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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-02-26-AC-min.pdf 2/26/2026 AC Minutes 1 Minutes Town of Lexington Appropriation Committee (AC) February 26, 2026 Place and Time: Remote participation via a Zoom teleconferencing session that was open to the public; 7:30 p.m. Members Present: Glenn Parker, Chair; Sanjay Padaki, Vice-Chair; Alan Levine, Secretary; Anil Ahuja; John Bartenstein; Eric Michelson; Sean Osborne; Carolyn Kosnoff, Assistant Town Man- ager, Finance (non-voting, ex officio) Members Absent: Vinita Verma; Lily Yan Other Attendees: Archan Basu; Steve Kaufman; Lisah Rhodes, Capital Expenditures Committee (CEC); Tom Shiple; Mike Cronin, Director of Public Facilities; Matt Daggett; Jay Luker; Elaine Tung; Deepika Sawhney; Sudha Cheruku; Gauri Govil All votes recorded below were conducted by roll call. At 7:32 p.m. Mr. Parker called the meeting to order and took attendance by roll call. Announcements and Liaison Reports Ms. Kosnoff reported that the current year expenses for snow removal have gone over budget, and that legal expenses are also trending very high. Discussion of Financial Articles for the 2026 Annual Town Meeting Article 25 Surcharge on Specific Residential Development – Citizen Petition Mr. Daggett summarized the article by stating that the purpose is to reauthorize the home rule peti- tion that was previously authorized under Article 6 of Special Town Meeting 2020-2. If special leg- islation doesn't pass within a certain number of legislative sessions, local approval must be obtained again before it can be submitted to another legislative session. The petition would seek to gain authorization to levy a linkage fee for the purpose of funding the creation of community housing. The fee would be imposed as a surcharge on single or two-family residential construction that follows a teardown. When the building permit gets issued, this sur- charge would be levied on a dollars per square foot basis on the gross floor area of the structures that are permitted. The Select Board would be authorized to conduct a study on the surcharge rate, to set the surcharge rate, and to adjust it annually for inflation or other reasons. All the proceeds would go into the Affordable Housing Trust. There will be provisions for abatement of portions of the fee in certain circumstances. Mr. Bartenstein asked if Mr. Daggett is aware of a lawsuit that been filed to challenge a linkage fee. Mr. Daggett was not aware of the specific suit. In response to a question from Mr. Michelson, Mr. Daggett said that no other town in Massachusetts has a fee structured just like the one proposed. However, a home rule petition currently in the legis- lature would allow Concord to put a surcharge on all construction. Mr. Daggett noted that in most cases, the developer will pay the fee upon applying for a building permit. If the property owner is redeveloping the property for their own benefit, they may choose to have a lien put on the property with a value that diminishes to zero over 5 years as long as the 2/26/2026 AC Minutes 2 property is not sold. The remaining part of the fee would be paid if the property is sold before five years have elapsed. Ms. Kosnoff asked Mr. Daggett if he has a sense of how many instances a surcharge would be im- posed as a lien in a typical year, but he did not know the answer. She added that she is interested be- cause the Finance Department is involved in tracking and abating liens and that there is an associ- ated cost as well as staff time needed for each lien. She suggested that Mr. Daggett reach out to the Treasurer’s and Assessor’s Offices to learn more about this. Article 27 Procurement for Online Capital Project Platform – Citizen Petition Mr. Kaufman briefly described this article. The intent is to get more transparency and visibility for the town citizens into major capital projects including the high school project. The initiative pro- poses using a web-based portal that would show the status of each major project. Most of the neigh- boring towns do this already, but Lexington doesn't do anything like it. It's hard to find this infor- mation if it exists at all. The initiative focuses on regular updates on progress versus plan and spending versus budget. Mr. Kaufman’s discussions with Mr. Cronin produced the suggestion that a monthly cadence for updates would match what the Public Facilities Department does now. Those discussions also led to the suggestion that the portal should focus on the seven most costly projects which would cover all of the large projects. Mr. Cronin mentioned that the proponents of the article met with him, Ms. Kosnoff, and the Town Manager to discuss what might be done. Mr. Cronin agrees that transparency is a worthwhile goal for the larger capital projects. The high school project may require somewhat different treatment from other projects because of its size – reporting for that project should be done on subunits as well as for the overall project. Mr. Cronin described an initial investigation of a platform for the portal but did not find the example that he was referred to by a platform vendor (ClearGov) repre- sentative to be informative. Mr. Cronin would like to talk to somebody who has a platform and does