Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Lee Select Board convened on October 20, 2026, for a regularly scheduled meeting. The Board addressed a full agenda, including the annual tax classification hearing, the establishment of a Cultural District Steering Committee, the adoption of financial policies, multiple license and permit approvals, and several municipal appointments.
Call the meeting to order. Welcome to the October 20th Lee Select Board meeting. Pursuant to Mass General Law Chapter 30A Section 20. I'm hereby informing all attendees that a video and audio recording is being made of this meeting. Alright, first uh order of business uh open session minutes of October 6, 2026. I have a motion to approve. Mr. Chair, I would move the approval of the open session minutes dated October 6th. All right, now there are only two of us tonight, so I'm going to second that. Is there any further discussion? No. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Public comment. Nothing from the public. All right, moving on to general business, the first order business discussion of the classification hearing from our our assessor Sarah Naven. Good evening, everyone. Hi, sir. Is that time of year again? Yep. Um, I'm gonna read from my little cue card here. Um the purpose of the classification hearing is to decide whether or not the town wants a single tax rate or a split tax rate, uh, which would be two tax rate, uh single tax rate would be residential and open space, a second tax rate would be commercial, industrial, and personal property. Um our values were preliminarily approved on September 29th of uh 26 and by the Bureau of Local Assessment. Um the LA4 total valuation for the town is 1,566,877,740. Um, the FY27 average single family home value for one uh 1,864 single homes is 454,811.69s for a total of 1,864 homes with a total value of 847,769,000. Last year's FY26 average single family home value was 429,358 and 84 cents with a total value of 798 million one hundred and seventy-eight thousand one hundred dollars. New construction added um for real estate commercial and industrial construction was seven million seven hundred and forty-one thousand eight hundred and twenty dollars. Uh personal property added an additional um six million ninety-eight thousand and twenty dollars for total new growth for FY27 at $13,839,840. Um, this new growth will help lower our tax rate. Um, the excess levy capacity is currently at $33,422,126.56 cents. This is the difference between the tax levy and the amount the town raised and appropriated for FY27. Um the Board of Assessors uh is the Board of Assessors recommends a single tax rate for FY27, which runs from July 1, 2026 to June 30th, 2027. Thank you, sir. Does anyone have any questions? We've done this before. Yes. To know if anybody had any issues, concerns. No. Okay. I don't um typically we keep the the or we've always kept the same tax rate. Yes. And I don't see any reason to split