Town Meeting on Saturday!

Town Meeting is on Saturday, March 26 at 9:30am in the Auditorium!

Middle School Open House 8:00am – 9:00am: Come see the renovated Middle School! (no guided tours, the public can wander through the building and faculty and student docents will be on hand).

Town Elections are on Monday, March 28 from 7:30am – 8:00pm in the Middle School (Reed) Gym!

What is Town Meeting? It’s the day when residents come together to vote on Town and School budgets, capital investments, town bylaws, and citizens’ petitions.

Who can vote at Town Meeting? Everyone who is registered to vote in the Town of Lincoln is a voter at Town Meeting! If you are a resident but not a registered voter, you are still welcome to attend. If there is a closely contested vote, you will be asked to move to a designated area while counting occurs. The meeting will be livestreamed, and state law requires in-person voting.

Will there be votes affecting the school building project? Yes! There are three votes that impact the project:

1. Article #11: Modular removal and field restoration: The School Committee has approved an agreement to sell the modular classrooms to the Nauset Regional School District for $550,000. From those proceeds the School Committee is asking for $350,000 to remove the modular school and restore the field.  The work will include dismantling the temporary school, removing the concrete footers and temporary parking lot, and, finally, restoring the field. Nauset needs to have the classrooms in place for the start of school in Fall 2022.  While the sale is happening now, the funds from the proceeds of the $550,000 sale, will not be available for use until FY2025. This means asking residents to approve Article 11 now in order to keep our project on schedule.  Once the proceeds from the sale of the modulars are certified, they will be used to reimburse the town.
2. Article #10 is the list of projects recommended by the Capital Planning Committee. The list includes a proposal to reallocate the remaining $200,000 from the sale of the modulars to replace the building lighting control system in the Middle School. The Audacy system was chosen through the bidding process in 2020 and installed as part of Phase 1. It is a cloud-based system that includes smart outlets, manual controls, and occupancy sensors throughout the building. In 2021, Audacy’s new parent company announced that it would discontinue the system and eliminate product support in 2026 at the latest. In addition, the Audacy components installed in the Middle School have already proven to be problematic. Our project team has been a strong advocate for us, and the supplier of the Audacy system is providing us, free of charge, a replacement Lutron system that is similar to what is being used in the Hanscom schools. The Lutron system is now being installed in the Primary School. The $200,000 we are requesting, along with $135,000 from the project budget, will be used to remove the Audacy system and install the Lutron system in the Middle School over the summer. Addressing this issue now will save the Town money when compared to doing it in the future after the construction project is complete.
3. Article #24 is sponsored by the Select Board. Before construction began, as the SBC went through the value engineering process, the town agreed to utilize money in the Cable Fund to support new cable television infrastructure in the school. The Cable Fund comes from annual fees paid to the town by Comcast and Verizon. As a result, it takes votes over the course of several years to allocate funds to the project. 

Here are the slides from last Wednesday when the SBC provided a Town Meeting update. Click here to see the March gallery.