Thank you Karla for your excellent summary of the HCA meeting. Most
appreciated. I agree with all your comments... 100%.The MAJOR CHANGE facing
this town's landscape is quite shocking and SAD.
We all owe it to the next generation(s) to protect Lincoln. They will
certainly Thank us... in the same way we thank those that work so hard to
protect local landscapes .. like Walden Pond and Codman Farm, so we may savor
their beauty.
How we can allow this to happen is beyond comprehension.
Theresa KafinaGiles Road
On Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 06:29:16 PM EDT, Karla Gravis
<[email protected]> wrote:
I encourage all those interested who were not able to attend towatch the Q&A
portion of the HCA meeting last night once it is uploaded.
- The committee spent a lot of time reviewing what has beenaccomplished to
date and discussing amongst themselves but little time was dedicated to public
debate. Few of thepublic questions were actually answered by the committee, at
times the mic wasjust passed on to the next question without any response. This
is similar toprevious meetings, where there is little room for resident debate.
In myopinion, the outreach has been one-directional. The working group is
composed only of people who sit on other boards, are town employees, or work
for theRLF. There is no opportunity for a regular resident or member-at-large
to bepart of the decision-making. There are outstanding resident questions that
thecommittee hasn’t answered.
- The town legal counsel was present during the meeting. When askedwhy the
Committee was contradicting his counsel as stated on public record, heindicated
that he had changed his mind on the enforceability of compliance. Hedid not
provide any facts to explain this reversal. He said that his new stancehad come
from a collaborative effort with his partners. This was very surprising tohear,
as this very same law firm is defending the town of Holden, which hasdecided
not to comply with the HCA. Our lawyer's partners at his firm, KP Law, wrote a
motion todismiss the action against Holden. We should not be rushing tocomply
just because “non-compliance is a risk” given our own lawyer's firmseems to be
giving other towns the opposite message to what they are tellingus. There are
other towns like Weston which seem to be comfortable taking await-and-see
approach.
- The committee repeated its claim that we will lose millions ingrant money
by not complying. However, we have never received any money fromthe grants
named in the actual HCA legislation. When this was brought up, thecommittee did
not respond. The committee claims we should comply because wecould use one of
the grant programs to update the Village Center septic systemto benefit a
private developer. I struggle to understand why the town wouldneed to fund this
private enterprise. Wouldn’t we be setting a terribleprecedent?
- The committee continues to quote a pandemic-era traffic study anda flawed
financial analysis to claim there is "no impact" to currentresidents. The
financial analysis used a cost per student of $6.3K, when ourschool's cost per
student is at least 4 times that. This report from theDepartment of Education
puts LPS (excluding Hanscom) at $27K per pupil. Thetown with the lowest cost
per pupil in the state is at $13K, nowhere close tothe $6K. Using accurate
numbers for that financial analysis would imply steep tax increases for current
Lincoln residents. Let's remember that in thiscase, we are talking about
apartments being rented starting at $4K a month.
- I strongly believe in providing full transparency on the impact ofrezoning
to the town. If there is a tax and traffic impact, we need to be clearon it.
The town may decide to take on these costs in the spirit of increasinghousing,
but it should be up to each resident to decide that for themselves,after being
provided an accurate cost/benefit analysis. Residents havevolunteered to
conduct this analysis, but the committee has not taken them upon the offer, so
far.
- There seems to be a reluctance from the committee to provide morethan one
option for residents to vote on. There is another option that wouldentail
rezoning areas where condos are already extant and the probability
ofredevelopment is much lower. The committee is very reluctant to follow
thispath. I am unclear as to why we do not want to present more than one option
upto vote, when we do so for other big projects like the school or the
communitycenter.
Given such an important decision that may change the landscape ofour town for
decades to come, we owe it to ourselves to look at these issuesmore carefully.
I struggle to understand why we are rushing to submit aproposal to the state
when we still have time before the deadline, other townsare delaying and the
guidelines could continue to change. The proposal wouldn'teven be increasing
affordable housing materially.
Karla Gravis
Weston Rd
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