Well said, Yonca! Thank you for writing this reminder of how fortunate we are!Lynne Smith 5 Tabor Hill Road Lincoln, MA 01773 781-258-1175 Sent from my iPhone On Nov 29, 2023, at 6:02 AM, Yonca Heyse <yoncahe...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello neighbors -
I originally come from Turkey where town decisions are mostly made by the will of the few and then enforced. With that backdrop, ever since I moved to Lincoln 10+ years ago, the democratic process in Lincoln has fascinated and impressed me. Running a town, while trying to build consensus and with majority votes vs. the will of a single person is a privilege. I also see that it's not all rosy - the process is long, exhausting, sometimes (often?) combative and perceptions of who the messenger is or the skilled marketing efforts of some advocates can sway the vote.
I haven't been close to the HCA vote, the process or the choices. Having said that, I want to point out how special in the world it is how this particular process unfolded. Facts may be slightly off but this is what I see: 1) Town has a mandate 2) Appoints committee 3) Committee puts in hours to come up with good options (thank you volunteers!) 4) Group of residents aren't satisfied with the options 5) They don't just complain but probably put in hours to develop other option(s) 6) They advocate and advocate and advocate and get their options included in the vote 7) The town now has a new option to vote for that may represent the desires of a portion of the town.
On December 2nd, we get to vote to determine the best option. This is the time to hate on Option A, B, C, D, E .....I urge everyone to put in a fraction of the effort that all volunteers have put in to try to determine what the right vote for every individual should be. Think about what you care about (maximizing housing? concentration of housing in the mall? likelihood of a vibrant commercial base? 4 story high buildings? and evaluate the options vs. your own criteria.
May the option that pleases the most win! AND Let's not forget how lucky we are to get to be part of this decision.
Respectfully, Yonca Heyse (1 Sweet Bay Ln)
I hope the readership is paying attention to the tone on both sides of this argument.
LRHA's timeline was definitely rushed. There was not a lot of time to pull things together. The group had been reaching out to town leadership and their requests and suggestions were falling on deaf ears. WE have put a great deal of effort and time into this process in a very short time frame. There are no formal meeting minutes. This group has been going back and forth in many different capacities on the Fly figuring things out.
Most of us caught on to what was happening with town leadership and HCA in the fairly recent past. While we are all respectful and appreciative to all the volunteer work and hours leadership puts forth, once the details were dug into and we were educated, it seemed quite clear that a handful thought that they knew better than the rest of us. Perhaps there efforts for option C will prevail via town vote. But it's very disappointing that Lincoln residents (many of which I consider friends and I plan on remaining friends with) and even town officials are chastising and labeling us as special interest and outliers, hijacking what a handful have put forward.
This group cares deeply about our town in every way: from providing additional multi-unit housing which is already at 41% and substantially higher than any of our peer towns, redeveloping the mall in a meaningful manner with Town input to ensure we have retail, commercial, mixed use and housing, all while trying to add diversity and affordability.
I am a Layman so no knock against Layman and most of us, which apparently includes the planning board, the HCAWG, the planning director and the $400,000 consultant Utile, did not fully understand the complexities of the HCA model put out by the state. That I know of, only one person and a Lincoln resident, David Cuetos, fastidiously broke down the model and understands it thoroughly and discovered severe flaws in the model that have huge implications on the potential final results of HCA. We are incredibly lucky to have David reside in Lincoln and caring so much. I want to thank him personally for all the time and energy he's put into this so that we're all much better informed.
In my 25 years in this special town, there's been hotly debated and emotional topics but most always with respect for each other. Kind Regards,
Scott Clary
617-968-5769
Sent from a mobile device - please excuse typos and errors
What about the timeline? Option E was presented to the HCAWG one week ago with the Thanksgiving holiday in between. There has been no time for scrutiny let alone public discussion.
How is that reasonable especially in light of incessant calls that the working group's process and timeline was rushed?
Option E was presented in a public meeting on 11/21. You can look at the video of the meeting here .
