All articles were passed at Town Meeting except Articles 13 and 14, which were citizen petitions and were withdrawn by the petitioner during the meeting. Articles 7 and 8 are covered in their own article.
Articles 1-6 were previous articles from last spring’s Town Meeting and were all passed by voice vote without discussion or debate.
Article 1 was in response to a change in the state law regarding Other Post-Employment Benefits Liability Trust Funds (OPEB funds) in the state, which sets aside money to assist with retiree health insurance and other benefits for town employees.
Articles 2-5 update the fees for various Town offices, such as the Select Board fees and the Board of Health. Article 6 appropriates funds to supplement the Medicare budget line item for Fiscal Year 2026, which was previously estimated and now needs to be supplemented.
Articles 7 and 8 establish regulations for ADUs in Lynnfield, based on the change in state law that went into effect in February.
Articles 9 and 10 amend the zoning for and allow the sale of the parcel at 630 Salem St., previously the South Library Branch and most recently serving as the Fire Department Headquarters until the opening of the new Fire Station at 1100 Summer St. Since that new complex opened, this building is considered extraneous and the Town has now decided to sell it.
Article 9 rezones the lot to Limited Business (LB) from Single Residence A (RA), allowing for greater possible use cases for the lot. The Town engaged in the Request for Proposals (RFP) process to invite bids for if this article did not pass and bids for if it did. Article 10 authorized the actual transfer of the property to the Select Board for sale. The lot was appraised at $425,000 as-is if it remained zoned as RA. The winning bid for both cases was from the same bidder and came in at at $475,000.
Article 11 was to raise or appropriate an amount of funds, estimated at less than $350,000, to finish the public safety building process. At the beginning of the process but after the contracts for work had been penned, it was discovered that a large amount of PFAS contamination was present at the site of the South Fire Station, and new laws and regulations signed by the Biden Administration required that contamination to be mitigated.
It was decided to slightly reduce the scope of the overall project from the contract as written and pause the demolition of the old South Fire Station in order to ensure the contamination was properly dealt with. Now that the project on the South Station site is otherwise generally complete, the Town requested some additional money to finalize the demolition and to complete other incidental goals that were deferred. It expects the costs to be lower than the estimate of $350,000 and to return excess funds to the Town coffers at the next Town Meeting in May.
Article 12 is to appropriate funds for the Lynnfield Public Library to repair or replace its roof, which is more than three decades old and has been an ongoing problem for the library. Leaks and “ice dams” have caused ongoing damage to the building and everything within it. The funds will come out of the Town’s Sale of Real Estate fund and should work out to be a “wash” when compared to the sale of the lot at 630 Salem St., according to Town Administrator Rob Dolan.
Articles 13 and 14 were, in the opinion of town counsel and based on research into state law, found to be unenforceable. They would have been non-binding rules to make the Select Board meet with the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee at least twice a year, among other related provisions. However, according to the town counsel, state law prohibits Town Meeting articles from imposing rules on elected boards like the Select Board, preserving a separation of powers.
