Name: Patrick Mehr
Address: 31 Woodcliffe Road
Precinct: 3
e-mail address: patrick.mehr [at] gmail.com ()
phone number: 781-367-2229

Community Activities: 

• Town Meeting member, Pct 3: 2000-2015
• Tree Committee: 1999-2005 or so; co-wrote Lexington’s Tree by-law, the first in Massachusetts to protect certain trees on private property
• Ad-hoc Electric Utility Committee: approximately 2001-2015 (main activity: http://massmunichoice.org)

The School Building Committee has approved a plan, “Bloom” for the new high school and building on the current playing fields in the Center. Do you support this decision? If not, what would you propose as an alternative?

No.

The SBC’s preferred design, Bloom, makes no sense: (1) Bloom will be too small on day 1 (sized for 2,395 students, fewer than the 2,405 we now have) yet must last us for 70 years (and MBTA developments may increase the Town’s population very significantly), (2) Bloom will take too long to build: LHS overcrowding can be addressed faster with a staged design, (3) at 2/3 of $1 billion, Bloom is too expensive, (4) Bloom destroys the continuity of the fields, and (5) the LPS and SBC have no plan B should the necessary debt exclusion for Bloom fail, or should the necessary Article 97 land swap be delayed or rules illegal by a court (since not all alternatives saving the fields, specifically the staged design described below, were considered by the SBC), just like Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) was killed by a court.

Instead of Bloom, the SBC should have our architects design a staged project, Phase 1 of which is what the Schools’ 2015 Master Plan outlined, replacing LHS’s foreign languages building with a multi-story rectangular new building, to be built faster than Bloom and at far lower cost. Then, 1-2-3 years after Phase 1 opens, based on how High School enrollments grow (or don’t: nobody can guess today) as a result of new MBTA dwellings, Phase 2 must be designed to the right size, possibly a full 2nd High School. Contrary to what the SBC wants the public to believe, no staged design has been professionally looked at.

In parallel, the Select Board and our legislative delegation must engage with the Governor to have the MSBA adapt its procedures so that Lexington, which did 10 times what the State asked of us regarding MBTA zoning, remains at the front of the queue of MSBA’s applicants when we are able to size Phase 2 of our new High School project.