The citizens group came together organically, not unlike the citizens group that sprung up in Newton (and displaced five incumbents in the recent elections). The Brookline Select Board also worked with citizen groups, going as far as visiting each building on Harvard St to make decisions on which ones to include as a group. This form of citizen involvement is happening in other towns.
100 residents emailed the Selects asking for an additional option to Options C and Ds. I would argue the “special interest” here is the inclusion of the RLF project into *every* single option the HCAWG has presented, even though many people have requested an option without it. I would also argue it is a special interest when RLF employees criticize a grassroots citizens group, without disclosing their affiliation to the RLF. Another “special interest” is Civico having a say in our bylaws.
Why does every single HCAWG option include the mall? There would have been no need for a citizen-generated option if the HCAWG had 1) put forth an option without the mall and/or 2) addressed the numerous concerns (and mistakes) with options C and D. These concerns were brought up publicly.
Let’s remember Utile created the options in private meetings. There were no open discussions where the HCAWG went parcel by parcel as to what was included or not. Utile came up with the options privately (based on some loose guidance but no parcel-by-parcel open discussion whatsoever) and then were presented to the public. Perhaps if there had been open discussions with Utile, we would have been quicker to catch the multiple mistakes in the submission before it was sent to the State. (18 extra acres of parcels, LW zoning at 20 units/acre, etc). Must be noted that it was the citizens' group who caught the mistakes.
This strikes me as extremely hypocritical in regard to the way the dialog has unfolded over the past few months.
Why should this group receive preferential treatment in terms of the process used to develop an option we are being asked to vote on? Many members of the group who developed option E have spent the last few months demanding transparency, calling into question the ethics of the volunteers on the working group and elsewhere, destabilizing the process, and generally using the public forum of Lincoln Talk as a bully pulpit to push their agenda.
I am asking for meeting and voting records in order to fully evaluate the merits of and intent behind option E, just like many have asked for and received for Options C and D.
To vote for an option (E) that has not had the same level of public scrutiny is a terrible idea.
John
I am writing in response to
recent comments on Lincoln Talk, one of which accused the Lincoln Residents for
Housing Alternatives (LRHA) of being a “special
interest group, which has had secret meetings to develop…options with no public
notifications of meetings or publication of minutes”. This group of residents
sprang up organically from individuals using Lincoln Talk, our only open-ended
Town-wide communication platform. They
did not have the advantage of being appointed as committee members by the
Selects. Instead, they attended
meetings, read distributed information, and looked up relevant Massachusetts’
law. Their ideas grew during back-and-forth
discussions on Lincoln Talk. There is no open meeting law to restrict residents
from talking together. To characterize these discussions as ‘secret meetings’
is offensive to me. These individuals, without a
hierarchy of leaders but with similar ideas and meeting mostly on line, created
a web site with fact-based information regarding the Housing Choice Act
and a fifth option, now called Option E. While I have not contributed to the website,
I have taken a strong interest in the analysis presented there. To my knowledge, there is no ‘special
interest’ that unites the group other than basing their opinions on data and analysis and showing where that leads. And that leads me to Option
E, which is entirely
compliant with HCA rezoning rules. Its main difference compared to Options C and D, is
that it excludes the Lincoln Mall from HCA development. It excludes the Mall
because many of us, listed as supporters on the LRHA website, believe it
is the most likely to be developed and we want it to be developed subject to Town approvals: we want more affordability and better control of the layout and design than a ‘by right’ developer might give us. As a 20-year member of the Lincoln
Land Conservation Trust and a supporter of the RLF, I want to see the
Mall filled with wonderful condos, one of which I might buy when we are ready
to downsize! I do not criticize the Town
staff, the RLF, and the appointed Working Group members. They have done a great job getting us to this
point. But everyone has their own lens for Lincoln’s response to the housing
crisis. Let’s not criticize those
residents who have invested their time and volunteered their skills to create
alternatives. We will all meet on December 2nd to make the best
choice we know how to make for Lincoln’s future. See you there!
Lynne Smith 5 Tabor Hill Road Lincoln, MA 01773 cell: 781-258-1175
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