics program because she wanted to “improve my teamwork skills and learn about programming and building robots,” and she and her teammates certainly succeeded. The team also learned a lot about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math and how to compete under pressure.
“It’s interesting to see how other teams solve the same missions that we do in very different ways,” said Amelia Pillar.
“Out team really learned a lot and improved our teamwork,” said Alex Stewart.
“Sometimes it’s stressful to set up the robot in a gymnasium full of screaming people,” but the teams were equal to the pressure, said Stavros First.
The FTC team advanced from the Canton qualifier and will compete in the Massachusetts FTC State Competition on March 4 at Natick High School. The Orange GearTicks also advanced to the Massachusetts FLL State Tournament, in which they will compete on December 17 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The Red and Blue GearTicks FLL teams will also compete in further qualifiers.
In the inaugural year of early voting in Massachusetts, Lincoln wound up with 40.7 percent of its residents casting ballots early—the fifth-highest percentage in the Commonwealth.
The highest percentage belonged to Eastham with 47.4 percent, followed by Carlisle, Mashpee and Concord. Overall turnout (the proportion of eligible voters who cast ballots) in Massachusetts was 68 percent in Massachusetts and about 58 percent nationally. The official number for Lincoln wasn’t in as of late last week, but Town Clerk Susan Brooks estimated it would be close to or slightly above the 2012 turnout of 78 percent.
Thirty-four states permitted early voting in some form for the election last month. “There are a lot of variations on the theme” in terms of when, where and by what method early voting may take place, Brooks said. As it was this year in-person early voting (in addition to absentee ballots) will be an option in even-numbered years in Massachusetts from now on.
“Lincoln is highly educated and highly opinionated,” Brooks said when asked why she thought Lincoln had such a large early turnout. Also, it’s possible that “people voted early to be done with paying attention” to the bitterly fought race, she added. “They just wanted to be able to check out.”
The December 8 article headlined “Dwyer hopes to modernize town government’s outreach methods” incorrectly stated that Jonathan Dwyer met his wife Carolyn at the First Baptist Church in Newton. They actually met when both were students at Hamilton College. The article also gave the wrong year for when he started serving on the Parks and Recreation Committee. Dwyer joined in 2010 and is currently in the first year of his third three-year term.
Peter Pantazelos
Peter Pantazelos, 85 (November 26) — Executive nice president and CFO of Thermo Electron for 40 years.
Edward Gerrig, 87 (November 14) — husband of Bernice “Bunny” (Hoffman) Gerrig; resident at The Commons.
Mary T. Tori, 90 (November 17) — wife of the late John E. Torri, great-grandmother of five.
Jonathan Dwyer at home.
Jonathan Dwyer’s forte at work and as a volunteer is making incremental improvements, and he hopes to apply the same skill set to the job of selectman if he is elected in March to replace outgoing Selectman Peter Braun.
Dwyer, 48, currently works for a large insurance company doing internal consulting to improve software speed and quality after doing something similar for Fidelity for many years. The Mahopac, N.Y. native moved to Lincoln with his wife, Lincoln native Carolyn Caswell Dwyer, around 1999. He started his Lincoln public service as chair of the Celebrations Committee, succeeding Nancy Pimental in heading up planning for the town’s Fourth of July events as well as other holiday commemorations. In 2010, he joined the Parks and Recreation Committee, which he now chairs.
“I feel strongly that you give back,” Dwyer said. “Being engaged in the town’s civil and government life opens up a whole bunch of relationships with people who work for the town and the citizens, people who are enthusiastic about making a difference in other people’s lives. Understanding how the town works and being a part of that is personally satisfying to me.”
Dwyer already has a busy life as the father of three girls, the youngest of whom attends the Lincoln School. He knows that if he becomes a selectman, he’ll have to step back from some of his outside activities, including one that has taken much of his time for the past several years: being moderator of the First Baptist Church in Newton.
As Dwyer described it, a church moderator is sort of a president or CEO—”a person who organizes its governance, makes sure the minister has what e or she needs to be effective, making sure the budget is being actively managed so the church is financially sound and the congregation is engaged.” His contributions have included making the service more approachable for people who did not grow up in the Christian tradition and modernizing the church’s governance.
