HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-08-28-VISION2025-min
Town of Lexington
Vision for Lexington Committee Meeting
August 28, 2026
Remote Meeting
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Members Present: Sara del Nido Budish, Margaret Coppe, Bob Creech (Planning Board),
Andrew Dixon, John Giudice, Vineeta Kumar (Select Board), Bhumip Khasnabish, Tom Lin,
Carol Marine, Shannon Murtagh, Mona Roy (School Committee), PK Shiu, Catherine Yan
Absent: Marian Cohen, Min Zhou
Guests: John Zhao (Council on Aging), Matthew Jarrell (Town’s Transportation Manager)
Staff: Darah Meister (Town’s Management Fellow)
Meeting was called to order: 8:15 AM.
The remote meeting script was read by Margaret Coppe.
Roll Call Vote: Budish, Aye; Coppe, Aye; Creech, Aye; Dixon, Aye; Giudice, Aye; Khasnabish,
Aye; Aye, Kumar; Lin, Aye; Marine, Aye; Murtagh, Aye; Roy, Aye; Shiu, Aye; Yan, Aye.
Minutes:
Minutes from July 24, 2026, will be shared and approved at the next meeting.
Meeting Highlights:
VFL Website and Report on Emails
Committee requested the following updates to Vision for Lexington webpage:
Update meeting details: Last Friday of every month at 8 AM.
Add August 2025 report: Our Vote, Our Community: Addressing Low Voter Turnout in
Lexington’s Local Elections.
Add Zoom meeting link – Management Fellow noted security concerns; this request may
not be doable.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity
N/A
Town Wide Survey
1. UMass Lowell Contract Update
Tom Lin reported that the Town is currently reviewing the contract, and legal teams for
both parties are reviewing it as well.
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UMass Lowell is preparing a full contract that mirrors the Town's format; once complete,
the parties' legal teams will continue their review.
Town raised concerns about the indemnification terms, which the group noted is a
common point of negotiation and has been worked out.
Town Manager will do a final review.
2. Survey Update
Sarah noted recommendations from UMass Lowell after reviewing the 2022 survey to
align with current survey best practices/reduce bias and confusion, including:
o Revising double-barreled questions (e.g., disentangling DEI-related items into
separate questions)
o Reordering scale questions from worst-to-best rather than best-to-worst
o Adding headers to improve structure and clarity
o Using Qualtrics' translation function to offer the survey in Chinese and Korean
o Rebalancing open-ended questions to reduce bias (e.g., revising prompts such as
"In what ways has Lexington gotten worse over the past few years?")
If the goal is to shorten the survey, the committee may need to cut existing questions.
Mona raised a concern that, as currently framed, the DEI question implies a tradeoff
between good academic standards and DEI and asked whether the question could be
revised while still allowing comparison to past years' data.
The committee discussed the degree to which question content can be changed from the
2022 survey while still supporting longitudinal comparisons year over year.
3. Survey Subcommittee Meetings
The Survey Subcommittee meets biweekly on Fridays at 11:00 AM via Zoom.
Next subcommittee meeting: Friday, September 4.
Margaret to circulate Zoom link to committee members.
4. Student Engagement
High School students are preparing their own survey, which UMass Lowell has agreed to
review, edit, and help brainstorm distribution strategies for reaching the student body.
5. Data Ownership and Access
To do: Determine who owns the raw data from the 2022 survey, and confirm ownership
of the 2027 survey data going forward. It was noted that the Town will own the data and
that this should be spelled out in the contract.
Confidentiality concerns were raised regarding public accessibility of raw data. The
committee confirmed there is no intention to collect names or other personally
identifiable information.
Question raised again about who has access to 2022 survey data, held by the organization
that originally conducted it (Marian/Framingham State), for analysis purposes (including
potential trend analysis by UMass Lowell).
o Marian noted in a previous meeting that she was unsure which drive/disk the
historical data is stored on.
o The committee asked whether Elizabeth Mancini might have additional
information on the location of past data.
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o It was suggested that if past data is unavailable and comparative analysis is not
feasible, the committee may have more flexibility to revise survey questions.
Regarding data storage responsibility: Darah will check in with Steve and Kelly on where
individual response data and cumulative survey data should be stored and whether that
falls under the Town's responsibility, noting that it most likely does given the use of
Town funds for the survey process.
6. Next Steps
Committee members will review the draft survey ahead of the next meeting and identify
content to eliminate or add.
o Should the survey include questions about the cemetery or crematorium?
Discussion topic to revisit: what "a vibrant downtown" means in the context of the
survey.
Draft survey will be shared via Google Docs in view-only mode (no edit access),
consistent with Open Meeting Law; members may share comments/edits with the Survey
Steering Committee.
The committee will look into whether it is legally obligated to follow state-level data
disaggregation standards (i.e., not grouping all identity subgroups together, such as under
a single "Asian" category, and accounting for multicultural/biracial identities). PK will
add two additional subcategories and send them to Margaret to circulate them to the
committee.
Meeting in person
Not discussed.
Public comment
No public comment.
Motion to Adjourn: Moma Roy moved adjournment.
Roll Call Vote: Budish, Aye; Coppe, Aye; Creech, Aye; Dixon, Aye; Giudice, Aye: Khasnabish,
Aye; Lin, Aye; Marine, Aye; Roy, Aye; Shiu, Aye; Yan, Aye.
Murtagh, no longer present.
Meeting ended: 9:09
Next meeting: Friday, September 25, 2026, at 8:00 AM.
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Minutes submitted by Darah Meister, Management Fellow.
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