
Joe on the Issues
As a member of the Select Board, Joe Pato has consistently collaborated with key stakeholders and stayed focused on what makes Lexington a great place to live, work, and educate our children.
Joe’s 2025 priorities
High School Redevelopment Project
Rally our community to support a Lexington High School building project that strikes the right balance for students, taxpayers, and our community as a whole.
There is community consensus that the current high school facility is woefully undersized, with major systems near or past their useful life expectancy. In today’s post-pandemic construction environment, any project is a large financial investment for the Town. The high school building project is larger than any project we have previously undertaken. It is important that we invest wisely – and avoid throwing large sums of money into inadequate half-measures.
Joe supports the School Building Committee’s (SBC) submission to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). This proposal is the result of two years of work, including 200+ public meetings, incorporating input from a broad diversity of community perspectives. This project satisfies key criteria:
- First and foremost, it meets the district’s educational plan, providing appropriate space for all academic needs.
- It responds to community feedback by reducing disruption to playing fields. The submitted plan ensures that more fields will stay in their current location than the original proposal and moves others to the area where the current school buildings are located.
- It responds to parent and student feedback by reducing student disruption, enabling the current LHS to remain operational until students are relocated to the new facility.
- It is designed for flexibility – with space for growth in phases should that be needed.
- It is designed for improved safety – with features not present in the current multiple building campus.
We are entering the schematic design phase of the project, when the basic design concept is transformed from abstract building blocks into detailed specifications. Joe has stressed to the SBC and the project architects that we need a modest design, one that creates a robust and sound facility but avoids unnecessary expense. Joe is committed to keeping costs in check.
Joe is also committed to working on ways to reduce the resulting financial burden by seeking new funding sources, rebalancing expenses, and lobbying for additional state aid.
Ultimately, town voters will decide how we proceed with the high school building project. Joe’s goal is to provide us with a project that voters will agree best meets our collective needs.
MBTA Housing Zoning and Growth
Address multi-family housing development and its impact on our schools and services, lands and roads.
Lexington complied with the multi-family zoning requirement of the Massachusetts Zoning Act (Ch 40a) in the spring of 2023. This rezoning provides the opportunity for badly needed diversity of housing in Lexington – housing that will support residents who want to downsize, or who want to live closer to retail stores and professional services. It will also offer some lower cost, attainable housing.
This summer it became clear that new MBTA multi-family development projects were being proposed faster than expected and this warrants a slowdown or pause to allow the Town to examine the results of those projects already in the pipeline. Joe supports acting at the special town meeting this spring to right-size our zoning in a way that maintains our compliance with state law and allows us to better control the rate of growth. Let’s mend it, not end it.
In the meantime, Joe has advocated for and helped organize fact-finding initiatives that will enable Lexington to respond to these challenges with informed decision-making. For example:
- Joe is in contact with LPS adminstration reviewing housing project proposals as they are submitted.
- Joe requested a +1 meeting (chairs +1 member of Select Board, School Committee, Appropriation Committee, and Capital Committee) with town staff to discuss broader impacts of growth – resulting in:
- Tasking staff to outline departmental effects of growth
- Investigating additional tax mitigation strategies for funding the high school project beyond current resources: the capital stabilization fund and the dedicated incremental tax revenue policy
- Joe requested and obtained a revival of the School Master Planning committee to examine and revise student population growth scenarios at all grade levels.
Climate and Environmental Initiatives
Continue to be a strong voice and leader on climate and the environment. Joe has:
- As a member of the Waste Reduction Taskforce, championed bringing curbside compost collection townwide to reduce trash disposal expenses and redirecting valuable nutrients to productive use. More broadly, he worked for the adoption of Lexington’s Zero Waste Plan.
- Successfully advocated to adopt a Sustainable Building Plan for new and renovated facilities. This established a policy for the highest reasonably attainable and economically viable performance standards for health, energy, and resilience for the maintenance and renovation of Town buildings.
- Collaborated with the Sustainable Lexington Committee to propose and then led the Select Board to adopt the Sustainable Action Plan. This is a roadmap for the Town’s efforts to move forward on several key sustainability issues, from finding energy efficiencies to protecting our residents in extreme weather patterns. This comprehensive plan calls for designing buildings that are healthier for our staff and students and cost taxpayers less to operate over time.