regular updates. Mr. Bartenstein said that he liked the idea of a periodic status update on previously approved capital projects, noting that for some time he had considered proposing a “retrospective” at the annual town meeting, perhaps by volunteers from the Town Meeting Members Association (TMMA), on the sta- tus or outcome of previously approved warrant articles. He also suggested selecting projects based on a dollar threshold rather than arbitrarily choosing the seven largest. Mr. Ahuja stated that it would be important to determine what an end user would want to see before purchasing an off-the-shelf product. Mr. Padaki said that he is concerned that what is needed to do the proposed task has not been deter- mined so it isn’t clear that $50,000 will be sufficient. Mr. Cronin clarified his statement that the high school project stands apart from others by noting that an Owner’s Project Manager (OPM) has been retained for that project and can be asked to pro- vide information for a platform. He added that the managers in his department use a combination of MUNIS and Excel spreadsheets to track projects. In response to the discussion of the reporting frequency and the projects that would be covered, Mr. Kaufman said that he would be flexible in regard to the criteria that would be used to determine which projects would be covered by a platform. Mr. Parker said that he did not think that it was ap- propriate to include design-related details in the motion, and, furthermore, that it is essential to do a requirements analysis before making any decisions on implementation. 2/26/2026 AC Minutes 3 Mr. Basu noted that both town meeting members and residents would like to know whether projects are on track, where the projects are relative to plan, whether too much is being spent, and whether the projects are accomplishing the results that were promised. He emphasized that this information is not presently being made widely available. Mr. Kaufman then said that the intent, if the article gets approved, is first to look at requirements, then to look at the possibility of developing a plat- form internally versus using commercially available software, and only after that to make a decision on what to report and how. Then the Town could either do an RFP or develop its own system in- house. Mr. Bartenstein doubted whether just feeding numbers into a spreadsheet would be useful; many cases may require judgment by the staff members putting out the information. The amount of staff time that will be needed for periodic updates was discussed with some con- cerned that it might be excessive. Mr. Kaufman hoped that the updates could be done within half a person-day per month considering that the number of covered projects would be small. Ms. Kosnoff pointed out that major projects may include projects managed by the Recreation and Public Works Departments or the Department of Public Facilities. Mr. Michelson noted that $600,000 of requested operational program improvements are not recom- mended for implementation this year, and that only a few such requests have been approved in the last several years. He is not convinced that an expenditure for the proposed reporting platform, or of the staff time needed to implement it, is a higher priority than program improvements sought by staff that have been put off for years. Mr. Padaki suggested the motion might be revised to cover only the investigation and development of a budget for implementing a platform. When a design and budget have been determined, an arti- cle for implementation could be brought to a future town meeting. Mr. Basu suggested that use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools may be the best way to carry out the proposed program. Mr. Padaki asked Ms. Sawhney about overlap between Article 26 and Article 27. Ms. Sawhney agreed that there is overlap but felt that Article 27 would not be sufficient to achieve the goals of Article 26 because the biggest project, i.e., the high school project, needs special attention and the information on that project needs to be communicated in an understandable way to all residents, in- cluding those who are not comfortable with English. Future Meeting Schedule The Committee will meet next on Thursday, March 5, with the goal of voting on all, or at least many, of the warrant articles to be addressed in the Committee’s report. Minutes of Prior Meetings Minutes for the meeting of February 19, 2026, were approved by a vote of 7-0. Planning for the Committee’s Report to the 2026 Annual Town Meeting Ms. Kosnoff informed the meeting that preliminary water and sewer assessments had been received from the MWRA, and that the numbers have been put into the corresponding enterprise fund budg- ets in the Brown Book. Minuteman High School’s final assessment for Lexington is also in the budget now. The requested appropriation for preliminary work on the North and Burlington Streets Sidewalk has been reduced to $60,000, and that for preliminary work on the intersections of Adams St. with Hancock and East Streets has been deferred. 2/26/2026 AC Minutes 4 Adjourn The meeting was adjourned by roll call vote at 9:26 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Alan M. Levine Approved: March 12, 2026 Exhibits ● Agenda, posted by Mr. Parker