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03/29/2021 AC Minutes Minutes Town of Lexington Appropriation Committee (AC) March 29, 2021 Place and Time: Remote Participation: in accordance with the Governor's March 12, 2020 Order Suspending Certain Provisions of the Open Meeting Law; communication took place via a Zoom teleconferencing session that was open to the public; 7:00 p.m. Members Present: Glenn Parker, Chair; Sanjay Padaki, Vice-Chair; Alan Levine, Secretary; Anil Ahuja; John Bartenstein; Vineeta Kumar; Eric Michelson; Meg Muckenhoupt; Lily Manhua Yan; Carolyn Kosnoff, Assistant Town Manager, Finance (non-voting, ex officio) Member(s)Absent: None Other Attendees: Sara Arnold, Recording Secretary Mr. Parker confirmed attendance, reviewed the authorization for meeting remotely, noted that the meeting was being called to order at 7:03 p.m. on March 29, 2021, and stated that the meeting was being recorded for the purpose of creating minutes. He also noted that materials for the meeting were available on-line. Announcements and Liaison Reports Mr. Michelson reported that the Select Board(SB) had voted earlier to keep parking meters on Massachusetts Avenue as part of the Center Streetscape project. Mr. Padaki reported that the SB had recently voted to support charging $0.30 per kilowatt hour for using the town-operated recharging stations. Open Articles Mr. Parker noted that Ms. Kosnoff had shared an open articles report, which included an eight-page list of all the articles that had unused or partially unused appropriations. Mr. Parker explained that he subsequently identified articles from that list that were more than a year old and had zero expenditures to-date; these represent $10.6 million of appropriated but not expended or encumbered funds. Ms. Kosnoff explained that projects get delayed for a variety of reasons from staff bandwidth to unexpected events such as the broken water pipe in 2020. COVID-19 had a definite impact on projects in 2020. Mr. Parker identified two appropriations that represent approximately half of the $10.6 million: • A 1999 $3.0 million debt authorization for land acquisition: Ms. Kosnoff explained that this was approved before the Town had the Community Preservation Act funds in place and the Conservation Commission wanted funds to be available in case an opportunity to purchase land arose. The authorization was approved with the understanding that any purchase would need to be approved by town meeting. Ms. Kosnoff added that there have been some discussions about rescinding this, and she does not include that money in the modeling that is done regularly. It was noted that rescission would reduce the Town's authorized debt. Some members agreed that this authorization should be rescinded. Before proceeding, the Conservation Commission and other stakeholders would need to be contacted. • A 2017 $2.185 million request for Hartwell Avenue infrastructure improvements: Ms. Kosnoff explained that this was put on hold because of zoning changes for the Hartwell Ave. area and because of the ongoing traffic study for the Hartwell Ave. and 1