Hasn’t that ship sailed some time ago? Regards,
SRK Steven R. Kanner, MD Lincoln, MA From: Lincoln <[email protected]> On Behalf Of June L Matthews Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2025 4:06 PM To: Peter Buchthal <[email protected]>; Seth Rosen <[email protected]> Cc: Lincoln Talk <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LincolnTalk] Trying to make sense of our budgets and our taxes As some of you will remember, I’ve been advocating this for a long time. Build the Community Center in the center of our community! I won’t reiterate my earlier arguments (I wrote a “My Turn” piece for the Squirrel which you can look up), but to me it makes eminent sense to locate a community (or senior) center within walking distance of Donelan’s, the Post Office, and the train station, plus multi-family housing such as Lincoln Woods, the Ryan Estate, and the Flying Nuns. LEAP can stay at the school where it belongs. June Matthews From: Lincoln <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Peter Buchthal Sent: Thursday, June 5, 2025 1:23 PM To: Seth Rosen <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: Lincoln Talk <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [LincolnTalk] Trying to make sense of our budgets and our taxes If the sitework at Hartwell is so expensive, maybe the CCBC should have more seriously considered other less expensive options like buying a building near the Mall as a senior center (leave Leap out of the picture) , and re-invigorate our town center. It's not too late to vote NO and reopen a healthy discussion of needs vs wants for a small town of our size. Peter Buchthal Weston Rd On Thu, Jun 5, 2025 at 12:33 PM Seth Rosen <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Margaret, why are you convinced proposing a new design would cost as much or more than the current plan? If you scale it down to encompass actual necessity, we can build it much cheaper. There were three budgets proposed and we chose the most expensive one. Now we can't deliver that scope, so let's reduce scope. That feels like a great use of resources. The idea that "we've already done a bunch of work, so we can't stop now" is what I take issue with. It's cheaper to write off some work and time than to proceed with something that we can't afford, don't need and that's way over-budget. Seth On Thu, Jun 5, 2025 at 12:22 PM Margaret Olson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: David Cuetos said: <snip> Anyone who has followed the CCBC’s process knows there were certain “luxuries” included in the project vision that could have been trimmed. I haven’t followed their work since town Meeting, but I’d think removing the teaching kitchen, cheaper finishes and cutting down on site work would all move the needle materially </snip> Unfortunately, the site work is a relatively large portion of the CC cost and equally unfortunately it's not likely that it can easily be reduced. The site is very constrained by wetlands (see the GIS) and some of it is in the buffers. This by law requires mitigations, and mitigations are expensive. If I were to poke fault at the CCBC process it is that the cost implications of the wetland and a larger vs smaller footprint building were not explained to the town. We were asked what we would prefer for a design, not how much (in $) we preferred it. Having served as a town volunteer on boards and committees for many years I have a pretty good idea why it was done this way - it's an extremely hard sort of question to ask of an electorate and get any kind of coherent answer. All that being said, I don't think a redesign is a good use of my tax money. Could we get a more cost effective building? Maybe, but we would have to start from scratch and at the end of the day starting from scratch would wind up costing just as much as the current plan even with it's cost increases. As FinCom, Andy Payne, and others have pointed out. It would be a largely pointless use of town time and resources. We're a small town with limited staff. There are only so many projects or issues they can tackle at once because there just aren't that many staff. Margaret -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to [email protected]<mailto:[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. -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to [email protected]<mailto:[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.
-- 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.
