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Home My WebLink About2023-03-09-AC-min 03/09/2023 AC Minutes 1 Minutes Town of Lexington Appropriation Committee (AC) March 9, 2023 Place and Time: Remote Participation: in accordance with “An Act Relative to Extending Certain State of Emergency Accommodations”, signed into law by Gov. Baker on July 16, 2022, communication took place via a Zoom teleconferencing session that was open to the public; 7:30 p.m. Members Present: Glenn Parker, Chair; Sanjay Padaki, Vice-Chair; Anil Ahuja; John Bartenstein; Alan Levine, Secretary; Eric Michelson; Sean Osborne; Lily Manhua Yan; Carolyn Kosnoff, Assistant Town Manager, Finance (non-voting, ex officio) Member(s) Absent: none Other Attendees: David Kanter, Capital Expenditures Committee; Kat Labrecque, Budget Officer; Zhaojung Lu, resident At 7:34 p.m. Mr. Parker confirmed attendance by roll call and stated that the meeting was being recorded for the purpose of creating minutes. Mr. Michelson agreed to take minutes in the absence of a recording secretary. Announcements and Liaison Reports Mr. Levine reported on the School Master Planning meeting which he attended this morning. On March 1 the MSBA invited the Town’s High School project into the Feasibility stage. This moves this project forward and has the School Department and Town planning for the disruptions of construction. Of concern is the disposition of the Central Office (CO), currently located in the old Harrington School. The cost to do badly needed renovations to this building is estimated at $16 million. At the same time, this site is being considered for creation of athletic fields, which will be needed to replace some of the Center Recreation Complex fields that will be taken out of use during the LHS construction. The old Harrington site is 6 acres and would have room for 2 large rectangular multipurpose fields and an overlay cricket field. Dr Hackett is going to recommend to the School Committee that the CO vacate the old Harrington School building and temporarily relocate to 173 Bedford St., and later move into a new 17,000 square foot facility that is part of or adjacent to the new LHS. Rough estimates of the associated costs are (1) $1.5 million to demolish the old Harrington building; (2) $6 million to construct fields at the old Harrington site; and (3) $16 million for the construction of a new CO. Mr. Levine also confirmed that town meeting will be asked to (1) appropriate $500K to the SPED Stabilization Fund, and (2) create a SPED Reserve Fund and appropriate $750K into it. Annual Town Meeting Report and Articles Mr Parker reviewed each article covered in the draft Committee report, asked members to provide missing votes, and confirmed previous votes. The new tallies were enumerated on a spreadsheet shared with the Committee. After all the votes on the covered articles were tabulated, the Committee voted 8-0 by roll call to confirm the votes as recorded on the sheet. The following changes in articles occurred since they were previously discussed. 03/09/2023 AC Minutes 2 Article 4 – The additional Chapter 70 aid was allocated to the Municipal and School budgets using the revenue allocation formula. This removed the need to use free cash to support the operating budget. It also allowed an additional $120K of free cash to be used to fund capital projects and thereby reduce the issuance of debt. Articles 7 & 19 – Article 7 will now only direct future payments from Brookhaven to the Affordable Housing Trust (AHT). Article 19(f) will appropriate the balance of the Affordable Housing Capital Stabilization Fund (AHCSF) into the AHT. Article 19(g) will rescind the prior town meeting authorization of directing Brookhaven payments into the AHCSF. Article 7 will require a majority vote, and Article 19 will require a 2/3 majority vote. Article 21 – Ms. Kosnoff reported that while this article is not finalized, she anticipates 3 items: 1) accounting for additional CPA state matching funds by distributing an additional $50K to each of the 3 specific reserves; 2) an appropriation to Police Personal Services to fund over-time; and 3) an appropriation to Fire Personal Services to fund over-time. Minutes of Prior Meetings The only outstanding minutes were from March 2, 2023, but they were not ready to be approved. Adjourn The meeting was adjourned by unanimous roll call vote at 9:22 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Eric Michelson Approved: April 3, 2023 Exhibits ● Agenda, posted by Mr. Parker ● Article vote tally sheet (“AC Votes 2023-03-09.pdf”)