Members of several Lexington committees met at Cary Hall for a summit to discuss the results of a town residential impact report on Monday night.
The report examined how an increase in the town’s population, brought on by incoming MBTA Communities Act compliant housing, could affect public school enrollment and emergency services.
Members from Lexington’s select board, planning board, school committee, appropriation committee, and capital expenditures committee attended the summit. Many of them found the report’s findings unreliable and argued it did not answer critical questions or fully address potential impacts on emergency services.
Eric Michelson, a member of the town’s appropriation committee, thinks Lexington must learn when to address issues such as staffing the police department, adjusting the town’s water capacity, and managing traffic, among other items.
“We’ve got to not look at this as a hurricane coming toward us, but we need to know that something is coming and when to bring the sandbags out,” he said. “Not only are those questions not answered, but they are not addressed by this report.”
The study, called, “Impact analysis of multi-family housing development on Lexington, MA” was completed in March by Fougere Planning + Development, a land-use planning and development consulting firm out of Milford, NH, and Jeffrey Donohoe Associates, an economic and real estate consulting firm out of Contoocook, NH.
That team gathered data from Lexington Public Schools on the number of students living in existing multi-family housing in Lexington such as the Avalon at Lexington Hills, Lexington Meadows, and Jefferson Union, among others. They also gathered call data from Lexington’s fire and police departments to estimate the impact incoming housing could have on LFD and LPD services.
The report estimates 2,670 people will move to town if the 1,117 multi-family units Lexington’s planning board is considering are approved, built, and occupied.
Based on that data, 499 additional students may be enrolled at LPS by the 2030 to 2031 school year, the report states.
Town manager Steve Bartha said many professionals have estimated the cost of incoming students and everyones’ estimates are slightly different.
“We’re all throwing darts,” he said. “We’re not necessarily trying to get a bullseye but trying to make sure we’re on the same board.”
LPS enrollment has been declining, the report states. It could lose 312 students by fiscal year 2030. That means the district could net 177 additional students if the proposed units are occupied. Those new students could cost the town about $2.9 million.
LPS has seen fewer new students, but more students with heightened needs, who cost the town more money, Eileen Jay, chair of the school committee, noted.
“We don’t have a lot of new revenue to cover that,” she said during the summit. “My big worry is how to think about those short-term years and balancing both of those pressures.”
Fougere’s report states an additional 481 annual calls could be made to the local police; 119 to the fire department; and 131 to emergency medical services, or EMS, if all proposed units are built.
LPD estimated it would need to hire four new police officers, the report states. That could add about $497,000 to annual costs and a one-time cost of $100,000 for a new cruiser and equipment.
Fougere’s report estimates the incoming housing will generate a net increase in property tax revenue of about $4,644,800 and about $326,667, annually, from excise taxes.
A couple appropriation committee members argued the numbers found by the report aren’t dependable.
Glenn Parker, chair of the town’s appropriation committee, said he doesn’t think the report was done logically. And Alan Levine of the appropriation committee called the numbers in the report “totally unreliable.”
Other committee members were worried the strain an increase in population could put on town services is deeper than what the report suggests.
“We might be talking about death by a thousand cuts…large increases in enrollment might mean redistricting,” Charles Lamb of the appropriations committee used as an example.
Doug Lucente, chair of the select board, wants people who move to Lexington to experience the same level of service that residents experience now.
“There are items where we have to say, ‘we have to do this or our service levels are going to suffer’,” he said.
That means committee members may have to push for a new fire station or special education reserve funding in the future, Lucente said.
“We should be looking at, a little bit closer, our human services department…we are going to have some additional needs perhaps and I want us to be prepared to serve those folks,” he said.
Planning board chair Michael Schanbacher, however, argued because the proposed multi-family housing developments take “a while to come online,” Lexington will have time to “absorb these changes as they come.” He noted the planning board only has three permits right now and “time will tell how many of the proposed projects get built.”
Your story misses the main point, which is that the Fougère report is “totally unreliable” — as Alan Levine is quoted to have (correctly) said — for the simple reason that the amounts in table 16 of the report (e.g. $12,093 per high school non-SPED student, and all similar per student $ figures in that table) used as variable school costs per student are about 1/2 of what they are in reality, as shown in this simple sanity check that compares Fougère’s numbers with our real $240 million annual school expenses:
$/student #s used by Fougère & # students per DESE 2025 (2023 for SPED)
LPS student type $/student # students Cost per Fougère
General Elementary $10,455 1,626 $16,999,830
General Middle $10,042 1,732 $17,392,744
General High School $12,093 2,405 $29,083,665
SPED in-district $44,000 841 $37,004,000
SPED out-of-district $80,000 144 $11,520,000
Total from above: $16,598 6,748 $112,000,239
Total real school budget (rounded): $240,000,000
Unexplained difference: $127,999,761
This shows that the Fougère report used $ costs per student that ignore about half of our total school costs of $240 million per year, making the whole report useless, since schools represent 80% of the Town’s budget each year.
If the Schools and/or the Town know the CORRECT marginal costs to our educate non-SPED and SPED students, as opposed to the evidently too low $ figures Fougère used, will Fougère be asked to redo the study? If not, how will we have correct estimates, since Fougère’s current ones are useless, because so grossly underestimated?
If neither the Schools nor the Town know the marginal costs to educate non-SPED and SPED students, how will that knowledge be created?
The Town cannot do any long-range planning of our budgets if nobody knows — as is the case today since Fougère used such wrong $/student figures — our fixed, semi-fixed (i.e. $0 if we have say just 50 more students in our schools, certainly not $0 if we have 500, 1,000 or more additional students to educate) and variable costs, so the questions above seem essential to me, as a former BCG consultant.
Apologies for the poor formatting above!
My “sanity check” which demonstrates that the Fougère report is useless is now at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16_pHruKbMDhByNsYDVOenq7N5L9qUkID/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116971253884586510151&rtpof=true&sd=true as a small Excel spreadsheet.