Lincoln Select Board closes 40-article town meeting warrant, presses back on state housing mandate

LINCOLN — January 31, 2022 — Lincoln Select Board warns 750-unit zoning floor would force 30 percent housing-stock expansion. At a joint Jan. 31 session with the Planning Board and South Lincoln Planning Action Committee, Planning Board Chair Margaret Olson briefed officials on draft Department of Housing and Community Development guidelines implementing the 2021 Housing Choice Act, which would require Lincoln to zone a 50-acre district near its commuter rail station for multifamily housing at 15 units per acre. Olson stressed the rules govern zoning only: "We could in theory zone the entire half mile for 15 units per acre. If nobody sold their property or built anything new, we would have no new housing and we would be in compliance." Member James Craig questioned Lincoln's classification as a bus-service community based on a single 77 bus stop at Hanscom. Town Administrator Tim Higgins urged collective advocacy through MAPC's MAGIC subregion and the Massachusetts Municipal Association. The board separately closed the 40-article March 26 town meeting warrant and endorsed a $119,000 preferred budget add producing a 3.6 percent total increase, with $137,000 of items shifted to ARPA funding, including $100,000 for the IDEA committee.