Hi Seth, I would need to hear the other side before choosing a position. That being said, it is clear that you did some serious homework, put a lot of thought into it, and presented it in a thoughtful, respectful way. Kudos. Joanna
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Tuesday, October 25, 2022, 2:17 PM, Seth Rosen <rosen...@gmail.com> wrote: Friends and Neighbors - I've recently become more informed on this particular issue, and share a lot of the concerns articulated below. The below information was compiled by a group of very diligent and thoughtful neighbors whose opinions I respect. I volunteered to send it along to LincolnTalk. If you have feelings on this issue, and are concerned about a potential ~9% property tax increase to fund it, please make your voice heard on November 30th. The Background InMay of 2022, a proposal was approved at Town Meeting to establish a Committeeto explore the construction of a Community Center. The major goal for theCommunity Center is to house the Council on Aging, in other words, to operateas a senior center. At that time, the cost of this Community Center wasestimated at $25MM. This cost would be paid from our property taxes. OnNovember 14th the Committee will provide more details on the two designspresented in May and ask residents to approve $325,000 to hire an architect to finalize both designs and put them to a vote at the Special Town Meeting onNovember 30th. Whilewe want to provide seniors with a facility that meets their needs, we believethe two very similar designs envisioned by the Committee are not the right pathforward. The details are spelled out below, but basically: - They are too expensive, outof proportion to our needs and means. Your property taxes will go up thousandsof dollars a year, forever, making our town even more unaffordable for manyresidents. - Town’s finances are alreadystretched after the completion of the school building and will be furthercompromised by unavoidable incremental expenses and capital investments. - There are better and cheaperways to achieve the same goals. They should be investigated before moving ahead with a final design. What can you do? First, learn more about this. Thereis low awareness of this project and its consequences, but in our experiencewhen folks are debriefed on the matter, most agree with our take. Read belowfor more detailed information about the costs and alternatives, and please donot hesitate to get in touch if you have questions (email lincolnccquesti...@gmail.com).Second, come to the Special Town Meeting in the Donaldson Auditorium onNovember 30th at 7:30pm, and vote against the proposal to spendanother $325,000 to fund additional work on this design. Thecurrent proposal is disproportionate to our needs and would make our town evenmore unaffordable for young families and retired seniors. Our estimate is thatthe construction and manning of the Center would increase the average propertytax bill by $1,700. We can both provide our seniors the services they need, andavoid financial hardship in our community. Its financial impact has been materially understated Thepreliminary financial impact presented at Town Meeting in May is not anaccurate representation of the financial burden the Community Center willimpose on our town: · The 3% interest ratediscussed at the time would be over 4% today. This alone would increase thedebt service cost by 20%. · The alternatives presentedlast year ranged between $23MM and $25.4MM. We can use $25MM to calculate thedebt service. Using the updated interest rate, annual debt service would be ~$1.5MM. · We do not want to get boggeddown on this debate, but we would just note that the inflation expectationsused at the time are looking very optimistic. The cost estimate increased anaverage 10% every year between the initial estimate of 2018 and the update in2021, but are only projected to grow 3.5% per year over the next four despite amuch higher overall inflation background. · There was no estimation ofthe operating budget of this new facility. A good rule of thumb for a publicbuilding is to assume 2% annual maintenance ($500,000), on top of that weassume $100,000 in utilities expense, 0.5% insurance cost ($150,000), perhapsan additional $300,000 for 3-4 FTEs (janitors and personnel for new servicesprovided) and another $50,000 in sundry expenses like new capital equipment andconsumables. This would represent a cost increase of ~$1.1MM per year, growingat the rate of inflation. A$2.6MM annual expense would represent an increase of approximately 9% versusthe FY22 tax levy, $1,700 in incremental property tax for the average property owner.This is simply unacceptable at a time in our town when we are discussingoptions of how to reduce the financial burden for seniors living on a fixedincome. Lincoln families already pay the third-highest property tax bills inMassachusetts. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/fy2022-massachusetts-average-single-family-tax Propertytaxes in our town are already more onerous, defined as a percentage of ourincome, than our neighbors and peers’. https://dlsgateway.dor.state.ma.us/reports/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=AverageSingleTaxBill.SingleFamTaxBill_wRange Dire straits directly ahead Thetown faces a difficult next few years financially as the following incrementalexpenses, to be accomplished through increases in the tax levy, are likely torequire overrides · Teacher salaries, which areby far the town’s greatest expense, have been frozen for the past two years andtheir contract is up for negotiation this fiscal year. · The last inflation read was8.2%, including a 6.6% increase in core inflation. The town will have to maketough decisions regarding resource prioritization to keep fiscal balances incheck and retain talent. · There are several othernon-discretionary capital investments in the horizon, including a roadmaintenance plan and a new DPW facility, which would be jeopardized if we movedahead with this project. · Last year we received aone-off $2MM from the American Rescue Plan. We should not expect this type oflargesse in the future. As most of you know, the town has a very small commercial tax baseand an insignificant amount of new single-family house construction to lightenthe burden on existing property owners. The current economic consensus is thatthe U.S. economy is heading into a recession. It would be highly imprudent toincrease our leverage and spending in this macroeconomic environment. We have great alternatives Thetown already has enough space to host senior activities, we just need to bemore open-minded in our approach. We believe that converting Pierce House intothe town’s COA headquarters would address all of the concerns associated withBemis Hall as presented in the 2018 Planning report. To be precise, there wouldbe plentiful parking, easy accessibility and enough rooms to both provideservices that require confidentiality and conduct group activities. PierceHouse is an idyllic location right at the center of town that needs to bemaintained into perpetuity. This new mission would set it much closer to thePierce family’s original gift intentions (community health) than its currentuse as a wedding facility. We suspect that many neighbors would be very happywith the accompanying noise reduction and we would avoid doubling down on theexisting traffic congestion at the school’s campus. Thereis no shortage of currently underutilized public buildings in town which couldcompliment Pierce House to provide additional space for the COA and communitygroups. The Town Building is very large for a town our size (the same size asWeston with less than half the population) and Hartwell could definitely seeheavier use with a more rational floorplan. We should also reconsider upgradingBemis Hall. Otherthan housing COA activities, it is not entirely clear what benefits theCommunity Center would provide the town. By its own admission, the Parks andRecreation department is happy with the pod where they are currently located.There will almost certainly be a need to revamp the pods or find alternativeaccommodations at some point in the nearfuture, but we should not let the tail wag the dog. A palatial structure out of proportion with our needs and ourpeers Thecurrent Community Center proposal is for a 23,500 sqft facility, which is outof proportion with the size of our town and our senior population: · Most neighboring towns, allof them more populous than us (pop. 4,771 excluding Hanscom), do not have aseparate Community Center. Wayland (pop. 13,724), Bedford (14,155), Carlisle(5,181) and Harvard (6,844) fall in that list. · Concord, with almost fourtimes our population, has a 18,000 sqft Community Center, which also houses itspre-school. · Sudbury, which has apopulation also almost four times ours, has a project to build a new facility.The space allocated to their senior center is 5,754 sqft. · Weston, is a wealthier townwith more than twice the seniors (65+) and total population, has a slightlysmaller (22,500 sqft), much more modest architecturally facility. · Even Newton, with apopulation 18 times ours, is projecting a cheaper Senior Center ($19.5MM). · The envisioned cost persquare foot of our Center, which would surpass $1,000 per square foot, speaksto a lavish facility, more suited to an international conference center than asmall town’s senior center. · Pierce House has a finishedsquare footage of 5,306, perfect for our needs. -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. 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