Bravo, the YES campaign now sees Lexington can save more money!

In her Nov 16, 2017 Patch story, Nicola Rinaldi, co-chair of the YES campaign, makes several false assertions. Below, you can read our NO campaign's rebuttal of those false assertions.

You can watch our 1-hour long TV debate with the YES campaign here, which also dispels the YES campaign's myths, starting after Nicola Rinaldi's very interesting (and accurate) first 7.5 minutes during which she describes how our leaders have failed to replace our decrepit Hastings school and Bedford St fire station when they should have — decades or years ago, if only our leaders had any long-term, 10- or 20-year, outlooks of our operating AND capital budgets: none exist.

The YES campaign is trying to convince voters of three things that are not true (our more detailed rebuttal of the YES campaign's misleading assertions is at Lexvote.org/ryr):

(1) the YES campaign claims that the Town already saves money, since it has accumulated $28 million in its Capital Stabilization Fund (plus $9 million in its Stabilization Fund), when in fact the $28 million exist for 2 (and only 2) reasons: (a) Lexington started enjoying multi-million dollar annual savings on its health benefits expenditures after it finally joined the State’s Group Insurance Commission (GIC) — unfortunately several years too late, ignoring what some people in town suggested right after Brookline joined GIC, that Lexington should do the same —, and (b) after that, the Selectmen did NOT reduce our tax rates, but instead continued to tax us at the maximum allowed (called the “levy limit” to use Prop 2 1/2 technical jargon), even though the Selectmen could have balanced our operating budgets with lower taxes. So the $28 million are all taxpayers’ money that could instead still be in our wallets, if the Selectmen had not taxed us at the full “levy limit”. In fact, some people feel they could get a better return on their money than the Town gets on the accumulated $28 million (approximately 1% per year) for the portion of their taxes that they paid into that $28 million, had the Selectmen not continued to tax us at the “levy limit” after Lexington joined GIC and the corresponding savings materialized.

(2) the YES campaign claims that the $6.5 million in savings we have identified are overstated because we have not included in our calculations some more minor costs (for example, the cost of a few over-max aides and extra school bus transportation, should 98 elementary students change school to eliminate 16 classrooms and save some $2 million annually while increasing average class size by just +2.7 students systemwide).

It is true that our calculations are only the best estimates citizens can produce, since we do not have access to Town- and School-proprietary data. The ONLY reasons we have not incorporated (and could not) several such small costs are that (a) we, as citizens, contrary to School and Town leaders and staff, CANNOT access the detailed information and data necessary to calculate (or even estimate) those costs, and (b) our School and Town leaders and staff have consistently refused for years to look at these Lexvote.org/sc, Lexvote.org/hc and Lexvote.org/metco savings opportunities (notwithstanding what the YES campaign wants voters to believe...) that we believe it is now BETTER for Lexington and its taxpayers to discuss these opportunities publicly even if our cost estimates of the possible savings can (and should) still be refined, than for voters to NOT know that these opportunities exist because they are continually and systematically ignored. Should we wait — possibly into eternity... — until our School and Town leaders finally study them fully before voters know about them, while our taxes increase unnecessarily? We do not believe that to be the fair way to run our public affairs.

(3) the YES campaign wants you to believe that we don't realize that there are implementation issues for each of these money-savings initiatives. Of course there are implementation issues — we know that better than the YES campaign, because unlike the YES campaign, we have been working on these savings opportunities for years now: at the end of our TV debate 18 months ago, Nicola Rinaldi asked voters to pass the 2016 debt exclusion (it did, raising our taxes by +2%), promising that afterwards she would "personally" work on the proposed money-saving opportunities; she did nothing of the sort in the past 18 months...

We know full well for example that raising all salaries by $7,000 and in exchange lowering Lexington's payment of 85% of our employees' health premiums to 50% (as Concord does) requires the agreement of all of our (many: over 20) municipal and school unions, in both "coalition bargaining" (for benefits) AND direct negotiations (for salaries). But this initiative first requires the Town Manager to have replicated (via the use of expert consultants) and improved our analysis of the $2.5 million in annual savings before any proposal can be made for our unions to consider. The Town Manager and the Selectmen have not done that.

The YES campaign wants voters to believe that the Town Manager and the Selectmen have studied Lexvote.org/hc (or the other money-saving opportunities); they have not done so (nor has Nicola Rinaldi or anyone from the YES campaign "personally" worked to get such studies done) — if any such study existed, and if the results where what the YES campaign wants you to believe (in short, Lexvote.org/hc and the other proposals are "pipe dreams"), the results would have publicized if anything to undercut the arguments this NO campaign makes: the Monday, December 4 the answers to the three questions are NO, NO and NO because a +3% tax increase is unnecessary; the three projects can and will be done, funded by the $6.5 million in annual savings from the opportunities at Lexvote.org once the Town and Schools finally study and implement them, without any extra tax increase.

And the projects need not be delayed. If voters vote NO, NO and NO, thereby rejecting the +3% tax increase on December 4, there is enough money ($28 million) in the Town's Capital Stabilization Fund for the Selectmen to use that Fund as the source of a "bridge loan" to ourselves, to start the projects right away even if the full implementation of all Lexvote.org money-saving initiatives will take some time before they generate the full $6.5 million in annual savings that will cover more than the three projects' annual $6 million in debt service (without the — therefore unnecessary — +3% tax increase).