2018-10-17-AC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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10/17/2018 AC Minutes Mr. Levine reported that the School Department is preparing a Statement of Interest(SOI)for replacing Lexington High School with much assistance from the Department of Public Facilities. Early 2019 is targeted for submitting the SOI to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. 2. Open Meeting Law Issues and Preparing this Committee's Report for the Special Town Meeting (STM) 2018-1: Mr. Bartenstein discussed the impacts triggered by the 2018 Boelter vs Board of Selectmen of Wayland case as they relate to preparing this Committee's report. Committee members cannot share their opinions on matters within the jurisdiction of the Committee, which opinions arguably may be embedded in some draft article write-ups, with a quorum of this Committee unless the material is made public at the same time. In other words, a conservative interpretation of the Open Meeting Law(OML) counsels against distributing draft article write-ups to the entire committee in advance of a meeting, unless they are contemporaneously made publicly available, even if there is no ensuing email response or debate among Committee members outside of a meeting. Since Lexington does not currently have a satisfactory mechanism for publicly posting such material, the plan until such a facility can be created will be not to circulate draft write-ups in advance of a meeting but instead to bring hard copies to the meeting, with extra copies for potential public attendees, for review and discussion during the meeting. Although this process will undoubtedly be inefficient and extend the duration of meetings, it should be manageable for this fall's upcoming special town meeting report given the relatively small number of warrant articles now requiring comment and analysis. It was noted that the two people assigned to a section of the report can continue to work together and send the resulting draft to Mr. Parker and Mr. Bartenstein because this arrangement, although outside of a meeting, does not result in a quorum receiving the material. Mr. Bartenstein and Mr. Parker discussed a tentative schedule for distribution, discussion and voting on material for the STM 2018-1 report, following the process described above, noting that it will be imperative to meet deadlines. To that end, it was agreed to hold a meeting on November 1 rather than on October 25. All draft material should be submitted to Mr. Parker and Mr. Bartenstein by the end of the day October 28. Mr. Parker will subsequently prepare a draft report for distribution and discussion at the November 1 meeting. Ms. Kosnoff noted that material related to"housekeeping" articles would be available on October 26, providing the necessary information for those articles. 3. Financial Articles for the STM 2018-1: The following articles were discussed: • Article 3: Appropriate for Center Streetscape Design: Mr. Michelson plans to draft the material for this article, which is requesting $650,000 for design funds with the expectation that construction funds, currently estimated to be $9.5 million, would be requested at the 2019 ATM. Ms. Kosnoff said new growth in FY2018 was greater than budgeted, which results in the availability of approximately $700,000 in cash. She expects to recommend using most of this for the design funds. She anticipates that bonds (probably 10-15 year bonds)would be used for construction funds but details beyond that are not available and cannot be determined until the total package for FY2020 capital projects can be analyzed. Town departments recently submitted requests for over$70.0 million to fund such projects. There was discussion about the desire to have more information regarding the sources for construction funds before voting design 2