It doesn’t make any sense to put this project on pause. A large number of people have for years understood the need for an improved building for the Council on Aging and Human Services. The people who are against any project whatsoever can vote against this project at town meeting. But the many people who are in favor deserve to have an actual project brought before the town to be voted on its merits.
Ruth Ann Hendrickson (She, her, hers) On Jun 28, 2023, at 9:25 AM, Seth Rosen <rosen...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi June,
While I agree that a pause in this work would be prudent, it's not going to happen I'm afraid.
A few controversial, but I think accurate, points...
1) There is a sub-group of residents who believe that the construction of a community center is a long time in the making. They believe that the volume of planning work and discussions already done over the years justifies its construction (i.e. we've been working on it for a long time, so it must be a good idea).
2) This same group generally believes that the renovation of the school came with an implied promise to build a community center.
3) This group was massively emboldened by the town's willingness to authorize $325,000 to develop alternatives and create plans at various levels of cost. These levels were largely arbitrarily determined in the meeting, in real time, in an effort to reflect the town's concern about costs vs. actual needs. And (mostly) allow everyone to go home since the meeting itself took ten times as long as it needed to. Most younger folks, especially those with kids, had to leave long before the vote was actually taken.
4) Now the construction project has an architect, and is a solution looking for a problem. Exercise classes with 4 attendees now need dedicated spaces, staff members need large and new dedicated offices, etc. The list goes on.
The CCBC is a community center building committee. They want to build a community center, that's why they didn't ask in the survey if people thought we needed one. They don't want the answer to that question. And candidly, I'm inclined to agree with them that it doesn't matter. The will of the town and the opinions of survey respondents are irrelevant to both sides. This will be put to a vote and the only thing that matters is the will of the people who actually show up and vote.
Seth
I agree that this (a “pause”) would be a good idea. Back when the CCBC survey came out a resident wrote to say that it didn’t contain the important question as to whether the responder was in favor of building
a community center at Hartwell (or at all). The CCBC was requested to send out a second survey but this never happened. Moreover, the meeting (in 2018?) at which there was a “unanimous” vote for the Harwell site was not attended by anything like a majority
of town voters. Someone estimated that there were perhaps 150 people there. And, as you point out, this was a long time ago and many things have changed since then.
June Matthews
Greenridge Lane
These are great and I'm happy to see the transparency.
However, is there an option to pause all this work forward on the Community Centre and actually check in with the whole community whether they want this project to go ahead? (Method to be determined, perhaps some kind of mandatory vote?
Don't tear me apart on this specific, I'm just thinking out loud.)
Seems to me that there's been a lot of turnover in people living in Lincoln, many of whom, like ourselves, are young pandemic or post-pandemic transplants. We did not have a say in whether this is a project that we wanted (or can afford)
since the vote happened so long ago, and many of us are new or first time home owners.
Given the incredible amount of division on the issue, especially on Lincoln Talk and at town meetings, maybe we can pause and check in before plowing ahead?
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