- Worked to pass the Getting to NetZero Plan, which seeks to reduce the town’s total greenhouse gas emissions and move the community to 100% renewable energy sources.
Town Management Transition
Provide continuity and support for our excellent new Town Manager
Steve Bartha began his role as Lexington Town Manager this past November. As Steve gets to know Lexington, Joe will help him successfully transition to his new post.
Joe will pursue these priorities while sustaining the policies and initiatives he has pursued since being elected to Town Meeting in 2008:
- Advance economic development in a manner respectful of surrounding neighborhoods while reducing the burden on residential taxpayers.
- Manage Lexington’s Sustainable Action Plan and Getting to NetZero Plan for a healthier environment.
- Improve our streets and sidewalks so they are safe and accessible for all — for those who walk, bike, drive, or need assistance getting around.
- Strongly support quality education in our schools.
- Ensure Lexington continues to be a welcoming and inclusive community.
Fiscal and Economic Development Policy
Joe asks tough questions to ensure that every penny spent by the Town is justified. From his first days on the Appropriation Committee, Joe has rolled up his sleeves and worked to find ways to save residents money.
- Joe helped usher in new revenue sources for the Town including:
- More than $850,000 in new revenue per year being produced by the solar panels installed on Lexington town facilities and schools.
- A reduced cost of electricity for the community through the adoption of the Community Aggregation Program that lowered electricity charges for consumers by more than $29.5M since inception.
- To reduce the tax burden on residents, Joe works to create a better balance between the residential and business tax base. He finds ways to be welcoming to businesses while preserving our residential neighborhoods.
- To help those who are concerned about being priced out of town, Joe led the effort to explore tax assistance programs allowed by the state. He put together the Residential Exemption Study Working Group and Study Committee, which led to significant increases in eligibility thresholds for the Lexington Property Tax Deferral Program.
- As a member of a Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) policy committee, Joe has lobbied for additional state aid to municipalities and for additional relief for stressed property taxpayers. This has led to Governor Healy’s proposal to create new property tax exemptions for seniors. The bill will allow cities and towns to adopt a new Senior Means Tested Property Tax Exemption for qualifying seniors and to increase existing senior property tax exemptions.
- Joe ensures Lexington stays fiscally healthy so the Town qualifies for the lowest possible interest rates to finance the building of our school and municipal facilities. During Joe’s time on the Select Board, Lexington has improved its financial reserves and retained the highest bond ratings. Borrowing at the lowest possible rates saves significant taxpayer dollars in decreased debt service costs.
Public Safety
Public safety is one of Joe’s highest priorities. When discord emerged over policing, Joe initiated and co-led a community-wide listening tour that fostered understanding and enabled our Police Department to be more responsive to community concerns. Joe’s advocacy has also helped Lexington to:
- Increase effective spending for road and sidewalk maintenance.
- Adopt the Complete Streets policy to improve the co-existence of multiple modes of transportation and increase safety for cyclists and pedestrians.
- Replace the obsolete Fire Headquarters and Police Station.
- Include robust safety and accessibility features in the Center Streetscape Project.
Collaboration & Community
Joe believes that we are one community, and that the role of a Select Board Member is to balance competing interests and bring people together:
- He holds regular community listening sessions on key issues to gather varied constituent perspectives.
- As the Covid-19 pandemic emerged, Joe provided hundreds of hours of unpaid effort to develop technology that allowed 200+ Town Meeting participants to successfully conduct Town business remotely while safeguarding everyone’s health at no expense to the town.
- As Select Board chair, Joe led the effort to bring the community together around a school building plan that expanded the Clarke and Diamond Middle Schools, added capacity at Bowman, Bridge and Fiske Elementary Schools, and led to the reconstruction of the Hastings elementary school.
- Advocated for and led the community to approve a debt exclusion to build the new Hastings School and Lexington Children’s Place public preschool program.
- Advocated for a successful debt exclusion to fund the Middle School Expansion Projects.
- As Select Board chair, Joe commissioned the creation of an ad hoc Center Streetscape design committee to build consensus among disparate community interests. The resulting balanced proposal was unanimously adopted by the Select Board.
- As a Town Meeting Member and then Select Board Member, Joe led the effort to bring electronic voting to Town Meeting. This innovation increased efficiency during meetings, and provides residents with better transparency on Town Meeting Members’ votes.