Lincoln Select Board defers $40,000 GIS staffing line, closes annual town meeting warrant

LINCOLN -- January 28, 2013, Lincoln Select Board defers $40,000 GIS staffing request and closes annual town meeting warrant. Members Noah Eckhouse and Peter Braun told IT Director Chuck Miller and assessor volunteer Ellen Meadors the $40,000 contract for two days a week of outsourced GIS administration through Harold Scheid's firm should wait for a broader fiscal 2015 IT staffing review; Eckhouse called the line "a ratcheting up of a tenth of 1% of the total town budget essentially for perpetuity," and Braun pressed alternatives including a half-time town employee. Lincoln has spent roughly $145,000 of a $185,000 GIS plan adopted in 2009. The board's preferred budget add-list now stands at $81,000. Conservation Commission members Julie Dobrow and Peter von Mertens then presented a 20-to-30-minute documentary project on Lincoln's conservation history, dropping a planned $12,000 warrant article in favor of crowdfunding after the Community Preservation Committee deemed oral histories ineligible.