Modernizing things by degrees—whether with software, a church or town government— is Dwyer’s sweet spot. “A lot of these institutions were designed 150 yrs ago. There are ways of collaborating and relating to each other that are different from back then, and we have to keep on adjusting,” he said. For example, in many situations involving software development, “people have grown into silos of not working together over time. My job is to bring people together, make decisions earlier and turn out improvements more incrementally.”
The town is at various stages of pursuing some major capital projects including a renovated or rebuilt Lincoln School, a community center, expanded recreational facilities and more affordable housing. Given the costs involved, “we’re going to be living with these decisions for a long time, and it would be good if more of the town was engaged. I’m not so sure our dialogue today includes everybody, and I’m wondering if can do better in getting folks to understand what decisions are coming up and why their opinion is important,” he said.
Asked about how he sees these projects falling into place, Dwyer said, “I’m coming in with an open mind. I’m in favor of all these building projects, but I don’t know about the priority yet. I hope we can do all of them, but I don’t know if we can. The town should have the opportunity to prioritize and decide.”
As part of that process, Dwyer (if he is elected) hopes to begin by making Town Meeting—the town’s primary decision-making apparatus—easier to follow and attend. Among his ideas, which he has shared with Town Moderator Sarah Cannon Holden, are making the informational slides shown in the auditorium larger and more legible, or perhaps videotaping presentations by town boards and committees and making them available online beforehand. Other possibilities: having a time limit and a timer that speakers and audience members could see to control the amount of time at the microphone, and allowing instant feedback or even voting via a smartphone app or another digital device.
Although streamlining processes and helping people work together more effectively is central for Dwyer, so is the independent and questioning spirit that is part of the “Lincoln way.” He was raised as a Catholic but later found a home at the First Baptist in Newton (which is American Baptist, a denomination from which Southern Baptists split off just before the Civil War). He liked the fact that congregants felt free to think about and interpret the Bible and sermons in their own way.
“I was looking for an open-minded place that didn’t tell you what to think,” Dwyer said.
Peter Braun (2014 photo)
Looking back on his six years as one of Lincoln’s selectmen, Peter Braun is proud of his accomplishments but is looking forward to a future oriented more around grandchildren than town government.
“I feel strongly that it’s important to encourage new people to come into the office and for selectmen to step aside and play some other role, if they are so inclined,” Braun said when asked why he decided not to run for a third two-year term. “It’s not about me, it’s about the long-term stability and governance of the institution we call the town of Lincoln.”
A second consideration for Braun is the pending arrival of a grandson, the child of his son and daughter-in-law in Jamaica Plain. “This is going to a big deal for us,” said Braun, adding that he and his wife “are very baby-oriented.” His daughter-in-law and her family are Chilean, so he also plans to learn Spanish. Meanwhile, his career as lawyer working for community hospitals is winding down, largely because many of his clients have been swallowed up by larger hospitals.
“I’m getting to a point where my life circumstances are changing,” said Braun, who is 67. “You reach a certain point in life where you real you need to think about the horizon.”
As Braun ran for his second term in 2014, the town was grappling with the fallout of the failed school funding vote in 2012. Challenger Vincent Cannistraro—who had been a critic of the projects’ cost estimates—ran a vigorous campaign against Braun but lost to the incumbent by a margin of 487-372.
Parks and Recreation Committee Chair Jonathan Dwyer, who has declared his candidacy for the vacant seat, “has my strong endorsement,” Braun said. Dwyer’s father-in-law John Caswell, himself a former selectman in the 1980s, was one of those who urged Braun to try for a seat on the board. “He was one of my inspirations to run for selectman,” said Braun, adding that Caswell unfortunately passed away shortly before his mentee was sworn in.
As a selectman, Braun played a major role in expanding the membership and overall role of the Capital Planning Committee. The panel, which at one time consisted of a single at-large member and four members from other boards and committees, added four at-large members.
The planning for Minuteman High School’s new building and the construction of the Route 2 flyover at Crosby’s Corner were two “challenging issues” that also reached major milestones during Braun’s tenure, though Braun noted that the Route 2 project had been in the works long before he became a selectman. “I was just a steward for the implementation phase” of the Route 2 project, though “it happened to be a pretty active tail end,” Braun said, referring to the controversy over tree-cutting when work commenced in 2013.
