2006-01-05-AC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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January 5, 2006 v. The Town Counsel was not comfortable with including playground safety improvements and lighting although other towns have done it. Safety is important to recreation. w. There are 680 acres of open land in Lexington that do not have protection by designation, e.g., as conservation land. The Lexington Comprehensive Plan suggests one-third of that should be acquired by the town. x. Towns opting for 3% CPA assessment get the highest priority on matching funds if there are insufficient funds for a 100% match. y. Al Levine raised a question on multifamily houses. It was suggested that one tax bill would generate one assessment. CPA would not directly tax those renting in Lexington; only those who own property. z. Since the rebates suggested in the presentation must be claimed and are not automatically generated, the experience in other towns is that 5% of those available are actually claimed. The CPA advocacy committee stated that they wanted to simplify forms as much as possible to make it easier to claim a refund. aa. Cpaforlexington.org is the website of the CPA advocacy committee. bb. A question was asked whether interest earned by the CPA fund would go back into the fund. Michael Young suggested that would be expected but he would check to be sure. [Subsequently reported: Section 7 of the enabling statute states that “the treasurer may deposit or invest the proceeds of the fund…and any income therefrom shall be credited to the fund.”] cc. David Kanter suggested the advocacy committee be proactive in endorsing the time line which includes getting ready in advance of the vote so if the voters approve CPA, projects could be presented at this year’s Annual Town Meeting for funding by the Town’s FY2007 CPA funds. 4. At a suggestion from Al Levine, the AC discussed whether, and if so how, it should move forward on this issue. a. Paul Hamburger suggested that we should (1) identify that portion of proposed CPA projects which would be done under the capital plan; (2) compare the cost of doing them under the capital plan vs. the entire cost of CPA. This would determine the amount saved. It was generally agreed that “unvarnished impact” would best describe what we want. It was agreed that Paul should write up a starter strawman and that Al would work on the result of that with the objective of coming to the AC meeting on January 19 with a documented proposal of what to do. The AC agreed that the “position” might not be stated, rather that the AC would present a 4