Happy 2013 from the Lincoln Squirrel! I hope everyone behaved themselves on New Year’s Eve, unlike my friend here…
Do you have some random squirrelly video, picture or text you’d like to submit? I’ll post stuff like this from time to time, and you can find them in the “just for fun” category. Shoot me an email at lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. And don’t forget to “like” the Squirrel on Facebook to get updates in your Facebook news stream:
By Alice Waugh
State officials have given Lincoln another two months to decide how to proceed with the school building project, but they appeared to offer little wiggle room as far as allowing changes to their approved plan.
The town has until February 28, 2013 to “assess community support and examine how best to proceed,” said the December 14 letter to Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall from Mary Pichetti, director of capital planning for the Massachusetts School Building Authority. McFall and School Committee Chair Jennifer Glass wrote on November 15 to ask for an extension to try to keep the project alive after it failed to get a two-thirds majority at the November 3 Town Meeting.
[Read more…] about State gives town two months on school building project
By Alice Waugh
The Board of Selectmen will not support the idea of bringing the “same exact” project to another Town Meeting, even if that was the only way to retain the state funding.
“It would be disrespectful of the Town Meeting process,” Selectman Renel Fredriksen said at the board’s December 17 meeting.
“I think it was very clear,” said Selectman Noah Eckhouse, referring to the November 3 Town Meeting vote at which the $49 million project failed to garner a two-thirds majority. “It may have been a majority [in favor], but it was a down vote. We don’t want to run the same project up the flagpole.”
Eckhouse added that he “might” support having a vote on a project that was “meaningfully different,” even though he knew there was “never a question” that the town would drop out of the pipeline for a promised state grant of $21 million for the project.
“There are many, many reasons people voted against it,” Braun said. “To just revisit it would be counterproductive for town culture and goodwill.”
When you consider the votes that would be necessary, “the numbers are daunting,” Braun said. The Town Meeting tally was 370 in favor of the project and 321 against (54 percent to 45 percent). If the same number of “no” votes were cast in a second Town Meeting, “another 270 people would have to show up and all vote yes” to achieve a two-third majority, he said.
Put another way, if the same group of 691 voters came to a second Town Meeting, 93 of them would have to switch their votes from “no” to “yes” for the measure to pass.
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By Alice Waugh
The vast majority of people with a terminal medical condition want to die peacefully at home rather than in a hospital, but many seniors don’t know that Medicare will cover hospice care with no out-of-pocket expenses, a hospice representative said at a Council on Aging talk.
Erin Sanford, a patient transition representative from AseraCare Hospice, explained what hospice offers and how Medicare covers it while also dispelling some misconceptions at the November 16 session in Bemis Hall.
The word hospice is related to hospitality, or “providing a place of shelter for weary travelers,” Sanford said. The first hospice was founded in 1967 in London by Dame Cicely Saunders, who felt that end-of life care should provide pain relief, preserve the patient’s dignity, and help the patent and family with the psychological and spiritual pain of death. Medicare added a hospice benefit in 1983. Medicaid, MassHealth and most private insurance plans also have a hospice benefit.
[Read more…] about CoA speaker explains what hospice is—and isn’t
By Alice Waugh
School officials are still waiting for a response to their request from the state for more time to achieve enough “yes” votes to allow the school building project to go forward.
At a meeting of three town panels on December 5, Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall said she had spoken by phone to representatives of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) and gotten “verbal approval of additional time to work with the community” until at least the end of February.
[Read more…] about Town still awaiting word on extension request for school project
Dead trees including this one on Weston Road have been targeted or removal by the DPW. (Photo by Alice Waugh)
By Alice Waugh
The Department of Public Works will host a December 19 public hearing to discuss the fate of several roadside trees that have been slated for removal for public safety purposes.
Twelve of the 28 trees within the town’s roadside rights of way have been targeted because they interfere with sight lines at the intersection of Route 117 and Lincoln Road, where 12 are targeted adjacent to 203 Lincoln Rd. Others were tagged because they are dead. The specific trees are listed on the notice of the hearing, where residents with any comments or objections to the removals may speak. The hearing will be held at 8 p.m. at the DPW headquarters at 30 Lewis St.
Any trees cut down by the DPW will be brought in segments (unsplit) to its Lewis Street site, where residents are welcome to take them for firewood or other purposes. If a contractor is hired, that company will haul away the wood, said DPW head Chris Bibbo.
Branches from trees as well as many others that were removed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and other storms are also available in the form of wood chips at the DPW. Anyone with a Lincoln transfer station sticker may take wood chips and logs.
The Lincoln Town Office Building
By Alice Waugh
Officials and workers have been pleasantly surprised at the craftsmanship they’ve discovered inside the walls of the century-old Town Office Building, whose renovation project is proceeding on schedule.
At a November 16 Council on Aging presentation, Richard Thuma of project manager Bargmann Hendrie + Archetype, Inc. and Assistant Town Administrator Anita Scheipers showed photos of the building’s interior wall structure with angled braces between the vertical studs, which is not something found in modern buildings. [Read more…] about Town Office Building renovations coming along
Keep limber in winter with all sorts of activities, including ballroom dancing and yoga for adults, basketball and musical theater for kids, and skiing for everyone!
Hurricane Sandy damaged plenty of Lincoln tress — many still at the height of their autumn colors.
Accuweather.com offers some amazing statistics on Sandy: the second-lowest barometric pressure ever reorder for a hurricane (27.76 inches at sea), waves of 39.67 feet (recorded at a buoy about 20 miles east of Bermuda), and 9-foot storm surges in New Haven and The Battery, N.Y. Lincoln got off fairly lightly, though more than half of homes in town lost power in the storm, and the muffled roar of generators could be hear in many neighborhoods for days afterward. Still, it could have been worse — Redhouse, Md., got 26 inches of snow.
Elizabeth Cherniak of South Great Road heard a loud crash as a tree fell across power lines on the road adjacent to her driveway. “Then a transformer exploded—it was like a bomb going off,” she said. “Then I noticed little fires up in the wires and the tree trunk was glowing” as the tree began to burn. Fortunately the heavy rain doused the fire quickly.
