BREAKING NEWS: Lincoln Residents Only Allowed to Use First Base at New LS Softball Field

First, it is great that we passed funding at town meeting for the new LS softball field. We should have done this when the high school was built. Unfortunately, the path to get this funded was messy at best and shows some of the serious issues that the town of Sudbury faces in our regional agreement with Lincoln. Lincoln parents are great and the students they send LS are terrific, but the business relationship between our two towns is severely one sided. Last Wednesday’s discussion at town meeting highlighted these issues.

The first hint of the problem occurred when LS School Committee Chairwoman Nancy Marshall spoke about the town of Lincoln wanting to help fund the field, but she was very vague about why they were not funding $50K. We had heard this had passed at Lincoln Town Meeting in March, so her remarks were confusing. To hear the whole story, you just need to go and watch the tapes from the Lincoln town meeting. The discussion starts at 1:02:00  As you listen, you realize that what was happening is that Lincoln was only going to provide the money for the softball field if they got access to all the fields at LS including the turf field. The contentious issue here is that the town of Sudbury built the turf field with our CPA money. Lincoln did not contribute at the time. At 1:12:45 into the tape, LSSC member Gerald Quirk address a question from Lincoln Park and Rec and states “my intention, that’s what the condition is [turf access], the mechanism by which field time gets allocated ….will need to be worked out…”

Now LS is a shared asset between both towns. So both towns should get access to all the facilities. It is the same when we renovate Fairbanks or Atkinson Pool. Everyone in town has access. Everyone pays for the asset through their property tax contributions based on their real estate appraisal. In the Fairbanks case, to actually use the pool, there is a fee that goes to operations. If only our regional agreement with Lincoln were set up this way.

Lincoln only pays for assets based on the number of students in the school. Since they only have 15% of the student population, the regional agreement says they should only contribute 15% to new assets. It is why their contribution is potentially only $50K for the softball field. So when Mr. Quirk discusses mechanisms for using fields, under these scenarios, I propose a simple mechanism. Lincoln can use the softball field 15% of the time or perhaps just 15% of the field.

But that is absurd. As absurd if we decided to charged those people within 1 mile of Fairbanks more money for the roof since they are closer to the facility and could use it more often. LS is a shared asset. Lincoln should contribute to LS assets according to their real estate property valuations just like towns do when it comes to building assets. Attendance figures should drive operating expense allocation only.

In this specific case, we are using attendance figures at LS to drive asset contribution values for a field that all Lincoln residents can use, even those with kids at private schools. The connection between attendance at LS and asset contribution is even more difficult to justify in this case. 

Don’t look for the LSSC to fix this. Our at-large voting system means the Lincoln voting block controls nearly all the board. We as a town could vote for a block of candidates and take control of the board by using the at-large voting system against Lincoln, but many of our elected officials continue to talk in the language of consensus. If you listened to the park and rec gentleman from Lincoln in the recording above, notice he said “negotiation” a couple of times when referring to us. Lincoln is smart and gets this. Of course, why our BOS and SPS have not worked to address this is beyond me. Our funding of LS is substandard, Lincoln is not paying in enough, and this impacts the money we have available for SPS.

Finally, when we passed article 22 at town meeting, LS is now part of our capital planning process. The high school needs a major technology upgrade. Get ready to see Sudbury pay 85% of these costs, while our “partner” pays just 15%. Perhaps we should put up a bandwidth limiter that only allows Lincoln residents 15% of the bandwidth, or perhaps only 15% of the WIFI coverage at the school. But that is absurd. It is as absurd as our regional agreement.