Dear Lexington neighbors:
Happy new year 2025! I am running for the Lexington Select Board and am writing to ask for your support.
Trained as a French technocrat and now a 25-year Lexington resident, I believe I bring necessary long-range thinking and planning skills to our Town’s critical issues.
Two current issues spurred my decision to run for office. In April 2023, Lexington rezoned 228 acres for new housing instead of 50 as the State required. I support new housing in Lexington, especially affordable housing. But 228 acres of dense housing could double Lexington’s population, and make it impossible to balance future budgets without massive tax increases and/or deep budget cuts. That would jeopardize the quality of our schools.
Since the new MBTA zoning has thrown a monkey wrench into school planning and could add many hundreds of students to our schools, the School Building Committee’s choice of a new High School design called Bloom does not make sense. Bloom will cost two-thirds of a billion dollars, yet it is planned to accommodate fewer students than we already have now. The Committee ignored the phased project outlined in the 2015 Schools Master Plan that would allow us to create at a lower cost and sooner than Bloom space needed to relieve overcrowding at LHS and would, in a second phase, give us a correctly sized new High School. As a Select Board member, I will support a phased approach but will oppose a tax increase to fund the ill-conceived Bloom.
Please visit https://patrick4lex.org to read about my other priorities such as reducing taxes on owner-occupied houses assessed below the median town assessment (currently $1,416,000) while raising taxes on larger houses. Concord did that last year by instituting a residential exemption.
For the past 25 years, I have been concerned about keeping our town green. I want to strengthen our Tree By-law (which I helped draft in 2000) so that healthy old trees are not cut at the whim of builders or homeowners. Trees contribute greatly to the character of the Town and to our good health, both of which I am committed to maintain.
Please sign up to endorse my candidacy and to help by filling the forms on this page.
Please email this letter to your neighbors. We will elect two Select Board members on Monday, March 3 and I hope you will give me one of your two votes. Thank you.
Patrick Mehr
https://patrick4lex.org
Patrick, agree with everything except for the higher taxes for the houses assessed below the median town assessment.
Firstly, the way taxes are assessed need to be revisited. Unlike most towns, Lex assesses way too frequently and my house, for example, is tax-assessed higher than Redfin or zillow estimates. Tried fighting it with 0 results for couple years.
Secondly, this is a socialistic practice, and we are a capitalist society. Let’s not recreate Europe here. It’s as overreaching as the MBTA Act itself.
Natalia, I believe that between the need for a new high school and needing to hire more employees (teachers, staff, fire, police, DPW, etc.) to manage the rapid population growth due to the unexpectedly fast growth of MBTA-driven multi-family housing we are in for periodic substantial tax increases. Be it debt exclusions or overrides, taxes will go up or we will suffer drastic service reductions. Patrick is advocating for a system where properties below median assessment get a tax reduction thus helping people in less expensive housing remain in Lexington in spite of rapidly increasing taxes. I agree with you that how taxes are assessed needs to be revised, but that is a State government issue and worth directing to our State reps. Patrick’s main focus for the Select Board is to make sure that our taxes are spent in the most efficient way so that tax increases can be kept to a minimum while we continue to benefit from the excellent services we currently enjoy. I hope you will support Patrick for Select Board and vote for him on March 3. Thnx for staying informed.
Natalia H;
With a residential exemption, taxes on houses assessed below the median assessment, which in layman’s English would be called “small” houses will see their taxes diminish NOT “higher” as you incorrectly wrote. It’s the larger houses, assessed above $1,416,000, that would pay higher taxes. A residential exemption makes to our local real estate tax system a bit what our Federal income tax system does as a matter of course: people with low income pay at a low % rate of their income (0% or 10%, etc), and people with high incomes pay at a much higher rate (up to 37% of their income: see https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brackets) which seems fair to me in our capitalistic system. re Europe, note in https://patrick4lex.org/bio that my parents fled (Communist) Romania in 1947 to Paris, and that I in turn left France in 1982 because its “socialistic” policies were going to bankrupt it — as is now happening. Hope this helps. Email me on patrick@patrick4lex.org if you need more details.
Patrick, this proposal risks driving away the wealthier households who currently bear the majority of the town’s expenses, which I definitely will not be supportive of. This could mirror what happened in France when the government raised taxes on the highest income bracket to over 70%, prompting some billionaires to leave the country.
Natalia H:
Your fear is vastly exaggerated. In France, they tax wealth at a rate of up to 1.5% of assets (repeat, assets, not income) above 10 million Euros EACH year.
A residential exemption would only add $5-10-15,000 to the tax bill of a $3+ million home, quite affordable if somebody spent $3 million on a home, it seems to me.
