Dear Lincoln Talkers - Today I am writing to share my thoughts on the direction I believe we should lead Lincoln with respect to its land use and planning over the next 5-10 years. My goal with this email is to gauge if there is sufficient support in town for me to run for a planning board spot. If you are interested, please fill in the very brief Google form attached or email me directly. I need 33 signatures and while I could just go to the dump, I would like to try to meet folks this way as well.. Please forward to any Lincoln resident who you think might be interested in discussing.
Rob A for Planning Board, https://forms.gle/KxbCsBEGQTi7rPsT6 For a quick bio, I am in IT/software engineering at a biotech in Boston. I grew up in Georgia and have an engineering degree from the University of Virginia. I have been in Lincoln for 10+ years and live at 185 Lincoln Rd near Lincoln Station. I volunteer as a Tech Tutor at Bemis for the COA. My wife works at Mt Auburn Hospital in surgery and I have 2 kids who are/will attend the Lincoln Public schools (see pic). I have lived in multiple countries and US cities and I believe Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is a good policy in locations that already have the infrastructure in place to support it. I am wary however of the massive change toward TOD proposed for Lincoln Station given that new residents can’t realistically live car-free in Lincoln. In summary, here are my positions: - The Mall - The Mall clearly needs to be redeveloped. The older buildings are tired and the space is not well utilized. I believe there is a win-win-win option for the RLF, town, and new residents which involves both ecosystem restoration and new development. We should not settle for a developer who looks to maximize their profit and we should upgrade our site guidelines to reflect that. - Traffic - I believe our town should dedicate more financial resources to establish a baseline on key metrics (e.g. wait times, queue lengths) on all of major cut-through roads and then use predictive modeling to determine the likely impact of any new development on any of our major roads. We should not settle for the basic traffic study that a developer does that focuses only on the impact to the specific road where the parcel is. For those that live on our major roads, I ask you to join me to demand both baseline studies and more thorough impact studies for any new development. If you live in a subdivision or side street, I ask that you be sensitive to those that live on our major cut-through roads. - The HCA - The MBTA Communities Act is a law that was passed by our Commonwealth with bi-partisan support and we as a town have agreed to a specific design which re-zones parcels in broad swaths all around Lincoln Station. I believe, had we taken more time, we could have come up with a better, more creative plan that would have been better for current residents while still supporting modest growth to help ease the housing crisis. I would be interested in making modifications to our plan that still meets the HCA requirements however balances the needs of our current residents over the needs of future residents. There are certainly other parcels at Lincoln Station that would be good candidates but others outside of Lincoln Station as well. I recognize that this would take time, perhaps 2-3 years to be re-planned. Again, the town would have to be willing to commit some limited budget to these activities. - Single Family Home sizes - I would like the Planning Board to study capping the square footage of Single Family Homes in Lincoln to better protect the environment and save resources (e.g. oil, gas). - 2 acre minimums - I believe these were put in place to protect Lincoln against suburban sprawl and traffic. Along with our conservation land, I believe this (along with the schools) is what attracted most of us to Lincoln in the first place. Therefore, I would protect this standard for single family homes. Thank you for reading and if you made it this far, please feel free to reach out to me at this email address. Please email me, fill out my form and/or look for me at the dump next weekend - thanks! Rob Ahlert 185 Lincoln Rd -- *Robert Ahlert* | *781.738.1069* | [email protected]
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