It upsets me a great deal when I hear aspersions like this cast on town boards. The development on Mary’s Way was seen by the town as a way to protect the town from 40 B developments for several years ahead. It also allowed us to provide some much needed moderate income housing and add to the net zero housing stock. I was on the water commission while this project was being considered, and, after doing due diligence to ensure that the water supply could support the new project and requiring them to put individual water metering on each unit, we approved for the above reasons. I personally know most of the people on the other town boards and not one of them is anything less than honestly devoted to the welfare of the town.
Ruth Ann Hendrickson (She, her, hers) On Oct 12, 2023, at 2:48 PM, Susanna Szeto <szeto...@gmail.com> wrote:
Follow the money and maybe we can find the reason! On Oct 11, 2023, at 9:20 PM, Cathy O'Brien <cathyobrie...@gmail.com> wrote:
This sounds like it is being “fast tracked”
Very similar to “oriole landing” approval of their development I think it Was approved in 9 months- fastest development approval in Lincoln
Common denominator- CIVICO
In full disclosure I am the largest abutter to oriole landing
But I truly believe there is shenanigans with some sort of secret relationship with in Lincoln
NO development moves this fast in Lincoln
Why is ONE developer been the SOLE company to be the finalist in the 2 largest housing increase in a small amount of time for such a small town…
And if I recall… CIVICO was involved in building the school….
There is something not right about this….
Cathy obrien 3 Mary’s way I encourage all those interested who were not able to attend to
watch the Q&A portion of the HCA meeting last night once it is uploaded.
- The committee spent a lot of time reviewing what has been
accomplished to date and discussing amongst themselves but little time was dedicated to public debate. Few of the
public questions were actually answered by the committee, at times the mic was
just passed on to the next question without any response. This is similar to
previous meetings, where there is little room for resident debate. In my
opinion, 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 the
RLF. There is no opportunity for a regular resident or member-at-large to be
part of the decision-making. There are outstanding resident questions that the
committee hasn’t answered.
- The town legal counsel was present during the meeting. When asked
why the Committee was contradicting his counsel as stated on public record, he
indicated that he had changed his mind on the enforceability of compliance. He
did not provide any facts to explain this reversal. He said that his new stance
had come from a collaborative effort with his partners. This was very surprising to
hear, as this very same law firm is defending the town of Holden, which has
decided not to comply with the HCA. Our lawyer's partners at his firm, KP Law, wrote a motion to
dismiss the action against Holden. We should not be rushing to
comply just because “non-compliance is a risk” given our own lawyer's firm
seems to be giving other towns the opposite message to what they are telling
us. There are other towns like Weston which seem to be comfortable taking a
wait-and-see approach.
- The committee repeated its claim that we will lose millions in
grant money by not complying. However, we have never received any money from
the grants named in the actual HCA legislation. When this was brought up, the
committee did not respond. The committee claims we should comply because we
could use one of the grant programs to update the Village Center septic system
to benefit a private developer. I struggle to understand why the town would
need to fund this private enterprise. Wouldn’t we be setting a terrible
precedent?
- The committee continues to quote a pandemic-era traffic study and
a flawed financial analysis to claim there is "no impact" to current
residents. The financial analysis used a cost per student of $6.3K, when our
school's cost per student is at least 4 times that.
This report from the
Department of Education puts LPS (excluding Hanscom) at $27K per pupil. The
town with the lowest cost per pupil in the state is at $13K, nowhere close to
the $6K. Using accurate numbers for that financial analysis would imply steep tax increases for current Lincoln residents. Let's remember that in this
case, we are talking about apartments being rented starting at $4K a month.
- I strongly believe in providing full transparency on the impact of
rezoning to the town. If there is a tax and traffic impact, we need to be clear
on it. The town may decide to take on these costs in the spirit of increasing
housing, but it should be up to each resident to decide that for themselves,
after being provided an accurate cost/benefit analysis. Residents have
volunteered to conduct this analysis, but the committee has not taken them up
on the offer, so far.
- There seems to be a reluctance from the committee to provide more
than one option for residents to vote on. There is another option that would
entail rezoning areas where condos are already extant and the probability of
redevelopment is much lower. The committee is very reluctant to follow this
path. I am unclear as to why we do not want to present more than one option up
to vote, when we do so for other big projects like the school or the community
center.
Given such an important decision that may change the landscape of
our town for decades to come, we owe it to ourselves to look at these issues
more carefully. I struggle to understand why we are rushing to submit a
proposal to the state when we still have time before the deadline, other towns
are delaying and the guidelines could continue to change. The proposal wouldn't
even be increasing affordable housing materially. Karla Gravis Weston Rd
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