But remember, 3 out of 5 Select Board members need to support this for it to happen and so far, all 5 in the past have regularly opposed it, I believe for the wrong reasons. Namely, I believe that many more people in small houses would benefit from a tax break that they need to be able to stay in Town, than folks in big homes who would barely feel a tax hike which they can generally afford.
Details about France’s “impôt sur la fortune immobilière” are at https://www.economie.gouv.fr/particuliers/impot-fortune-immobiliere-ifi
It’s quite disheartening and disappointing to read this. The SBC hasn’t even made an ask of the Select Board but Candidate Mehr is already pre-disposed to reject one if it’s for Bloom? This just screams bias to me. https://www.mma.org/members/msa/massachusetts-select-board-handbook/chapter-3-public-decision-making-and-community-engagement/ ethics rules seem to require Candidate Mehr to abstain from any discussion of school building issues: “ Bias exists when someone is so predisposed to accept or reject a matter that he or she cannot reasonably be expected to fairly and impartially adjudicate the matter. Everyone has some degree of bias, and not all bias is invalidating bias. Problems arise, however, when the public believes that a Select Board member is incapable of remaining impartial when required. Therefore, when speaking about a matter that could possibly come before the board in an adjudicatory proceeding, board members must be careful in their public pronouncements. Use general statements such as, “This is a very serious situation, and the board will hold a hearing on the matter to determine next steps. You are welcome to come speak at that hearing if you wish.” Select Board members should abstain from participating in a hearing if they are so predisposed that they are unable to fairly adjudicate a matter.”
As reported here in the Observer, the SBC has made their position clear: https://lexobserver.org/2024/11/13/school-building-committee-unanimously-votes-to-pursue-bloom-for-lexington-high-school-building-project/
The link you provided is guidance for sitting board members. Patrick is a candidate and this may be the most important issue the Select Board will encounter for years. Making his position known is appropriate and will help voters choose in the coming election. I expect all the candidates will address it in the coming campaign.
Jeremy:
I am someone who studies issues to the best of my abilities, using all the information I can assemble.
I am also someone who says what I think, and will do what I say — unless new information of a compelling nature appears that can make me change the conclusions I have reached per the previous paragraph. And I believe anyone running for any elected office should meticulously follow the rules (some would call them ethics) I outlined in the previous sentence.
That is why I wrote what I wrote in this letter to the Lexington Observer announcing my candidacy for our Select Board, and on https://patrick4lex.org.
Any voter who thinks that the SBC proposing to the community Bloom, costing 2/3 of $1 billion, sized for 30 students fewer than we already have (when we know that at least 1,120 new MBTA dwellings will be built in the next 2-3 years, and possibly many thousands more if Town Meeting doesn’t do the right thing soon), located in the sports fields, after NOT having looked at any phased design (as outlined by the Schools’ own 2015 Master Plan) is a proper process, should not vote for me.
Besides being the wrong design in the wrong location, Bloom is a perfect example of a process gone awry, because (i) no serious long-range planning of enrollments or finances was done, and (ii) the SBC has made of its oft-repeated “we listen to the public” a complete charade.
Patrick Mehr
for Lexington Select Board
Priorities: patrick4lex.org
Help my campaign: patrick4lex.org/endorsedonate
Supporters: patrick4lex.org/supporters
Bio: patrick4lex.org/bio
Lexington’s Select Board appointed ad hoc Residential Exemption Policy Study Committee, of which I was one member, undertook a lengthy examination of the direct and indirect effects of implementing the MA Residential Exemption option in Lexington. It turns out to be a much more complex (and interesting) issue than Mr. Mehr has considered. The Committee unanimously recommended NOT adopting this policy despite members’ universal desire to reduce the residential tax burden on income constrained and older town residents. The Committee’s April 2019 final report is available here https://www.lexingtonma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2045/Committee-Final-Report-PDF Pages 8-10 of the Executive Summary section give a relatively brief explanation as to why this policy leads to outcomes counter to tax relief goals.
Sara (I am Patrick, not “Mr. Mehr”):
If it is so complex an issue, how come Concord was able to resolve it?
More to the substance: I have studied the report of your Committee very closely, and have these 2 points.
(1) the key question “is/would our real estate tax system be more fair, (a) as today without a residential exemption, or (b) if a residential exemption was implemented?” was never asked by your Committee. I believe that (b) is obviously more fair than (a). The only advantage of (a) is that we accept it as a fait accompli, which it is by State law, without questioning its fairness.
(2) Would a system, unlike a residential exemption, that would be income- or asset-tested, be better than a residential exemption (which ignores each homeowner’s particular finances)? Of course, yes. But our State Reps and Senators have been unable to get Beacon Hill to allow Lexington to implement such a system in 6 years.
So rather than wait another 6 years — or 60?… — for Beacon hill to wake up to the problem, I would rather see a sub-optimal system — a residential exemption — established now, simply because of the — obvious to me — answer to (1).