Thanks John , a lot to think about here. And yes, a good, well researched plan is being picked apart to such a degree that it may never happen. All of Lincoln could benefit greatly from a Community Center. And it will never cost less than it will if we move forward now.
Sent from my iPhone > On Sep 14, 2023, at 7:53 AM, john gregg via Lincoln <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > If you build it they will come. > > > You have services but no facility which makes it harder on the Parks and Rec > staff or LEAP to provide quality services to everyone. You build a school > with up to date facilities to help encourage people to move to Lincoln with > children, you provide elderly services to keep families in the town, or even > as families grow older the parents need more assistance and move back with > the kids to help provide the necessary help instead of living alone. It gives > flexibility and leverage to attract people to the town and then keep those > people there instead of chasing people away because the overall view of > Lincoln is they are concerned with themselves, not others, not a very diverse > community of people live in the town. > > Lincoln is a beautiful town, lots of history. close to Boston but from the > outside people do not want to move to Lincoln unless you fit the criteria. > School population is going down for several reasons, we moved to Lincoln for > the school and LSHS. My belief is that Lincoln needs to take a look in the > mirror and ask if they just want to be a town where the priority is to > continue to make Lincoln less welcoming to others or make it more welcoming. > There is no need to run more studies, or take more census, the need is to > understand and provide the necessary services for children, parents, and the > elderly of the Town a Community Center makes Lincoln on par with other > surrounding towns to be more attractive to move into. > > If this was a discussion to put in EV Charging stations at the Commuter Rail > Parking lot for $10 Million dollars the project would already be under way, > why is it that hard to commit to provide positive services to the community > in general and society as a whole? A Community Center to house programs for > the elderly, LEAP facility for after school programs that help working > parents, a central housing area for Parks and Rec Staff to provide other > quality services makes a community more centralized and welcoming. This > entire discussion is eerily similar to the School discussion, at that did not > end well. > > “ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but > expecting different results” – Albert Einstein > > Thanks, > John > 01776 > > > On Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 07:08:44 PM EDT, Peter Buchthal > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Lynne, Karla and David make excellent points. One of the challenges the town > faces with the community center is the lack of trust in the building > committee to size > a COA/ParksRec building to meet our needs and not our wishes. I believe the > major hill the community is trying to climb is how many seniors actually use > the facilities today. > Parks and Recreation has provided actual attendance figures for all of the > activities. COA has provided only maximum and minimum numbers without means > or averages. The maximum and minimums for a particular activity can vary > greatly with the maximum being sometimes triple the minimum headcount. For > residents who are not awash in money, in may be hard to justify building a > larger council on aging for the occasional activities that may need more > space once every three months. Wayland, a town with twice the senior > population compared to Lincoln just built a new Senior Center for 11 Million > dollars. Their building that meets the needs of a town with twice the senior > population is 12,900 square feet. Our small, medium and large Community > Center proposals are 16K, 18K or 20+k. > > I believe the Building Committee should ask Fincom or the Select board to > fund a consultant to provide average and mean numbers from the COA computer > system so that the community can see the actual consistent usage of today's > COA. As someone who is familiar with computers, I believe the town could > easily also find several residents (representing different groups within the > town) who might volunteer their time to provide the needed computer expertise > to extract the needed average and mean numbers from COAs computer system and > generate more meaningful usage statistics for the community. > > Let's not overbuild a public building again. > > Peter Buchthal > Weston Rd. > > > -- > The LincolnTalk mailing list. > To post, send mail to [email protected]. > Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. > Change your subscription settings at > https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln. >
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