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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-03-19-AC-min.pdf 3/19/2026 AC Minutes 1 Minutes Town of Lexington Appropriation Committee (AC) March 19, 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; Vinita Verma; Lily Yan; Carolyn Kosnoff, Assistant Town Manager, Finance (ex officio, non-voting) Members Absent: none Other Attendees: Lisah Rhodes, Capital Expenditures Committee (CEC); Charles Lamb (CEC); Archan Basu All votes recorded below were conducted by roll call. At 7:33 p.m. Mr. Parker called the meeting to order and took attendance by roll call. Announcements and Liaison Reports No report was offered. Discussion of Financial Articles for the 2026 Annual Town Meeting There was discussion of what to include in the discussion in the report of Article 23 Appropriate for Trash/Recycling Bins. Mr. Michelson said that the report should acknowledge that when the Town next goes out to bid for trash/recycling services, going with automated collection seems likely to yield many more bids and be much more competitive than would staying with manual collection. Mr. Levine added that automated collection may be much less expensive for contractors to provide, and that may be just as important a factor in determining bid amounts. Regarding Article 7 Vision for Lexington Survey, Ms. Verma stated that she asked a member of the Vision for Lexington committee about the impacts of the previous surveys but had not yet received a response. Mr. Osborne requested that the discussion in the report of Article 5 Enterprise Fund Budgets con- sider whether local water conservation efforts played a key role in reducing Lexington’s water us- age relative to other MWRA communities. Mr. Bartenstein responded that different communities may be more or less urban and so have different amounts of grass and respond differently to dry or wet weather. He acknowledged that water conservation efforts do play a role in how much water is used. He noted that the water rates need to be set higher if the usage is going to be low to cover costs that are fixed, i.e., not dependent on the volume of water used by the whole town. In response to a query from Mr. Padaki, Ms. Kosnoff said that last year’s Brown Book had tables including revenue for solar facilities other than the facility on Hartwell Ave. but that was mislead- ing because the Town does not earn revenue for the electric power generated at those facilities. She noted that much of the power generated by those facilities is used locally and thereby reduces the need to consume power from the grid, i.e., saves money by cost avoidance. 3/19/2026 AC Minutes 2 Mr. Osborne summarized what he had learned about the electric vehicle (EV) charges for the Police Station requested in Article 7 Sustainable Projects. The cost for the commercial-level electrical up- grades that are required for the new chargers is included in the requested amount. Currently, the Po- lice Department’s electric vehicles are for use by administrators, while neither the Police Chief’s vehicle and nor the police cruisers are EVs because they cannot rely on trickle chargers. The goal is to purchase four electric cruisers over the next several years. There will be some savings in fuel costs, and there will be a one-time savings on the purchase as long as the rebate incentives are still funded by the state. Mr. Osborne noted that additional chargers would be required before making the entire department fleet electric. The goal isn’t mainly to save money but rather to electrify the town (understood as a way to reduce the Town’s carbon footprint). A motion was made to recommend approval of Article 7. The vote was 9-0. Regarding Article 6 Amend FY2026 Budgets, Mr. Michelson asked what drove the legal services line over budget. Ms. Kosnoff said that budget line presently covers about $133,000 for work con- cerning Article 97 for the Lexington High School (LHS) project and about $6,000 for work for the Affordable Housing Trust. The LHS work will be moved to the LHS project budget and the AHT work will be charged to the AHT. Besides those expenses, much has been spent on litigation and public records requests. Ms. Kosnoff said that snow removal expenses are currently between $300,000 and $500,000 over budget, there may be charges that haven’t yet hit the ledger, and the snow season isn’t completely over. The FY2027 recommended budget includes $400,000 set aside for a snow removal deficit, so that putting $200,000 into the snow budget now together with the funds set aside is likely to be sufficient to cover all FY2026 snow removal expenses. A motion was made to recommend approval of Article 6. The vote was 9-0. Mr. Parker proposed that the Committee offer a substitute motion for Article 27 which is Stephen Kaufman's proposal for a capital transparency program. Mr. Parker presented a draft of the substi- tute motion very similar to the motion for Article 27 on the Town Meeting web page except that it doesn't commit the town to any particular expenses in the future other than what might be spent in the first year to study and prepare an implementation plan. The article sponsors do not support a change in the motion. Mr. Parker said that he had talked about this with Deborah Brown, and she said she saw no reason why the Committee could not offer a motion. Mr. Padaki emphasized that the goal of offering a substitute motion is to make sure that the idea to present better information on the status of capital projects to residents is not dropped which could happen if the main motion for Article 27 fails. The Committee discussed the substitute motion and suggested edits thereof. The final version of the motion is as follows: Substitute Motion Resolved that, in the interest of providing additional financial transparency for major capital projects, the Town: (a) Develop a prioritized set of requirements to share information with residents about selected capital projects in Lexington. 3/19/2026 AC Minutes 3 (b) Investigate commercially available systems and/or in-house solutions that could sat- isfy the above requirements in consultation with Town staff, the Select Board and other interested parties. (c) Develop proposals for a project timeline and budget, including initial setup and on- going expenses to implement the preferred solution. (d) Provide a progress report at the 2026 fall Special Town Meeting. In response to comments, Ms. Kosnoff stated that she and the other Finance Department staff have a lot of work to perform over the next six months and will not have much time available for studying how to present additional project and financial information to residents. She specifically called out a project to improve the payroll system that involves currently separate accrual systems for work hours and overtime for the Police and Fire Departments, implementing quarterly water/sewer bill- ing, and a very large project to implement a new cashiering software module that would be pur- chased with the funding requested in Article 12(o). She expects that the senior staff in other depart- ments would also have only limited time to work on development of a transparency platform. Based on Ms. Kosnoff’s comments and comments from Committee members, the substitute motion was revised to avoid imposing a hard deadline for the tasks to be done under parts (a), (b), and (c) of the above substitute motion. Rather, wording was inserted in part (d) to set a time to make a pro- gress report. Mr. Parker asked if any Committee member had an objection to the substitute motion as drafted. There were no objections (note that Mr. Osborne needed to leave the meeting before this point). Mr. Bartenstein reported on his investigations and other work on Article 24 Elderly and Disabled Taxation Aid Fund and Committee to motivate and explain the write up in the draft Committee re- port. He also mentioned that there is a bill, the Municipal Empowerment Act, pending in the legisla- ture that could allow more generous tax relief for seniors and disabled people. He noted that he has three main concerns, that the Act has not been described precisely, that a new tax check off could compete with the Fund for Lexington, and the new committee and tax check off could consume staff time and other resources while raising only small amounts of funds. The Committee voted 8-0 by roll call to approve the report allowing for non-substantive edits before it is published. Future Meeting Schedule The Committee will meet next on Monday, March 30, 2026, at 7 p.m. prior to the first session of the annual town meeting. Minutes of Prior Meetings Approval of the minutes for the meeting of March 12, 2026, was deferred due to the lateness of the hour. Adjourn The meeting was adjourned by roll call vote at 9:57 p.m. 3/19/2026 AC Minutes 4 Respectfully submitted, Alan M. Levine Approved: April 8, 2026 Exhibits ● Agenda, posted by Mr. Parker