As for Minuteman, “I know not everyone was happy with the result, but I think in the long term it will serve us well,” Braun said. Lincoln residents voted to withdraw from the Minuteman district in late 2015 after failing to win concessions from other towns for being the host community for the new school.
Still unresolved is the fate of the Lincoln School. After the 2012 defeat, the town reapplied several times for state funding and expects to hear by January about its 2016 application. Braun initially raised questions about the project but eventually became an “avid proponent,” he said. Now the town may be faced with paying for a major renovation of school replacement entirely with its own money.
“This is a truly essential part of our future. Whether we fix what there is in place or do some more expensive and transformative, it’s essential that we step up and do the right thing for our schools,” Braun said.
Braun was also instrumental in launching the Selectman’s Newsletter and serving as an active liaison to Lincoln’s state and U.S. legislative delegations, as well as with Hanscom Air Force Base and the Hanscom Area Towns Committee. Going forward, he hopes to stay involved with those efforts in an informal or ad hoc way, “but that would be up to the future Board of Selectmen,” he said.
Karin Levy (left) and Nancy Fleming, co-chairs of First Parish in Lincoln’s Touch of Christmas Fair, with the greenery that volunteers will use to make holiday wreaths and centerpieces. The fair will be on Saturday, Dec. 10 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Santa arrives to greet children and pose for pictures at 11 a.m.
Jackson Gillman will perform a half-hour hour set starting around 8:30 p.m. at the next LOMA (Lincoln Open-Mike Acoustic) on Monday, Dec. 12 from 7-10 pm. in the Lincoln Public Library’s Tarbell room. Admission is free and refreshments are provided. Jackson has been described as zany, intelligent, professional, whimsical and inspirational, or in his own words, a “stand-up chameleon” who incorporates comedy, drama, music, dance, mime, and sign language. Jackson featured at the National Storytelling Festival in Tennessee four times (watch this video of him telling his “Foodie” story at Club Passim) and has thrice been Teller in Residence at the International Storytelling Center
LOMA is a monthly event. Performers can sign up at the event or email Rich Eilbert at loma3re@gmail.com for a slot. There is a sound system with mikes and instrumental pickups suitable for individuals or small groups.
Finding Dory will be shown at the Lincoln Public Library on Wednesday, Dec. 14 at 2 p.m. In the animagted film, amnesiac fish Dory journeys to be reunited with her parents. Along the way, she is captured and taken to a California public aquarium, from which Marlin and Nemo attempt to rescue her. Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Free popcorn.
Lt. Gov. Karen Polito, State Rep Thomas Stanley, Selectman Peter Braun and Town Administrator Tim Higgins at the signing of the Community Compact.
In a December 1 ceremony in Lincoln, Lt. Gov. Karen Polito and town officials signed a Community Compact by which Lincoln will pursue best practices in three areas: water resource management, housing and economic development, and business continuity. In return, the town can get technical assistance as well as extra points on grants and grant opportunities from the state.
Under terms of the two-year agreement, Lincoln will work to implement stormwater management measures and land use regulations that help promote infiltration, control flooding and reduce pollution. Lincoln is now eligible to join nine other area towns in applying for a $99,000 Efficiency and Regionalization Grant, a regional grant that would provide technical assistance for communities to comply with permitting requirements for municipal separate storm sewer systems.
In the area of business continuity, the town hopes to digitize paper records and implement a permit tracking software program as well as creating a more robust GIS/GPS program that integrates with the software. These measures should result in improved operational efficiencies, both interdepartmentally and with the public. The town is also eligible to apply next year for a Community Compact IT Grant of up to $200,000.
Lincoln will look into aligning land use regulations, capital investments and other municipal actions with housing and economic development, the master plan or other plans for future growth. The town will also promote development and reuse of previously developed sites and create opportunities for various stakeholders in economic development efforts, such as by helping identify priority development projects, improve local permitting processes, and proactively address obstacles to housing and job creation with a focus on the South Lincoln area.
“We really want to make it a vibrant village center,” Director of Planning and Land Use Jennifer Burney said at the ceremony.
Polito praised Burney, Town Administrator Tim Higgins, Selectman Peter Bran and town Lincoln officials for their efforts. “You are our public workforce across our state that really binds us together,” she said. “The state is not a place where we should be making decisions; it’s really at the local level, and you are the people closest to the grassroots. If we strengthen local government, we will truly knit together a stronger Massachusetts.”